TEAMWORK [teem-wurk]

Noun: 1. Cooperative or coordinated effort on the part of a group of persons acting together as part of a team or in the interests of a common cause.

My team for the designated marketing assignment #3, consisted of people who were both task-oriented and creative. Two of the major components that helped all the members of our group work so well together. Everyone was on time to meetings, eager to do their part for the assignment, and stayed focused on the task at hand. While everyone had a different approach to a question, or different solution for a scheduling problem, no one was shy when it came to asking questions and providing alternatives.

The members of our team, I feel, were quite comfortable with one another by the time that assignment #3 rolled around. We were able to communicate performance concerns, apply individual strengths, and identify personal weaknesses both throughout the term and completion of assignment #3.

Assignment #3 itself was fun to plan, and much fun to film. I believe everyone in the group enjoyed themselves during the production process of our short film. We were able to incorporate a bit of everyone’s vision for the project, and that is what I think makes it refreshing. We applied corrections where necessary from our two previous assignments, and tried to articulate concepts along with terminology from class lectures.

Overall, it was an uncommon experience that our group had this term, leaving myself with very little complaints and many praises for each individual one of my group members. It was an interesting project, and one I enjoyed.

The Coca-Cola Company was ranked in Interbrand’s Best Global Brands for 2013 as being the third most recognized brand worldwide. Coca-Cola Company has been the leading soft drink producer for many years on a global scale, most recently in 2011 holding an overall market share in the soft drink and beverage industry, of 25.90%. As compared to its rival Pepsi&Co. with an 11.50% share in the market, in its 127 years of establishment the Coca-Cola Company’s brand has made it to the top of the most valued brands worldwide.

The company is as much of a cold beverage producer and innovator, as it is a marketing company. As Interbrand summarized, “Coca-Cola achieves impressive global presence through standout ad campaigns, bold design, digital savvy, and a simple, universally relevant theme that weaves throughout the brand’s communications: happiness.”

In 2006, the Coca-Cola Company spent $2.6 billion for worldwide advertising expenditures. Although 2006 is the last year that Coca-Cola published information of such expenditures on its website, the amount  is more than astonishing, and can help put an understanding to the resources that Coca-Cola employs and empowers to maintain brand recognition.

Brand recognition is an essential part to the success of any company. It helps build relationships between buyers throughout multiple levels: suppliers, retailers, and customers. Most importantly, it helps to establish brand loyalty within the company’s consumer base. An integral part of Coca-Cola’s marketing strategy, a behavioural variable that is both applicable and forthcoming in Coca-Cola’s target market around the world.

Global Locations Where Coca-Cola Products Are Sold 

Labeled locations are where Coca-Cola products are not sold.

I read an article recently, titled 10 Ways Today’s Purpose-Driven Brands can Bring Their Core Values to Life. It brought about a way of selling your product through means of promoting social good, and corporate philanthropy. In short, the author states, “emotional impact on your customers will be in direct proportion to the social impact of your purpose. [And the] social impact of your purpose will be in direct proportion to the success of your business.”

By not just focusing on marketing your product as a fulfillment for individual consumer needs and wants, you are opening up opportunity for your company to expand promotion of your product and your company on a universal level. A key factor to emotionally connecting to that of people nationally or across the world, is to strengthen your brand purpose.

A brand purpose is that promise you make to your customers, it tells them what they can count on from your products and your services. It can be as simple as just a differential factor between yourself and competitors, or it could be more. More? 

More, as in the ability to market your brand as having values that do not just benefit the everyday, individual consumer. But rather, that your brand holds values that aim to help provide solutions, contribute to environmental betterment, and have a say in social issues seen by the larger community as valuable. Much like the article articulates, “With our planet in a rapid state of decline – climate change, loss of biodiversity, disparity of wealth, obesity, water scarcity, the list goes on – companies will increasingly be viewed as either part of the solution or the problem.”

By taking on a marketing strategy that emphasizes the broader vision, what your brand holds as values, companies are being perceived as becoming “part of the solution”. With a positive image in today’s socially and environmentally conscious society, it is believed that how a company conveys their business’ philanthropic values determines their success. And that this theory of authentically positioning your brand in a way that is meaningful and relevant, has never been so important.

Please refer to the example video below:

Nike: Find Your Greatness

In response to the Canadian Marketing Association’s blog, Crowd Sourced Couture: How Social Media Redesigned the Shopping Experience, I would have to say first and foremost it was an interesting read. The blog post diligently focuses on the effects of consumer trends displayed through social media as being the newest (and most influential) factor in personal purchasing decisions.

