Conversation1

Narrator

Listen to a conversation between a student and a university print shop employee.

Student

Hi. I saw your ad in the campus newspaper.

Employee

Oh. We don’t have any job openings right now.

Student

Oh, no. I meant the other ad, about the services you provide for students. You see, I’ve been working at the campus tutoring center as a math tutor. But things have changed, including my schedule. And now I want to start doing tutoring work independently. But in order to, basically, start my own business, I need to get the word out.

Employee

Ok.

Student 

I was thinking I should get something printed up that I can hand out to people.

Employee

Ah. Well, actually, I just printed up some great-looking flyers for someone doing the same thing.

Student

Flyers. Yeah, that’s an idea. I guess then I could post them around campus.

Employee

Yeah. And you can hand them out too. But, oh, you know what? I did something really neat for someone last week. She didn’t want to go the traditional route, you know, business cards, flyers, so we customized pencils for her.

Student

Pencils?

Employee

Yeah. You know, a little message printed on the pencil.

Student

Oh, that’s cool.

Employee

Yeah. But you should know, it’s not our cheapest option. Oh, and you know those little sticky notes?

Student

You do those too?

Employee

Well, we did once. I think those bright pieces of paper would be real attention getters. You know, student use them all the time, so they should be good for business. I don’t know why we haven’t done more.

Student

Wow.

Employee

So you’ve got some options.

Student

Right.  Well, what about business cards? My friend has these business cards. She does tutoring too. And she got them at this place in town, but they were kind of expensive.

Employee

For business cards?  Well, I don’t know what your friend paid. But we could do something real simple and it wouldn’t be much. Like for a batch of 250 for one of our standard designs, 20 dollars maybe.

Student

20 dollars sounds okay.

Employee

Now, there are some other choices that’ll affect the cost. You know, like different background patterns, using color ink, that sort of thing. And it also depends on how many words you want to include.

Student

Ok. Well, I know what I want them to say. But I am just thinking, I kind of like that pencil idea.

Employee

Yeah. I thought it was neat. Now, of course you can only fit your name and phone number, and like, in your case, math tutoring on it.

Student

Right. Well, I could custom-design the business cards though, right? That’s what my friend did. She said she designed them at the computer right there at the print shop.

Employee

Well, you can do that here too. But a custom design would be a bigger investment for your business than one of our standard designs.

Student

Well, I don’t know. I am interested in business cards, so can I look at the standard designs?

Lecture1- Advertising(Green Marketing)

Narrator

Listen to part of a lecture in an advertising class.

Professor

Last class someone asked about green marketing. Green marketing refers to companies promoting the products as environmentally friendly. Companies often turn to advertising experts to help them do this. 

Green marketing seems recent, but advertising professionals grew interest in it several decades ago. The seeds for green marketing were probably planted in 1970, when the first Earth Day took place. Rallies all over the United States were organized to protest environmental degradation. Some 20 million demonstrators participated in that first Earth Day. And it helped spark dozens of environmental laws. The biggest was the Endangered Species Act of 1973, which protects imperiled animal species from extinction. There was also passage of the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act was strengthened.

Earth Day, Environmental Laws, Environmental Issues in the news, Being Green was entering the mainstream. And businesses started saying, hey, we can get involved in this. So in 1975, a major advertising trade group held its first workshop on ecological marketing. A few years later, we began seeing ads tapping into people’s environmental concerns.

But some green marketers learned the hard way, green marketing must still involve all the same principles of a traditional marketing campaign. Your ad must attract attention, stimulate consumers’ interest, create a desire for your product, and motivate people to take action to buy your product.

So let me tell you about one green marketing campaign that failed at first and explain why. It was for a compact fluorescent light bulb. We’ll call it the eco-light. It was first introduced, I believe, in the late 90s. It cost far more than a regular incandescent bulb. The advertising message was, basically, “use this eco-light and save the planet”. But that message wasn’t effective. Research shows that consumers don’t want to let go off any traditional product attributes, like convenience, price and quality. Even though surveys indicate that almost everybody cares about the environment. So the company reintroduced the eco-light with a new message, one that emphasized cost savings, that the eco-light lowers electric bills and lasts for years. So it’s good for the earth, cost-effective and convenient because it doesn’t have to be changed every few months. This ad campaign worked like a charm.

Something else, uh, the company that makes the co-light, researchers would consider it an ‘extreme green company’, not only because its products are energy-efficient, but because the company tries to reduce its environmental impact in other ways too