It took time, because I didn’t have confidence with blogging.
And also today I’m not. But I didn’t waste time. I invested it.
It has been challenging, because it smelled of something new.
And also today it does. But I can say that I’ve tried.
Six posts don’t make me a blogger, of course.
But they helped me to share ideas and points of view.
Who reads, judges. Not the writer.
But the writer knows it has lived an experience, whatever the judgement is.
Vancouver has been an experience.
UBC has been an experience.
Marketing has been an experience.
Blogging has been an experience.
Who reads, judges. Who writes, improves. Anyway.
So, thank you readers.
I’ll come back to Italy. But, AbyHoods may survive.
And being one of the link with the UBC. A part of it.
“People tend to make more impulse and inspired purchases in person, especially if they’ve been made to feel like a first-class shopper.” – Kit Yarrow [1]
Don’t leave empty handed [2]
The way to encourage people to feel that Christmas is just around the corner is to make them known that they can receive presents. And they’ll give presents. When the Christmas shopping season begins? On the Black Friday. A non-holiday-that-tastes-of-holiday which I ignored two days ago. Then you see the advertisement in every single website. And it smells of marketing.
In his blogMark J. Miller starts talking about coffee retailers’ promotion and ends up saying:
“The Black Friday is the best day of the year for wannabe social scientists in the marketing world to try out their craziest ideas.”
The Black Friday is a game played in a short time full of pressure. As a retailer your purpose is to increase the excitement in a day full of excitement that open a so exciting shopping period. That will reflect on your sales. And your excitement will goes up. In a bunch of aggressive competitors, as a retailer the game is played the days before the Black Friday. The customers have to choose you.
All of this it is challenging for the sales promotion. You have to attract early birds shoppers who probably have an idea about the good they wanna purchase, but if they miss their goal, they won’t think too much and buy the best opportunity they see in a storm of opportunities. Hence, your sales promotion must highlight that You have lots of offers that cannot be renounced. If customers feel they are less likely to leave empty handed, they’ll choose you. If they feel an immediate value, they’ll enter your store. But creating this immediate value to add to the everyday value you give requires something more than your everyday sales promotion.
Wal-Mart coupon [3]
As Miller writes, the social media offer great tools and companies play the game by combining the online cyber opportunities with a greater attention to the overall service to improve the customers’ experience and with traditional forms of sales promotion like samples and coupons. But retailers have to reinvent these forms to make them special for a special day, because they need to be first, distinguished and chosen. Thus, be crazy and creative. Dare! If you fail, your sales won’t increase, but probably the customers will forget your mistake. It’s one day. If you succeed, the attempt will become ‘perceived value’. It will be one month of Christmas shopping.
Bibliography:
[1] Mark J. Miller, ‘Free Coffee Not the Only Perk Awaiting Black Friday Shoppers’. Retrieved from http://www.brandchannel.com/home/post/2012/11/20/Black-Friday-Free-Coffee-111912.aspx
[2] Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2012/11/20/black-friday-thanksgiving-target/1718049/
[3] Retrieved from http://www.i4u.com/48312/walmart-black-friday-2011-sales-launches-already-10pm-thanksgiving-night
“Children 12 and under spend more than $11 billion of their own money and influence family spending decisions worth another $165 billion“[1]
– McMarketing [2]
You say McDonald’s, you say a world. Among millions of topics about it, one is clear: they are great marketers. Hei folks, they sell a tasty, high fat and zero nutrition product (O’Brien, 2011).
To start with, it’s fair to say that McDonald’s is involved in CSR programs from nutrition up to environment through charity. But CSR and junk food taste as a contradiction especially if you advertise on kids. Our kids.
As the columnist for Business Ethics MagazineGael O’Brien faced in her article “Marketing to Children: Accepting Responsibility”, targeting children in advertisement is a big issue that easily deletes the border between what is ethical from what is un-ethical. Marketing to children is not unconditionally wrong, but it depends on what you sell and how you treat children. They don’t understand the marketing intentions till they are 8. They are vulnerable and can’t raise defensive barriers.
Marketing to children has been a milestone in McDonald’s advertising for years thanks to the awareness that kids are an incredible source of power and a lucrative market. McDonald’s doesn’t offer foods, but an experience and the toys/surprises that you can find in your Happy Meal® build that experience. It’s a misleading exchange between something attractive like a toy and something unhealthy like a burger. They sell a tasty, high fat and zero nutrition product through a toys-driven image of happiness and a familiar environment. Whilst the word ‘obesity’ echoes from the background.
