Baldwin Wallace Mile/800 Recap

I was very excited for this meet simply because I was doing a mile and trying to get some speed work in off the 800. For this meet we didn’t leave at the crack of dawn, but we got back at the crack of dawn…5:15 am to be exact! The entire way to Baldwin Wallace I listened to my favorite artist Social Club Misfits. Their new album Into The Night was released and every song is a banger! I listened to the album 11 times total that day. It is easily their best work yet. We got to the meet and I did a short shake out after the long bus ride.

Before the mile I had the athletic trainer stretch out my hips, because I knew I was going to be moving fast. It was finally time for the warm up and we warmed up a little early for the mile. We didn’t let it get to us, so we just kept moving around and doing some more stretches. My stomach started to hurt and I think it was from the Wendy’s we had for lunch. *Viewer discretion is advised on the next few sentences.* Since I was about to race, I tried my best to puke up the food before the race but never happened. I have never done that before a race, so I was kinda scared about it.

My heat finally came up and it was all behind me. I went out and did some strides and was excited for the race. I went out with my bud Sean and tried to hold on him. We were racing three days after a 6xmile workout and a 90 min mid week long run on Wednesday. I was still feeling both the days in my legs but went out and raced. I don’t have a lot of speed but I ran a 4:53 mile. It wasn’t what I wanted but I managed to walk away with a PR and I finally ran a sub 5 mile.

After the race I did an extended cool down/warm up for the 800. I got back and did more dynamic stretches and was listening to music to stay pumped up. I was listening to WWE theme songs to get me going. Finally it was go time for the 800. I went out and led the first two laps on the 200m track. I went through the first 400 in a 59 which is my PR for a 400 from my senior year of high school. My next 400 was a 75 and my final time was a 2:15. I am not much of a sprinter but I can run forever. I am the weird one that loves long runs!

This was a very great meet and came away with two PRs. It was also great for everyone to come around and cheer for the entire track team in all their events. The only thing that wasn’t fun was getting back at campus at 5:15 am, but it is all for the love of track. I am excited for my next track meet because it will be an outdoor meet and I will most likely be doing the 10K.

Quentin Cassidy was a miler… Adam Romano is not…

Spire Institute 5K

Another race, and another PR. This time I made the trip up to Spire Institute in Geneva, Ohio. I left fairly early for this meet. I didn’t have to get up at 5:30 in the morning. This time I was able to sleep in which was really needed. I also got the best racing fuel known as Subway. Always go for the Italian herb and cheese, it is the best bread there. The entire trip up and back was just a bunch of random music which helped pass the time. I listened to my favorite album that has been out since October, and that is Perception by NF.

Finally, I arrived at Spire with Coach Lopitz. We left a little earlier than the track team, but they all showed up later. These people are the best teammates ever and I am thankful that they went nuts during my 5K.  I did a short shake out when I arrived and this was my first time racing here. I was amazed at how big the indoor track facility was. I had heard teammates talk about it before, but I couldn’t believe there was an 8 lane indoor track. I was feeling nice and fresh for the race during my warm up.

It was finally time for my race and I was excited for it. I was set up to run a really fast time that would have been a yuuuugggeee PR. I started the race out at the back and worked up to the front. I worked up to the front too fast, and should have just relaxed behind the leaders instead of leading the race. I went through the first mile in a 5:10 feeling great. It didn’t even feel like a 5:10, it felt more like a 5:30. Either way I went through the race and felt great the entire time. I then made it to the middle of the race and with eight laps left I kinda stopped pushing. That is when the race really starts and I should have pushed harder. I really need to work on my mental toughness because I feel like that is 80% of racing. If you can figure that out then you are golden. I know I am really fit right now. I know the race will come around and I can’t wait for that to happen.

I held on the rest of the race but I wasn’t running the lap times I wanted to run. I finished with a time of 17:24. I was on pace for around a 16:30 5K, and I would have loved to have run that. I know it will come at the right time. I finished the race mad because I knew I could have went much faster. A lot of people would question why I would be mad about a PR, but it could have been so much better.

