Month: January 2011

Apple is undoublty one of the fastest growing and most succesful companies in the world today.  As students and young-adults with disposable income, we are Apple’s prime target for their Mac products.  As Breighton Ma mentioned in his blog post “Branding, Why?”,  Apple has done an incredible job of positioning itself in our evoked set and associating its brand with the cool factor.

However, their “Hi, I’m a Mac” commercials and narrowing in on how a Mac user looks and behaves, Apple may have defined it’s target market too narrowly (that’s definitely nothing to laugh about).  Microsoft recognized this mistake by Apple and immediately capitalized on the opportunity to capture the segment of consumers who Apple missed in its commercials.  Check out Microsoft’s attempt to break the stereotype that Apple has portrayed as a PC user:

This campaign certainly goes beyond the 2 stereotypical characters in Mac commercials and connects with the audience on a more personal level. Using real, everyday people from around the world to vouch for the PC was definitely a smart move to demonstrate the versatility, ease of use and the incredible size of the PC community. From six-year-olds to engineers, virtually anyone can be a PC user.

Although it may appear that Apple has the competitive edge over Microsoft with its Mac products, this is not the case if you consider the many different suppliers of PCs that consumers have to choose from. The sleekness of the Macbooks and performance of its operating system may be popular among students, but in reality, more students own a PC and than a Mac. Microsoft has been able to capture and retain a large consumer base because it is the most widely used operating system, priced competitively, and packaged in various options. PCs continue to fly off the shelves, keeping up with its competition.

Healthy minds and bodies are some of the few things that never go out of style. Entrepreneurs are constantly coming up with products that drive this trend of being active and eating right.  Luckily, they’ve come up with some innovative ways that make it easy for us to incorporate a balanced diet into our hectic schedules.

Baby Carrots definitely made a huge splash in the vending machine market with their dynamic campaigns, targeting younger generations with bold videos and clever packaging.  Their strategy of associating their product to junk food (eat’em like junk food) is effective in capturing kids and teens, but by doing so, they’ve limited their audience to kids in school and perhaps made it difficult for themselves to introduce differentiated products in the long-run.

Image source: Baby Carrots

The geniuses behind Baby Carrots weren’t the only ones to venture into the vending machine market. I stumbled across a Barcelona company, Lo Fresco, who also introduced a vending machine, named “Lof”, featuring only healthy snacks. The concept of the Lof is nearly identicle to Baby Carrots, but they have taken a different approach with their marketing.  Lof is designed to appeal to consumers from any generation with an apetite and a healthy conscience. These machines are appropriate not only in schools, but in any location, including offices.  They also dispense a variety of products, offering consumers more choice and satisfying different taste buds.

Two companies with two completely different marketing strategies have capitalized on the convenience and accessibilty of vending machines, redifining the type of foods that are associated with being on-the-go.  No matter which approach companies are using to substitute junk food with healthier alternatives, our attitudes toward food is, with no doubt, heading in the right direction.