Fion Lee's Blog

Well it was required to comment on an external marketing blog. So I went on google and typed “marketing blog”, there I clicked on the 4th link which lead me to : Seth’s Blog.

I would like to comment on his post about: “Compared to perfect: the price/value mismatch in content“.

In his post, he mentioned that price and reviews of a product show ZERO correlation. So not necessarily expensive pricing leads to great quality. ABSOLUTELY TRUE! As we come across luxurious goods, are they guaranteed 100% quality? Some may have flaws and most people are mainly buying for the brand name. As I mentioned in one of my posts, why do people buy diamonds, an overpriced carbon?

How about the other way around? Does low pricing lead to poor quality? Compared to perfection, of course it won’t be good enough. What if its “free”? As Seth stated, “free is a valid marketing strategy”. We learned in class that free samples, free trials are short term promotional strategies. It allows trialability and response from the consumers. But marketers need to know the bottom line of their pricing strategy. If it’s been cheap or free all along, why would they bother paying high price for that particular product? People nowadays are picky and can often find substitutes. With technology advancing so fast, marketers should really seek ways to position their products at the right time to the right consumers at the right place.

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I just had my marketing presentation today, and saw a presentation by my fellow classmates about Ivivva by Lululemon.
Not just the invigilator, I’ve never heard of Ivivva as well! Well maybe because I wasn’t their target market, or nothing close to that. Their target market is preteen females aged 6-12, who are sporty, outgoing and active. Well clearly I’m none of that but its there are some interesting facts pointed out from my fellow classmates during the presentation.

“Why would you launch a separate store where preteen females can’t afford to pay alone?” Yes, of course, their mothers HAVE to go with them, and why not put the Ivivva line IN the Lululemon Athletica store?

But as Sunny Freeman’s post on “Lululemon taps into tween market with Vancouver launch of Ivivva brand” stated,

“She does not want to wear what an 11-year-old wears and she doesn’t want to be in mommy and me outfits.” Mark Rosen, an analyst with Accountability Research Corp. said the move to diversify from yoga wear is savvy.”

Good point, I personally wouldn’t want to wear something that a 10-year-old teen is wearing. It’s either I’m too childish or she’s too mature. As my classmates stated, they would want to eliminate the Ivivva stores and have the brand incorporated in Lululemon Athletica. However, is that what the consumers want? They might not like the idea of “mommy and me outfits” or they actually feel comfortable shopping at Ivivva with their friends since its a unique store and brand tailored to them.

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After the new logo has been released, I had my first starbucks on friday with my friend.
She ordered the new Cocoa cappuccino, and I had my White Chocolate Mocha. No difference.

We talked about how we didn’t have any particular feelings towards the new logo, neither positive nor negative.
Of course, we would rather no change. Why the change? Is it necessary? Did they change any ingredients to make that perfect cup of coffee? I don’t think so.
They took out the “coffee” from their branding, and leave it with just Starbucks.
They might be just doing brand repositioning but not doing any line extension nor brand extension.

Their coffee tastes the same, and their warm and welcoming staff are still the same.
Another friend of mine ordered Soy milk no foam, but they forgot the soy where she paid for it.
The staff apologized and gave her the “free drink card” for compensation.
She immediately felt satisfied and left the store happily.

I believe its not just the “coffee” that they are selling, but also the quality, the service and the lifestyle that the brand can bring to all its customers! 🙂

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While browsing in one of my fellow classmates, Iris Chen’s blogpost about Muji.
OMG that is like my FAVOURITE stationary brand!

I agree with what she said about “no brand” with great values.
I personally love how Muji portrays the “clear, clean and pure” quality to its consumers.
Not just that but they regularly produces the latest and new pens which you would think to yourself:
“I don’t think I got this style yet.” but the consumer remorse will not hit you due to the fact of it’s low price.

When I first approached Muji, I thought it’s targeting market would be students, since pens are their well-known products.
After some brand extension, they increased their products to food, clothings, personal hygiene products, furnitures, anything that you can think of! However their products remained “clear, clean and pure”. Their colours don’t vary a lot, very earthy and eco-friendly.

