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
