Month: November 2010

Every Ad, every marketing campaign which is done for business, always leaves me with bitter feelings. No matter how good or funny it is, I always have this feeling that beneath all of the positive commercial images, what they really trying to do is to make money of me. However recently, I stumbled upon a blog post about breast cancer awareness http://blogs.nfl.com/2010/10/04/think-pink/ , i discovered that marketing can serve business and actually “mean” good things under the cover of commercial images. NFL breast cancer support, is an amazing pice of marketing art. Not only it attracts new fan base to the game, and shows the stereotypical tough sport form a very soft and caring point of view, but it actually means what it sells.

It is so adorable to see huge guys tackling each other, bursting through the field and catching the football in their pink glove, cleats and helmets. A lot of critics argue that the money that has been put into manufacturing these “pink” goods would have been better off spent directly towards breast cancer, i strongly disagree with that. This is one of the greatest marketing campaigns (in my opinion), because it shows us the guy how important this issue is. These men, are ultimate Old Spice manliest men man, and they do care, so should the regular guys; and from my prospective, seeing these great men committed to such thing, while playing arguably one of the toughest sports ever to be played, definitely raised my breast cancer awareness. But again that’s just my opinion.

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It is true for most of the luxurious brands. Form consumers point of view, exclusive and luxurious goods shouldn’t be commonly seen, this applies to advertisements as well. When was the last time you’ve seen Vertu (phone), Azimut (boats) or Lamborghini (vehicles) commercial on TV? Well… never really; maybe Cosmopolitan or some other common magazine?…and the answer is “no” again. Companies that offer truly unique and luxurious goods don’t want publicity, because their biggest fear is that image of their product is going to become common. However, one of such companies chose a different, unique marketing campaign. Audi, introduced its’ new super sport vehicle R8 in 2006. Not only the marketing campaign but the whole approach of creating the vehicle was very unique, and time showed, really successful.

Audi approach in manufacturing this vehicle was to make it  not only the cheaper than its competitors but also most drivable in its class.

After the car was released in 2006 it won numerous awards, interestingly enough people didn’t really care about the price, the biggest emphasis was put on the ease of the driving, and use. Main problem of Porsches, Ferraris, and Aston Martins is that if it broke, chances are you would have to send the car to one of the few repair centers, for Audi its all different.  Audi is a big brand, with numerous services in every city.

Even though Audi is super common in most places as a car brand, it still managed to create a luxurious vehicle, with charisma and exclusive aura to it.  Company  also changed its view on traditional marketing for such product by showing many commercials in “regular” magazines, TV, it was even aired during Super Bowl, which considered to be the most expensive advertisement event, probably for a reason. Audi wanted publicity, they wanted children to have little Audi R8 models on their bed shelves, and in this particular case publicity worked in favor to them.

Many people have money to buy such cars, but only few of them will feel comfortable driving Ferrari, because it does demand certain amount of driving skills to reasonably fully utilize the vehicle. However, Audi created the drivable super car, and above all else also advertised it to the general public, which most of the companies would have never done, because it might have jeopardize their exclusive image. Audi, here, only benefited form it. People who have money, but never considered buying sport vehicle, because of the skill it usually demands, have been reminded of such option again. And what I learned from personal stories and opinion, many people did change their opinion on “sport” cars through Audi R8, and actually bought it. Keep it up Audi!

I was browsing the net, and accidentally found an article about a massive corporation (17.5 billion euros in revenue) called LVMH. This is French based luxury good giant which controls almost half of the whole luxury goods industry in several markets such as clothes and spirits. Companies like Fendi, Christian Dior, Marc Jacobs, Louis Vuitton, Tag Heuer, Moet Chandon, Don Perignon etc are considered to be very exclusive, rare and unique goods,  however they are just a part of a huge corporation which makes almost 5 million in profit, which doesn’t make any sense to me. How come Louis Vuitton purse costs twice as much as Marc Jacobs purse even though Marc Jacobs himself is a head designer for both companies. I understand the whole idea about luxury goods and services, however globalization of it just somehow seems wrong to me. In my mind corporation and a luxury good don’t really go together unless it is something enormous like a jet, yacht, maybach, hotel etc. but how would you feel if lets say Aston Martin, Ferrarri, Bugatti, Maybach, Rolls Royce, Lamborghini were actually under the control of one corporation? This is just wrong. Exclusive things should stay autonomous, independent otherwise it all becomes just like an assembly line product with a different price tag on it. As a personal conclusion for me all of the “exclusive” brands under these corporations  just lost all the value to me. Again its just my personal opinion.

P.S. Look it up girls, and guys .. I guess 🙂 LVMH and PPR

There are many hilarious commercials every now and then, but only small number of them actually work, and vitamin water is one of these lucky brands that made these type of advertisements work positively towards their company image. These short paragraphs on the side of the bottle always make me smile. So how is it that they managed to do that? Well from my point of view the secret – is they didn’t go too far like some of the Trojan condom commercials, and they aren’t awkward too (you laugh at the joke not at the clown). So they positioned themselves really wisely by approaching same customers (soda/pop buyers) with the new product, as well as approaching the new market of “water buyers” with another healthy beverage, which also has taste to it (you can’t actually find anywhere on the bottle that it is part of coca cola, they created the separate brand Glaceau, which also sells smart water). Vitamin Water, in my opinion, has one of the best marketing approach in the whole beverage industry. I think Coca Cola gave its’ marketing department very little restrictions on that project and so far it turned out really well. These hilarious paragraphs on the side, funny commercials with Steve Nash and other celebrities, the lack of web site (their primary web site is a face book page!!), even small things like good looking bottles, give this company a lot of charisma. And brand’s charisma in my opinion, is the deciding factor for companies success in non-alcoholic beverage market.

P.S. It again proved me how valuble marketing can be.