Advertising and Marketing

When a company wishes to sell or improve the sales of its products or services, it may decide to advertise. Newspapers and magazines carry advertisements, as do billboards, television, and radio. Marketing is a wider process of creating a product or service, advertising it and selling it. advertising and marketing are vast industries that affect all our lives.

How Advertising works?

Advertising use humour and strong images to get our attention. Short, memorable catchphrases called slogans become associated with the product. An advertising campaign often combines posters and television advertisements so that repetition ensures people remember the product.

Image

Advertisers try to create a product image that will appeal to particular customers. An advertisement for perfume, for example may project an image of beauty and sophistication. Well known personalities may be shown endorsing a product to strengthen its image.

Marketing

A company’s marketing strategy includes market research, product development, publicity, advertising, and point of sale displays. The marketing department researches the product people want, and works with other departments to make sure that products meet the customers’ needs and expectations.

Market research

The purpose of market research is to find out what sorts of people are likely to buy a product, and what will make them buy one product rather than another. Researchers get this information from questionnaires, interviews and government statistics.

Point of sale

Shops use posters and display units to encourage people to buy products. Point of sale displays try to catch the customers’ eye where he or she can buy the product immediately. Shop window displays aim to draw customer into a shop.

Public relations

Many companies use public relations, or PR, to improve their standing with the people who buy their products. The two main branches of PR are research and communication. Research tries to find out what people think about the company with people through press coverage, advertising, and sponsorship.

Advertising agencies

Companies use advertising agencies to advise them on their advertising strategy. Advertising agencies conduct market research, plan which forms of media the clients’ advertisements should appear in, and finally prepare the clients’ advertisements.

Storyboard

The first stage of producing a television advertisement is to present a storyboard of ideas to the client, showing how the final advertisement will look. A storyboard rather looks like a comic strip, with a series of pictures showing how the action will run. If the client approves the storyboard, production can go ahead.

Production

The advertising agency hires a production team to film the advertisement. This will include a producer, who supervises the rehearsal schedule, and a director, who directs the action when the commercial is being filmed. Once the film has been shot, a sound track is added. The sound track may be a voice-over repeating the product name and a catchy tune called a jingle.

Advertisement

Once the advertisement has been completed, it is shown to the client. If the client approves the film, it is taken to the television stations to be aired. Television advertising is by far the most expensive form of advertising, but it is the most effective since it reaches people in their own homes. 

The Big Bang

 

An incredible explosion called the Big Bang is believed to have created the Universe. Observations of galaxies and heat radiation from space have helped confirm this theory. Astronomers are now working to explain exactly what happened from the point of the Big Bang explosion which created everything in today’s Universe- matter, energy, space, and time- to the present Universe with its galaxies, stars, planets, and us.

Origin of the Universe

One of the most difficult problems facing scientists in the 20^th century was to explain how the Universe was created. The Universe is changing, but from what and to what? The Steady State theory suggested that the Universe had no beginning or end. The alternative, and now generally accepted, theory is the Big Bang. It proposes that the Universe was created in an explosion 15 billion years ago. From very small and simple beginnings it has grown vast and complex.

Steady State Theory

In the late 1940s and the 1950s, the Steady State theory was as popular as the Big Bang theory. It proposed that the Universe looked the same at any place and at any time. Although expanding, it would stay unchanged and in perfect balance. Material was being continuously created to keep the density of the Universe constant. As scientists found proof for the Big Bang, the Steady State theory was largely abandoned.

Big Bang Theory

All matter and time was created in the Big Bang. The explosion started pushing everything away and the Universe has been expanding ever since, and as the Universe expanded, the temperature dropped. A fraction of a second after the explosion, the first tiny particles began to form. By the time the Universe was three minutes old it consisted of 75 per cent hydrogen and 25 per cent helium. Everything that exists now- galaxies, stars, Earth, and humans- was created from these elements. In 1931, a Belgian cosmologist Georges Lemaltre (1894 - 1966) was the first to put forward the theory that the Universe started from a dense, single unit of material in a big explosion. The name Big Bang followed in 1950, introduced by Fred Hoyle, a British astronomer and supporter of the Steady State theory.

Expanding Universe:

In the 1920’s analyzing starlight from galaxies showed that the galaxies are moving away from Earth. This is true of galaxies in every direction from Earth. Over time, the Universe is becoming larger and less dense. The idea that the Universe started in an explosion from a single point grew out of observations that the Universe is expanding.

The heat produced by the Big Bang has been cooling ever since. It now has a temperature of -270°C (-454°F), detected as microwave radiation from all over the sky.

Future of the Universe

Nobody knows for certain what is going to happen to the Universe. At present, it is getting larger and less dense. Most astronomers believe there will be a time when it stops expanding. But there is disagreement about what happens then: will the Universe live on for ever, wither and die, or start to contract?

The Universe may end in a Big Crunch if it starts to contract until it is hot and dense once more. But even this may not mean the end of the universe. The Big Crunch might be followed by another Big Bang explosion, and the whole process could start over again.

