Feb. 26 Application Log

This week we continued our conversations on what creates social currency most effectively. It was interesting to me that this principle, though perhaps in different words, came up in my Comms 330 class. On Thursday we began our discussion on ambient advertising. This type of advertising strays from the classic, popular forms of advertising such as commercials, radio spots, billboards, and print ads in newspaper and magazines. Aside from this list of things that they aren’t, it is hard to perfectly describe what ambient advertising actually is. This type of advertising is, by definition, different. One great example is a large sticker of a hand placed on the ground on a parking spot, making whatever car parked there look like a toy car, done by hot wheels. The overall idea of ambient ads is to catch people by surprise, and get them talking. This type of advertising makes people want to share, and become free channels of distribution. In other words, this form of advertising is very effective at creating social currency.