After reading Burger King’s Lesson in 24/7 Marketing, I am amazed by the fact that marketing is literally everywhere and anytime! I am also surprised by how important the role of social media is in marketing.

With the advancement in technology, most companies are relying on social media such as Facebook and Twitter to market their products and values. They have a Facebook page and a Twitter account where they post updates about their products or to interact with their followers. However, technology is double-edged sword, the bad side of which is the notorious hacking. After Burger King’s twitter account was hacked, several inappropriate tweets were posted against its competitor, Macdonald’s. Such blatant act of sabotage does not, at the least damage Macdonald’s, but goes a long way in backfiring and damaging its own brand.

An analogy of this is when a person backmouths others. Most of the time, people just take it with a grain of salt, but they will become doubtful of the person who is talking about it. This person’s reputation is damaged by his own words. Lesson learned: the way we carry ourselves, the gestures we use, the words we say and our facial expressions speak a lot more than we realize. The way we behave is the way we market ourselves. Therefore, marketing is everywhere and anytime for us as well. If we do not keep an eye on our behavior and our words, they will catch up with us eventually. So to play safe, WATCH WHAT YOU SAY everywhere and anytime!

Not until the kickoff of the Super Bowl game, there was already a lot of discussion and hoopla around the coming Super Bowl commercials. Everyone was so eager to know who was to win this big game of advertisement?

With the wrap-up of the game, most people already have the answer. Among all the attention-catching ads, Budweiser Clydesdale 2013 is definitely the most eye-catching and bucking the trend. The ad features Budweiser’s famous Clydesdales horse. It starts off with a man tending to a foal who was only a week old when the ad was shot. Then it jumps to three years later, and we see a reunion between the man and the horse. With over 5.5 million Youtube views and the radio DJs’ talking about it on the next day, the company has successfully established its position in consumers’ retrieval set and potentially their evoked set by stirring up some heartwarming sentiment.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2prAccclXs]

Comparing to those funny ads or sexually suggestive ones such as Calvin Klein Orgy Billboard, Budweiser Clydesdale 2013 differentiates itself by tapping into the softest spot of human psychology and relates to consumers’ love needs as depicted in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Calvin Klein Orgy Billboard

It is the basic human love exhibited in the ad that can give consumers a long-lasting memory. For those sexy ads, it is nothing more than a gimmick which “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” is the common route to take. In this world of new advertisements being produced every minute, what can really affiliate with the public comes down to the most basic human emotion.