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The first advertisement is OMO (Unilever’s product) done for Vietnam’s market during Tet Holiday.

The second advertisement is also OMO ad with different name ALA, introduced in Argentina.

From these two advertisements (ads), I can see that Unilever has succeeded in avoiding Barriers to Intercultural Communication into getting notice from their customers. Perception of reality, images or sense of self, and language are some ways that communication can be influenced by culture.

The two ads above were made in the order to transfer a message from Unilever to their customers that ‘Dirt is Good.’ Understanding of perception of reality plays a significant role in advertising strategy of Unilever. Why they are not using a same advertising for both countries. It’s simply because Vietnam and Argentina have different perception of reality.

Sense of self can be noticed obviously through the ads as well.  Same idea ‘Dirt is Good’ was put smoothly in two different ways for both marketplaces to best fit their sense of self.

·      In Argentina, kids like to play in outside, discover the world themselves. Sometimes they are even a little bit naughty, playing with dirt and mud. The ad come up with the title ‘Pedon Mama’ which means ‘Pardon Mama’ in English is just so cute, just like the kids. They play, they discover, and they know their mum will not mind. How great it is!

·      Vietnamese like to help others. No wonder why Unilever has promoted the images of people helping people, no matter what. This has touched on the sense of self of Vietnamese. Especially when they even add in the traditional Tet Holiday in Vietnam, when everyone will try to do at least one good thing to other. So BOOM, they just Love the product!

Language is noticeably from the two ads. Spanish was used for ALA’s ad in Argentina, whereas Vietnamese was used for OMO’s ad in Vietnam. Would Unilever’s ad be effective anymore if the company only use one single English Ad for both markets? It would be a worse strategy ever. They even use two separated name for the product in the two countries. OMO for Vietnam and ALA for Argentina. Be flexible to change and adopt the language where the most of the products being consumed will bring best results to the company.

As I said at the beginning, Unilever is brilliant in avoiding the cultural barriers to communication when expend their brand to new and unfamiliar marketplaces. Something valuable for a future-businesswoman like me to learn.

Campaign at Java City 

I found this Campaign really helped me understand about the theories of

communication such as Cultivation theory and Agenda setting function.

(The story of how the campaign started and its results are posted

above).

·         Agenda setting function:

Ogilvy & Mather (India), the media agency who has created this advertisement, has succeeded in increasing the importance of the ‘interest in theatre’ issue in public’s mind through repeating the ads with the ending message “For more drama come to the Hutch Range Shankara Theatre Festival.”

A media’s influence depends on public’s direct experience with the issue and whether it is obtrusive or unobtrusive. In this case Ogilvy is an expert. The media created a campaign with real life incidents and filmed them with hidden cameras. This provided the target audience direct interaction with the campaign, therefore, they remember the ads. Not only the witnesses were influenced, the ones who watch it through TV were also convinced because the campaign does not look like a stage at all. Moreover, the audience has the right to choose to come to the theatre or not. In other words, it is unobtrusive, thus created more effect among the audience.

·         Cultivation theory: Resonance

Ogilvy also did a good job in getting the target audience’s attention through making the ads matching their daily life experience. Indians are extremely curious about other people’s lives; therefore, creating something that raise up their curiosity would be a wide strategy. Ogilvy hence created a “double dose” effect on their audience.

More amazing to know that this campaign only cost Ogilvy & Mather, India $625, but its results are unbelievable. 

Right at the first moment when Ms. Hui gave us a hint for mid-term exam preparation “Hey guys, please go home to watch one or two pieces of romance or drama. You will need it for your mid-term paper,” I thought of the movie named ‘No Reservations’ released in late 2007.

The movie is for the Relationship Development analysis. I chose this movie because it fits the Knapp Model of Relationship Development, which contains 10 stages, moving from ‘Coming together’ to ‘Coming apart’ stages in a relationship. This entry will mainly mention about the 5 stages of ‘Coming together’ and will touch on a little bit on the first stage of ‘Coming apart.’

Coming together

1.     Initiating: Kate and Nick, the two main characters in the romance are both famous chiefs. So it is obviously that the first place they meet will be at the kitchen of a well-known restaurant. Nick presents himself to Kate with a smiley face and the reason why he comes to work for this kitchen is because of her. He admires her talent in cooking. In the other hand, Kate appears cold and very cautious as thinking that Nick comes here to take away her job.

