benny lam's blog

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.