How Trayvon's murder is affecting Skittles and Arizona Iced Tea

I don't know if everyone has heard the story of a 17 year old, African American boy named Trayvon Martin but a February 26th, Trayvon went to the store to pick up his brother up some Skittles and Arizona Iced Tea. After the boy left the store, a neighborhood watch person named George Zimmerman called the police to report that he saw a suspicious looking person (Martin) wearing a hoodie walk out of a convenient store and down the street. The police told Zimmerman not to do anything and that they would handle it, but Zimmerman didn't listen and followed Martin anyway. After a while Martin noticed he was being followed so he turned around and punched the guy in the face and as a reaction Zimmerman pulled out a gun and shot Martin to death. There has been a lot of controversy about this case ever since it happened.
The reason I bring this up is because I read an article saying that people think that the Skittle and Arizona Iced Tea companies should do something about the case because they are getting free publicity from it. For example, protesters are holding up signs displaying the brands to represent what happened. Now people think that they should do something to help Martin's family because they are getting free advertising. On the other hand, it's not these companies faults for what happened, it was something totally out of their control, and they even publicly expressed their condolences, what else could they do. So what do you think? What should the Skittles and Arizona Iced Tea companies do in this situation?

Event Sponsorship

I believe that sponsoring an event is one of the best way to advertise either a new product or a company in general. Sporting events are great to sponsor because you can reach a wide variety of consumers. For example, if Anheuser-Busch were to sponsor a baseball game, they would be able to reach everyone over the age of 21 that is at the game no matter what race or gender. This gives them the best opportunity to introduce a new product like the Bud Light Platinum. When sponsoring a sporting event, the company gets recognized either on a sign or something of that nature.
On the other hand, if a company were to sponsor a different type of event, like a concert, they would be able to be more creative with their promotional techniques. For example, if Monster sponsors a concert, they can give the band free energy drinks to drink during their performance for the audience to see. That will get people to think the band like Monster so they might be more inclined to drink it as well. With either type of event sponsorship that a company chooses to use, I believe it is a lot more effective to people over a commercial .

Emotional vs. Rational appeals

In advertising you can either try to appeal to your target market through emotions or rational thought. I believe that aiming for emotions whenever possible in advertising is the best way to connect with your audience. I think this is because it will get the consumer attached to the product on a higher level. For example, if you associate your product with babies or pets, the audience will think about either babies or pets that are their own or know very well. In relating the advertisements with their own lives, it would be more expected for them to remember the advertisement. On the other hand, the advertisement is too long and drags out, that would turn consumers away from the product because they would remember how bored they were watching or reading the advertisement. For example, the Chanel advertisement we watched in class yesterday made me very interested at first because I love the movie Moulin Rouge, but after a while I couldn't wait for it to be over. So I think the best way to catch the attention of a target market and keep it is to appeal to their emotions in a shorter, more to the point advertisement.