Media Blog

Thursday November 26, 2009, Thanksgiving

Went to see the movie, 2012, in a theater located in downtown Dallas, TX. Driving to the movie theater saw about twenty billboards advertising everything from further online education to toothpaste, and Beer. Of all of the billboards I saw, the Bud Light had the most striking one as they constructed a rock waterfall with a tropical scene depicted in the middle. I cannot imagine what an exorbitant amount of money was spent to construct this waterfall. However, in TX, beer drinking seems to be a popular past time of many people so clearly the cost of the billboard is worth the benefit of profit.

At the movie theater, we say many advertisements, whether it be movie posters, scenes from movies playing on large scenes, or movie preview that advertised up and coming movies such as the Price of Persia, which is coming out in May of 2010.

Throughout out the movie, there were a few subtle advertisements promoting certain products or places such as an expensive Bently car, Yellowstone National Park, plastic surgery, etc.

Friday, November 27, 2009, Black Friday

We went shopping latter in the evening around 4 pm. By that point it seemed that most of the craziness had subsided. We only went to one store, Marshalls, where we saw a few advertisements for various shoes or clothing products being sold in the store. Surprisingly, there were far fewer advertisements in the store than your typical department store such as JcPenny’s or Macy’s. Also, to my surprise there were no overhead announcements.

On our way back home from Marshalls, we stopped at Chipotle to eat some Mexican food. Just looking at the pictures of food in the windows made us hungry. We also decided to buy a hot chai tea in the Starbucks next door. Even though we had no previous intention of buying a hot drink, the advertisements were almost overwhelming.

Again driving back through Dallas area, we passed an almost incalculable number of billboards, window advertisements, cars with logo written on the side or simply people wearing certain obvious name brand clothing. Again, these advertisements were of virtually anything possible such as homeowners insurance, H & M clothing, Ford trucks, etc.

Later that evening I checked my facebook account. Several of the pop-up adds were for dating websites such as E-Harmony. I also saw several advertisements for teeth whitening strips.