2.     Experimenting: Because of the job feature, they start having some small talks even though Kate does not want to. At the same time, the ‘feeling each other out’ process begins. Kate is perfect at creating recipes but holds too much pressure when working, while Nick plays and inspires others by his enjoyment when he cooks. Nick finally makes Kate smiles by helping her niece move out of the shell.

3.     Intensifying: Nick and Kate disclose more personal information to each other as well as sharing their feelings oftenly. Trust hence has been built up between the to souls. That’s when intimacy takes place. More physical contacts are shown.

4.     Integrating: Nevertheless, I think the movie doesn’t review much this stage. Since their is no announcement from Kate and Nick that they are a couple, no body knows, except Kate’s niece. 

Coming apart: Differentiating

However, love never runs smooth. Kate and Nick have conflict. Kate concerns about Nick taking away her job rises again as the owner of the restaurant follows Nick’s advice and change everything Kate has built up.

Coming together: Bonding

As mentioned in the lecture note, the stages in Knapp Model of Relational Development are not linear, which means it can skip and then go back to the previous stage.

‘No reservations’ is a case. Nick and Kate later realize that the problem is not that intense. They then get into peace again and even more attach to each other. When Nick and Kate feel that they have understand each other enough, enough commitment has been formed, they move in to live together and open their own restaurant. A happy ending, isn’t it?

Overall, ‘No reservations,’ like most of other romances I have seen, has a typical story line, which follows through most of the parts of the Knapp Model of Relationship Development. I realize that in any romance, the relationship needs to either pass the 5 stages of Coming together, or follows the other 5 stages of Coming apart. Sometimes, it can also move back and forth between ‘coming together’ and ‘coming apart,’ like the movie ‘No Reservations’ itself. I believe that my analysis above has explained it clearly enough.

Dance team is my favorite team ever. And it was the hardest one to manage as well. Why managing group communication is that hard? It is because any great performance requires a strong coherence of talented individuals. Group synergy is how this is called, which explains that individuals perform best in a group. But because dancers are gifted and artistic, they are quite hard to work with. Some may even say that artists or dancers are hard-to-pleased as each individual one of them has a very strong characteristic. Took it at a challenge, I myself formed my own dance team and participated in the School’s Annual Dance Competition. As the other two members of the group are my two best friends, I thought that it would be very simple to work as a group. However, things turn out the other way around, we had the problem related group dialectics. I could be able to manage well the task vs. maintenance goals in the group, but not individual vs. group needs. For task vs. maintenance goals, each member of the team was in charge with different tasks such as costumes seeker, music picker, or performance coordinator. By focusing on what we were best at reduced a lot of time-consuming for us and avoided any conflict among the group’s member. In contrast, we did not meet the individual vs. group needs. Our levels of individual expectation of rewards gained from the competition were not same; therefore, leads to different levels of commitment and contribution to the group. After all, we solved the problem by re-adjusting our individuals and group needs.

The best part came out at the end, when our efforts have been paid by the First Price of the Competition.

Reading about Bruce Tuckman’s Five stages of Group Development’s Model, I can see that our team work process that day exactly passed those stages mentioned. They are forming (task identity), storming (status argue), norming (disagreements), performing (get the work done), and adjourning (reflection).

Additional Feed:

Step Up 2, the newest movie released last week again wakes my love for dance up. The movie also shows a lot of concepts about Group Communication like I mentioned in the entry above. Below is the trailer of ‘Step Up 2′

Watch it and get inspired by the Dance Evolution as well as strategies for effective Group Communication.

Enjoy the movie ^^  

Recently, I went to watch the movie called ‘The Leap Years,’ the first English movie product of Singapore. For me, ‘The Leap Year’

is a perfect non-verbal communication piece. Please does not misinterpret this with a silent movie, ok? Im saying that this is a really good piece of romance that has well illustrated different types of non-verbal communication.

1.     Paralinguistics: study of vocal nonverbal cues like quality of voice, vocalics, or even silence.

In this movie, paralinguistics reflects through soundtracks. This is also my favorite part of the entire movie. You can refer to the link below for a soundtrack of the movie, The birthday song, performed by famous Singaporean singer Corrinne May.

