Starbucks Coffee!
Throughout the term, our marketing team worked really well alongside each other. It was very easy to get along with my group members from the get-go. We were able to complete the first two parts effectively without a hitch and I really enjoyed working on the project itself. We found the majority of our problems with the last assignment. Everyone was busy, so finding a time to meet got to be very difficult. Even so, everyone showed commitment to the project and in the end, we were able to complete it at a level I thought was beyond acceptable. I saw everyone put the effort into the assignments and really contributed their ideas to ensure we covered all our areas in each part.

And none of

The assignment really did a great job in putting ideas and knowledge into real life applications. It does reveal the importance in research a company must undertake to expand into a new market place and the difficulties in so. With the amount of time I got to spend reading up on Starbucks, I feel like I know it like the back of my hand (don’t know if I’d really take that as a good thing!). I definitely believe it was a great way to prepare for midterms/finals in that I’ll have worked quite a bit in understanding a section of marketing prior to the upcoming final.

Mmmm Coffee 

In reading Natalie Mak’s “Role of Trademarks in Marketing” post, I was really surprised by the aggressive nature in keeping trademarks from being used in other businesses. I understand that businesses need to do their due diligence in order to protect other firms from hurting their business, but in the case of an innocent misunderstanding and even a situation I would hardly call damaging for the Louis Vuitton brand name, I don’t believe the actions taken were appropriate against a little hair salon such as the one in the video presented:

Louis Vuitton collection design results in a lawsuit for this Hong Kong Barber

Natalie brought up the point that LV may be damaging their own image by acting as a bully and I think this is valid. I, personally, don’t see the damage to the LV brand nor do I see how the hair salon could have gained too much from simply having a design put on the chairs matching that of the LV brand. They could have taken different measures that didn’t require such aggressive behavior for a local hair salon, which would have made the situation a lot cleaner.

It is important to note the importance of doing one’s due diligence when setting up their own business. Hopefully it is an eye opener for current and upcoming businesses to do a lot of research in the rules and regulations of the business environment. One will have to watch out for infringements on names, phrases, logos, and, in this case, the pattern of other companies–even if they’re a part of a different market.

In addition to doing one’s due diligence, it goes to show the importance in developing a brand image. Creating a set of colours, patterns, words, anything you can think of is crucial to any business. It may be an aspect overlooked by many companies, but a successful business sets up a marketing department to help with the development of a positive and consist brand image from the birth of a firm. 

Reading Mr. Rohit Bhargava’s Blog, I came across “5 Tragic Ways to Lose An Audience Despite Telling Great Stories.”

It was interesting to read over some of the points and a lot of it can be applied to when you’re marketing. A few points definitely stood out to myself, Mistake #2: Toxic Words, #3: Personal Disconnection, and #4: Experience Blindness. Each had an underlying theme; keep a neutral standpoint.

I recently read a trending article on Bing and I found it interesting how they wrote the article up. They put so much emphasis on what they believe was right and what was wrong, then moving onto what they thought was smart and what was not. The author had a strong belief and it showed throughout the article and can be pretty upsetting for many people, which in turn leads to an ineffective article even if it is a great story.

Taking a side means facing the opposing side with little to strong resistance. With Marketing, you want to appeal to everyone. You don’t want to exclude anyone because you worded a message inappropriately. Something as simple as involving Puma over Adidas may flare up problems with preferences towards one brand to another.

If you want to put out a message for marketing means, try to stick to a perspective and use of words that is neutral to its audience. Strongly sitting on one side may bring up problems that you don’t want to deal with.