I cooled down and the anger started to fade away. There was a short meeting with the track team and then those competing the next day went to the hotel. I made the trip back to Wesleyan with Coach Lopitz for the athlete day on Saturday. We talked about the race and what I could have done different. Then we proceeded to listen to different kinds of music and some how made it to “Weird Al” Yankovic songs and that helped me not think about the race. It is very important to have a short term memory as a runner, so you don’t think about the bad races. It is also good to think about ways you could have improved in the race, which is what I am doing.

I am taking the week off from racing and have just been training. The next time I will be racing is on the 9th at Baldwin Wallace. I am excited for this meet because I will be doing some shorter distances.  #ScootScootTheBoogie

Youngstown State 3k Race Recap

Throughout this year, I am going to recap all my races…that is if I remember to write about them. This is something I have always wanted to do and I am finally getting around to doing it. But first, just a short background. This past cross country season, I had a great season and it all started to come together after years of hard work. I was running PRs in all my races and running close to my PRs in track workouts. This is going to take me a while to figure out but I hope you enjoy my narrative about my races. Some will be lengthy or short, it just depends on the race and how soon after I write the recap.

Now time to get into everything about my race at Youngstown State. First off we left really early in the morning to get there. I got up at 5:30 a.m. because the bus was leaving at 6 a.m. We arrived to the meet early, and this was my first time ever running on a 300m indoor track. I was excited for this meet for the fact that I had a great month of training in December. I was racing in the 3k so it was the second to last race of the day. So I sat around all day and cheered on my teammates. Around 1 o’clock I was thinking about getting some lunch but I didn’t get anything. I started to get really hungry throughout the day, so I just started eating the food the school brought with us. My race was finally getting close and I was really excited!

I started my warm up at the end of the 200 heats that were going on. There were three heats of the women’s 3k and three heats of the men’s. I was in the third heat of the men’s race. I felt great during my warm up and was ready to go. I may have started my warm up a little early, but I like to have some spare time before the race for the bathroom and stretching. My race finally came up and I wasn’t trying to do anything crazy just something to get back into racing.

The race started and I was in the middle of the pack on the first lap. I slowly worked my way up through the field clicking off 57 second laps on the 300m track. The hosts were playing music during the races, which is always great as a distance runner. The first song that was playing was “Thunder” by Imagine Dragons. This is a great song and it was perfect for the race. I eventually had worked my way up and was leading the race. I have rarely ever felt what it’s like to lead a race. The feeling was great because I had a runner’s high. With 1000m left in the race, I really wanted to start picking it up and get after it with 600m left. Well I got passed with 800m left and kinda lost my runner’s high. I ended up splitting a 62 second lap after running 57s consistently. I was able to finish strong, but while I was leading I felt like I was flying. It is a completely different feeling when being in a race.

I finished the race and felt like I still had some left in the tank, but I just came off two weeks of running the most miles ever. I felt like I could have pushed faster, but I don’t have any speed. Either way I came away with a 44 second PR. I ran a 9:46 3k which is great for me. I think if I didn’t fall off the last 1000m, I could have ran close to a 9:30 for 3k. I have made huge jumps during my junior year of college. I am excited to see what happens throughout this track season.

My next race will be at Spire Institute Jan. 26 and I will be racing in the 5k. I am hoping for another huge PR.

Meadowbrook Mall Friday Night Live Ad Campaign

During the course of the fall semester in my advertising class, we have learned about many ways to reach the consumer through ad campaigns. At the beginning of the semester, we were given a company and the company my group was given, was the Meadowbrook Mall located in Bridgeport, WV. We did a lot of research on the company to learn when it was founded, what type of stores were there, and what their target audience is. When we knew we were going to be meeting with them, we prepared questions to ask them. Luckily for my group, they showed up with an event they wanted to put on during the summer. They wanted people from 18-24 years of age to come to the event. The event would have live music and food. There would be chances to win gifts and gift cards to use in the store. It will take place every Friday, during the month of June. This is a great way to bring even more people to the mall.

