Working on the marketing assignment throughout the semester was an interesting experience as we were applying our knowledge to the real-world scenario.
Managing the group dynamics and our different characters proved to be sometimes challenging but the overall experience was good. By setting group rules and assessing each person skills we were able to distribute the tasks in optimal way, taking advantage of our strengths and mitigating our weaknesses.
Final, video assignment was a challenging wrap-up of what we’ve learnt during the course. We were free to use any kind of tools. We’ve practiced group brainstorming on the ideas and recommendation, critical thinking; finally, we created a script for our video, artistic concept of the video and created a final product. It took us much more time that a “usual” presentation, however, it was interesting to reach out and practice the use new technologies – video and voice editing. I had some previous experience but it was the first time I was required to do for a course.
Through the assignment I’ve developed my group-work skills and reflected a lot about the process. If I was to change something, I would express my expectations to the group in a clearer way at the beginning of our project and try to set clearer goals for each meeting to make them more productive.
The course was very interesting overall. My top takeaway is that marketing is not about pushing things to the customers, but rather finding the right audience and providing them with valuable information on a product that they need, thus building long-term relationships and sustainable market for the company. Gaining literacy in some marketing terms and strategies as well as seeing marketing strategy as a set of interconnected and coherent actions was very valuable and will help me on my way to better understand marketing and its role in business.
Detergent are in mature product category therefore companies try to differentiate themselves from one another claiming “innovation” in every single product, being 3in1, 10in1, more concentrated or capsules instead of powder of liquid.
As Anmol suggest, the latter strategy had a big impact on the industry. The reason behind is that it provides better consumer experience – capsules avoid overuse of product, are easy to apply etc.
I agree with Anmol than rather than competing on the products features producers should focus on making their products more user-friendly; for exemple offering multi-dosage capsules of machine built-in systems would be one way of creating real value to customers by saving their time and energy. This kind of innovation would also likely create new product category (rather that keep competing in the mature category) and increase margins, unlike concentrating current detergents.
UK-based Bodyform managed to reach out to huge group of customers by responding to a “viral” post on its Facebook wall. The video itself went viral too, providing definitely a high ROI.
In his blogpost, Paul states that
“if this [ad] is consistent with the brand personality then it is gold.”
This is true, however, by reaching through social media the brand has reach a certain group of customers that respond well to this kind of advertising. Moreover, being a small brand compared to the market leaders, any kind of attention that will raise brand awareness is welcome.
In the era of internet companies are competing to attract consumers’ attention using social media or platforms as YouTube in innovative ways. However, most of the ads/videos are overlooked.
Virool is a company that offers solutions for making ads “go more viral”. This is achieved by using STP potential of the online media. Consumers can be identified based on their geographic, demographic (age, gender, education), psychographic (interests) and behavioral (previous videos seen) characteristics. This makes the advertising campaign more meaningful and potentially can prompt users to share the add they’ve seen with their friends further increasing its reach.
Virool focuses not only on YouTube but also on social media, mobile advertising, blogs, etc. The technology allows the advertiser to access data on viewers’ locations, platform which can be a meaningful source of intelligence.
See the virool’s viral promotional video that attracted my attention:
When I first used Facebook Graph search I was disappointed by the limitations of the Beta version. Releasing a product that is not ready is a risk, as some users may not give it a second try (remember Apple maps?). Nonetheless, Facebook has a competitive advantage expressed in the quantity of users and volume of data it possesses which keeps competitors away.
Impact
Graph Search is a new way of finding information on Facebook, apart from Timeline and News feed. Unlike other functions, it does not provide ready mix of data but allows a meaningful search for information (first order change).
Second order effect is changing user’s focus from “socializing and communication” to “search for information”. This is a significant shift as it can improve company’s advertising revenues, by providing ads better suited to customer’s current focus; as a result, they are more likely to click on them and purchase advertised goods (boosting Facebook’s revenues).
The Graph search will also make the “likes” more meaningful for the companies that heavily invested in them.
