Nook—Billy's Marketing Blog

I have a chance to work with three different teams for three different commerce courses this term, so I am able to compare how well each team worked together based on personal experience. Frankly, the marketing team works much better than the other two teams.Everyone contributes ideas and shares work. Everyone works with each other with three common goals, to learn through the project, to submit work on time, and to achieve the best mark we can. Working with people who share those goals in a team is lucky, then no one needs to put extra effort on others’ part, so we all feel good.

Overall, I liked the marketing assignment part three, and I was satisfied with the results regarding on both quality and teamwork. Everyone in the team contributed to the assignment, added a bit of their ideas and personalities into the project.  Everyone showed up on the meeting time. Also, special thanks to the director Michael , cameraman Victor and script writer Jason, they devoted a lot on this part and consumed a lot of time on post-production phase. Something we could do better next time is planning  everything a little bit earlier, so we won’t have to rush during the last weekend. In addition, if every group works on the same appointed brand, it will be more interesting to see people’s creativity.

In conclusion, I like the marketing project.

After reading Anna’s blog about political environment needs to update with the new technology, I realized that the regulation is becoming one of the most important constrains for making the new technology for everyday usage. A few hot topics such as auto-drive car, realistic game, hyperloop and bitcoin. Government even doesn’t know it’s legal or not, so it’s impossible for them to advertising and raising the public awareness.

Bitcoin is definitely an new technology that facing the legal issue. Basically, it is an algorithm to calculate one unique ID that is called one bitcoin. It can be made and traded like real money, and the good thing for bitcoin is that it’s secure and it doesn’t have any inflation, no government can control it. It will reach the total number of 2,100,000 and no more bitcoin is available after that. To some content, it’s even more ideal than gold.

The price of bitcoin is raised from $65 at January this year to nearly $900 yesterday, and some people even so optimistic that they predicting it’s value will go up to 40,ooo a coin!  Many website accepts bitcoin as one of the paying methods, but for daily usage, it’s still not as convenience as cash or credit card. For this large value of one virtual property, there must have some laws to protect people’s property but actually their aren’t. FBI recently seized 600,000 bitcoin from one under-table trading website called silk road, this is a huge amount and it’s value is up to 540 million. If the virtual property is not protected by law, bitcoin still has risk for public usage. What if one day, US government announced that bitcoin is a fraud, all website is banned, then all your money will be seized by government.

Bitcoin is really a good product for public use, it’s purchase power will never decrease. However, without the protection of law, now I would say it’s more like a financial tool rather than currency. People are just buying and selling for making money, but in this case it will finally destroy this great idea.

Tesla Motors‘ (NASDAQ: TSLA), recently becomes a hot topic and everyone is amazed by its electric car. However, a couple of weeks ago, Tesla Model S, caught fire in an accident, and this became a great opportunities for people to argue against Tesla regarding of car safety concern. One of the blog is from Russ Finley who is the guest blogger for The Christian Science Monitor, arguing that should this be another setback for electric car?

Actually, I think this is not an issue to worry about. Based on comments from Tesla CEO Elon Musk in a company blog post about the first fire in early October, earlier this week he explained that Tesla’s Model S has only seen two fires in 100 million miles driven, while traditional vehicles have one fire for every 20 million miles driven. The numbers make a strong case that the vehicle is at least as fireproof as traditional vehicles. Highly flammable liquid versus battery, it’s really hard to say which one is safer.

Although Tesla’s PR had done very well in this issue, I think marketing team should use the public’s curiosity to prove Tesla may be the safest car in the world.  Tesla marketing team can make a commercial or Youtube video to demonstrate how hard a Tesla can get fire, and how easy an ordinary car can. On one hand, Tesla can use this commercial to clear up people’s concern and make investors relieved; On the other hand, besides the eco purpose, powerful driving performance, cool electrical controlling system, Tesla could have another excellent selling point: it is safer than gasoline car. I think many consumers such as people who have family and kids will really consider this selling point and weigh Tesla more than gasoline car.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0kjI08n4fg

It is hard to ignore that BlackBerry is still in the top tier regarding of the mobile device management system. This is always the core business of BlackBerry and that’s way many companies choose BlackBerry as their mobile solution. In terms of security, usability and acknowledgement, BlackBerry still have the competitive advantage.