Everything you need to know about Dogs

 

Dogs have lived with people for more than 11,000 years. They may have started to stay near humans for food and warmth. Then people began to train dogs to work for them. They bred certain types of dog for herding and guarding other domestic animals, then for hunting and for companionship. Gradually, different types of dogs developed, but it was not until the end of the 19^th century that specific breeds were classified. Today, there are about 200 dog breeds throughout the world. They are more varied in their appearance and behavior than any other domestic animal.

Domestic Dogs 

All breeds of domestic dogs from the Great Dane to the Chihuahua are descended from the wolf and have inherited the wolf’s instincts. Like wolves, dogs are pack animals. They treat humans as a part of their pack, and can be trained to accept their owner as their pack leader, and to follow his or her commands.

Dog groups

 The people of ancient Egypt and western Asia were the first to breed distinct types of dog for different purposes. By Roman times, dogs were kept for much the same reasons as they are today. There are seven main groups- working, sporting, non-sporting, terriers, hounds, toys and herding.

Dog Groups

Dog Features

The wolf is designed to chase, capture, kill and eat its prey. It is agile, with strong legs for running long distances. Domestic dogs retain many of the features of a wolf, but through selective breeding now exist in any shapes, sizes and colors.

Coats: 

There are three main types of dog coats- long, short and wiry. Most breeds have an outer coat of guard hairs and an undercoat of shorter hair. They moult, or shed their fur, changing their coat in 

spring and autumn.

Long hair

Wiry hair

Short hair

Feet: 

Dogs walk on their toes rather than the soles of their feet. Their paw pads help with grip, as do their claws, which are non-retractable unlike the cats.

Senses: 

Dogs have highly developed senses of hearing and smell. They use these in communication and to track down their prey. The police use dogs to sniff out explosives, criminals, and drugs. The dogs can see well in the dark and are good at seeing movement in the distance.

Reproduction

A female dog is pregnant for about nine weeks, and then gives birth to several puppies known as a litter. At birth, puppies are blind and deaf. Their eyes open at about 10 to 12 days and they are able to hear at 13 to 17 days old. Teeth start to grow between three and five weeks of age. 

At one week old, a puppy spends most of its time sleeping and feeding by suckling from its mother.

At two weeks old, the puppy takes its first wobbling steps and begins to explore. Its eyes are now open and it can hear.

At three weeks old, the puppy may start to eat solid food. At first, its mother will regurgitate meat for it.

At six weeks old, the puppy no longer feeds from its mother. It can soon be taken away from her to a new home. 

Everything you need to know about Cats

Domestic cats are related to wild cats, such as lions and tigers, and they are able to fend well for themselves. They are excellent hunters, and their eyes, ears, nose, and whiskers are well adapted for their natural preference for hunting at night. Cats are affectionate and respond well to humans. They are domesticated about 4,000 years ago to keep people company and destroy pests.

There are more than 100 recognized breeds of domestic cats. They are distinguished mainly by their body shape. People started to breed cats for their looks between 100 and 150 years ago.

 

Types of Cats

Fur

Cats can be divided into long haired and short haired breeds. Fur is of various textures. Common coat colors are grey-blue, white, red, and mixtures of these, such as silver and lilac.

Fur Texture

Head shapes

Cat head shapes range from large and round, like that of the British short-hair, to wedge-shaped, like that of the Siamese. Some breeds have special characteristics, such as the Scottish fold, which has the tip of its ears bent forward.

Claws

Cats use their claws to defend themselves and to climb. At other times, the claws are drawn in, or retracted, for protection. They are covered by a bony sheath that is an extension of the last bone of each toe and fit inside pockets in the skin.

Claws working mechanism

Senses

Cats can see well in low light and can focus on small objects a long way away. Their super sensitive hearing picks up sounds that we cannot hear and can also take in two sounds at once, such as mouse in a thunderstorm. Their ears are funnel-shaped to draw sounds inside the ear. Whiskers are sensitive to touch. Cats use them to feel their way in the dark, and to measure whether spaces are wide enough for them to go through. Sense of taste is important for distinguishing any food that may be harmful.

A cat’s pupils expand enormously in the dark to let in as much light as possible. A layer of cells at the back of the eyes, called the tapetum, reflects light back into the   eye which helps cats see in the dark. Cats rely more on eyesight than smell when hunting. They have the largest eyes in relation to their size of any animal.

Cat's eye cycle

Balance

A cat’s long flexible tail helps it to balance. Cats will almost always land on their feet, even when falling from a great height. They have very quick reflexes and can twist and turn their body the right way up in a fraction of a second.

A cat balancing

Grooming

Cats are very clean animals and spend at least an hour a day grooming, using their tongue as a ”comb”. The tongue has tiny hard spines, called papillae, on its surface. The licking helps to keep the fur clean and waterproof, and also spreads the cat’s scent all over its body.

A cat grooming itself

Kittens

Cats have an average of four or five kittens in a litter. Kittens love to stalk, chase, and pounce on things. This helps to make them strong, and develops the skills they will need as adults. 

A Litter