This is an commercial of the Washington’s Lottery.  It video-taped people taking birds that cannot fly to the sky such as chickens and penguins. The birds actually look so excited and happy in the sky as if they were meant to be able to fly.  The source of the marketer is the Washington’s Lottery.  What they’ve encoded within the commercial is the idea that Washington’s lottery get you a chance to change your world and make all your dream come true.  The channel of communication is the awesome ad.  The commercial was cameraed at a background of the open field with valeys and mountains faraway.  It gives people an open and wide view as well as a desire of freedom.  When those birds were taken to the sky, they don’t look scared at all, but so excited and happy as if  the dream of their life has come true.  The scenario was just touching and sweet.  The soft and beautiful background music matches the commercial well. All these made up great channels of  their message.  What delivered to the audience was a feeling of warmness attaching to the company and a desire of changing our lives.  The commercial did a good job in graping people’s attention as well as holding it. It also aroused people’s desire deep down in heart and the feeling of wanting it.  I think it helps improve the brand awareness and most likely, people will tell each other about this great commercial or share it with friends on face book=)

Granville street is one of my faverate shopping streets.  I found a special brand on the street called “JNBY”.  The clothe collection there is one of a kind because their collections are designed in a way that you can wear them the way you want. A scarf can be a skirt, or even a babydoll top! I really like it and I checked them out online just to have a look at their new collections. However, I found that this brand is actually “Made In China”.  JNBY is  simplythe capital letters of the brand name in Manderin. This brand was first started in Hang Zhou, China in 1994.   I went to their website, and noticed this brand has branch stores across different regions in Asia as well as North America.  In fact I do know this brand when I was in China and I did not find anything special about their collections there.  However, what they are doing in North America did surprised me. Personally I think they did very good job adjusting to the target market in terms of  cloth design.  In other words, their product changed in order to suit into Canadian market.  They use a lot of cotten in their products, and the design of their cloth is more casual, relaxing and trendy.  However their products in Chinese market thend to use cotten, wollen and silk as major matieral and the design tend to be tight, and conservative. The price here is actually  more expensive than it is in China.  However, usually there are many products on sale in their stores.  Sometimes I can find good cloth with pretty reasonable price during their sale season.  In addition,you can find JNBY in almost every big shopping mall in China whereas there are only 3 stores in BC.  However, the major design concept of the product remain the same in the global market- JNBY is about an individual’s interpretation of trends and design as it relates to today’s modern lifestyle.

North America vs China

Email has become one of the most important way of communication today, and many professionals need to check email every now and then to keep in touch with the business.  However, while people are enjoying the convenience of the free communication, many people are bothered by the spam emails received everyday.  According to the definition of wikipedia, the spam email  is ” a subset of electronic spam involving nearly identical messages sent to numerous recipients by email. Definitions of spam usually include the aspects that email is unsolicited and sent in bulk”.

People send email spam to promote their product, services or to attract traffic to their websites. The problem can be huge. Once I was attacked by some spammer, and my email account was sending out spam mails everywhere. In the end, hot-mail has to block my account. In terms of spam control, there are several recommendations as followed.

– Use more than one email address.

– Try not to expose your personal email address on public website. It is estimated that 95% of spam mails are caused by posting one’s email address publicly.

– Use spam blocking tools. They are available from most web mail providers.

– Remember to report a spam if you get one.

Here’s a YouTube video tutorial about how to protect yourself from spam

Today’s market have changed a lot. People seem to be unsatisfied my malls and stores, another shopping platform has become a trend- Internet shopping. According to Alexa, ebay.com ranks at 21 globally. More surprisingly, taobao.com, a major online shopping site in China, ranks at no.13 globally.  Why all of a sudden, Internet becomes a popular shopping place?

According to a Nielsen survey, 81% of shoppers consider being able to shop at any time as the most attractive feature of online shopping. 77% of shoppers think that saving the time of navigating in crowds and waiting in queues is their major motivation.  Another survey conducted by Synovate showed that 67% of shoppers consider the lower price the biggest advantage of online shopping, followed by the availability of free shipping as the second most important consideration.

From a personal perspective, I sometimes shop on ebay because it’s more time-saving to shop online. It could take me a whole day walking around in the mall and waiting in line to pay (especially during Christmas). It simply doesn’t worth the effort and the time to wasting a whole afternoon looking for a tank-top or a hat. The advantage of Online shopping become the most obvious when I know exactly what I need. For example, once I want to buy a bottle of perfume for my friend as her birthday gift. I knew the name and size of the perfume. Therefore, I could purchase it online about half a month before her birthday, which saves me the traffic time if I shop in stores and some money since it’s cheaper online. However, I would not say that online shopping will completely replace traditional shopping. Some advantages of traditional shopping such as the pleasure of browsing in different stores, being able to actually try on the product, and the convenience of returning or exchanging the product are irreplacable . Moreover, shopping together in malls is an important way to socialize for women. It is not only shopping itself, but also the pleasure of hanging out with friends that bring people to the malls.

Being Henry by Range Rover Evoque- YouTube trailer

“Being Henry” is an interactive “action, love, fantasy, comedy, adventure” film that is co-produced by Land Rover, The Brooklyn Brothers London, Some such & Co.  By providing a a “choose your own adventure style” interaction, the movie allow viewers to make choices for Henry, and different choices will lead up to different endings (32) of the movie.

In the film, viewers will be asked to make different choices for Henry, the main characters. The story begins with an ordinary morning. When Henry wakes up, his day will be in control of the viewer. Choices range from day chores (choosing where to go) to big decisions. Viewers are very likely to involve in the story of Henry since they are the ones who made the choices. To some extend, the viewers will consider themselves “Being Henry”. In terms of emotion involvement, the film is differentiated from other movies.

In the end, viewers’ choices will be connected the their personalized Range Rover Evoque. The movie is actually a part of Range Rover Evoque’s Pulse of the City campaign. The theme of the movie is about choices made in life. The idea behind “being Henry” is show viewers unique features of Range Rover Evoque- the perfect and personalized car. What should be noticed is that different from Range Rover’s brand tonality, the film seems to target at younger audience rather than middle-aged segment. The shift of target to younger generation is also a major point of the new Range Rover Evoque.

Here, why not try “Being Henry” yourself?

http://helloevoque.com/beinghenry