The power of the media (and how you can harness it)

Confession #1
​So, you’ve decided to read this blog and you may be asking yourself what gives me the authority to write a blog on media and marketing. 
My blog; Confessions of a Media Addict is simply the true story of how I have utilised media to propel myself from poverty, in a shack with no electricity, to become a best selling author and entrepreneur. 

In times of crisis, the media becomes more influential and important than ever. We rely on the news for updates, and we rely on our social networking sites for connection.  This blog will cover my tips and tricks on how to use media and marketing to turn your passion into a profitable online business and grow your social following by being unique.

I grew up on an isolated hippie commune in Australia called ‘Nimbingee’ yes, the name says it all. Nimbingee is about twenty minutes out of Nimbin. Which, if you haven’t already heard of it, is a small-town famous for celebrating the smoking of weed.
Nimbin is only a street long and every single shop on the street is painted with bright murals. Most of these murals have Marijuana leaves incorporated somehow. The stores have names like Bring-A-Bong, The Hemp Embassy, The Hemp Museum, and The Apothecary.
Even the local supermarket isn’t Coles or Woolworths, no, that would be way too normal for Nimbin, it’s called The Emporium.
Imagine if Diagon Alley was entirely dedicated to Weed, that is what it’s like arriving in Nimbin.
Barefooted, dreadlocked men roam the streets, and women in technicolor clothes ask you if you want to buy Ganja cookies.

We didn’t have electricity on the Nimbingee commune, which meant no television, or Xbox, or any of the other gadgets children normally grow up with.
As a young child, my favorite toy was an old Yalumba ‘goon cask’ which I had tied to a string. When I brought up the fact that it may not have been an appropriate toy for a five-year-old with my mother she replied:
‘Darling you loved that Goon Sack. You took it everywhere with you’.


Not having electricity meant I didn’t even have lights; we used candles at night. To bathe, we had to heat hot water on the wood fire stovetop and carry it out to an old bathtub. This old bathtub was plonked in the forest adjacent to our shack. There were not any walls at all around the bathtub; just vines and shrubbery.
I feel like you are probably picturing an Instagram model reclining in a glamping tub right now, as candles flicker in the twilight. Forget that image and reimagine a rusted bathtub that is lopsided. It looks like it was just hauled from the tip and left in the undergrowth beside a hovel of a house. Rather than reclining, picture me hunched over in it, like Gollum, squeezed into a small plastic tub ( we didn’t have the manpower to fill up the bath so we just put a small plastic tub inside it, in fact, I don’t think the rusted old thing even had a plug).
That was my childhood.
If we wanted to watch a movie or some television there was a ‘Main House’ which we could use for this. The Main House was a large, old, wooden shack about a thirty-minute walk from my hovel. It was called the ‘Main House’ because it was the only establishment on the Nimbingee commune with access to mains power. It was a community centre where everyone could come and watch television or use the power outlets.
I remember walking through the forest with a torch every Tuesday night to watch The OC with my sister. Our fingers were always crossed that we wouldn’t walk all that way, stepping over sticks in the darkness, to find some unshaven hippie had got the television before us.
I think this is where I can trace my obsession with media back to.  Something about the deprivation of it in my everyday life, and almost ritual occasion, that our Tuesday treks to the community centre gave me a healthy (or some might say unhealthy) obsession with media.
You are probably asking yourself how on earth did a girl from a commune called Nimbingee, with a rusty outdoor bath, and crumbling hovel of a house become a corporate in a power suit who has best-selling novels on Amazon, an eCommerce business, and works with clients who have half-million-dollar budgets?

As soon as I was able to leave home I enrolled in university where I studied Media and Communications. After that, I went on to work at large media establishments across Australasia. For the last ten years I have worked in big corporate media companies specialising in television, print, radio, and digital. I have worked in promotions, account management, advertising sales, and marketing roles. As well as this, I write poetry, and my two poetry books Unsent Love Notes, and You are my late night thoughts have featured multiple times in the Amazon best sellers list. My poetry niche led met to set up my wine label, Wines by J Strelou. I have used the skills I learned working in media to grow these brands online. 
 
I love working for advertising companies and seeing brands utilise the power of media to persuade the consumer.
However, it soon became abundantly clear to me that I was way more obsessed with media and marketing than any of my colleagues. I wondered why no one else was foaming at the mouth and ranting about ad creative like I was. Or why no one wanted to engage with me at the water cooler in the morning while I analysed the television commercials I had watched the night before.
Suddenly, it dawned on me that I’m that annoying person who yells ‘product placement!’ when I’m watching Netflix and the camera zooms in on a Cartier watch.
Nobody else cares, nobody is interested in me pointing out that Gossip Girl is obviously sponsored by Vitamin Water, they just want Chuck and Blair to get back together.
The reason why media fascinates me so much is that like Malcolm X said, it has the power to manipulate people’s minds, and when you begin an advertising campaign that power is in your hands.
Malcolm X said, ‘the media can make the innocent guilty or the guilty innocent’ (although where Malcolm X is concerned this wasn’t necessarily a good thing) but just like this, advertising on highly consumed media platforms can shape the perception of a brand.