– McDonald’s Commercial [3]
Certainly it’s up to parents educate their kids about healthy products, and they can’t be saved from their responsibilities, though when they are daily bombarded from catchy commercials, restaurants almost everywhere, appealing products and toys it is quite straightforward to be persuaded.
Marketing to children can be deceptive and ethics loses when the contradiction wins. Ronald McDonald’s is a clown, is a “friend”, but above all he is a brand. The Happy Meals® toys are nice, a tradition and a sponsor. McDonald’s can’t forgo them. But they should understand how their great power narrows the parents’ control over children who are used as pawns.
“The chain is McDonald’s-children-parents.
It should be McDonald’s-parents-children.” [4]
They have more power they wanna show and they are protect. Also the law seems to be ineffective against such a system. Marketing to children is a thin way of marketing, it is visible, but not enough to be socially unacceptable by the most. What does it means? It means that the CSR remains CSR about what they want. About what they’re lovin.
Bibliography:
[1] Tom McGee and Kevin Heubusch, `Getting Inside Kids’ Heads’, American Demographics, Vol. 19, No. 1 (1997), quoted in Sharon Beder, Marketing to Children, University of Wollongong, 1998.
[2] Speider Schneider, ‘McMarketing: McDonalds Marketing And Advertising Hits And Pits’. Retrieved from http://www.noupe.com/inspiration/mcmarketing-mcdonalds-marketing-and-advertising-hits-and-pits.html
Deactivation from Facebook. I was thinking about it while I was sitting on my rocking chair in my room, 8592 kilometers far from my hometown. Although I own a not-smartphone without an internet connection.
Two days ago I read Claire’s blog post about the first Facebook commercial and in two seconds this flowed in front of my eyes. Facebook fascinates me a lot and the points that Claire tackled matched the questions arising in my mind.
http://youtu.be/c7SjvLceXgU
Facebook 1st commercial ever | The things that connect us
This is the first time that Facebook tells how it thinks itself in a direct way unless Zuckerberg’s words. A traditional way. The new technologies, the newest devices are not shown at all because Facebook positions itself in the same level of the most usual means of connection. A traditional advertisement with traditional elements for a traditional tool. That persuasive voice starts comparing ‘thesocialnetwork’ to everyday life elements like chairs and then it widens the perspective talking about the nation, a connection as a whole, and finally about the universe. Where we feel alone, but we are not. Not thanks to chairs or airplanes, but thanks to Facebook which is presented as a traditional element of nowadays communication, but it is more than this: it challenges the universe and its loneliness. Through Facebook the loneliness will lose. I think that this is the message, this is a silent celebration without numbers (1 billion users), but throughout feelings.
Facebook | Connections
Though you don’t know the Facebook tools (timeline, etc..), you know that it exists. They didn’t need to advertise the features of the product, but they needed a straightforward mean like a commercial to say ‘Hey we are here for you. Don’t leave us.’ I agree with Claire about the doubts Facebook has to deal with. I add that the commercial targets the potential customers, but above all the aim is to convince the users not to deactivate or delete their profile. Facebook is connection, connection is Facebook. If you quit, you’ll be lost (according to them).
I don’t think it’s true, but actually I’m sitting on my rocking chair and my profile is still active on Facebook.
One sport: soccer. One city: Milan. Two teams: the “snake” and the “devil”. The first one has built its story and success on two colors, namely black and blue, and the other on two colors too, namely black and red. When it happens, blue and red are two different ways of thinking. According to the supporters, this matters.
But the supporters are your current customers, what about the potential customers? Japan, Indonesia, China and the whole Asia are huge markets: large populations, an increasing wealth and great enthusiasm are the ingredients of their attractiveness. But if we look at the flags, there might be a problem. Red. Red. Red.
Inter Milan, the ” Black-and-Blue Snake”, entered the Asian market through different tactics: it bought a Japanese player; it played two friendlies and launched a shop in Indonesia and…it designed a red away-jersey. Red? It is the first time the jersey is totally red. Is it not like an insult to your supporters?
This is the “red snake”:
Let’s consider two aspects.
How much does a color matter for the Asian people?
I’ve read that the color of red means good luck, happiness, prosperity in China: it has a great value. And if a potential Chinese customer enters a shop, he could be more impressed by something red. This matters.
