Ok, so this is my last post, and i hope this one isn't too late to be included, I'm going to try and get it done before class so hopefully it will be countable.

Next let me say that I started this semester hoping to learn a lot about advertising by keeping this diary and some of the things that motivates companies to create the ads they use, and maybe start paying attention to advertisements. And i'd like to say that i feel it was successful. I don't look at ads all the time, but at least I don't just change the channel as soon as one comes on T.V., or just dismiss them in magazines as often as i used to anymore. I also feel that keeping my diary online helped me to do this because it forced me to actually pay attention and try to keep up with it since i knew other people could see it and because of this i didn't wait until the night before to do the assignments like i would have with a regular book. I actually made my plans wait on some nights so i could keep up with this and had a lot of fun finding commercials and advertisements to use. But i really do think this diary was a great way to learn outside the classroom and made me realize how much advertising really was around me.

I also think commercials have more of an effect on people than they even realize. If you look just on Youtube.com and type in the word commercials many actual commercials will come up, but also many commercials were remade by people, that had to have been inspired by those commercials in some way or other, or else they wouldn't have felt the need to remake them for whatever purpose.

And other companies also look at commercials and advertisements from their competitors and see what they are doing in a way to figure out their own advertising strategy and campaigns. for example the Mac and PC commercials for Microsoft were spoofed for other companies and they turned out slightly similar ads.

Then there are the people who don't really pay attention to a commercial but end up buying the product over a competitor, just because they now recognize it because of the advertisement they saw.

Which goes to show something I didn't really realize before this class and doing the participation diary: the magnitude of, many many people who do pay attention to advertising and how effective it really is for businesses whether people think so or not.