Strategy
From a perspective of Porter’s 5 forces framework, Graph search addresses principally threat of new entrants and substitutes: it creates a new user experience that is not provided by anyone else. The competition is unlikely to develop similar product as it does not have a necessary input of data and thus may have more difficulty in attracting Facebook users (e.g. Google+).
Concerns
Privacy is a concern that comes to mind first. Graph search can access only information that is marked as public by the users; however, it seems that many users are not aware of how to manage their privacy settings.
Quality of data, especially “likes” is another issue that the company will have to address along the way. Do the likes really represent what we like?
I’m therefore looking forward to Facebooks’ next step, which hopefully will include rolling out a fully-baked product that will provide a tangible value for users.
On February 14th the first One Billion Rising event took place all over the word. The rising against the violence was a very successful and inspiring event, which was supported by a very professional marketing effort.
What are some reasons for such a broad engagement and success?
Storytelling: action’s value proposition was expressed by telling a story that can easily appeal to everybody. Storytelling helps educate people on the reasons for the action (1 in 3 women is victim of violence at some point in her life) and its goals.
Engaging value proposition: the action does not focus on value proposition for somebody, but rather a value proposition WITH victims and people that are for the cause. Anybody around the world can get involved.
Social media: the message of the action was viral on social media and organizations and individuals around the world decided to get involved by organizing their own, local events. The events were also streamed on-line.
Immersive experience: similar to immersive marketing, the events with high involvement created a brand/action awareness that is likely to endure for a long time.
All these elements greatly helped marketing success of the campaign that was the biggest and loudest of its kind, rising cause and overall brand awareness of the organization that organized it.
Certain companies may employ marketing considered as unethical as a part of their strategy. Let’s look at the American Apparel’s ‘Hurricane Sandy Sale’. The campaign is in line with other run previously by the AA.
What for some clients may seem unethical, certainly promotes the image of the company as alternative and rebel, and thus differentiates it from its competitors. What for some is aggressive or tasteless, for the other customers may be desirable.
AA’s CEO, Dov Charney, stated that the event was misunderstood and the reactions were exaggerated by a group of bloggers. The campaign has generated sales.
It’s difficult to determine the long-term impact of this particular ad on the company. Nevertheless, I would not classify the AA’s ad as unethical, but designed to create debate and thus generate interest in the brand.
Looking from the other perspective, it’s interesting that the company that on one hand builds on values like domestic production (as opposed to the rivals’ abuse of child labor) or fair wages for its employees recurs to the behaviors that are designed to attract attention (often negative) at any price.
Last 10 weeks in d.studio have been a very intense time, full of new experiences and challenges. Along the semester I came across a number of resources that helped me understand the concept of design thinking. I reflected on the reasons why people are innovative and what conditions lead to disruptive innovations. These two videos were a good starting point for me:
Carl Rogers defined the following conditions for creativity:
– being open to experience, not judging or categorizing at the beginning
– having an internal focus of evaluation (step back, avoid final answers)
– being able to toy with elements and concepts.
d.studio tools
I agree with these principles and in d.studio, working on the project with Climate Smart we were applying them to our process.
Apart from these generic guidelines, my group used a series of techniques from the design toolkit. Some of them were very useful to define our goals and direction we wanted to follow. This was the case of Business Model Canvas, Brainstorming, EyePhone and team SWOT. Other techniques were helpful during the process, to overcome difficulties we’ve encounter; this is especially the case of assumption-dumption, improvs and prototyping. Prototyping was probably the single technique that has had the biggest impact on our project: not only it made us ask more about the reasons and possible pathways to our goal, but also allowed us to spot issues or mistakes in our assumptions. A prototyping-improv performed by our group in class took 10 minutes to design, 5 minutes to play twice (with group feedback in between). We presented the online-learning experience that the course we were designing should deliver to the customers. The feedback from our colleagues in d.studio was very precise, probably because the improv was so visual and involving. This make me realize how many times prototyping can be done with little o no means.
