blogs.ubc.ca/bradenparker

We all remember the days when you had to put together a science fair project. You got out your poster board and usually would make a volcano. It was a classic. All you needed was baking soda, vinegar and some paper mache, and you were done.

Recently, Google has introduced the “Google Global Science Fair”. This is not your typical science fair. They are asking teenagers from 13-18 to enter the contest and put forth their best ideas. At first this doesn’t seem like a huge deal. It’s simply a science fair. However, the winners are expected to do amazing things. And this means great PR for Google. They are seen as finding these all star teenagers and helping them work in the future. Google are following in pursuit of Intel, whose previous grandprize winner created a photosynthesizing process that allows cancer drugs to penetrate more deeply. Her work is now being further researched and tested at the University of Texas at Dallas. The “grand prize” winner of this science fair gets a National Geographic Expedition, a $50,000 scholarship from Google, a once in a liftetime experience with CERN, LEGO, Google or Scientific America, a life size lego statue of the winner AND a scientific america package. This folks, is not your typical science fair, and Google has done a great job at promoting the event and letting it be known what their winners have accomplished. By supporting today’s youth and motivating them to create a incredible science fair project, they are generating positive public relations and improving their brand image. Below is a video created by google further explaining the importance of science and the world.

Sources:
http://www.pixelvulture.com/index.php/2011/01/google-global-science-fair/
http://blog.turnthescrew.com/
http://www.fastcompany.com/1742077/google-global-science-fair
http://www.google.com/events/sciencefair/prizes.html

As consumers, we are constnatly bombarded with marketing noise. Everywhere you go, products are thrown at you and surpsrigingly we are getting better at sorting through it. We recognize product placement, and are not paying attention to silly advertisements anymore. From a marketing perspective this makes the need for creative advertisements increasingly important. If you are not able to catch the attention of consumers you are done for in the marketing world. According to the AIDA (Awareness Interest Desire Action) model, the biggest, most broad portion of the model is awareness. This is capturing your consumers attention, and without awareness you are not going to have any of your products purchased. Below are some creative advertisements.

1. Condom Ad- this is great in that you never see a soldier going into battle, with nothing but a gun. Your attention is caught and the advertisement can then follow up by catering to your interest, desire and action needs.

2. MADD Ad- here marketers are trying to convey the point of drunk driving. This is a good ad, in that it used a typical parking spot and turned it into a meaningful advertisement to stop drunk driving.

3. Water Conservation Bench – This is another cool advertisement with only enough bench for one person. This makes people come over to the bench and see what the deal is with this one seated bench.

All of the advertisements above capture the consumers attention and awareness immediately. You don’t typically see the things above, and hence they catch your eye. A bench with one seat!? Parking spot with a tree in the middle?! And a soldier in battle naked?! There is a reason you read these advertisements. They catch your attention. Creative ads are slowly becoming the only thing that catch our attention and marketers are going to need to come up with increasingly creative ways to market their product. Below is a short video of different forms of creative advertising:

Sources:

http://justcreativedesign.com/2008/07/30/192-of-the-best-smart-clever-creative-advertisements/

Rebecca Black. You may or may not have heard of her, but chances are you have. This is the newest viral video to hit Youtube and is evidence that ANYTHING can be a viral video. To be honest, I think this video is terrible. She is not a very good singer and butchers this “song”. After wasting a few minutes of my life watching this video, I realized that there is a lot of opportunity in this viral video. If a company or organization were able to use this viral video and make a spin-off cover movie, there is lots of potential. So often there are terrible, yet amusing viral video’s on the internet. Along with these viral video’s comes follow-up, mock videos. These mock videos end up being watched just as much as the original viral video. It only takes a small amount of humor and a creative idea to make these spin-off videos successful and if a brand were to associate their image with this laughter it could be a chance to popularize your brand. Obviously, you would have to be careful with your brand image, and only certain comedic brands could succeed in this joking publicity stunt. Below is the original Rebecca Black “Friday” video.

Now after seeing that you understand the potential this video has to be roasted. Say, for example, Huggies, were to have a video of the same music video with babies doing the same things, or a bunch of construction workers, doing a song and dance. That would create a lot of exposure. Here are a few examples of cover youtube videos that random people have done.

Not all companies are utilizing the funny side of vial videos. You would have huge exposure for your companies by promoting this mock-marketing technique, and not many companies have chosen to do so this far.

