Teen Branding

This week, it's all about . . . . .

Source : Image Shack

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The girlfriend : "OMG! that ESPRIT bag is like so cute ! I'm like, so gonna get it!! OMG! There's new season collection at MNG!"

The distracted boyfriend : "Wow! Quiksilver, Nike, Adidas all having sales man ! Bye dear! "

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Does that sound familiar to you ? Are you one of them ?

Nowadays, teen branding is growing fast in the society; especially in the urban cities. Teenagers are addicted to brands that they are willing to do anything just to buy branded goods. There are a lot of cases that teenagers are working part time to buy their dream bags or shoes. For example, an ex-schoolmate of ours that are working as a waiter at a cafe every weekend because he wanted to buy a limited edition Nike Dunk that was retailed at RM800!

Source : here

That is how big the impact is on teen branding. Here are a small portion of brands that we can find it in the market.

Source : from all websites respectively

There are numerous of brands that we can find in the market today. Over the decades, branded goods are on associated with adults. But, today not only adults; but teenagers are also in the trend of buying branded goods.

Teenagers perceive brands as a social class identification. Teenagers think that buying branded goods are cool and trendy. Besides that, teenagers think that buying branded is not because of its quality but the image that the brand carried. From the brand itself, it tells others that these people who are carrying that brand can afford to own such expensive goods which indirectly means that they are rich compare with those who do not have branded goods.

Source : The TV addict and Image Shack

Teenagers are taking the simple thing like clothing and dressing to a higher level. They are more brand conscious compare to Generation-X. There are teenagers that only wear certain brands of clothings and will never put on anything that are not known as a branded clothings. This is because duo income family are growing rapidly that parents do not have time to accompany their children and their only way is to compensate them with materials which cause children to become more materialistic nowadays.


Teenagers have more disposable income that eventually lead them to spend on their favorite brands. In addition, teenagers are very self conscious too! They are ashame to wear unknown brand on themselves that their peers might look down at them or laugh at them.

Source : Image Shack

To prove our point of the trend in teen branding, we did a few shoots of teens with branded stuffs around.

Adidas sport shoes

Roxy handbag... on a guy??!

Nike sport shoes

Adidas shirt

Nike sneakers

Hush Puppies shirt

Last but not least, We; The Oxygenated Ones, have something to say about teen branding.

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Chien Hui's opinion :

Although I am not a regular customer for branded stuff, I will still buy branded goods once in a blue moon, mostly during sales of course. Well, who could resist the marketing skills by brands to make you guys think, you look more macho or prettier with their brand right? So far, the reason why I made those purchases normally is because of the designs. But I must say that I find branded stuffs are ridiculously overpriced too. I guess everyone knows that, but ironically, we still fall for it don't we ? My mom always tells me that " If I cut away that xxx label off, there is nothing so grand about it anymore right?" I still remember that I got so influence into the Giordano umbrella trend during high school. Because of that, I bought their umbrella for RM30! I even thought of buying all the other colours as well! Luckily, scoldings from my mom stopped me. If not, I wonder what I will do with all those umbrellas!

Jenn's opinion:

I think branded or not is not an issue for me. I am willing to wear anything as long as it looks nice and comfortable on me. But, when I was a teenager I used to be very obsessed with brands. I wanted to buy everything branded. I once bought a RM100 T-shirt which looked so simple but just because of the brand "Stussy" printed on the T-shirt! When I looked back, I think I was foolish. Now, I realized that quality is more important. I will still buy certain products for its brand for the sake of getting a better quality. For example, like watch, laptop, cosmetics and electrical items. I still have friends that are addicted to brands that they only buy certain branded clothings and bags that might cause than more than RM500 a month. I think branding is very much depending on individual perception and background. It just cannot be change overnight.

Source : Image Shack

Jun Xiang's opinion

Nowadays more and more teenagers fancy towards branded stuff. They pay a lot of money just ‘chasing’ after the fashion; it is not possible for us to buy enough material items to achieve happiness. For me if the things are necessary and comfortable to use then I will buy it regardless it is branded or not. Most of us will relate branded equals to good quality, but we must avoid impulse purchasing and think whether we can afford it or not before buying it

Wei Tzen's opinion

For me, the thing is branded or not is not an important issue to me. The only important issue to me is the quality of the brand and whether it suitable for me or not. Nowadays, many teenagers like to purchase or the branded things without consider whether they can afford or not. This is because they want to show off in front of their friends. This kind of thinking is really not mature and wasting their parents money just because of chasing the unrealistic things. For an example, my friend willing to spend about RM 1200 just for buying a branded spectacle. It is unworthy for me to spend such a high amount of money to buy a spectacle which have the same function as the normal brand spectacle. For me, the quality and comfortable will be the most important.