“A new layer has been added with the ability to see how popular a product is in-store according to what people are saying via social media.” This strategic analysis of consumer behaviour towards products when shopping in-store, both positively and negatively correlates an individual consumers response to a particular product based on how that product is perceived on social media outlets such as; Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter. Stores, like Nordstorm, advertise how many “pins”, “likes”, and “retweets” an item receives on the virtual social world by hanging the statistics on clothing hangers, or displaying them by the products of subject.

What I guessed from reading this far into the blog, was that those products with more “likes”, and “pins” would be more likely to attract the buyer to want to purchase it. Why? Well simply (at least I thought), the more a product of any sort is liked and shared amongst peers, role models, and friends on social media, the more that particular product is more accepted. Therefore, the safer and more confident the customer would feel in purchasing that product. And although some results supported this automatic assumption, there were also negative correlation in sales to number of likes the product received on the internet.

In a world where individualism is becoming a prominent trend, and active factor in purchasing decisions, it should have been obvious. The more likes and tweets that a product receives – ultimately declaring the level of the product’s popularity – the less certain individual consumers saw that product as desirable. In fact, the more virtual likes the lesser in sales that item had, strictly due to the fact that people purposefully try to find ways to set themselves apart from what the majority of society views as “likeable”.

This blog by the Canadian Marketing Association, was definitely interesting, along with insightful. We always think of using social media to encourage online purchasing, not necessarily the other way around. Like in this article, where companies utilize social media for in-store purchasing encouragement. A new new layer of the purchasing cake that I’m sure, whether we know it or not, have all had a taste of.

As a responding blog to that of Tim Burke’s Someone’s Watching You, I could not agree more with the author’s finishing point, “I think that this is crossing the line, companies are gathering information on [consumers] then passing it around like a business card.” How are companies gathering information on you? Well, according to an ABC news-clip about a retail store located in San Francisco, through hidden cameras, and unauthorized documentation of personal details. That’s how.

There is a purpose to this madness. That is, both retail store managers and marketers alike use customers’ body and facial reaction (collected by the hidden cameras in mannequins) to see if their clientele is attracted or not to the store’s product supply. By further documenting your age, how long you were in the store, and what you bought at the register, business researchers can come to conclusions about what is trending, if prices are too high on some products, and can configure this information to feed the functional and psychological needs of the store’s target market.

But as an enthusiastic retail-therapy shopper, trust is part of the package of selling me your product. By invading to such an extensive degree on the personal privacy of your customers, you are not only risking their loyalty, but their trust in you as a supplier and retail individual in society. This kind of technology, though cheap, is being facilitated in a manner that is both degrading of personal privacy, and threatening in regards to customers’ sense of purchasing protection.

It is a practice that, in my opinion, should be pursued no further by marketers. It crosses the standard boundaries that are presumed by the customer, and that should be enforced by the retailer.

There is a saying that goes along the lines of “sex sells”. And it’s true. Unfortunately, there are a growing number of ad campaigns and billboards that are both sexually explicit, and emotionally racy. As the popularity for such advertisements seems to be plastering naked women, covered in sweat and men, along our highways and shopping mall windows, you can’t help but notice the transcending theme for the queasy posters that leave little to the imagination. They are inappropriate and extremely unethical.

The question becomes; at what price are we going to continue to exploit the nature of female sexuality? When is this practice crossing the line? I’d say that having an extremely slim, blonde woman on a couch in a scrap piece of material – and topless nonetheless – being groped and sexually advanced on by not one, not two, but three guys, might be traversing over that thin line. Take, for instance, the Calvin Klein Jean advertisement below, published in a Rolling Stone magazine. It’s one-eighth denim, and seven-eighths of vindictive sexual exploitation.

A statistic claims “we are exposed to over 2000 ads a day, constituting perhaps the most powerful educational force in society.” When kids, teenagers, or even adults see advertisements that so blatantly expose women as “things” of sexual desire, we are instilling a gross, and unethical perception of how women should be treated. It is not hard to avoid, let the girl wear a top and some pants, instead of stripping her of her clothes and her individual identity.

Such extreme marketing techniques are concerning, and unethically sound. With a world full of art, culture and music, do we really need sex to still sell?

Calvin Klein Ad featured in the Rolling Stone

It’s beautiful, when you hear it you can’t stop thinking about it, and when you see it on signs and in windows your heart skips a beat. Yes, you know what I’m talking about….”FREE”. That one word can appeal to just about anybody, but speaking from a university standpoint, a students’ day can be brightened just by getting a free pen.

