Today I received my first at home Vivoo test. Vivoo is wellness app that guides users to a healthier lifestyle with personalized nutrition advice based on urine data. The unboxing of this test was slightly exciting. This bundle did not feel cheaply made. The colors of packaging were plain, yet very eye-catching. The colors were bright and lively, and the package wasn’t filled with directions which also made it more appealing. The Vivoo bundle is also recyclable which I thought was genius because many consumers are becoming more conscious of how products affect environmental issues. The overall directions were easy to read, and the directions were simple to follow. After unboxing my Vivoo home test, I decided to put it to the test. Like I said earlier, the steps were easy to follow and after taking a picture and waiting 120 seconds I had instant results. My results were interesting to read, and the app was easy to use. The whole process of me downloading the app, taking the test, and waiting for my results took me no longer then 5 minutes to complete.

Next, I decided to check out Vivoo website. The graphics went together well, and it was simple to navigate to the many links. The home page was informational in countless ways and answered my questions without having to travel to other sites. The overall website seems reliable and put together by professionals. The loading speed was quick, and they prioritized scrolling over clicking, which I also liked. Lastly, I checked out Vivoo’s Instagram account. The page was informational and easy to navigate. They collaborate with consumers all the time to repost their experience with Vivoo and to help share it with the world. They post weekly tips to promote good health and encouraging consumers to live their best life.

Visuals help potential consumers envision the product or service being offered. Visuals capture attention better than a headline or slogan. A picture can say a thousand words, and advertising space is expensive and limited. Instagram posts, memes on social media, YouTube videos, Snapchats, commercials and billboards are examples of visual advertising. Visual advertising includes obtaining customer’s attention, creating a good impression, and generating interests from an indifferent audience.  Visuals and videos are a key element in advertising and because technology is constantly advancing, so are these marketing strategies. For many companies, visual influence is how they gain new cliental. According to Forbes, today’s consumers have changed in a fundamental way. Customers are web and mobile savvy, rely on research and recommendations, and perhaps most are visually influenced that they turn to multimedia when they make their purchase choice.

Benefits of visual advertising:

• Research has proven that humans have an attention span of 8 seconds.
• Visuals are processed 60K faster than text message or emails.
• One minute of a video is more influential than 1.8 million words.
• Color visuals increase leadership by 80%.
• 40% of people respond better to visual information than written text.
• Smart phones and social media platforms have created multimedia experts.
• 70% of your sensory receptors are in your eyes.
• 50% of your brain is active during the visual process.

Communicating does no good if your audience doesn’t retain the information. Today, it’s easy for consumers to ignore a message if it’s not in a digestible format. Integrating visuals and videos can boost how much your audience absorbs and remembers. Studies show that our brains not only process visuals quicker, but they retain and transmits much more information. The human brain processes information in image form, an individual will be able to retain visual information for long period of time. People will easily forget what they hear or read but retain images. This is because images are stored in the long-term memory, whereas words and texts are stored in the short-term memory. The evolution of visual advertising has increased drastically over the past decade. Traditional ads consist of billboards, radio announcements, and newspapers. Since technology has advanced, businesses have found a new way to target their consumers. Social media is now one of the main outputs for visual and video advertising, and company sales have been radically increasing because so. 88% of Americans use some sort of social media account, whether it’s Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, etc… Digital advertising has taken over so much that search engines and social media sites alike incorporated native advertising that matched their product’s main UI to avoid disrupting their account experience.

Consumers love watching videos, images, GIFs, memes rather than listening or reading words. Social media platforms encourage ads to have fewer words and more graphics. People pay more attention when communicating in person, verses telephone or emails. Visual and video advertising has had a positive impact on boosting business sales and will continue to increase over time.

Business collaboration provides every worker with an equal opportunity to contribute and communicate their ideas. Team members see value in working together and seem to have more productive and engaging meetings. When collaboration improves, so does the business. Team collaborating can have many benefits such as: Improved flexibility of the organization, healthier employees, accelerated business velocity, innovative ideas, enhanced individual productivity, and increased profitability. Coworker collaboration has changed drastically in the last few years, and some are struggling to stay up to date. Today we are seeing new generations, who specialized in technology, that are entering the workforce and bringing a new expectation.

