If you can market your product so that consumers think it is something they need instead of something they want, then it doesn’t matter what you’re selling because you will be successful. Marketing isn’t just about advertisements, its about what consumers think when they see your product and developing the product so consumers want it. A good example of this is the ad for the Lamborghini Reventon Roadster which, because it presents the car as a scarce anomaly and a status symbol, develops the product so that people want it.
Lamborghini has realized that its target market is men and women who have a lot of money and want to flaunt it, and this ad presents the car as the ultimate status symbol.
An even more interesting example of this is a study done by the American Association of Wine Economists in 2008 titled:“Do More Expensive Wines Taste Better?”. It proved that the ordinary person who knows nothing about wine and is unaware of the price of the wine they are tasking does not derive more enjoyment from ‘better’, more expensive wine and when the same person knew the prices, they would enjoy the more expensive one. Why? Who knows, but it goes to show that all you need to do is make the consumer think the product is good, say by setting the price very high.
One day after seeing a moving company throw away cardboard boxes after unpacking them, Marty Metro was inspired to begin a business that connected people who had used boxes to people who needed boxes. In 2002 he left his job as an IT consultant and opened Boomerang Boxes, a retail store in L.A. that sold used boxes. Despite enthusiasm from many customers the company was loosing tens of thousands of dollars every month until Metro was $300,000 in debt. At this point Metro started working on the idea of selling boxes online and, in 2006 was given $300,000 by venture capitalists to develop an online business which Metro called UsedCardboardBoxes.com. In 2008 the company had 1 million dollars in sales and was faced with a supply lower than the demand. Metro used his IT expertise to develop a computer system that matched companies and people in need of boxes with people and companies trying to get rid of boxes. The company’s sales are now approximately $10 million and still growing fast.
UsedCardboardBoxes.com is extremely innovative and has, in a short frame of time, created large profits. Metro was able to take an object, cardboard boxes, and in a way never done before, turn them into a product out of which he was able to generate large profits.
Several years ago McDonald’s introduced coffee to their restaurants hoping to attract customers from competitors with low prices. The product was branded as an alternative to other pricy and somewhat pretentious cafes with adverts like the McDonald’s Unsnobby Coffee TV ad:
In October of this year McDonald’s made public the decision to build on the McCafe line and bring specialty coffees to Canada. To help the product gain valuable market share, McDonald’s undertook an aggressive marketing campaign, part of which includes a billion dollar modernization of store interiors, and the giving away of free coffee (over 60 million cups to date) so customers could experience the product’s quality. McDonald’s campaign was countered by Starbuck’s campaign that focused on quality over cost:
Starbuck’s marketing campaign seems to have little effect on the consumers as it seems that McDonald’s launched their product at the perfect time. Although Starbucks may control a large segment of the market, with the recent economic downturn many people are looking to save money in any place they can so welcome the change to less expensive coffee, giving McDonald’s new products a competitive edge.
I recently came across a blog belonging to Kevin Jagger.
Kevin played football at McGill while studying finance, but stopped after he graduated. Years later, Kevin found himself watching the 2010 winter olympics and realized he wasn’t ready to give up sport quite so quickly. He quit his job and began a full time training schedule with the lofty goal of making it to the Olympics as a speed skater. Kevin quickly realized that he had begun quite a costly undertaking. He needed sponsors, quickly. So began Kevin’s blog – “Long Track Long Shot”– in which he chronicled his progress. He shared the blog with his friends who shared with their friends till the blog grew in popularity. Through a blog, Facebook site and Twitter page, Kevin was able to grow an audience which he leveraged to gain sponsorship.
The blog changed Kevin’s brand. No longer did potential sponsors see him as a middle aged man who, in the early stage of his skating career, lost races to teenage girls, but a success story which had captured the interest of many. Most importantly he had capture their interest… with a blog.
When one thinks of Weight Watchers, the image conjured is often that of a lady bragging about the amount of weight she has lost. She might be sporting her high school jeans, a little black dress or even a bikini. Over the years Weight Watchers periodically changes the face of their product- Their earlier advertisements starred Lynn Red…
…and more recently their TV commercials star Jennifer Hudson…
…however they have always been focused toward ladies seeking self improvement. With eloquent pink cursive handwritten fonts in their ads and ladies talking about how much confidence they have gained while wearing their bathing suits because of Weight Watchers, it is safe to say that Weight Watcher’s target segment has been women. Or it least it was, until recently when Weight Watchers completely changed their target segment with one advert. Recent marketing plans have been part of a tactical move to gain more market share. Weight Watchers is no longer something specifically targeted for women, and its all thanks to ads like this:
In August of 2007 Mattel Inc., the world’s largest toy company, began a massive recall of 9 million toys because of faulty magnets and high levels of lead in paints used on the toys. Immediately Mattel was quick to take the blame for its mistakes in what seemed to be the ethically correct move. CEO Bob Eckert was adamant that the company’s number one concern was children safety and for the most part parents bought his apology.
Is ethical business cutting as many corners as is possible in order to turn a profit and making a seemingly sincere apology when those corners come back to bike the business’ public image or should Mattel have spared no efforts from preventing this from happening in the first place.
The public would not likely have been so forgiving with Mattel if they knew that over the 66 years of the company’s existence it has had 28 recalls, numerous reported accusations of stolen toy ideas and in the mid 1970′s found to be releasing fraudulent financial statements to give the appearance of growth.
Can Mattel be considered morally conscious for quickly assuming the blame in such ethical fashion, or was it meerly damage control to hide its underhanded business methods.
One of the topics discussed in the article “Positioning” by Al Ries and Jack Trout was the importance of getting your product into the consumer’s mind. Recently there has been a certain breakfast cereal which has been growing in popularity for doing exactly that. In 2009 a couple from BC began selling their healthy breakfast cereal online. It was then called HapiFoods. With hundreds of cereal brands already fighting for a share in the market, the name HapiFoods wasn’t quite grabbing the attention of the consumers and it showed. The couple sold about ten bags per day under this name. After getting raving reviews from their few customers the couple decided to change the name to Holy Crap. Under the new name the cereal sold 100 bags on the first day alone.
Holy Crap is an extremely healthy cereal packed full of amino acids, omega 3, natural fibre and iron. Often a product with such health benefits can boast them as a relevant distinction from competitors however there are many other cereal brands claiming to benefit health. In this example Holy Crap used its unconventional name to get its brand into the consumer’s mind.