Since we had this event and the target audience they wanted to reach, we knew we needed to create an ad campaign. We used the program called commspoint to get research on our target audience. We got some great information to help decide on what we wanted to do for our ad campaign. Some of the information we got was for social media advertising, and media in the entertainment field. This was great, we were going to reach the media in an earned and bought type of way. We decided to use radio to reach our target audience instead of television. During the summer, many people are in their cars traveling rather than their houses.

When it comes to the social media aspect for our ad campaign, we decided to use Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. The reason for us to use Facebook was for people to check in at the event. When using Instagram, they would post their pictures with the hashtag #MBMFridayNight for a chance at winning a prize. When using Snapchat they could post pictures and videos at the event with a geofilter on it. This will bring their friends in, because they want to get that geofilter. I know a lot of people that save pictures into their Snapchat memories so they can go back and look at them. Social Media is becoming one of the main ways companies advertise their media. This is a great tool to use for owned media and interact with fans.

By using these forms of media, it will help put on a great event at the Meadowbrook Mall. This is an event that could compete with other events going on during the summer. The live music and chances at winning something has me wanting to attend!

Are Consumers Getting Burnout on Ads?

Don’t you just hate it when you are in the middle of a television show and an advertisement appears? I feel the same exact way about this. I very much dislike it when an ad plays in the middle of a show I am watching or a video on YouTube. The American Marketing Association states that we see 10,000 advertisements a day. One reason we see all these ads, is because in a one hour television show, there are roughly 18 minutes of ads. This is astonishing to me because I have never really thought about it. I have realized I see a lot more ads because of social media , but never thought it was that high of a number. Since we see this many ads, eventually we will get tired of them. I know of some people that have used an ad blocker because of this.

The United States of America spends the most on advertising than any other country. In 2016, the U.S. spent more than 190 billion dollars on advertising. Advertisers are really trying to get their word out there, since it is a competitive market. That is why they come up with catchy taglines and videos. Some are saying this is leading to consumer burnout.  This is known to come up whenever a consumer feels  burnt out on seeing so many ads. Advertisers are having to really think about what they are putting out there. Is it really grabbing the audiences attention, or are they just looking at it and moving on. If they are moving on, advertisers really have to work on a plan to keep them invested. A lot of companies do that by making an ad that involves something trending in pop culture. Reebok did a great job with this because of the glitch happening on iPhones. Whenever you have a capital I in a message, it becomes A ?. 

One day, I decided to do my own experiment and see how many ads I could see in a day. During this experiment, I only managed to use technology. I didn’t get the chance to listen to the radio or watch television. All the advertising I witnessed was either by social media or ads on Youtube videos. By the end of the day, I had seen over a couple 1000 ads. I wasn’t anywhere close to the 10,000 but I still seen a lot. The amount I saw was still more than expected, because I wasn’t looking at other types of media. This was also during a weekday and not on a weekend, so that had a major effect. By the end of the day, I was experiencing ad burnout. I was paying attention to some of the ads because of this. When I was watching a Youtube video, I kept waiting for the five seconds to skip the commercial. I seen some clever ads throughout the day and my favorite one was a Star Wars ad.

Battlefront II

I seen this while looking at stuff for the upcoming Star Wars movie. So this really grabbed my eye because I am a huge fan and I can’t wait to get the new video game. I found out if I pre order it, I can get other great things as well. Since I am able to that, I am going to try and pre order it. Evidently this ad spoils stuff from the movie, but I didn’t pay attention to that because I seen you could get special upgrades and themes. Advertising has a way of manipulating what you are looking at so I would have never known about this if I didn’t click on this link.

