Bobae Yang's Blog

Recently, I found two interesting Korean McDonald’s commercials while surfing internet. Even though they are not very recent, I really liked them; therefore, I would like to share those in my marketing blog.

Both commercials are apparently for the purpose of increasing sales or profits by getting target customers  interested in their products, increasing  customers’ brand awareness of McDonald’s,  and eventually persuade them to go to McDonald’s and purchase.  In this sense, I think both commercials succeeded in gaining customers attention since I think two commercials are very entertaining and intriguing which illustrate very well of McDonald’s brand personality—fun and young . However, I found that each commercial tried to target different market segmentation; therefore, they use different elements of advertising mix such as music, messages, and people in the commercial.

First of all, above commercial is very cute. Its story delivers that McDonald’s will provide customers with fun and entertaining meal experience. Especially, I found that the commercial uses the demographic base of family stage variable to target young family-a married couple with kids.  Besides, the music was very bubbly and cheerful as well as the store environment looks fun and youthful. From the psychographic perspective, I believe that people who see themselves as happy, fun and joyful will be attracted to this commercial.

Above one really made me laugh a lot. I think although this commercial is short and does not really communicate verbally, but it gives very strong impact by conveying the interesting message ” Don’t risk your life for $5 fries”; therefore, I consider it very effective. I think this commercial demographically targets middle/low-end since at the very last it shows the price of fries and says it is so cheap.

Packaging is an important brand element with more tangible benefits than any other brand elements. For this reason, many marketers place considerable importance on making products’ design more eye-catching to attract customers’ attention.  For this purpose, package designs cannot simply inform the customers, but also provoke feelings and communicate emotions. An effective packaging looks attractive, impresses with its creativity and is just nice to have on the shelf.

The following product of Fruit drinks is one of my favorite packaging designs. It combines beautiful illustration and an interesting for of the bottle.  By just looking at the bottle, I feel happy; it gives me an idea that the fruit drinks will provide me with fun, joyful, and unique fruit-drinking experience. Besides that, the shape of the bottle makes it easy for consumers to hold it more conveniently, and the size of the bottle also adds value to fruit drinkers by offering medium size portion for each bottle

Sometimes, all you need is just a title of what is inside the package. This packaging design of salt, is pretty smart. We do not need more product information on its package, and we do not expect any innovation or creativity on its packaging. When we go grocery shopping to buy salt, all we want is to find salt quickly, and keep looking around the market for other products. In this sense, I found the packaging design of salt very effective.

Recently, packaging has been focused more on convenience not only for users of the products, but also for retailers and manufacturers; they want convenience in terms of displaying and selling the product. Potof, fresh organic meals’ packaging design delivers a convenience to retailers and manufactures since the plastic container which is not fragile facilitates the shipment or storage

Google will begin testing a mobile payment stores in San Francisco and New York in the next for months by installing thousands of cash register systems from VeriFone Systems. I, as a shopper, am very favorable about Google’s new mobile payment service since I will be able to easily ring up my purchases with my smart phone which makes my shopping faster and cooler. The technology — called near field communication, which transmits signals over short distances — would let shoppers ditch cash or plastic (or even loyalty and gift cards and coupons) and check out by tapping a smart phone against a register.

I think Google’s mobile payment service will bring about powerful effect on many other industries. Many people have already adopted Smartphone; but those who have not yet-late majority or laggards will finally shift to Smartphone if Google’s test marketing is successful in two cities. Especially, credit card companies such as Visa and MasterCard should be concerned about how much more powerful theses devices are going to be. Carrying cash when going shopping or going for dinner or movies is already another time’s story as of the introduction of credit cards; you now can purchase anything anywhere as long as you carry one piece of credit card which makes your life more convenient and lighter. What will happen if Googles’ new featured service with payment is officially released?   It may eventually replace credit cards. Almost everyone has cellular phones, and most of them carry the phone almost always 24/7 with them, but we do not necessarily carry credit cards always with us. Therefore, I found its distinctive, competitive opportunity. I am very looking forward to experiencing this new mobile payment service!

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/

Most large airlines have deals that often go back years with teams in their headquarters and hub cities. Chicago-based United Airline is the official airline of the NBA’s Chicago Bulls and the NFL’s Washington Redskins and Denver Broncos. Fort Worth-based American Airlines has been flying the Dallas Cowboys football team for 30 years. My question is, are such sponsorship activities effective?



