Anthony Chen's Blog

In this article that talks about current brands’ challenge to gain consumer’s trust. It mentioned that consumers don’t cares if two third of the brands disappear in the market. It also mentioned Brands need to earn trust from consumers in order to achieve business success and a good way is through social media.

I believe social media nowadays is an essential part in marketing as it covers a massive amount of consumers from all kinds of segmentation. Through social media, Brands can interact with consumers by posting promotions or new products and see consumer’s reaction from their comments.

Samsung Mobile on Facebook is a great example. It posts all their products online with features and many pictures. It even allows customers to trade in their phone in return for credit while getting a new Samsung phone.

I agree with the article that social media will allow companies to gain brand trust from consumers. For me Facebook have become one of the platform where I can interact with my close friend. If the company is able to join this platform, it will make me feel that this company is also like a close friend and I tend to be more attentive of it’s activities.

Today I went to No 9 Restaurant in Landsdown mall for breakfast with my family. As I got in the parking lot, it was filled with cars. I though it was pretty weird since there shouldn’t be so many cars this early on a weekend. When I finally found a spot( far away from the entrance) and got in the mall, this is what I saw. From my memory, Landsdown Mall only gets crowdy during boxing day, and maybe Chinese new year. So I was curious at what could have given rise to such long lineup. When I reached the end of the line, I saw this.

Ronson is launching a limited time one location sale for women’s shoes.A pair of shoes that are usually 160 dollars have gone down to 40 dollars which is quite a deal. I think Ronson has done a great job setting up the promotion as limited time and a set location, and letting people know by putting ads on newspaper(I asked people standing in line they knew about the promotion). It has switched from their usual profit orientation to sales orientation for this weekend.Ronson should have also left a good impression to people who wasn’t familiar with Ronson. For example, me! I haven’t heard a lot from Ronson before.But this promotion allow to remember this retail’s name for awhile by leaving me wonder when it will do another promotion on men’s shoes.

I just finished watching this mini-series on YouTube called Ktown. It is a reality show about dramas happening between friends in a group of Asians living in Los Angeles. I also got addicted to a song on YouTube called Hello by JON MCXRO. How did I found these videos among the millions posted on YouTube? It is because of Vlogs.

Vlogs are just like blogs but in video. People post vlogs to talk about their lives, concern, advices, and opinions on certain social issues. As Vloggers gain enough fan base, YouTube will start paying them.

Other videos that would like to augment its views will use this vlogger’s popularity to market its video by letting the vlogger post a link on their vlogs. Therefore, it is not surprising to see plenty of links popping out during a popular vlogger’s video and when you click to that link, you will see “the Vlogge’s name” brought me here.

Other vloggers post vlogs about products that they use which they liked and recommend them to the viewers. The Vlogger usually talks about the effect of the product and where viewers could purchase it. I know many of my female friends that have bough their make-up products by following recommendation in vlogs.

What do you guys think? How Many times have you being influence by vloggers?

I was looking around my Comm 296 classmate’s blog at around with a empty stomach when Benedicta’s blog appeared. When I saw the word Pizza, my feeling of hunger became stronger. But as I scrolled down to see the rest of the picture, my feeling of craving for food suddently stopped. I don’t think a picture of a black liver is appropriate to be displayed on the packaging of food. When I worked at the Duty free shop at YVR, I have always encountered Chinese costumers complaining about the packaging of the cigarettes, I would end up losing these customers. This shows again how important packaging of a good is. Every word and image on the package have an effect on consumer’s decision.

If the law about putting these “beautiful” images on junk food did go through, most likely sales on the junk food will go down and the company that makes these junk food would be greatly affected.

Recent dispute between China and japan on the belonging of the Senkaku Islands or the DiaoYu Islands has stimulated massive anti-Japanese movements in China. Many Japan-made products were boycotted, numerous flights between China and Japan got suspended as well as many touristic groups to Japan got cancelled. The movement also initiated a number of protests in many major cities in China which turned violent.

Protestants would vandalize Japanese Brand cars and Japanese themed restaurants.

Chinese Car manufacturer Hawtai motor have recently developed a special edition of its newest SUV car. The Hawtai Boliger now comes in a red version with yellow stars on the sides; just like the Chinese national flag. This special edition is called Ai Guo Ban which translates as patriotic edition. The slogan of this car is ” our land is measured by our footsteps”.

There are many chinese car brands in China but it was poorly supported by even the Chinese Consumers due to low quality. Most would consider buying a Japanese Car for it’s efficiency or a European Car for it’s safety.

I think this patriotic edition of the Hawtai Boliger could boost sales in the short-term. But when the patriotic spirit finally dies down. Chinese car industry will go back to its original state. If Chinese Car companies want to succeed, they need to catch up to Japanese and European car qualities.

Sources:
http://www.hawtaimotor.com/html/boliger_aiguo/
http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article3900960.ece
http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article3900960.ece

I am sure most of you all heard of this song that got over 220 million hit on YouTube as of today and will sure not stop growing at this number. For those that don’t know, this is a music video for a song called Gangnam style performed by PSY, a Korean pop  rapper. It’s lyrics talks about the Gangnam district in Seoul, is full of girls that knows when to be elegant and when to get rowdy.PSY the singer in the music video says that he is the right guy for them. This video is the most watched Korean pop music video on YouTube.  This was not the first time people outside of Korea got a taste of K-pop, it has been increasing in popularity all around the world.  I was once unaware of k-pop, but after a k-pop song that a friend suggested me, I got completely hooked into it. I started looking for more k-pop music and it has become one of my favorite music style.

But why is k-pop so attractive even to non-Koreans? I think Korean music publishers has made a lot of research on their potential followers on how to attract them to this music style. When I think of k-pop, I think of young and beautiful people, who doesn’t like to see nice looking things? These performers have become the standard of what beautiful people should look like to many k-pop lovers.  I also think of catchy tunes, k-pop music combined many popular genre like rap, R&B, electronic bass into tunes that are mostly repetitive and fast paced. Most of the time, the song title are in English and it includes many english lyrics so that people who doesn’t speak korean can somewhat understand what the song is about. I think of nicely synchronized and easy to learn dance moves, as people are trying to imitate the signature move of the song which makes it hard to forget. Finally I think of colorful visual, which makes the music video hard to not take a glance.

So if you haven’t watch Gangnam style music video yet, what are you waiting for? Maybe after this music video, you will fall in love with k-pop too!