How Diminished Ratings in the NFL is Effecting Ads

Hello everyone, today we will be talking about the drop in ratings during NFL games and how it has an effect on advertisers. The ratings have been falling since the protests and other bad publicity, but that won’t be our main focus for today. During the 2016-2017 football season there was a drop in ratings, because of the election and big name stars weren’t playing like Tom Brady.  A lot of people thought this drop in ratings would be temporary, but it looks like they were wrong. The NFL is a powerful company and last season alone, advertisers paid a record high $4.2 billion on ads during the regular season. Some experts believe that this was because there were more games being showcased on more national telecasts. Even though the ratings keep dropping, advertisements are still being put out. It is speculated that if ratings keep dropping than advertisements won’t be run as frequently.

 

Viewership drop 

 

Now lets take a look at how the ratings dropping is causing an effect with the stock market inside the NFL. The NFL stock is on the rise this season but networks such as Disney, CBS, Fox and Comcast are down 1% to 8%. It is expected there will be over $5 billion spent on advertising this year in the NFL. Broadcasting companies will be in the red this year and most likely won’t be spending near as much on ads during the 2018-2019 NFL season. During week two of the 2017 NFL season, there was a substantial drop in Monday Night Football ratings. It was a 14% drop, unlike anything else. A Jefferies analysis has projected there could be a loss of over $200 million on ads if the TV ratings continue to drop.

Since the ratings are dropping, networks are having to “make goods”.  Because of this, ads are being showed again at no charge. This was done during the 2016 season but is most likely being dealt with the same way during the 2017 season since ratings are worse than last year.

We are six weeks into the 2017 season and total viewership is down 7.5 percent from this time last year. It was estimated that 15 million people were tuning into the games this season. Since that is happening, ads aren’t being shown at their full potential. This is making companies not reach their target audience. Since the ratings are dropping players and owners are meeting to discuss ways on how to bring the audience back. Will the ratings make a jump back up nearing the half way point of the season?

In my opinion, I don’t watch a lot of NFL games because they are slow and boring. I like to stick to college games because I feel like they are more entertaining. It seems like during an NFL game there is a commercial every five minutes, so it takes me out of the game. I will watch NFL games when the playoffs come around, or if there is a great match up between two teams. I feel like the ratings are also dropping because people are doing other stuff with their free time. More and more people are getting back into outdoor activities, so they are doing that on the weekends. If people aren’t that, they are busy with other stuff preparing for the work week. I also believe with games being longer than 3 hours people aren’t tuning in as often. Since it takes this long, I would much rather attend the game than watch it on TV. It is so much better in person.

I have given you information based off research and my opinion on why the NFL ratings are dropping. Will the NFL bounce back and advertisements make their money back? Or will advertisements be pulled from the networks. Please leave your thoughts or comments down below.

-Adam Romano

InnerAction Media Creative Director Fills Marketing Students in on Ad Agencies

There are many roles inside an ad agency. These roles have one person doing the work most of the time for what they are great at. Then the team comes together to combine everything that they have worked on to make it a complete project. This is what Mike Arbogast Creative Director at InnerAction Media spoke about in class Mon. Sep. 11. Before he got into the meat of everything he had the class participate in an activity.

During the activity, we were all given a picture. Our task was to tell everyone about what was in our picture and form a story. The one thing we couldn’t do was show the other members in our group what was in our picture. This took some time because we had to figure out what our story was. Once we figured out what our scene looked like, we grouped up together to form smaller groups. Afterwards, we got into a single file line and hoped the other members had done their part as well. Mike went through and looked at our pictures like they were telling a story. Both teams had done a great job and was in the order the pictures were suppose to go. This was a great exercise to show how marketing works.

Every person has a specific task to complete in order to get the job finished. Some people may have different ideas, and they don’t want to share those ideas with a lot of people. So they keep them secret just like we did in the exercise in class. This is why marketers are known as problem solvers because they are coming up with ideas to show their clients.