Recently, I was reading Travis Crowe’s blog. He had an interesting post on the recent expsoure of Charlie Sheen. I realized that celebrities are taking endorsement deals to great lengths. There are the obvious huge sport stars endoresment deals. But there are also smaller, quite strange celebrity endorsements. It quite honestly, makes you wonder, WHAT on earth was going through their heads when they signed on to do these endorsements. A few of my favorite include:

1. Pope Leo XIII and Mariani Wine – Perhaps the first celebrity endorsement in marketing’s history, the pope went on the record ranting about this wine. The funny thing is that this particular wine was laced with cocaine.

2. Gorbachev and Louis Vuitton – There is a picture of Gorbachev sitting in a limousine with an open Louis Vuitton bag sitting next to him.

3. Paris Hilton and the Tipsy Elephant Cause – This is my personal favorite, and definitely the strangest celebrity endorsement I’ve heard of. In north-east India the elephant owners are feeding their elephants a type of rice liquor that gets the elephants drunk. They’re favorite drunk act, uprooting telephone poles. Paris Hilton made a report on the World Entertainment News Network’s website and raised awareness for the drunk elephants.

Celebrity endorsements are the strangest form of marketing. You can have people that are crazy, such as Charlie Sheen, or the Russian leader, regardless your ultimate goal is to get your company out there. But do most companies choose to endorse these antics? Some company endorsements could hurt a comapny rather than help it and perhaps taht is why you don’t see companies like Apple or Microsoft paying crazy celebrities to publicize their companies. One thing is certain, celebrity endorsements will continue and they will only get wilder, and wilder.

Source: http://www.oddee.com/item_96843.aspx

I have recently been browsing marketing blogs and came across a interesting post about viral videos.  Rohit Bhargava’s blog is constantly updated about recent marketing strategies and different ways to publicize your company. Rohit’s recent blog post is about Levi’s interesting attempt at making a viral video. The surprising  part of this video is that no where is there any obvious sponsorship or promotion of Levis. That is what brought up a lot of debate. Viral Videos have become marketing tools that allow the exploitation of products to million’s of viewers for a small price. Levi’s Viral Video attempt: an ass cam. That’s right. They hired two australian models to put a camera in their jeans and just walk around Los Angeles.

As you would assume, no pun intended, males, females, young and old were all recorded staring at these models behinds. Immediately the video went viral with 7 million views. Viewers thought it was funny and Levis was naturally, very happy. Then word got out that the video was made by Levis. In the end customers felt duped and were not happy with Levis. Had Levis promoted this more with their brand name and made it known that they were behind it would have been better and there are many  comments on the youtube video expressing how viewers felt. Ultimately, an important lesson is that, hiding behind the fact just makes the whole company look like asses.

But if you feel as though you want to make your own ass cam, check out this video:

Sir Richard Branson is an iconic entrepreneur and has come up with very creative ways to publicize his company. Richard’s recent blog post describes the ways that small companies can grow and what they need to be careful of. In particular, Branson highlights the importance of company culture. This is a factor that influences the consumer behavior and it has a tendency to change as a company grows. In particular Branson highlights 2 important factors to remember when your trying to build a strong culture.

1. Strong Foundation – it is important to have a strong foundation when you first build your company. A strong foundation means that you can build on that and will be the building blocks in your company culture. Choosing your employees, suppliers, core business leaders and any other deicison you make will effect your culture.

2. Organically Grown – it is also important to just let your culture grow. Your business decisions and choosing who you hire will result in a culture that grows as your company grows. If you push a culture too much you don’t gain a organic culture and will eventually negatively impact your product and customer service.

It is important to build on your culture and create a brand that customers enjoy buying. Virgin has done this better than perhaps any other company out there and has resulted in their massive brand extension. Anything Virgin is seen as hip, cool, and fun. As a result consumers buy their products, from radio shows to a intergalactic journey through space. Virgin has done things right and if you find your self in the situation of owning a small company, remember the importance of organizational culture and the role it has on your customers, products, employees and brand.

Today I read Whitney Lindskog’s blog and was truly fascinated by her outlook on marketing in the McDonalds organization. The fact that McDonalds has been able to keep with the changing social influences. It made me think about McDonalds growing on a more global scale. In the early days McDonalds was growing in North America. Now McDonalds has truly gone global and they have made advertisements to reflect the country they are in. After much thought I realized that much of McDonald’s marketing campaign involves their kids toys. And the one commonality amongs nation’s is childrens love for toys and fun. McDonalds has done an excellent job in catering to children’s needs and there are many commercials that prove this point.
Here is a commercial in Japan:

They have used a very american show and restaurant and turned it Japanese. McDonalds has always been very good at building up their customer base with the use of these toys and regardless of your country, McDonalds knows that kids want toys. They have always marketed their toys and the ad above proves that they use have successfully marketed it to different children. One interseting fact that most people know is that McDonalds is the number one toy producer. Since they are able to produce so many toys and are constantly changing what the new “McDonalds Happy Meal Toy” is  they have been able to maintain their market and achieved a sustainable competitive advantage on a global scale.

