Ashkan's Blog

In 2002 Toyota Motor Corporation, also the founder of three other Motor Vehicle brands, Created a new automobile brand, Scion. Toyota Motor, a Japanese automobile corporation and also one of the worlds biggest motor vehicle brands, branched a new brand in order to target a different market. Hino and Lexus Motors, also created by Toyota Motors, are part of the luxury vehicles market. Toyota itself has taken over both the economical price and the eco-friendly market in order to meet almost all demographics. Toyota is now targeting younger consumers to purchase their newly founded brand, SCION. As Scion says in an article, “Scion’s long-term goal is to appeal to Generation Y consumers”. You might have noticed most Scion ads are in the following categories; movie theater ads, live sport games ads, TV ads in between movies targeting younger audiences. Even the Scion commercials are showing fast and smooth handling vehicles that attract more younger individuals. Scion is currently only served in North America and Puerto Rico and planning to expand to other countries.

A great new way for movie directors to find investment for their movies, is to find advertisers that would like to advertise their product or service in a movie. Since the 1980s this idea has been a great way for most movie directors to not only look for investors to invest in their movie but advertising and marketing individuals. Nowadays product placement can get very competitive; Forbes and Fortune magazine had to fight to find out which one was going to be on and promoted on the Wall Street 1987 movie.
Since it is now tremendously expensive to promote a movie, the producers are usually looking for ways to get some money back and some promotions as well. This could be a matter of putting a product in a background of a scene, It can be a way of writing a dialogue into a script, or simply a product being used and enjoyed in the movie.

Blackberry or iPhone? Well this isn’t a new topic question to anyone, and after many discussions and researches, I think we can all agree that we are biased towards one another based on our needs. However, as a Blackberry user, I would like to discuss the reasons why I choose to purchase a Blackberry. I believe Research In Motion Co. (RIM) has created a very strong value based relationship with its customers, whom are very loyal to the brand. Founded in 1999, Blackberry started focusing on specific markets individually and one by one. Blackberry was first created as not only a phone but as a personal assistant, which attracted many business men and women in their late 20s and older. In later years, RIM came up with the new feature on its Blackberry Smart phones, called Blackberry Messenger or BBM. After adding this very simple but unique feature, Blackberry became very popular among younger users aged between 17-30. This targeting strategy took Blackberry to another level. In other words, Blackberry was now used as not only a business phone, but a strong networking device/software.

Overall, in my opinion Research In Motion used a very strong value based strategy to attract its new customers as well as keeping its current customers loyal to its brand. Eventhough, Apple’s iPhone may have many other features that are not included in Blackberry (such as 1000s of iPhone applications), Blackberry  holds the highest market share within the smart phone industry.

I recently watched a youtube video from the Ikea Marketing department, whom came up with a very creative advertising to get consumers to promote and advertise Ikea and their products. This simple but yet useful strategy used by Ikea Marketing in 2009, only used the Social Network Website, Facebook, and some past showroom inventory products. Aside from coming up with this great idea, there is almost no advertising cost involved.

Here is how this strategy works:

In order to engage consumers and people in the opening of their new Ikea store in Malmo, the marketing department of Ikea used the already existing and very popular Social Network Website, Facebook, to advertise their store opening. The store created a Facebook account for their store manager and posted pictures of their showrooms as its profile picture and in the caption of the photos they asked people to tag them selves as a product in the picture and the first to tag that product will get it for free. This idea got many people to tag themselves in the picture and therefore advertise for the store in their page.

Aside from all the tags from the consumers, Ikea created a video and posted it on youtube, which had thousands of views within just a few weeks. This idea attracted many people interested in marketing and advertising as well as many Ikea costumers to write blogs and tweeter about their strategy.

Netflix is an online DVD streaming website, founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings. The company was originally started as a DVD mailing service, which allowed customers to order movies online or through the phone(limit of two movies per month) for a flat rate of $4.99/month and receive the discs in the mail. But since receiving and returning the movies through the mail is just as much work as going to a video rental store, Netflix didn’t manage to attract enough demand. 

In 2008, Hastings came up with a new idea to attract more customers; online movie streaming through PCs, Apple Macbooks, Playstation consoles, Microsoft Xboxs, and Nintendo Wii for only $8/month. This creative idea is now taking over the movie rental industry. Netflix customers can visit the company blog to find out about new movies added to the library as well as requesting new titles. Everyday more and more people are joining Netflix and more video rental stores are closing down. From a personal interview with a store manager of the Rogers video rental store in North Vancouver, which is closing in March 2011, I was told that the number of movie rentals from the store has been declining by large numbers.

In my opinion, the reason for the fast growth of Netflix is simply because many people have some sort of gaming console or have a way of connecting their computer to their TV to stream movies from the 100,000 title movie collection of Netflix for only 8 dollars a month. Netflix is currently generating a $1.67 billion revenue and has many potential future customers to join this new and easy way of renting movies.

The NFL Pro-Bowl weekend will be played on Sunday January 30th, 2011, during the off week before the Super Bowl game (between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers).  This brilliant idea became official in the 1970s by the National Football League. Unlike most other sports, which have their all star games in the middle of the season, the NFL Pro-Bowl is played after the playoff season and before the Super Bowl Championship. Besides adding some excitement to game, this great marketing has been generating very big revenues for the American Professional Football Association.

Since the Super Bowl is the most watched event in the United States, holding the all star game a week before the championship has been attracting many viewers to this great event. This is simply because at this time of the season the league is just hitting its climax and therefore many sports lovers are following football.

Every year, the NFL Pro Bowl is becoming more and more important to the people and businesses. Therefore, winning a Pro Bowl has been helping football players become more recognized in the public. Also since the Pro Bowl is hosted by the same city which is hosting the Super Bowl, this gives a great opportunity for those cities and the businesses within to make some profit. For example, since every year more people are traveling to the hosting cities a week earlier to watch the Pro Bowl, the city is holding its tourists for a week longer.

Overall, the Pro Bowl has been making NFL playoff very popular and more well known than any other All Star sports game.

In November 2008, Andrew Mason, a music student from Northwestern University, launched a deal of the day website, called Groupon.com. The website was originally started in Chicago, but it was later expanded to many other states as well as Canada and 10 other countries. Groupon is an advertising and marketing website targeted towards the younger generations and small businesses looking to grow. In other words, Groupon is a new and creative way of advertising for products and services.

Groupon offers a few deals per day, usually a 50-90% discount, and if enough people sign up for the offer, then the deal becomes available to all who purchased the Groupon. If the predetermined minimum number of customers is not met, the deal is off.

For example, on January 20th, the deal in Vancouver was “$170 for a $335 value at the Coast Wenatchee Center Hotel for an Ultimate Ski and Lodging Package” with a minimum of 50 purchases for the deal to be on.

This creative marketing idea reduces the risk for retailers, who want to offer big discounts to their customers and expect to get a large quantity of people in return to make up for their discounts.

Groupon doesn’t charge business owners anything, and simply makes profit by getting a cut of the deal from the retailers. The company’s aim is to help introduce people to different stores, restaurants, services, or other retailers. Groupon is a fast growing company and as of October 2010 serves more than 150 markets in North America and 100 markets in Europe, Asia and South America and has gained 35 million registered users. The estimated revenue for the company is $350 million since their launch in 2008.