I have mentioned this team aspect in marketing that does different jobs, well some of those agencies are: branding, advertising, public relations, creative design, digital, and full-service by connecting all these together. Digital marketing is known as inbound marketing which refers to the consumer decision making process.  Inbound marketing is the most common form of marketing now. You don’t recognize it at first but when you step back and think about what the information is telling you, you can see it plain as day. That is because it is blogs, events, and social media which is all around us and we use on a daily basis.

Whenever you first meet with your client, you want to get information about their marketing strategy. In order to do that, you want to build trust, share information, learn more about their company, be accessible, and form a partnership. Whenever you are meeting with this client you want to ask hard questions. These questions will help you learn more about what this business is all about. Some things to ask might be where is your revenue coming from? How much do you spend on marketing? How do you measure success? What is your demographics of your target market? Once you have gotten all this information you want to start talking with your team. Make sure you get a lot of information regarding goals, SWOT, assets, customer personas, and the background of the client.

When you begin talking with your team, you want to form a blueprint. This blueprint will become a plan for what you want to do for the client. Once you have made your plan, it is a good idea to see if the client is on the same page. The one thing you don’t want to happen is scope creep. Scope-creep is a dirty word in the world of marketing. Scope-creep is when you keep doing work for your client that was never apart of the original blueprint. That is why it is important that after you make your blueprint to have your client sign the agreement. One thing you want to do is reduce the amount of scope-creep you do. It can help the client out you just don’t want it to become a priority.

I had a great time learning more about the marketing world from someone that does it every day. Mike Arbogast presented the class with a lot of information. The exercise was beneficial to see exactly how everything in an agency is done. Each person has one job and that job comes full circle to complete the puzzle. I will take this information and use it in the future. Some things I learned was inbound marketing and scope-creep during his presentation.

 

A Journey That Consumers Never Think About

Have you ever wondered why you buy a product at the store or online? Why is it that we as a consumer will buy the same good or service over and over again. Then we don’t even think about switching at all. Well this is known as the consumer decision journey, and every consumer goes through a different journey. It may take a consumer some time to be drawn towards a product. There are many ways a consumer can be influenced about a companies brand, and that is based on advertising and marketing. All of this is known as the path to purchase. Along with all of this, you want to look at the purchase funnel known as AIDA. AIDA is awareness, interest, desire, and action. This funnel can be incorporated into the decision journey. All of this apart of integrated marketing communication.

Integrated marketing communication (IMC) faces many challenges because consumers, brands, and media are fundamentally changing in profound ways. With the expansion of media, consumers are now utilizing different media sources to get their information about the brand or product. The consumers path to purchase is completely different from what it used to be. It is now shorter, but more complex because of the many different ways to come by media. IMC used to only be found in media like print or TV. You can now find IMC all over the place. Consumers now are actively seeking information about the brand and one way that they really do this is by consumer-to-consumer. Brand messaging isn’t under the marketer’s control as much because of word of mouth.

Source: McKinsey & Company 

Next, let’s take a look at the many different stages in the consumer’s decision journey. There are at least 12 factors in this stage. Those stages are needs, is aware, examines, learns, likes, will pay, commits, consumes, is satisfied, is loyal, engages and advocates. There are many different communication options that work well with these stages. The vast majority that work well are TV, mobile, direct, and selling. According to managementparadise.com, the one that has the most influence is direct marketing. It has changed from just being in print and now you can find it on internet ads. After finding what works best to get a consumer hooked on a product, you want them to stay on the loyalty loop so they will continue to buy your product and recommend it to friends. Whenever this happens, you know you will have a return customer and your company will be making profit.

I thought this was very interesting because we go through these steps when we are buying a product. I have never thought about it like this before, because we just show up at a store or look online and get the product. Sometimes we will do research on products and ask ourselves do we really want this product. As a college student we are always shopping around to find the best price for a product.  Have you ever realized that you have went through these same steps also?