I think Sports is a very smart tool for marketing. People who love sports, like to use or buy the products the athletes they admire or idolize purchase or use; and even for people who are not very into sports, products the famous athletes use/buy are still easy to retrieve or remember when they think about the product category. In this sense, the airline company’s alliance with sports teams seems to be very charming to me. Sports provide access to a lot of audience .If people have money to buy a sports ticket or season ticket, chances are they fly on a fairly frequent basis. Also, by sponsoring a specific sports team, the airline’s names appear in sports facilities, which can increase visibility by having audiences getting access to know and see the brand. In other words, airlines companies are establishing more solid brand equity by using co-brand marketing; it will potential customer/non-customer easily recognize or retrieve the brand later when thinking about the product category. Most importantly, the biggest attractiveness of sports team marketing is that people are saying ‘AirTran — Oh, that’s Peyton Manning’s airline,’

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/travel/2011-03-08-businesstravel08_ST_N.htm

I received a very interesting gift from a friend of mine last Christmas. It was just a common USB flashdrive, which was nothing to be surprised about, but it was special and different. Firstly, I found my name carved into the center of the bamboo square shaped body, and whenever the USB is connected to the computer, I can see a red light glowing from the inside of the bamboo, which is really cool.  What surprised me the most about the USB was the size of the storage, it was 32GB.  This little USB, which is only half the size of my finger, can store over 25 HD Movies! Later on, I found out that my friend got this through a customized order service on the Blue loyal website.  Since that time, I became a big fan of this USB company.  Originally these products were not within reach or accessible, as they used to only sell to distributor’s, but with the internet, and online shopping they found the opportunity to start selling their cool and unique products to customers all around the world at a very reasonable price.

Most attractively, it’s customization service makes each customer feel special.  They design the shape, color, material and size of the USB based on what you require.  One day, after my friend and I watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pt2, I realized that the necklace in the movie (Horcrux) was the exact same design that I saw on the catalogue from Blueloyal.  Of course, I ordered it for my niece who is a 7-year-old and my niece became very popular in her school, and I  became a hero to my niece.

Recently, one of my best friends introduced me to a very interesting game, which called Minecraft. When I very first saw my best friend playing it, I already liked it. Without much thought, I ended up purchasing the game by paying 16 dollars. The game is focused on creativity and building, allowing players to build constructions out of textured cubes in a 3D world, which totally reminds me of playing with Lego when I was a kid, which also means this game is extremely addicting.

Minecraft was developed on May 17, 2009 and gained a considerable level of popularity. It has been continually updated to catch up with consumers’ new demand and it passed a million units sold on January 12, 2011. I personally believe the reason of its fast diffusion stems from its easy triability and less of complexity. Anyone can play this game with anyone who they want since it is simple. Especially, it is great to play with your friends or families as you can each show your creativity and then look at your friends’ or families’ cities, houses, or structures that they design or you can build a house or anything with them.

My sister and I  have always been dreaming about building our own place since we were kids, which is a tremendously  large house which has a beautiful yard with surrounding walls or fences , with torches around so even at night time the entire area is always bright, and  most of all, cozy bath tub in the middle of my bathroom. However, it is still just a dream for us since we both have not even started making money yet. However, this game makes our dream real. My youngest sister just joined me on it, and we are building our dreamy house in this 3D world together!

A successful business Korean girl who is only 22-year-old has become a big issue in Korea. I was pretty impressed by her accomplishment of having an online shopping mall. She started her own online shopping mall when she was 17 as she was not interested in studying but rather enjoying going shopping or reading fashion magazines. She played four different roles as a model, shopper, seller, and online shopping mall manager. She bought affordable clothes from the discounted retail stores by herself, and uploaded her pictures after outfitting those clothes with other matched accessories(shoes, purses, hair products, etc), and she made $400,000 when she was 18. Her shopping mall business was fresh and creative. She was not pretty enough to be a model(but now she is pretty after plastic surgery), but was smart enough to be a good marketer. She knew exactly who she was targeting and what type of fashion styles those target customers looked for. Customers for clothing, as a purchaser, have experienced post-purchase dissonance after buying stuff through online shopping mall. When they see the outfits the models are wearing, they expect the outfit will look as good as when they wear. Therefore, the more attractive the model is, the easier the customers click the order button. However, after one time purchase, customers will turn back… This clever girl, totally realized it in the beginning of her new business, and she herself became the model, targeting girls who are around her own age. Later on, she employed more girls as models who have different heights, weights, hairstyles and even skin-colors, and displayed details of each of the model’s sizes. Now she became a CEO who earns $5 million every year. She has successfully made online shopping easier, trustful, and fun!