Music was added in to make the piece more emotional, hence get more tears from the audience. Soft and slow music has been used in ‘The Leap Year’

to express the romantic mood through this whole piece of romance. 

2.     Chronemics: study of how time convey meaning

The title of the movie itself, The Leap Year, already tells the meaning of time in the relationship of the two main characters. The story is based on the special Leap Four Years day, February 29^th. The movie moves back and forth between the Leap Years days, which are also the birthday of the main female character, Li-Ann.  12 years time was condensed into a 95 minutes film, shows how fast time passes. In this particular movie, time conveys a deeper meaning: trust & love; because it is not easy to wait for each other 12 years and only meet once by 4 years.     

Not only the movie touches on individual time (past, future, present), it also shows the cultural association. The story was written base on the romantic Irish Leap Year custom, which allows woman to propose a date to a man.

3.     Objectics: study of how meanings are conveyed through physical objects

      As I observe, most of the movies in which the screens taking place in a long period of time usually use text, ‘Next 2 years’ for example, to indicate the change in time. In the Leap Year, the calendar with the date of February 29^th was shown to mention any timing change.

      The windmill is another object that was seen quite often through out the film. It symbols the male character, Jeremy, as the fortune-teller has told the Li-Ann that her real man is like a strong wind, comes and disappears. So when she first meets Jeremy at the Windows Café with a lot of windmills in his hands, she knows that her destiny has come

4.     Oculesics: study of nonverbal meaning associated with the eyes

There are a lots of screens in ‘The Leap Year’ where silence rules. The two main characters do not say a word, but by observing the way they look at each other, the audiences can already feel love in the air.

It’s so true that “Eyes are the windows to the soul.” On Li-Ann wedding, the day that meant to be the happiness moment in a woman’s life, Li-Ann’s eyes contacts show the sadness hidden deep inside her heart. Please take a look at the trailer of ‘The Leap Year’ below for more details.

  Some words for the conclusion:Just now when I was about to add this part in for a deeper content of the blog, I saw a guy also choosing “The Leap Years” to talk about in his blog. May be it’s because the movie was quite recently, but not exclude the fact that actually this movie was really well made. ‘Well made’ here means it has not only had a good story line, but a effective way in interaction with the audience at well. I myself as well as others who ever watched this romance, I believe, were really touched by the movie. Every part of it conveys something to the viewers, even the non-verbal communication factors. I guess that’s the main reason why the movie is evaluated as one of the best piece of romance produced by Singaporean. 

I myself have a real passion in Advertising industry, but never ask myself what make the advertisements (ads) great? Is that because of the ads’ creators, the media where it comes from, or the audience? Actually, more or less any great advertisement requires all of these aspects. And they are all parts of Communication.

A short, small ads can already make a different. Guess how amazing communication can change our lives. 

Above is an ads that has created a big impact on its target audience who are gamers. Have a look at the famous X-Box advertisement which was created to promote their slogan “Life’s short. Play more.”

Everyone was saying that this advertisement is exellent. However, I personally think that it’s not as great as I imagined it would be when I heard people worshiping about it. It is because the ad is a bit too exaggerated for me. I agree that media factors like graphics design, sounds, etc. did make this ad stand out. But then the content of it is not deep enough. The ad starts with a little baby, make the audience curious enough to keep watching it. The following screens are the development stages of the boy, till his last day in life. And then comes the last screen with X-Box slogan: Life’s short. Play more. This can either make the audience laugh out loud, or raise their eyebrows and say “What the heck!”

Moreover, I think a so-called successful advertisement should be able to convince most of the audiences who watch the ad (more than 90%). But I don’t think X-Box’s ad make it. View it in another way, I may be wrong as well since I am not their target audience, gamers are. So why they should care about what I am thinking about their ads? They only need gamers’ attention.  

Ok, it is possible to argue that way. But let me show you this advertisement, a brilliant advertisement in my point of view.

 Who ever used condoms are not convinced by this ad? Most of the men in this world are humorous or like to be one. So this is a perfect match. They will for sure laugh at the fantastic wish ‘Happy Father’s Day.’ Or even serious people will seriously pay attention to the fact that Durex is far better than their competitors in producing condoms.

Moreover, despite the fact that Durex’s advertisement is a print-ad, it has totally convinced the audience.

Just one word to say about this ad: brilliant.