benny lam's blog

The marketing plan assignment was a great experience for me. I was blessed with a few great teammates. We gel pretty well as a whole. I learned that I never get to choose who I can or want to work with in the real world. I need to put my dissatisfaction away and focus on working on the project objectively. I also learned that I need to be more vocal in the meetings even though it may risk the chance of upsetting other teammates. I need to contribute to the situation, then fix the relationships.

Marketing taught me a lot news things that I used to assume it was all about advertising. Today’s marketing about creating values to customers for a long run is a concept that I’ll take away with me for life. This course also taught me the skills to be critical about advertisement and alert about unethical campaigns.

I have personal reasons (which I prefer not to disclose) that caused me to have a mediocre performance this term.  However, if I get to do this course again, I would be more vocal in class and participate more.

The main takeaway in this course for me would be the powerful trends of social media. I am not a user of any social media, but I should not ignore the power of these tools as they might be useful to me in the future.

My girlfriend always wanted to join a cooking class. she loves culinary stuff.

She suggested this place called “Dirty Apron” http://www.dirtyapron.com/Home/

She got me interested in joining some cooking class too,

so I can treat her to a good meal after she had a long day at work or a tough workout at the gym.

Went to visit is over the weekend. (by accident), their store is near gas town.

Walked inside, stores is slipt into two halves. Left is the kitchen and cooking class area, looked clean and neat.

Right side is the Montreal/European style maketplace with meat and deli and sauses. Wooden becch for people to dine in with baked good an coffee. Very relaxing place to be.

Each class is about $150, they teach all kinds of cuisines from fusion to Japanese to French etc.

My marketing mind can’t help but need to think: How did they arrived at that price with this product?

Price is very high for one class in my opinion…. I’ll find out more about it after I attend a class. Stay tune.

What is so attractive or interesting about a website called facebook?

what is so great about reading what others are doing?

Can someone please tell me why it is such an big thing?

May be being an extrovert, I think only interactions in person are “real” for me. Cyber interactions just doesn’t cut it.

I need to explore the reasons why people are so addicted to facebook, so I ask my friends. I have many answers.

“It is convenient to set up party invites and group activities.” – seems vaild

“It easy for others to see what I’ve done and where I’ve been to.” – ok

“It easy to see other peoples’ lives without asking them.” – weird….

and many more different answers.

I think the only thing to take away from this product for me is privacy should be kept as privacy. People have different views on their privacy. I respect that and I understand is.

May be people just like to tell in the air, so they don’t look like show offs yet they get to show off.

May be it is a space for introverts to express themselves without the need to be shy in front of others.

Til today I still really don’t have an answer to why people use facebook. someone please educate me!!!

But please, think before you post, think about how others will react to it be for you click post.

I know one can’t control, nor should they control, what others think or assume. But please take that point into consideration in the future. It could be catastrophic to one’s life and others at the same time.

I know we are social animals, but in my head i thought social interactions are meant to be done in person.

I recent visited Mexico. It is a life changing experience to me in many aspects. Since this is marketing blog post, therefore I’ll blog about the marketing tactics that I experienced during this trip. My girlfriend suggested that we should visit an archaeological site as an activity. Once we arrived, I started the research at the local tour stores.

On the hotel zone strip Kukulcan Avenue, me and my girlfriend were bombarded by local sales people with tickets in their hands. They all have the same sales pitch, such as ” low prices, cheap, lots of fun, trust me amigos” ….etc. We were’t give details or info about their trips or offers at all. This is all very confusing and different from the marketing style from North America.

The”hurry-buy now-cheap” tactic forced me to stop and think “Who should I go with?”  These guys are doing it all wrong. There is no differentiation in terms of benefits. No segmentation of markets, no target audiences, no positioning against its competitions, everyone selling the same product and treating different guests as the same buyer…

I understand that Mexico is a relatively poor country compared to Canada, and it related to their level of education with that problem, so it make sense that their marketing strategies will be less sophisticated. I think that teaching them what I learned in 296 will greatly help them maximize profits for their Mayan people.

But not all Mexican salesman are the same. Until I bumped into Fernando, he was different. He recognized that we were looking for detailed historical guides and comfortable bus rides. So he sold us a package that completely fitted our needs.

Thanks Fernando!

In response to Emily Tang’s post https://blogs.ubc.ca/emilytang/ on Coca Cola’s Obesity fighting campaign. I agreed that  Coke is performing a damage control act. Coke should have provided information of its product for the educational purposes to its consumers before hand. I think Coke may have screwed up on the sequence a bit.

The result of this unethical behavior may not cause any damages to coke’s brand since they are selling some what of an addictive product with caffeine content. Perhaps this is one of the reason why coke is not really concerned about labeling facts or warning unless it was forced by the government to do so. It seems pointless to me for coke’s attempt to rally its customers to get healthy and start exercising while its product is partly the cause of needing the exercises.

If Coke is the one to get us of of obesity issue, then who. The government. I Do`t think so either. I use MayorBloomberg`s attempt to control sizes on sodas in NYC as my example. I think government intervention will only put limit our freedom in this situation and not solving the root of the problem. They should focus on early education instead.

In my opinion, all Coke needs to do as a responsible corporation should provide facts of its product to consumers in an unbiased form. Let the consumers have the freedom to decide if they want to accept the products, and that’s it. In today`s world, profit will come when the company is doing the `right`thing that society is looking for.

Recently, Google won a lawsuit against a lawsuit from the FTC about its search bias on its own website. A few internet bloggers say this will help Google to dominate the internet space and they betrayed their company philosophy of “Don’t do Evil”(not exact word). Before we jump to conclusion, lets define what evil means…one of the definition I pulled from dictionary.com

e·vil

adjective

Did Google’s Promise to ‘Do No Evil’ Persuade the FTC to Do Nothing About Its Search Bias?

http://allthingsd.com/20130113/ftc-chairman-google-settlement-was-a-win-for-consumers-not-search-giant/

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/evil

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