Month: December 2010

 Sidney Crosby of the Canadian Men’s Hockey Team was not the only one who scored big at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics Games, so did TELUS by means of ambush marketing.

Ambush marketing is where a non-sponsor of an event deliberately tries to create unauthorized association between their brand and the event. Although Bell was the official sponsor, TELUS continued its community based sponsorship initiatives on Whistler, leading many consumers to believe it was associated with the Games. With that in mind, the ‘London Olympic Association Right’ (LOAR) was created to give the 2012 games’ organizers the authority to “grant licenses to authorized sponsors to use the symbols, words and logos of the event” (news.bbc.co.uk) preventing non-sponsors from creating unofficial association with the games. According to BBC News, “[t]here are two lists of prohibited expressions, with marketers falling foul if they use any two words in list A, or any word in list A with one or more of the words in list B.” The level of rigidity of the legislation minimizes the chances of ambush marketing campaigns in 2012.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8519967.stm

The newest breed of superheroes is not found on the big screen but in the small business community. Social entrepreneurs are “heroes” with the ability to recognize society’s problems and bring about change. Muhammad Yunus is a real-life Superman with a burning desire to create “social value.” He is one of the world’s most famous social entrepreneurs. As a Bangladeshi economist, Yunus founded Grameen Bank, an institution that provides small loans to poor people possessing no collateral to help them establish creditworthiness and financial self-sufficiency. His objective was simple: To help the poor escape poverty. Yunus received copious international awards for his ideas, work, and determination to change the lives of those less fortunate. (see here for list of awards: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2006/yunus-bio.html)

As the popularity of Apple’s iPad skyrockets, Rogers Communication, Canada’s largest wireless provider, plans to enter the emerging tablet computer market. Since iPad’s launch last April, more than 7 million units have been sold. With that in mind, Rogers intends to allow its customers to share data plans between the devices and their smartphones.

Rogers also claims that it would carry Research In Motion’s (RIM) PlayBook even in its first iteration. The 3G version has yet to be unveiled, but RIM has hinted that it will be released in the first quarter of 2011. With the belief that tablets are “the dashboards for the highways of tomorrow” (bnn.ca), Rogers expects to launch at least a few tablets every quarter throughout 2011 and to allow its customers to record Rogers content from tablets and share their data plan among multiple devices. 2011 looks promising for Rogers.

http://www.bnn.ca/News/2010/12/3/Rogers-eyes-tablet-bill-sharing.aspx

Traditional marketing departments are now confronted with a difficult task of competing against the ever-growing power of social networks. Beverage giants like PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and Labatt are beginning to abandon the traditional marketing methods switching to the use of social sites like Facebook and Twitter to promote their products.

With the intention of appealing to a young, social-media-savvy consumer market, companies resort to a method known as crowd-sourcing. Crowd-sourcing is using the internet to harness “the wisdom of crowds to tackle tasks such as product design or crafting marketing slogans that would normally be done by staff or contractors” (canadianbusiness.com). Coca-Cola’s VitaminWater brand, for instance, went even further using “their Facebook community to create an entirely new beverage for the company. They picked the flavour profile, the name, the packaging, the whole thing” (canadianbusiness.com).  While the resulting product, dictated by the whims of the consumers, will be well-received, the need for marketing departments is undermined. The traditional ways of advertising (i.e. 30-second television commercial) are losing their effectiveness as young consumers watch less broadcast television in favour of gaming and computer activity. Companies, therefore, resort to crowd-sourcing in order to remain competitive. But in doing so, traditional marketing departments will be rendered obsolete in due time.

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/technology/trends/article.jsp?content=20100412_10020_10020&ref=related

Can happiness be measured? According to a 30-year-old methodology known as the “Net Promoter Score,” yes it can. Bain & Co. consultant Fred Reichheld is the one responsible for creating such brilliant system that has allowed companies like Zappos to evaluate its level of customer loyalty. While the methodology is simple in nature, it provides the user with invaluable information. The first step is to survey the customers after a sale or service is completed, asking them: “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely is it that you would recommend our company to a friend or colleague?” Subsequently, the percentage of “Detractors” (those who gave a rating of 0 to 6) is subtracted from the percentage of “Promoters” (those who gave a rating of 9 or 10). The “Passive” responses, either 7 or 8, are disregarded. After calculations, the difference is the company’s Net Promoter Score. The idea is to gauge customer loyalty rather than customer satisfaction. Unlike satisfied customers, loyal customers are more inclined to “refer more, spend more, spend more often and are willing to provide feedback” (canadianbusiness.com). The success of a business hinges on referrals, which is a result of customer loyalty. Case in point, Zappos was bought by Amazon for almost US $1 billion not because it was another online shoe retailer, but because Zappos has the ability to make its customers so happy that they will urge other people to buy shoes from them. By using the Net Promoter Score, companies have access to the knowledge that is crucial in the development of approaches that beget the most customer loyalty and referrals. How would you rate your favorite company on a scale of 1 to 10?

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/entrepreneur/sales_marketing/article.jsp?content=20091101_30007_30007