Here is another McDonalds toy ad:

According to the research firm Nielson, the smartphone battle is now a three-way-tie. The three companies that are in the tie are… Apple… RIM… and Android. It may be surprising but since Android’s launch in 2009 it went from having just 2% of the market to 27%. This may come as a surprise to people because quite often the Smartphone battle is seen as solely Apple and RIM. However it is now a close race, and all these companies do have their differences.

Apple’s iPhone is seen as the new hip and cool device you can show off to your friends. It is sleek and new and let’s face it. It is a nice looking phone. It has over 300,000 apps to download and is very easy to use.

RIM is notorious for it’s blackberry phones. They are a little bit bulkier than the iPhone but still have their competitive advantage. The infamous Blackberry Messaging (BBM) system is the key difference in blackberry’s interface. You are able to instantly message your friends, see when they read your message and set your own status updates.

Android is slightly different than the other two comapnies. Rather than creating their own hardware or cellphone they only created an operating system. It is owned and operated by Google and allows you to put widgets and even run flash on your cell phone. Android’s glory is based on it’s easy to use interface and simple connectivity to Google. You are able to connect to any type of google account and it links everythign on your phone.

With a brief summary of the phones it is hard to determine which company has a sustainable competitive advantage. Technology is progressing so fast and with the introduction of the new 4G network phones will only progress faster and faster. Will Apple, RIM or Android be the first company to introduce that new better product that will get consumers buzzing?

Sources/Photocredit:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/app-store.html
http://gadtricks.com/iphone-vs-blackberry-vs-android/
http://www.mobiledia.com/news/81314.html

Saving money is vital in the survival of a university student. Apple understands this and is utilizing this situational factor to impact consumer behavior. Apple has recently exploded onto the personal computer scene after a downfall with the resignation of Steve Jobs. However, Apple has turned around and is now considered one of the most successful companies in the technology sector. Part of apple’s turn around is its marketing campaign geared toward students. If you buy a MacBook computer you save money on the purchase and also can apply for a free iPod. Recently there has also been news about Apple considering moving their discount program from hardware to software. Saving up to 50% on iPhone apps.

The reason that Apple is pushing so hard towards these educational discounts is due to the situation most university students are in. With a lack of money it is hard for students to purchase high-quality goods. Apple’s discounts give students the chance to buy these high-quality goods. Some people might wonder why Apple would be so generous in their discounts? The reason is that if you are able to supply a customer a good product that they then use for several years in university it is very likely that they will purchase it for the rest of their lives. By creating these life long customers Apple will prosper and student’s wont complain because they are getting these products at such a good price.  Although it may seem like Apple is so generous to students the benefit of a lifetime customer far outweighs the savings a student gets on one apple computer. Next time you are in class, a library, or anywhere on a university campus, observe the high number of Apple products and you will realize how good their marketing campaign really is.

Photo Credit: http://www.allnewsmac.com/2010/08/09/apple-to-allow-educational-discount-to-app-store-applications/ http://www.tuaw.com/2010/08/09/schools-get-your-discount-at-the-app-store-some-day/

Article: http://www.tuaw.com/2010/08/09/schools-get-your-discount-at-the-app-store-some-day/

Recently smartphones and tablets have exploded onto the technological scene. You are now able to do amazing things any where you have a decent wireless signal. Through these smartphones you can do the typical things, making phone calls and texting but also surf the web, do your banking or download any app imaginable to help manage your daily life. This advancement in phone technologies has consequently started to take away from the computer market. Consumers that didn’t use their computer for much more than banking, surfing the web and email are now able to purchase a smartphone that can do the same thing for them. In the Globe & Mail there was an interesting article claiming that by the end of 2011 smartphones and tablet computers will surpass computer purchases.

The article is based on the research group Deloitte who based it’s prediction on research, in depth interviews, and input from many different firms and analysts. It strongly believes that tablet and smartphone markets are only going to grow. But will these smartphones and tablet surpass the computer market? It will be interesting to see what happens when the new “4G” network is released and if the faster connection speeds will further increase the demand for smartphones. Is this cultural trend going to end up having a negative effect on the computer market or will both markets only continue to grow? It will be an interesting year and one thing is certain. The new cultural trends of 2011 will have a very large impact on the macro environment of consumers.

Globe & Mail Article: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/tech-news/deloitte-predicts-2011-tech-trends/article1873224/

Photo Credit: http://mobileroadie.com/blog/page/2/