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Last month, I took some really pretty pictures of cherry blossoms at the Nitobe Memorial Garden (UBC). It’s a serene place and highly recommended for anyone who wants to take a walk and enjoy the beautiful scenery (Bonus: UBC students … Continue reading
Q: Hello Annie! It’s great being able to chat with you. Our readers would like to know about your experience with the Marketing Plan assignments and I have a couple of questions prepared for you. Let’s start with this one. What did you learn about teams, yourself, and marketing?
A: Hi there! Great chatting with you too! Well first off, I really enjoy working in teams. It allows us to leverage each person’s unique strengths to counter others’ potential weaknesses to create a well-balanced and efficient team. With myself, I am an adaptive individual and as such, I am fine working either in teams or independently. Of course, in team work, there’s still a component of independent work, where you work to reliably finish your own part by the agreed deadline. As I’ve realized, marketing might not be my forte, but the subject is definitely interesting. This is kind of embarrassing to admit, but I used to think that marketing was all about advertising and creating ads. After taking Introduction to Marketing (COMM 296), it has cleared my terrible misconception. Although advertising is a part of marketing, it isn’t everything. Marketing is a very complex subject consisting of how to communicate value and benefits, positioning, strategies, branding, and many more. It’s definitely not something easy because, instead of standing from your own point of view (which we usually do), we have put ourselves in other people’s (consumers’) shoes and see the product the way they do.
Q: That’s very insightful and I positively agree that working in groups or individually has its respective benefits. This leads us to the next question. What skills did you enhance or develop, if any?
A: My teamwork skills would be one that I enhanced. I feel that teamwork is a skill that is continually improved upon because each team you work with consists of different people with different personalities and work styles.
Q: From what I understand, this course and the assignments have been quite beneficial to you. But, what would you do differently next time?
A: This is a tough question. Haha. Well, if I knew more about the final video project, I would’ve probably went to the library sooner to learn how to make a video and be able to be more of a help in the video editing part for my team.
Q: Video editing can be quite tough especially with the many programs available. I’ve learned so much from talking to you. Now, let’s wrap up this interview with this last question. Our readers would like to know what are your top takeaways?
A: Overall, I feel that marketing is a very relevant subject regardless of which option you choose at Sauder . Actually, more like it’s very relevant in life because for job searching in our extroverted world, you have to be able to stand out from the crowd. To achieve this, you have to sell yourself well by knowing who your employers (target segment or consumers) are, what kind of person (product) they are looking for, and then fit (position) yourself accordingly.
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With this, I bid adieu to Marketing for now.
“Marketing takes a day to learn. Unfortunately it takes a lifetime to master.”
– Phil Kotler
(Sorry for the long post – Just trying to be creative.) 
I’ll start this off by saying this. “I’m not a big fan of candy and sweets” – probably because my parents used to scare me by talking about getting cavities and then having to see… the dentist. Like some kids, I am also afraid of dentists and their (dental) drills medical equipment. But every year, around Easter, I, too, like Samantha also see a lot of commercials and in-store promotion
for these…
and these…
There would always be a whole aisle full of chocolatey sweets and sugar-coated candy tempting me.
Aside from that though, I absolutely agree with Samantha that these eggs are intensively distributed when they appear and the stores are able to mark-up the prices for these chocolates due to the limited availability time. The commercials, the nearly ubiquitous product, and the association with Easter serve to remind consumers of the limited time of its existence and create demand.
One day, a friend of mine invited me to try a mini egg. Très délicieux! To be honest though, as adorable and delicious as it was, I can’t justify paying $1.99 for 42 grams. Maybe that’s just me and by fear of the dentist?
This is about the communication process of Starbuck’s Ideas in Action Blog (For the unrelated part 1, click here).
Starbucks, the sender, chooses to use the Internet as their communication channel when interacting with the public and their consumers, the receiver. The transmitter, in this case, would be the blog writer, Andrew L. The feedback loop is completed when the consumers choose to buy Starbucks Tribute Blend® at the store, meaning that the message in the blog was received loud and clear.
From reading this blogpost, I started to realize that it follows the AIDA model. It creates awareness for the product and the value behind it leading to the consumers’ interest in the product and the meaningful story behind its creation, particularly with the blogger’s choice of descriptive words to convey the feeling of luxury (i.e. “limited time”, “sun-dried”, etc). From this, we get desire on the consumers’ part to support this product and its vision of incorporating the world into one blend. Eventually, leading to an action where the consumers purchase it for the aforementioned benefits. Well, to be honest, the story was definitely interesting and has sparked interest, my interest at least. Who would’ve thought that a coffee blend would have such a special story behind it (I just thought it was for purely money-making purposes :P).
“Every picture has a story”
– actually let me tweak that a bit –
Every blend has a story.
As most of us are aware, the Nintendo DS (NDS) and its successor Nintendo DS Lite was a hit amongst many people. When it was first introduced, Nintendo had hit the bulls-eye again, following the success of its GameBoy franchise, less the GameBoy Micro, which “did not meet [Nintendo’s] expectations”.
The NDS had two screens, with one being a touch screen, and was sold with the promotions revolving around the concept of its touch screen.This product was able to reboot the handheld game console category back to the Introduction stage of the Product Life Cycle with its idea of having a touch screen, which gives the value of users being able to better interact with games. Then, the product category moved onto the Growth stage as more game companies, adapted the technology and expanded their game selection, which also marked the beginning of where Nintendo and other companies started to discontinue support for previous game consoles. This lead to consumers adopting the new technology, since if they wished to continue playing the games they like, they had to change consoles. As well, the product category was able to cater to different consumer preferences, for those who prefer action or those who prefer relaxation. Next, came the Maturity stage again, as the late majority started to adopt this technology and increased competition from other firms, such as PlayStation, for the market share and prices fell. Just before the Decline stage arrives, Nintendo again tries to reboot the category with the added benefit of having a camera and an extra large screen.
This was probably similar to what you would have seen, if you watched the Super Bowl (or the news) last night. A blackout. With the Super Bowl already being a super hot topic, a power failure (blackout) that lasted for 35 minutes and happened in the middle of the Super Bowl was equally sensational.
Marketers quickly took to the Internet and social media to continue their advertisements by putting their sponsored tweets near popular search terms. The blackout was a perfect opportunity for some relatively lower-cost marketing that was still associated with the event. With Super Bowl ad space costing $133,333 per second, you’d definitely want to make the most of that time.
They betted on people, whether they actually watched the Super Bowl or not, to quickly go online to find out more about the blackout by searching words such as: blackout, power failure, and power outage to name a few. You know what? These marketers were right! “Power outage” became the 8th most searched term during the game.
Marketers choose to use mass marketing during the Super Bowl, despite the premium price, because there was prestige associated with the timeslot and the Super Bowl was almost always the most watched program and drew a large audience. Their products may not have a very specific target market and so the Super Bowl was perfect with its ability to reach to broad demographic base and covering a large geographical region, North America.
Lastly, Super Bowl commercials hold a special place in people’s hearts as evident by the high amount of views these commercials receive on YouTube.
I’m going to end this post by sharing my favourite Super Bowl commercial, which received 7.5 million views in 4 days.