It could be risky?
The supporter have criticized the solution. The devil is red. The snake is not. It isn’t pleasant to see your team playing in red kit. But this jersey has something of eye-catching and new also for Italian supporters. Moreover, it is just the away-kit. Finally, the potential market is so large that this marketing tactic is worth the risk. Only the sales will tell us the truth.
But there is another huge reason…
The markets will be affected, but above all the choice of red seems to be a tribute to a consortium of Chinese investors which has offered to pay 55 million euros for a 15 percent stake of the club and their help for the construction of the new stadium. So, this is marketing-to-investors.
I am not Canadian. Not American. I am Italian. I. And I promise that it is the last time that the word “I” is written here. The power of one is nothing against the power of one plus one plus millions of one. And this is what the Kony 2012 campaign would like to achieve. A we-awareness.
Since the first 30-minutes documentary was launched on YouTube, the Kony 2012 campaign has reached millions of ears, eyes and hearts. A huge deal. However, this post doesn’t deal with what the campaign tells. The purpose here is to understand ‘why’ and ‘how’. Why have we been attracted in the movement? How are they were able to influence us?
The product is “Make Kony famous”. And “Act together”. It’s something strange because being part of a group influences our purchases, but here being part of a group is the good they wanna sell. And we are the customers who buy their product, their kit, who become their sellers. The issue is that most of us didn’t know anything about Kony. But (and this is a huge but!) we have needs. The interaction is a need and the chance to challenge ourselves in acting is another need. Self-actualization. And Kony 2012 seems to give us this chance.
It seems to give. A 30-minutes video?
It is the Internet and the marketing. Totally. This video is a sort of long commercial where things are told in a simple way, like a tale: a good purpose, an enemy (Kony), the helpers (20 celebrities and 12 politicians). And like kids we are fascinated. Our perception is overwhelmed. Then their promotion is great. They’ve worked on colors, pictures, logos, kits. And on their events where we are the main characters. Customers who act.
The campaign give us that chance to satisfy our needs of not being a ‘single’, but a ‘We’. Yes, it is a campaign. But surprise! It had a phenomenal impact in one day. They worked for years before, we became conscious in 30 minutes. From nothing. It is the marketers’ ability to go deep into potential customers’ need.
And if Kony 2012 is just a huge lie? We would be deceived customers. I would be sad.
Here the links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc
http://www.kony2012.com/ [website]
It is not Steve Jobs. Jobs has already did it. It is Tom DeLonge, guitarist of blink-182 and AVA. But not only. He created a social networking website called Modlife; he is the sole owner of Macbeth Footwear; he formed a breast cancer awareness foundation.
I’m going to focus on his AVA. The AVA are not simply a band, ‘AVA’ is a brand within a world where its people think and feel a little differently. This is not simply music, this is a whole experience who astonish the fan. But their project seems to refuse the advertising and the marketing tools. Their third album was put it up for free-download on their website; their independent movie seemed to appear out of nowhere.
But marketing is everywhere.
The music should be like a glue which creates a movement. On the sly, the fans knew the existence of the movie and stop. It was enough. It was also weird. Where was the promotion? AVA’s music is a sort of niche for few customers. Nevertheless AVA want to reach million of people, but in a sophisticated way. It’s a sophisticated marketing. Former they created an AVA-system of many bands linked to each other in a network to build a network of fans. Latter they created a technology platform so they can do direct-to-consumer sales of goods. The product’s changed: the customers have to judge AVA not based only on music, but based on the whole project.
“The goal is world domination, by merging the film industry and the music industry into one independent production company or collaboration of artists under the umbrella of AVA.”
Seven years are gone and it’s hard to judge. Does this sort of ‘marketing without marketing’ work? Slowly. It is an exciting way of thinking. For real. The music itself should be the medium, it should reach person after person and make he or she willing to buy the goods, to go to the concerts and to watch the movies. But it seems to be a long process and I’m not sure that without the traditional marketing tools it could be fulfilled. Certainly DeLonge has no doubts.
We don’t need to whisper. We need to talk to each other. To share ideas, comments, beliefs. To share our own world. To discover the way the others think in their own world. Because they could be our customers tomorrow.
And we will conquer their loyalty. Many neighborhoods. One city. Just blogging? Just marketing?
It could be. I hope not. I’ve never blogged before, but I’ll try it.
