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Social Listening

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  My wife, toddler, and I snuck away this weekend to try to escape the chaos for a little while and clear our heads. Holed up in a lovely hotel room in Newport, Oregon, we had the pleasure of catching up on cable television. Normally, we just stream the things we want to watch, so we miss out on commercials (if you can call that "missing out"). Liberty Mutual insurance is well known for their commercials and especially for their jingle. They are an insurance company that offers car, homeowner's, and renter's policies. They offer discounts and unique add-ons as their main selling points. I decided to dig in and see what their social media accounts were like and how they interact with their customers and followers.  Wow, I was really in for a surprise! Both their Instagram and Facebook pages are flooded with comments on nearly every post with customer complaints. One of the main complaints that I saw over and over again was a lack of communication and customer service f

Marketing in the News

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To be honest, beginning this assignment I had a completely different understanding of the task at hand than where I landed after rereading it and realizing that I needed to start over. After trying to switch gears from the post I was writing, I searched in a new direction looking for an article about an ad campaign. I came across this one in Digital Marketing News. Apparently, the Swedish housewares and furniture company IKEA have found themselves battling misperceptions and assumptions about the quality of their products, specifically their kitchen furnishing. In an ad released in the UK, they present a kitchen by the company "Eureka Spiritsis". The ad shows a luxury kitchen. A sophisticated-looking man talks about its superior quality and uses an over-the-top approach to convey its level of fanciness. Then as it seems the ad is ending, they say, "Surprise, it's IKEA," which is the same letters used in the name Eureka Spiritsis. They say, "So we lied about

A Little About Me

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  From left: son Marc, daughter Charley, wife Katie, daughter Peter Hi, hello! I'm excited to be here! I would love to introduce myself and include fun facts about my hobbies and interests, recent vacations, and captivating stories, but alas, I'm not sure I could even begin a list. My life is very full and chaotic, and at this point is overflowing with responsibilities and problem-solving. Let me back up a bit and explain. My wife and I both used to work in the aerospace industry in different parts of producing titanium components that mostly ended up on airplanes. I worked at my job for ten years. In 2020, as we all know, the Pandemic hit. The airline industry and the building of new planes was deeply impacted. My wife was laid-off in April of 2020, and I went through a series of furloughs and job uncertainty. We decided that with all of the time off, it was a good time to have another child, so we began the process with a clinic in Eugene, Oregon. Our daughter, Charley Ann, w