That’s why when McDonald’s has their highly-anticipated “Free Small Hot Brewed Coffee” promotion, well it basically parts the grey clouds of Vancouver for the hypothetical beams of sunshine as a beckon of light. Now besides being happy about free coffee customers might think, “Those people in the head office have lost their minds,” or “This is no different than McDonald’s burning bills.” But it’s not.

In response to classmate Mandy Xu’s post about this exact promotion, we both agree that it is money well lost in mean of the long-term strategy of the business. Mandy states “By cutting down price drastically, the restaurant boosts up its market share in a blink of an eye. This cost leadership strategy is subjected to attract a wide range of customers regardless of the contribution margin each one of them brings in.”

In that sense, McDonald’s is doing something right in terms of marketing. By giving out free coffee they are both “thanking” their loyal customers, while welcoming new ones – who previously might not have ever gone to McDonald’s.

Well, seems like McDonald’s has two thumbs up on this end; on behalf of university students, we’re loving it.

Responding to fellow classmate Clement Lau’s post regarding the analysis of Vancouver’s market in terms of utilizing the Porter’s Five Forces tool, I would have to disagree in the overall conclusion of the analysis. In respect to the success of small businesses and their entry into the hustling city of Vancouver, Clement stated that “I would think the degree of measurement with regards to the five forces are all listed as high”.

Honestly I can agree with 90% of that statement. Supplier and buyer power is high concerning number of customers, uniqueness of service, and cost of changing for small businesses. Threat of substitution, for sure is high; with endless options in the downtown Vancouver area for coffee for example. All an unsatisfied customer has to do it walk a block to find their new favourite coffee stop.

I would argue though that threat of new entry is not high, I would even argue that it is low. Especially with the ever recovering economy and all those families with it. The risk of entering such a vast, competitive, and established market – I would think – would seem as unattractive and undesirable for the average entrepreneur.

Competitive rivalry, as means of the resulted conclusions is high, and rightfully so.

Lead With Your Heart, Not Just Your Head

As my first response to an external blog, I chose to respond to Harvard Business Review writers Naomi Eisenberger and George Kohlrieser on how managers should focus less on leading with the stubbornness of authority, and with more caring for their employees.

According to Eisenberger and Kohlrieser, it is important for personnel with managerial positions to exercise the power of personal leadership when interacting with their employees.

I agree, in such that regardless if the company stresses their resources, and time into maximizing profits, it doesn’t make establishing personal connections and trusting relationships with employes any less imperative. I believe that “feeling connected is intrinsically rewarding to the brain” because having a social attachment with fellow employees helps to give way to better, more effective communication, employee respect, and less stressful work environment.

Personally, having worked a part-time job at Tim Horton’s my manager made an effort to be super friendly and communicative with all employees about more than just work related topics, but rather interests, and future plans. She managed to make those social connections with her employees, including myself, while maintaining an authoritative image. She was someone everyone respected.

I was very lucky to have such a positive experience with my boss as my first job, however I know now from Eisenberger and Kohlrieser’s blog that the preferred persona of many managerial figures is that of strict enforcement. See through their management by objectives and metrics to monitor performance, and their historic view that bonding with your team members will be seen as a distraction at best or weakness at worst.

Personally, I would rather trust my boss than a total stranger.

“By developing the first high-definition streaming video platform of Earth, UrtheCast plans to change the way we view the world.” So in other words, prepared to be amazed.

Don’t believe me? Watch:

Introduction to UrtheCast

UrtheCast is a high-definition resource that shows how small we actually are, by providing a real-world, up to-date video stream of the Earth. It seems fascinating and “out of this world” – no pun intended – but is it too much out of our world? Personally speaking I don’t know how I feel about UrtheCast, consider me on the fence.

“You will be able to scroll, pan, zoom, and search your way around the Earth”…sounds a lot like Google Earth with a sprinkle of YouTube. Its point of parity is clear, and its point of difference is restricted to its live streaming feature, but what is the practical realism of the implementation of such a program? Or should I be asking what are the consequences  of installing such a device on the International Space Station?

Seeing pictures of natural disasters, or war efforts overseas on the television is emotional and captivating, seeing shootings unfold or tsunamis wash away houses in the moment, watching something like that unfold in front of your eyes would be something else. At least those pictures that are shown on the news channel have taken the time to keep individuals’ identity private, and are being monitored as to what is considered appropriate for showing.

How can UrtheCast guarantee that this freedom they are claiming to give us, won’t be too much? They say that UrtheCast will “change the way we view the world”. Hopefully this is not for the worse.