Why don’t bring this to Chinese companies which are lack of mobile solution?

1. With the trend of BYOD, BlackBerry developed new BlackBerry Enterprise Solution 10 which can manage IOS, Android and BlackBerry devices at the same time. Companies can save a large amount of money for buying new devices for the employee but benefit from the new BES 10. With this selling point, many cost-leadership Chinese companies will prefer BlackBerry.

2. More and more Chinese companies are aware of the security issue. When changing from imitation to creation, companies don’t want their hard work to be stolen. Thinking about security, even US government is using BlackBerry; this will bring a strong image to Chinese companies that BlackBerry is the top in kind.

3. Most importantly, demand from Chinese companies is huge. Lots of Companies don’t even have a mobile solution for their employees. They haven’t noticed the advantage of extending the desktop to your handheld and doing business 24/7. BlackBerry needs some strong strategic alliances like Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent which are the biggest three IT companies in China. With their help and impact, many middle sized companies would like to follow their path and co-operate with BlackBerry as well.

In short, I think BlackBerry still have some chances in Chinese market. What BlackBerry needs to do is loss weight first, and become a niche player in consumer market and focus more on business market. For example, with selling the laptop department, IBM focus more on business service solutions, and become successful again. Best wishes to BlackBerry.

If you are interested in Tech, probably one of the most breaking news recently is BlackBerry will be totally bought out. Their new phones Z10 and Q10 are not selling well and the company is kicked out of the smartphone game. Maybe BlackBerry is never good for consumer market, at least in North America. However, BlackBerry is hot sale in Southeast Asia and Africa market, my  question is why they just ignore the second largest economic entity-Chinese market?

I understand that their could be a number of entry barriers and competitors for BlackBerry in Chinese market, but I still could see some opportunities for the company to come back to the game.

Consumer Market:

1. Large amount of population and rapid growing of smart phone market. If you want to do consumer business, you need to find where people are. Chinese people have the higher buying power than India and Southeast Asia counties. Counties like UK, they call it hot sale is about selling 1000+ BlackBerry devices during weekend. In China, hot sale can be millions of devices.

2. Strong brand image recognition. Frankly, due to TV, Hollywood movie and newspaper exposure, BlackBerry is getting a high brand recognition in China even without any marketing campaign. People have the idea that BlackBerry used to compete with Apple. Also, because of BlackBerry got the US government contract and President Obama is a loyal BlackBerry fan, this gives a lot of impression to normal Chinese consumers and they want to know more about this product. This could be at lease one huge selling chance.

3. Niche player in high end market. Vertu is a very high end cellphone company which pricing its phones around $6000 dollars, but it still can sell thousands of device every year. There are a group of people in China who want to be different, and don’t like to use Apple and Android devices. They need smartphones to differentiate themselves from others. BlackBerry can be a perfect maker for those people. Actually, Blackberry already had a phone partner with Proche Design and price around $2000 dollars. BlackBerry need a few more these products and targeting for Chinese high end market. For example, partner with LV and Channel for the phone design as well as accessories.

When talking about unethical marketing, the first thing popped into my head was a Pepsi commercial, and I bet lots of people had seen it before. Although it was never published, to some extend, it was a “successful” commercial since the producer successfully passed the “idea” to many people’s mind.

The whole commercial is about 30 seconds, and the story happens around one vending machine. In order to buy a can of Pepsi, a young boy has to buy two cans of coca cola to put them under his feet so that he will be able to touch the higher placed Pepsi. The unethical “idea” is very clear to audiences; Coca Cola is “lower” and Pepsi is “higher”, and the boy will waste two cans of coke just for a can of Pepsi.

Almost everybody knows Coca Cola and Pepsi, and except the brand, they have no other ways to compete with each other regarding of supply chain, flavors, price and etc. What Pepsi had done was to lower Coca Cola’s brand and made fun of it. However, I don’t think this kind of unethical commercial will make any difference to the consumers. It is so obvious that this commercial is made to stain Coca Cola, and people won’t give Pepsi more credibility according to it. Use unethical marketing to against your opponent will also lower your brand value when people know it.