Survey planning and individual interviews that were designed to help us understand the market were more complicated. Nevertheless, we came across various problems. First step was running the survey on-line, which proved to be unsuccessful because the respondents were not representative of the market. Second run of surveys and interviews was much improved, distributed in person. The results were very different from the online research. This experience was valuable to me as I understood the role of careful planning in surveying or interviewing. It’s a challenge to write questions that won’t affect respondents’ answers. Unless carefully planned, the research and data analysis can be a waste of time. However, our process of running a survey, redesigning it and re-running it was a perfect example of ASK-TRY-DO process with the goal of continuous improvement. This involves continuously generating, evaluating and sorting the ideas.
Personal growth
The time I spent on the Climate Smart project within the d.studio was filled with meetings and interactions with Climate Smart team, teammates, students and other stakeholders, as for example university administration and teaching representatives. As I was responsible for external communication, I needed to learn how to do it more professionally and efficiently. Together with my teammates we reflected on the importance of asking right questions. We designed the meeting outlines of the meeting with Brian Bemmels in collaboration with Elizabeth. Client engagement was further assured by meeting with the Climate Smart team and discussing our ideas on different Climate Smart training prototypes.
Inspirations
Another inspiring idea came to me while reading the ‘In Studio: Recipes for Systemic Change’ by Brian Boyer, Justin W. Cook and Marco Steinberg. This publication describes how design thinking in can be used also in Public Sector to boost innovation by changing the environment where it is to be generated. I was later on capable of joining the conference by Brian Boyer, ‘Re-Design for social innovation’, which he delivered in the UBC Robson Square centre. I found this topic very interesting as in the past I worked for an NGO that was funded by the European Union and some of the concepts and ideas could be applied in that sector. Furthermore, I believe that countries need design thinking just as much as the companies, so that can meet their goals and better respond to the changing environment.
Criticism vs. critique
The discussion about constructive critique and how the criticism can be transformed into a critique by asking the right questions were very helpful to me. They help in improving overall communication with colleagues. Instead of defending an idea , one should rather ask how to improve, why is it a bad idea, ask for feedback and know how to accept it.
Challenges
The project was many times challenging. Firstly, using tools like improvs, business model canvas, business brief or prototyping for a first time in business context provides a unique learning opportunity but it also requires a considerable amount of time and effort to produce desired effects.
Providing feedback within the group, responding to others suggestions, communicating effectively and keeping momentum throughout the semester were also some of the challenges I had to face.
Conclusion
In conclusion, d.studio was an enriching experience which helped me to make a first step into the world of business design. I learnt how to analyze a business from a different angle (business canvas), look for patterns and explore their potential; I’ve improved my communication and feedback skills and design processes based on ASK-TRY-DO methodology. Finally, I’ve expanded my professional network to the companies that I’ve worked for, professors and my colleagues. This is very likely to have a significant impact on my future career.
In response to Brian’s blog I’d like to say that the franchises are a very broad market. However the franchise models differ, most of them are strictly controlled, the digree of flexibility for a franchisee depending on franchise contract. Therefore I do not fully agree with Bryan’s the statement that once you sell a right to run franchise “You no longer wholly own your business either because the franchisees are not employees, but partial owners in their own right.” You can still remain desired level of power if the right contract is signed.
I do not agree that franchise lowers the startup costs, as it is in itself a significan cost to a franchasee, however, it significantly lowers business risk, as the franchises’ business models have been tested before and have proved reliable. It is also relatively easier to run a franchise for somebody that has no previous experience in business as many of the functions are outsourced to the mother organization.
I understand the concern Frederick has expressed in his post “Power Tabs and BC Hydro “. However, two of the main reasons why BC Hydro got into troubles when implementing the system of small meters were the lack of possibility to opt-out and the privacy concerns.
In this sense Energy aware’s solution is different as it’s fully optional and the information is circulating in a closed system, with no possibility of being retrieved by third parties. The only issue I’d like to adress is how to reach the clients. Should Energy aware do it through BC Hydro (which has quite a bad image among many customers because of the small meters) or directly? The question will be easier to answer once the company gets sales result from its retail in California.