Poh Lin's opinion:

As a teenager, anything that I buy will at least relate to a brand. When it comes to fashion apparel, me and my friends will look for shops that have a "cool" brand like MNG, Roxy, Esprit and Levi's. Sometimes, it is not about the cool brand that a product offers. It is more than that. Teens usually develop a love-hate relationship with a brand. We tend to stick with a few of the brands they really likes. As we can see most of the my generation today will respond to brands that reflect their lifestyle and offer innovation, creativity and a high degree of style. We will definitely stay away from outdated gadgets. Other popular trademarks include Nike, Adidas, Coke, Facebook, Google, MTV, Sony, MySpace and YouTube. Brand names are most important when it comes to computers, shoes. mP3 players and clothes. Despite being wired 24/7 with mobile devices and online communities, we feel the word "chill" best describes us, music most defines us, followed by family and moral values.

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Well, this is our last post for our BMK2054 blog assignment. We hope everybody had a fun time reading our posts and thanks for all the supports from you guys ! We also hope we scored for this assignment ! A big thank you from us to you!

Nostalgia

Hello everyone ! This week, we're back again with another topic, Nostalgia.

Source: www.nostalgiarock.com

So, what does nostalgia means ?

According to Wikipedia ( again ) , nostalgia means a bittersweet yearning for the things of the past. Well, based on our understanding, nostalgia basically means longing for something nice that happened in the past.

We're guessing you are even more confused with the word "Nostalgia" with our explanation now. Therefore, we provided an example to clear out those question marks above your head.

Source: www.lukechueh.com

The picture shows the astronaut monkey misses the real banana instead of the banana flavor in chocolate bar form. This shows that the monkey is having a nostalgia moment. If that make sense to you, we hope you somehow get the picture of the meaning of nostalgia.

Well, our task is to meet up with one of our friend or family member that we have not met in the last 10 years that evoke nolstagic feeling. In our task, the long lost friend is a friend to our group leader, Chien Hui.

First of all, we would like to introduce everybody the long lost friend of Chien Hui, Goh E-Theng.

( picture of E-Theng with Chien Hui's hand interrupting )

They were primary buddies and they were placed to sit next to each other in Standard 1. Since then, they have become best friends. But sadly, they eventually lost contact after Standard 6 due to E-Theng family shifted to Malacca after that. They have not meet ever since.

Therefore, Chien Hui searched back the old telephone book she used during primary to locate E-Theng's Malacca telephone number. Amazingly, the number is still valid in use! Chien Hui then called up E-Theng for a meet up happily.( partially due to the assignment purpose) At first, E-Theng was very shocked and thought it was a prank call. This is because E-Theng never knew Chien Hui has came to Malacca to study in Multimedia University.

Chien Hui dated her friend, E-Theng to meet at Johnny's Restaurant at Jaya Jusco, Bukit Beruang at 8pm on 13th March 2008. Just right before we went back for our midterm break.

Source: www.johnnyrestaurant.com

It was on Thursday, after Chien Hui fetched Jenn from her house, they went together. All of us were pretty nervous to meet a stranger. Chien Hui was very excited to see her long lost primary school mate too. We met E-Theng at entrance at Jaya Jusco and went to the restaurant together.

At first everyone felt so awkward to talk to her because we do not know her. After some self introduction of each other, we started to have some conversation with each others. Thank you Wei Tzen to blast out some jokes in between to smoothen the environment.

Soon after that, Wei Tzen took out his digital camera and start taking pictures of us ! So enjoy with the pictures we taken !

This is Chien Hui and E-Theng taking pictures together when they first meet up!



Poh Lin and Jenn wanted to take picture with E-Theng too!

Wei Tzen having a funny moment after he took a sip of his sour beverage, he squirmed inwardly.
While Jun Xiang dreams away about his yet to arrive food.
Thanks to Jenn who took this candid shoot !

Meanwhile, the girls are busy chit-chatting away.

