The other day while talking with my friends,  I  found something interesting about marketing culture difference between China and Canada.  While discussing about what could influence our purchase decision of a bottle of laundary detergent, I mentioned about celebrity.  In China, sometimes my intension of selecting one product over another may simply be that I saw celebrities who I like promoting  that product on TV ads.  Surprisingly, I found out that celebrities  never promote for laundary detergent here in Canada.

In China, we can find celebrities everywhere on TV commercials, not only for cosmetics and perfumes, also for shampoo, tooth paste, video games, and even for feminine pads! (I don’t find it shocking, but my friends almost screamed when I told them about the commercials)  Yes, in China companies market every product with the social influence of celebrities.   Having celebrities on advertisements seems to be the most popular way of marketing in China.  Earnings from commercials share large portion in the income of the stars.  However, it works.  When considering purchasing products especially less important goods, soap for instance, consumers’ decisions could be heavily affected by the social influence of the celebrities that showed up on TV commercials.  Here is a commercial Jay Chow(a super star in China) did for a video Game. lol

We can see McDoanald’s everywhere in Vancouver today; however, it took me half an hour to find a KFC store to get their fried chicken. It is obvious that the McDonald’s is probably the most popular fast food resturant in Vancouver.  However, as a person living in China for 20 years, I would say KFC in China is doing a much better job in terms of marketing than it is in here.  In fact, the number of KFC chains  is no less than those of McDonald’s, and the biggest  competitor of the McDonald’s in Chinese market is KFC.

Therefore, here I’d like to talk about the marketing strategies that KFC applied according to Chinese market.  First of all, they do know their customers.  At the beginning, KFC spend large amount of money on advertizing as McDonald’s did.  Unfortunately, they weren’t able to compete with McDonald’s.  McDonald’s had been widely accepted by Chinese people, but KFC didn’t do well (although KFC stepped into Chinese market earlier).  The reason why they almost reversed the situation is that they seem to know their customers better .  They understand that they are facing Chinese people who can not simply be satisfied by fried chicken and burgers. From then on, the menu of KFC has been getting updated frequently.  They provide roasted chicken wings instead of fried ones.  Their New Orlean roasted wings have been the most popular dish in KFC.  Later, they created their own burger called New Orlean roasted chicken leg burger, which became their another best seller.  Such new dishes that  hit right on Chinese people’s taste brought KFC to the level where McDonald’s spend large amount of money and time to achieve.  I would say, as a Chinese international student, I miss the KFC in China=(.

image sources: http://image.baidu.com/

Chinese Fried Fritters     New Orlean roasted wings

How much will you pay for a purse/wallet?

I asked 5 of my guy friends.  Steven, a commerce student,  told me his wallet is around $100, which is a Diesel.  Ricky, who is also an commerce student, bought his wallet from Guess for around $40.  Another friend of mine, Lu, a science student, told me he will never pay more than $30 for a wallet and his bought his wallet from China, which is around $6.  My close friend just bought a Chanel purse for $2500.  I was so surprised that she would actually pay thousands of dollars for a purse and asked why she did that.  Her answer was only one sentence. “Because it’s Chanel.”

I also did some research about Chanel in Chinese market.  I thought in a market like China, where you can get an super nice purse for $10 or an identical Chanel purse for $30, people may not pay thousands of dollars for a wallet.  However, women in China are even more enthusiastic about luxuries.  Actually in China, a Chanel purse is around $4000 and Chinese women are still crazy about them.  I would say Chanel is a typical brand that using profit orientation strategy.  According to my friend, Chanel doesn’t need any advertisement.  The logo itself is the best ad.  Chanel is elegance, taste and feminity.  People spend surprising amount of money on it because it is Chanel.

Nike+Apple, a team of the most competitive brands.  These two companies are working together and take exercising and digital-music players to a new level. The new product is called the Nike+iPod Sport Kit.  it allows runners and walkers to listen to songs and to record, store and share information (such as speed, distance covered and calories burned) with others about their exercise sessions.  From a personal perspective, it is true that I have to listen to music when I jog.  Jogging will be super boring without music. This is a good idea in terms of the effectiveness of co-branding.  The brand personalities of these two brands are kind of similar because they are both cheerful and popular among young people.  This product attracted attention of the market and actually improved the brand awareness of both brands.

Here’s another example of co-branding promotion: coca-cola & Apple.  Coca-cola company are joining forces with apple, launching a new promotion of giving out free iTune songs by giving out promotional packs of Coca-Cola, Diet Coke and Coke Zero.  I think it’s a good idea to promote these two brands together since both of the two brand are well-known and they actually make good partners together.  Probably because of the creative advertisements of coca-cola, coke is somewhat related to awesome music in my mind. Coke commercials always go with exciting music as background.  On the other hand, iTune is the world’s most popular online music store.  In addition, iTune does leave me an impression of something cool.  Therefore, the two brands make a terrific combination.  It is just delightful to see the words”free songs on iTunes” on the bottle of coke-zero because it makes zero seem even cooler.  In other words, the co-branding of coke and iTune enhances brand awareness of both brands.  As a consumer myself, this promotion did attract me to go check iTune store online after I saw it on the bottle of coke-zero.

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