Empowering employees is important for the growth of a business. Empowering workers means trusting members to make decisions within an organization. Many ask, how do businesses empower their workers? There are many different strategies to improving teamwork throughout a company. First things first, lead by example. As a business owner, if you want your employees to be responsible and hard working then you must treat them with the same respect you would like in return. Secondly, encourage socializing in the workplace. Of course, work always comes first, but occasionally set time aside for team members to get to know each other. Coworkers are more supportive and helpful towards people they are comfortable around. Lastly, set defined goals. Each team member should be responsible for their own task but working together in organized team processes could help motivate each other to be more creative. Though coworker collaboration has changed so much in the last few years, it’s bound to get better with technology these days. We’ve gone from telephones, to emails, video chat, to social media, and things are only going up from here. Being a remote worker can be effective for both parties. Remote workers have been known to have a better work-life balance, time savings, positive environmental impact, increased productivity, a happier work life, and better health. It’s also cheaper for businesses to allow their employees to work out of the office. Because today’s society is sustainability aware about our environment, I could see more companies pushing for remote workers. There are many popular software’s used for co-worker collaboration. Some of the best productive tools for businesses are: Flowdock, GoToMeeting, Slack, WebEx, Asana, Dapulse, ProofHub, RedBooth, Trello, Wimi, Codingteam, Igloo, Google Docs, and Quip. Each one of these software’s are unique and meet different criteria. Depending on the company’s needs, is how they would decide which product fit best for them.

Today technology is becoming so advanced and continues to make communication easier for everyone. Seeing that our generation has these tools, I believe it gives us the advantage to really grow with our communication skills. The newest technology doesn’t allow us to hide on one side of the screen. It gives us the benefit to see customers face-to-face and really develop that personal relationship that every good worker should crave. It forces you to constantly practice the importance of communication, while helping you improve every step of the way.

For my podcast assignment I listened to a podcast called The Unforgettable, identify what you do beyond “Make People Feel Better” with Adria DeCorte. Adria is a message clarifying coach who helps women coaches make a message that feels messy, clear, so they can reach more people. During this podcast, Adria has a special guest by the name of Kim Pendleton. Adria starts the podcast off by talking about relating to her audience through messages, whether it’s for personal reasons or the business aspect. She believes that people start listening to what you’re saying when you connect with that passion, mission and what you want to do in the world. “Kim Pendleton is a powerhouse at the intersection between women’s sexuality + trauma recovery who gives women sacred space to unveil their soulful, sexy side—to heal from the past, find their way home, and have more of that juiciness in their lives every day. Her own story has themes of religious deconditioning, sexual assault and trauma, a messy divorce, and ultimately reclaiming her body. She helps her people be more in touch with their body, reconnect to their partner, have better sex.” Kim now helps her people become in touch with their bodies and have better relationships with their partners. During this interview, Adria asked Kim, “What does she says during her marketing to really capture her people?” Kim feels like her work could help so many different people, while going in many directions. Relating to someone else’s experience can make you really passionate and motivated to help them. Kim clients don’t necessarily identify themselves with having sexual trauma. The signs and messages are all there, but the clients don’t see it like that. That being said, Adria asks Kim how she connects to her people through marketing. Kim goes on to tell the podcast that she doesn’t use direct words. She talks about symptoms and other relatable stories to catch their attention. When it came to the relationship topic of this episodes, Kim said she use to compare her relationships to others and tried to figure out different sources of how to fix things. She was willing to do anything to feel better. Tons of her clients have mended their relationships with Kim’s help. She says the more she shares, the more her clients feel safe and the more information they tell her. She says it’s nice not being alone during these situations. Kim’s past has given her a very successful career as a life coach and her marketing motive is relating to her viewers and making them feel better.  