CLick here

http://ggliopeople.mini.to

http://www.liphop.co.kr

I found this video, comparing Korea’s commercials to Japan’s on Youtube, and found it very interesting. Both TV commercials of Korea and Japan are very fun to watch. Everyone in the commercials are physically attractive, good-looking, tall, and in good shape and most of them are pop singers or actors/actresses. Both Korea and Japan barely offer information (price,function,promotion,etc.) about what they sell, instead, they primarily focus on affective factors: visual presentation of the products, music, interesting plots and above all how popular the main person in commercial is. I think it reflects the cultural characteristics of two countries.

According to the survey conducted by Daum.com in 2010, when making a purchase, what consumers(mostly age 15-30) in Korea care about the most is if other people will think the product they purchase is cool or not(social risks ). They want to look cool, so they buy stuff that celebrities use; therefore, marketing commercials is different from that of North America. Since people in Korea place less importance on product features, more importance on appearance factors, people in commercials are mostly attractive.  I personally like watching Korean and Japanese commercials. By just watching commercials between TV shows, feel like watching extra soap dramas, and it makes feel good and fresh. When I first saw commercials in Canada, I was very surprised by the different way of presenting the product. While commercials in Korean barely, maybe never, let consumers know the price of the products and never directly ask them to buy the product, commercials here are more direct which I found more helpful. I cannot say which is superior, but learned different TV commercials reflect the different cultural or social factors of society in purchasing decisions.

Bamboo Living Technology is an environmentally friendly company which focuses on development of various types of green containers. Bamboo Living products are made from all natural and renewable materials such as bamboo, sugarcane pulp, starch and water, with no chemical additives, so they are totally decomposable, recyclable, biodegradable and compostable as well as minimizing energy consumption and environmental pollution.

I think bamboo items are very smart and attractive considering what the company deals with is the product that we use to contain, eat or cook food; it definitely adds significant values to consumers by being safer and greener. Also, eco-friendly products have recently become one of the social trends. People started to care more about their healthy lifestyles and environment for their next generations. In this sense, I think bamboo items targeting at those who concern about greener and safer world have opportunities to compete the current existing market.

Bamboo living is not a big company, but it is growing steadily by positive word- of-mouth, which has huge social influences on the consumers’ purchase behaviors. I bought all of my kitchen products from Bamboo Living when I first moved in by myself because of my mother. She as an influencer plays a significantly important role in my purchase decision. I also feel good about myself when I use products from Bamboo living that can make the world better. Every day I save energy,reduce pollution and eat safe by using Bamboo products. However, when it comes to performance functions, bamboo items for kitchen are not as good. When you stir fried rice, you will see rice keeps sticking to the bamboo spoon, if you are sensitive of smell, you may not like eat food contained by bowl made from bamboo. The question is what the marketers can do about these problems?

When I feel like picking up some cool jeans and sexy casual jackets, I go to Guess without much thought.  Guess has built a solid reputation and brand image: comfort, casual, but sexy outfits.  When customers buy stuff at Guess stores anywhere in the world, they know they are buying high quality products with guaranteed services. Therefore, customers trust its qualities as well as its fashion lines; no one will doubt the quality of their jeans or jackets they are about to buy are out-of –fashion. Your friends may ask you “where did you get your new jacket?”, and when you say “Guess”,  the friends will say ”cool,” and this is what we normally expect when we buy stuff at Guess, and it is also how influential the strong brand image is.

The number of retail stores has constantly been increasing and the growing rate of the market is fairly high. With increased competitors, Guess decided to emphasize what other companies could not offer customers: the complete Guess lifestyle of jeans, accessories, and image. I think its new expansion to the new fashion items is very catchy and innovative. I like shopping, but do not like to do for a long time. When you go to Guess store, you will see jeans, dresses,etc. When you try a fancy dress on, you can also hold a nice handbag with high-heels wearing a shiny necklace which can go along with your new dress. You do not need to try hard to find a necklace and high-heels which have to be matched with the dress, and a handbag which has to go along with everything that you just bought. Considering one of the social-trends that we are living in a time-poor-society, the aligned fashion items of Guess’s expansion is very effective and innovative.

Guess