I was glancing through their websites and find out this new app related to ipads/iphones: MUJI CALENDAR.

What do they want to become..?

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I totally forgot about my Youtube post, and I’ve been using so many Youtube links!!
Thanks for the reminder from my fellow classmate, Christine Fung‘s Youtube post about Vlogging.

I totally agree with what she said about Youtube naturally just “converts” us into loyal advocates without any marketing nor promotion! It builds into our mind and if we like the channels, we simply just click -subscribe-. The more the people subscribes, the more the vloggers get the chance to partner up with Youtube and make $$!!

As Christine mentioned, most or maybe all the vloggers never market themselves. They don’t know you in real life!! How are they supposed to knock on your door and ask you to subscribe and give them money(youtube)?! It has to be an intrinsic motivator that pushes you to click that button on top of the video. Word of mouth also “markets” for the vloggers through the loyal advocates. Whenever a friend recommends some videos, you’ll always see something on the side – the “related videos”. I can spend a WHOLE day just watching “related videos”. It’s pretty amazing. Yes I know.

Youtube also has a lot of ads on the sides and sometimes before the video starts. It’s not avoidable, so it forces you to gain some “knowledge” on the products being advertised. Before I’ve never noticed the ad about “Indochino”, but ever since one of my Sauder club event invited them as a guest speaker, and when I saw that Youtube-Indochino ad, I was like “WHAT?! I’ve never seen this before!” But really, it’s been there for a really long time. Sometimes, we just need to stop whatever we’re doing, and pay attention to our surroundings. Life is beautiful!

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I was watching TV on monday night, catching up on some..gossip. 😉
And I came across this advertisement by Best Buy:

I laughed out loud right at that moment because it was SO TRUE!
Technology just moves like WHOOOSH and BAMM!
With the related videos, I clicked into their ad with Justin Beiber and Ozzy Osbourne

The Best Buy Buy Back program (tongue twister!)  reduces the post-purchase dissonance by a lot!
They guarantee their customers that they don’t have to worry about not catching up to the latest technology because Best Buy will  advance with them! With this program, customers won’t have to hesitate or research on when will the next technology release because with this program, they can just get it FIRST, and then get the  latest one when it comes out. And on and on and on. They also utilized celebrities as an analogy to how “new replaces old”. Justin Beiber walks out and tells Ozzy Osbourne that, “I’ll take it from here”.

I find this program PERFECT for people in generation X and especially Y. Since they are the ones who actually use the latest technology: smart-phones, video game consoles, portable media player. With the reduction of buyer’s remorse, they will less likely to feel guilty or thinking of getting the “latest technology” as a reduction of purchasing power or opportunity cost. Even though there WILL be a better alternative out there, “soon”, but no worries, you don’t have to regret when there’s BEST BUY BUY BACK!

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Last summer, I was deciding between the Blackberry Bold 9700 and the iPhone 4 (was going to be released in a month at that time). Due to social influences: friends were using Blackberry, and they were emphasizing on how “BBM” was extremely convenient and useful. This expands onto Jessica Malinab‘s blog about BBM: Communications for All Lifestyles, I agree that RIM did an excellent marketing campaign on promoting Blackberry Messenger and making it convenient to communicate between people. So after all the peer pressure, I got the Bold 9700. However, I only used it for 3 month, and my friends got the Torch 9800 for me for my birthday. I really appreciated what they got me, but at the same time, I felt that I was pushed into a dead end and cannot return. I WANTED AN IPHONE!!

I found this interesting statistic from Triangle Business Journal: Poll: BlackBerry, Android users want iPhone.
“The numbers among BlackBerry owners were even bigger, with 32 percent saying they are very likely to get a Verizon iPhone as soon as it goes on sale and another 34 percent saying they are somewhat likely.”