            My personal observation of this podcast was that I didn’t like it. I agreed with her marketing perspective of relating and connecting to customers, but I felt as if she just repeated herself throughout the episode. An alternative advertising idea for this podcast would be to talk about marketing solutions for social media and how she could grab viewers’ attention through advertising, rather then just relating to their stories.

Podcast Link: https://adriadecorte.com/hotseat-identify-what-you-do-beyond-make-people-feel-better-with-kim-pendleton/

An online application is a client-server computer program that the clients runs in a wed browser. Some popular software’s that are used to create content are Buffer, Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Agora Pulse, Sendible, eClincher, Social Pilot, and CoSchedule. Platforms that are used to share content are Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Yelp. The top five social media platforms that are used for shopping are Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and YouTube. Facebook has an estimated 2.7 billion users, Twitter has 126 million daily users, 250 million people use Pinterest every month, Instagram has 500 million daily users, and YouTube has 1.9 billion users worldwide. Facebook users can share photos and videos, comment on posts, keep in touch with friends and family, promote job opportunities, networking, promote upcoming events, advertising, shopping, posting reviews about a product or place, and many other things. Twitter is a social networking website where people communicate in shorter messages also known as a tweet. Twitter is used for posting tweets, retweeting a post you like, shopping, keeping up with sports news, etc. Pinterest allows their users to visually share and discover new interest by posting inspirational pictures and videos their personal board. Users also post millions of amazing recipes, with step by step instructions included. Instagram is used for sharing photos and videos, viewing followers’ feeds, posting Insta stories, viewing a business’s work, shopping and review products, and keeping up celebrities. YouTube users are watching videos or posting their videos to their blogs. Facebook has a large age range of users, but overall 25 to 34 years-old made up the biggest demographic. Twitters and Instagram’s age group is between 18 and 29 years-old. Pinterest’s age group is women ages 25 to 54 years-old. Lastly, the age group of YouTube users is 16-24 years-old.

 Growing up, my family was fortunate enough for my mom to be a stay at home mother. She was always so involved and doing everything possible to make us kids happy. Because of this, I always aspired to be a housewife like my mom when I grew up. Once I hit middle school, I realized I needed a realistic backup plan in case being a housewife didn’t work out. I decided that I wanted to get involved with medicine and possibly get my doctrines one day. It wasn’t till my junior year of high school when I finally realized that blood made me unsteady and being a doctor was just something my parents put in m y head because they wanted me to be successful. Once I recognized this situation, I was very confused about the future. I had one year till I left for college and had no idea what career path I wanted to work towards. I went into my freshman year of college being undecided about my degree and had never been so stressed. My parents were constantly nagging on me to decide, which made things even worse. A few months later, it just hit me out of nowhere. I was online shopping and realized how easily convinced I was by the right advertisement and was intrigued to know the secret behind it. Anything from the right powerful headline to the flashy graphic pictures in the background and I was sold. Since this day, I’ve been an Advertising and Public Relations major.

Today’s technology is rapidly changing the advertising business and is increasing the connectivity throughout the world. It’s how many companies rely on getting their consumers attention and is a way of exposing the newest information. Whether it’s a billboard or Facebook advertisement, companies are continuously thinking of new and creative ways to promote potential and current clients.  Businesses are running at such fast pace with the constant need for improvement and upgrades. From chunky desktops to MacBook’s, dial-up to Wi-Fi, and flip phones to Iphone’s. Watching the progression of this industry has been life changing to say the least.

        Adapting to new ways of advertising can have many effects on a business. Technology has help improved efficiency and communication throughout companies for decades. These advancements also allow us to perform tasks in less time and help us experience new cultures. Years ago, advertising was all done throughout televising and radio stations, not giving individuals the options to skip what they don’t want to hear. With new technology, consumers now have the option to personalize certain apps and programs leaving more satisfied customers. Technology has helped us step away from newspapers and magazines, giving this society a more sustainable environment. Technology has become a crucial accessory in our everyday lives, and the extreme dependability of it is not always healthy. Although there are many pros to this industry, the slightest malfunction can drive a business into the ground. Advertising can be very expensive and a waste of money if not done properly. A single wrong word could ruin the reputation of a company.