During conversations, we eventually found out E-Theng is pursuing her degree at UTeM. As time passes,we continue to chat about how Chien Hui and E-Theng used to be very mischievous during primary days and many untold secrets of Chien Hui was leaked too! We even chatted Jenn's Tioman boat crash incident and Wei Tzen's flash flood experiences.

At around 10pm, we soon decided to end our outing. But before that,here's a group picture of us during that night. We were all very happy to meet a new friend that night and as for Chien Hui, to meet back an old friend.

And as for me ( Chien Hui ) , I am very delighted to meet back my primary school buddy! Although at first it was because of assignment purpose, but in the end I was very glad to meet her up because of it! It brings back a lot of memories as we chat. I must admit it was quite awkward for myself too meeting up my old buddy after 10 years of absence. But luckily, we were soon talking like the good old days. Thanks to this assignment, I meet up with my old buddy back and I will definitely keep in touch with her in the days to come.

Metrosexual Men

A: " Hey B, Do you what is metrosexual men? "
B: " Huh? What men? Superman? What is that? I don't know-lah "

A:

The conversation above is an example of how majority have in mind about metrosexual men. Most of the people are not familiar with the term metrosexual men. Basically, metrosexual men are men with very clean image, very concern with their own appearance and willing to spend an amount of money and time on their appearance.

According to Wikipedia, the term "metrosexual" was created by Mark Simpson in his book "Here come the mirror men". Normally most of us will misunderstood metrosexual men as gay. But the fact is that metrosexual men are not gays!


They are just men who are a little bit of feminine and masculine at the same time. In other words, they are straight men who are over the top in appearances.

Let us give everybody a clearer picture of the differences between a metrosexual and a non-metrosexual man.

obviously, he's a non-metrosexual ...

... while he definitely is one.

A very good example for metrosexual men is the ever so famous David Beckham.

Yes guys, David Beckham is a metrosexual man !! *gaps*



. . . . and so is Jung Ji Hoon aka Rain from Korea !

..... and so are many other good looking celebrities ! Are you amazed?

We guess you all by now have a draft idea what are metrosexual men. So, what do these metrosexual men do when they are free? They go to the nail salon! We are not kidding you. Men these days are doing manicure like the ladies. We discovered from here that 64% of the male in North America regularly paint their nails with a colored polish!

Other than that, perhaps they might be busy shopping in the malls. Do you know that men these days love shopping as well? According to About.com, men make 3.6 shopping trips per week while women are 4.1 . The shopping gap is not that far away between two genders after all! If you ask them,they can easily name all of the designers' name and crave for their products. Or you might spot them in this particular boutique as shown below in South Africa that caters wardrobe for them.

The traditional definition of men are slowly fading away. As we defined earlier, metrosexual men are very concern about their appearances unlike non-metrosexual men. So this explains why metrosexual men too shop for care products when they are free.

What we mean by care products are hair care, skin care and beauty products as well. Here are some examples.

Men's skin care to avoid them looking like the moon's surface.

Men's perfume to ensure they attract the butterflies instead of flies.

Men's hair care product to avoid them visiting Yun Nam Hair Care.

We even found there is men's cosmetic concealer stick !! It is call The Men's Pen.


Now, who says make up are only for women ?

We actually did a lot of research on metrosexual men and some of us even asked her best friend for her opinion in metrosexual men. What we can conclude is that girls like to be friend with metrosexual men because they think that metrosexual guys can share their knowledge on face wash, skin care and fashion with girls because they are just like ladies spending time on shopping, facial and spa. This is perhaps what motives them to be more metrosexual than before? We're guessing it is ! Well, there are a lot of advantages to have a metrosexual boyfriend.

1. They are clean. You do not need to shout them for dirty underwear or socks on the bed.

2. They can cook! And they will clean the table and wash the dishes after dinner.

3. They can dress up with own personal style.

4. They will have brilliant ideas of surprises to you for all the occasion!



5. They live quality life.

6. They actually remind you when MEGA SALES is here !! and date you for shopping !

Ladies, are you hoping for miracle one day hoping your partner changed into a metrosexual ? Well, fear not ! With the upcoming trend of metrosexual men, we think that your man will soon become one ! ( at least that is what we think! no guarantees provided from us !)

As for the guys, are you wondering whether you are counted as one ? Not sure about it? Try this to find out !

BUT !!
before hitting the Close button on our blog, here are some videos of our fellow friend's responses after we explained the word "Metrosexual Men".