A carefully articulated advertising strategy can convince a consumer that something not-so-healthy is healthy. Products like Nutri-Grain, Powerade, and Milo do this well.
By associating themselves with sport and athleticism they create a narrative that suggests they are healthy because sports people consume them.

Advertising can persuade you to think you need things which you don’t. People line up at Apple to get the newest iPhone when the new product has only a couple of tweaks that differentiate it from the previous model.

Advertising can add a status or a feeling to a product.
If you drink Peroni beer, you feel that you are drinking a beer of a higher class than other brands. You feel like it’s transporting you to Italy.
How does Peroni do this?
We perceive Peroni as classy because their advertising is stylish and clean. The men who drink Peroni wear suits, and the women are Italian beauties. We associate Peroni with its Italian heritage because they use Italian stereotypes in their ads: dark-haired women, Vespas, and beaches.
Now let’s look at Corona. When we open a Corona, we taste Mexico, adventures, parties on the beach, and freedom. We feel cool because Corona meticulously associates themselves with skiing and surfing, which are considered cool sports. These sports also reflect the concept of freedom and adventure the Corona brand promotes.
Personally, when I select a beer, I choose Corona. Not because it tastes any better than other beers. All beer tastes the same to me, and that is like yeasty tang. I choose Corona because I feel like their brand embodies what I would like to stand for. Corona’s marketing effectively seduces me to thinking that when I take a sip, I will be transported to a place I would rather be.
I know, I know, I’m a sucker for advertising. But Corona, shut up and take my money because you have a great media strategy!

As I write this the Coronavirus is causing panic all over the world, and some people are boycotting Corona beer for fear of contracting the virus. Even though this is an extremely illogical reaction, it shows how the negativity in the media surrounding Coronavirus is powerful enough to affect the sales of Corona beer!

Media can be used to make a brand, or it can be used to break one, and that is what I call power. Take smoking for instance, once it was portrayed in the media as cool. I remember an old ad I came across for Tipalet Cigarettes from the 1960s. It depicts an image of a beautiful brunette with long eyelashes, which she is batting at a slick-haired man in a suit. He is blowing smoke in her face and the tag line reads: ‘Blow in her face she will follow you anywhere.’
Not only would this ad not fit within modern advertising standards, but it is also completely different from the messaging the government uses nowadays to warn of the dangers of smoking.  This shift in messaging has caused for the continued decline in smokers in New Zealand. Today only 12.5% of the population smokes daily (www.smokefreenewzealand.org.nz, 2020).

Media has an unparalleled influence over all aspects of life, and social media plays a huge role in this. The Cambridge Analytica scandal; where data and social media marketing was used to target and persuade people, shows that people are not only being manipulated by traditional media and that social media is now a powerful marketing tool.

Social media and online content creation is my forte as a marketer, because of this, I have grown one of my Instagram accounts to 40k plus followers. This was not an easy feat, and when I think about having to do it again, I get panics. The account is @j.strelou if you want to check it out.
Growing a following may not have been hard for the initial Instagram adopters, but for people trying to start later, as I did, it is so much work. This blog will cover the tips and tricks I learned along the way, in the hope that it can help other budding influencers or small business owners build their following also.

These days everyone wants to start a business, and the internet has made this highly accessible. Social media makes marketing your start-up available to everyone with any budget.
Almost everybody has a ‘slash’. You may be a retail assistant/fashion influencer, or a banker/ eCommerce start-up. This blog will give you the marketing tools you need to turn that ‘slash’ into a reality.

In 2020 technology has become such an extension of our beings that we are practically cyborgs; constantly connected to our phones or other tech devices.
Because of this, it is important for everyone to have an understanding of media and how it works.
Even if you don’t have a business or want to be an influencer you still interact with Media daily. Your Tinder bio is an advertisement for yourself, your Linkedin profile is also, and every post or image you upload on social media comes together to construct your online brand. Employers or potential partners look at this online brand and form a perception of who you are as a person. Having an understanding of media strategy enables you to construct this profile in a way that is persuasive to the audience that you want to reach.
This blog is a combination of all the marketing courses, sales training, TEDx talks, books, and presentations I have consumed over the last ten years in media. To ingest all the media related information I have read would take months, but you don’t have to do that because all the important parts will be in this blog!
I hope that after reading this blog you can market your start-up to your best ability on your own and not have to pay someone (like me) that you can’t yet afford to do it for you.

I am not an academic, but that is the point of difference this book offers you because no one wants to meander through pages of that erudite shit.
Am, I right?
Scholars make things sound so confusing when they can be explained quite simply. In research for this blog, I have forced my way through heaps of dense texts, and I hope that I can inform you in a way that also keeps you entertained.

This blog will provide tips and tricks for social growth, it will emphasise the importance of content creation and creative messaging, and touch on the mindset needed to make it all possible. These are my secrets to a persuasive brand strategy, and my admissions of personal failures, this blog is the confessions of a true; media addict.
If you still doubt my media and marketing prowess. Think about the fact that you read this blog, the blog written by a girl who grew up on a commune, and not the flashy ad agency owner, and that is testament to my marketing skills.