Values of AE Clothing

American Eagle outfitters is a brand of clothing that competes with the like of Abercrombie & Fitch and Hollister. The brand is quite unkown I think in the UK, it has no stores in the here unlike Abercrombie & Fitch and more recently Hollister, as a result it is not as well known commercially as its competitors are.
All three brands have their stores sell the brand in a similar way, by using music, smell to attract customers. They also do not label their stores in attempt to make passers by more curious of what inside. All marketing techniques.However American Eagle has different ways or different values and also relates to American identity in terms of prosperity and poverty.
Its relation to poverty is down to the fact that it prides itself on being luxurious affordable fashion wear, which it also uses against A&F or Hol.co to be competative. Being cheaper it attracts those who are not as well off, and gives more people freedom of choice, freedom of expression.
If American Eagle is competative and popular then it is related to prosperity. As previously mentioned AE sell their brand using the label "Luxurious" along with A&F or Hol.co so they are considered by the public to be so, whilst still being cheaper.
American Eagle plays mostly on the Value of Freedom so closely associated with American identity. The AE logo is "Live Your Life" what they are saying is liv your life and have fun but do it wearing American Eagle and you can live it better, free'er, more often and have a trillion times more fun.

An apple in Nike's hand

I chose Apple & Nike . I think this is a sort of cultural symbol of the United States.

Apple , it is a fruit make people become wise. In the United States, Apple has become synonymous with high-tech. Recently, Apple has launched a new magic mouse.


Here is another symbol of America, Nike. Just like the name, the meaning of victory. And advertisements of Nike are also mean of 'value'.

American Values - Michael Jordan

This is a video of Michael Jordan's 'Be legendary campaign'.
I think the video can be tied with striving for the American Dream and I think this can even be seen in the title 'Be legendary' and the words 'look me in the eyes, i'm scared of what i wont become'. It shows the values of the American Dream for American people and how apparent it is even in modern society to try and become successful in what they do. I think it uses very powerful marketing ploys for Jordan label and by buying into the Jordan brand you're buying into the American Dream of becoming 'Legendary'.

LoveTrain

I chose this advert as it is christmas now and is one of my favourite adverts. I think that the advert is sending out a message to the world as well as advertising the product. At the beginning of the advert it says 'give stripes' which could be seen as a telling the world to give love by giving someone a present at christmas to show them they are loved. The song used for the advert uses the lyrics 'People all over the world, join hands, start a lovetrain, lovetrain', the message that is given out by these lyrics is that the world should join together and create world peace. This commercial was aired in 2002 a year after the 9/11 terror attack, and i think that this advert was reaching out to those people who had lost someone they loved.

The advert also portrays the values of christmas, a time that everyone joins together to celebrate one day a year and can spend time with the ones they love and show them how much they love them.

The New D&G Fragrances Anthology

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXL8t41EqWw

My chosen commercial is advertising Dolce and Gabbana Fragrances. It's an advert that has been in circulation for a while now that I personally love (mainly because of the part of the Geroge Michael song it uses!), but it is still popular and up to date because of the stars that have been used. The six models are; Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffer, Eva Herzigova, Fernando Fernandes, Tyson Ballou and Noah Mills. D & G have been clever in that they have used some very attractive people who appeal to both sexes in order to reach a wider demographic.

In terms of 'value', well it's a fragrance, that much is obvious. A good deal of the world's population uses perfume. I don't step out of the house without it. This particular 'anthology' of fragrances appeals to both men and women as it deliberately caters to both genders. Fragrance is often used to attract the opposite sex and is meant to make the consumer feel attractive and sexy and sometimes it's just meant to make you feel a little better about yourself and give you an ego boost. However, in this case, I would think that it is the former. Half naked models? Yes, I think we know what they are trying to sell us. Sex sells, and don't you forget it.

The price for this perfume is to be expected as it is a designer brand. I found one website that is selling 100ml bottles for $65.00 which considering the exchange rate today is about £39, whereas on the UK Boots website it is £35. This was on the Macy's website, but there are others that go as high as $74. With this particular item I think you really have to shop around to get the best deal, because there are some websites that are happy to exploite their customers if it means they can get an few extra Dollars.

I think fragrance as a commodity is one that is based soley on branding. For example, designer brands, although they cost more, will often sell more because of the name of the product. Chanel No.5 is possibly the worlds most famous perfume because it is Chanel and was worn by movie starlett's of a certain era. Fragrances that are endorsed by Celebrities will sell more because of the culture we live in. This is none more true than in the US. A Hollywood obsessed culture see's Celebrities gracing the pages of magazines and TV screens as the spokesmodel for a fragrance. For example at the moment, I've seen almost constantly Sienna Miller, Josh Hartnett, Audrey Tatou, Ewan McGregor, Elizabeth Hurley, Gwenyth Paltrow and the list goes on. This is just for fragrance bare in mind, the cosmetics industry is a whole other world. And although D&G is an Italian brand, it is heavily marketed in the US as it is a. the richest country in the world and b. it is possibly the most Celebrity obsessed and is heavily endorsed by models who are marketed in America, hence the reason I chose it.

In my opinion, the D&G advert is a effective one in that it uses catchy music (George Michael's 'Freedom 90') and the models who are advertising the product are well known ones who are over the age of 25, which appeals to women as they do not feel so threatened by younger women. Granted, they look nowhere near their age, but they do sell the product in a way that appeals to both sexes. And then we have the male models who have the bodies that some 'ordinary' men aspire to have and who alot of women would aspire to be with! It basically acomplishes what it sets out to do; convinces the consumer that if they buy D&G's ridiculously overpriced fragrances at Macy's department store for Christmas, they too will look and smell like a supermodel.

Alger's Dick

Here is an article I've found about Alger's work Ragged Dick.

The Dictionary of American Biography calls Horatio Alger the "most successful writer of boys' stories in the whole of American literature." Before moving to New York City in 1866, Alger had been a Unitarian minister for two years. He'd also published several works of fiction. But none had anything like the success of Ragged Dick. This first of Alger's "rags to respectability" novels appeared serially in Student and Schoolmate, a monthly periodical that featured moral tales for youth. Alger's story began running in January, 1867, with the picture below as a kind of frontispiece. Before the last installment appeared in June, Ragged Dick had attracted so much attention that the Boston publisher A.K. Loring signed Alger to a contract that led, by the end of the century, to 118 other novels modeled on the same archetypal plot. As success stories Tom and Dick's adventures resemble each other only by contrast. The chapter below recounts Dick's first visit to a fashionable New York church, under the sponsorship of the second of his three male mentors. It is strikingly secular in its emphases, but not much like MT's chapter on Tom Sawyer in church. Of course, we shouldn't forget that in Sunday School Tom is tempted to fall down and worship the socially "elect" Judge Thatcher -- and curiously the idea of being "adopted" into "sivilization" by a rich patron whom one has aided is picked up in Tom Sawyer by the story of Huck and the Widow Douglas.

Breast Cancer awareness

In a Seattle hospital