Why is that? Why after using 3 months of BBM and all of a sudden, I wanted to switch to iPhone? Not just me, but also 32% of Blackberry owners agreed. iPhone apps has always been the killer for iPhones. They are always new, fun and interesting. So people tend to look at the stuff that COMES with the phone rather than the phone itself. They don’t have A LOT of marketing campaign but just a video posted on their homepage that hypes up everyone into desiring their products. (even with or without the glitches.)

Well, iPhone5 is coming out, hopefully in the summer. And this changes everything, AGAIN.

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Jasmine, Snow White, Mulan, Aurora, Cinderella, Pocahontas, Belle, Ariel, Tiana and last but not least, the newly added Rapunzel. They are all known as the Disney Princesses. I’ve personally watched all the Disney Princess movies and find all of them have a particular characteristic, their leading female roles are easily recalled; however, what about the males?

Despite the fact that “Aladdin” was named after Aladdin, for the rest of the Disney Princess movies are mainly targeted to younger teenage girls. How many “Princes” can you recall?

Disney saw a huge drop of interest in Disney Princess movies from “Princess and the Frog” (due to poor marketing of the film), they quickly changed their original title, “Rapunzel” into a gender-neutral one, “Tangled” so that they could target the movie not just to teenage girls, but also to boys. As Justin Chang of Variety pointed out, “imagine if ‘The Little Mermaid’ had been called ‘Beached'”. Did this marketing strategy affect the ticket sales as Disney hoped?

With being released for 69 days (as of now), “Tangled” has a global ticket sales of $444 million, while compared to the previous Princess movie, “Princess and the Frog“, global ticket sales almost DOUBLED. This is a significant evidence that maybe Disney Princess movies should not only target to girls but also include a spot for their teenage boys who want to watch some “princess movies”.

Moreover, there’s been rumours saying that “Tangled” might be the last Disney Princess movie, will Walt Disney close down the production line of Princess movies and concentrate on their Disney/Pixar movies(UP, Cars, Wall-E, Toy Story) to gain more revenue and benefit? That we will have to wait either the next Princess movie to come out, or never.

[Read more →]

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Tiffany, Cartier, Harry Winston…No girls can resist those brands, since:

Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend.

Diamonds have been trademarked to be luxurious, high-class, prestigious. However, aren’t they just PURE carbon? How can an element make such a great impact on human’s lives?

In 1947, De Beers Company created an advertising campaign with the slogan:

A Diamond is Forever

This influenced the demand for the whole industry. Ever since then each girl’s dream is to own a diamond ring from their loved ones, which represents eternal love. De Beers continued to use this slogan for more than 50 years, because it had created such a successful impact in the market.

This also refers back to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Diamonds, as luxurious goods, they obviously fall under the “Esteem Needs”.

There are 2 types of Esteem needs:
High: “Self-respect, the need for strength, competence, mastery, self-confidence, independence and freedom”
Low: “Respect of others, the need for status, recognition, fame, prestige, and attention”

We would want diamonds to boost up our self-confidence as well as display our social status and recognition. According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, you would need to satisfy and master the lower level of Needs before reaching your way up; therefore, it is crystal clear that Diamonds have made it’s way up to top.

Has Diamonds reach the “Self Actualization” needs yet? If not, how would marketing bump it another level higher?

[Read more →]

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Back in year 1 in term 2 of Comm 299, my TA showed us an ad for google.

This made me wonder: when did I start using google?

I believe that I’ve never paid attention to any google ads, but what made me abandon using Yahoo as a search engine and move over to google? Now the company has grown so much that it’s not JUST a search engine, but also email, news, videos, and even creating their own web browser. This company reminds me of apple, they both represent the “latest technology trend”.

A video post about the latest product can already attract thousand and millions of views, thus leads to people craving to use their products. Google even bought Youtube, one of the largest social media network. Youtube channel is now one of the most successful marketing techniques used in the internet. You can see loyal customers doing recommendations, or even unsatisfied customers complaining. It is also the fastest way to reach out to the Generation X and Y.

I’ll talk about Youtube in my next blog post.

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