Bryce Blakely's Blog

Hello classmates, Sauderites, and lost internet surfers, my name is Bryce Blakely and I’m a second year Commerce student studying at the Sauder School of Business here at UBC. So a little back ground information about myself; I’m originally from Toronto so the decision to come to Vancouver definitely had a lot to do with lifestyle choice, I’m a fairly avid snowboarder. I’ve always been driven towards more individualistic activities or at least activities that have a very defined sense of getting out what you put in. This has motivated me to lean towards the more entrepreneurial aspect of business which I plan on pursuing post-Sauder.

Aside from the obvious reason to be taking Comm 296, I have always thought of marketing as the most interesting aspect of business. To some marketing can seem superfluous, but I have always seen marketing as the single most definitive means of brand differentiation available. I believe a good marketing campaign not only promotes a product or service but should be a embodiment of the core values of a business as well as a reflection of the direction that business intends to pursue in the future.

In my experience with marketing I have always found it to be more effective at a grass roots level. Being a snowboarder from Ontario I have seen many upstart apparel companies or board companies attempting to enter that market with essentially the money in their pockets. To market their brand the owners would literally sit at the bottom of the terrain park and hand out stickers. For one you got a sticker (that’s awesome! Put it on your board) but more importantly you can associate a face with the brand. I’ve always found it easier to support a brand if you can somehow feel connected at the very beginning.

This year COMM 299 has taught me things about myself in a way that has come more in the form of life lessons about myself as a person rather than undiscovered inner qualities (I’m sure I’m a gold mine). This semester I’ve definitely been having a lot of trouble keeping up with school, housing, money, and securing a job for the summer that’ll get me through next year. I’ll admit I tend to let my focus on academic matters slip and become passive in my studies. As such I managed to be one of the few students that didn’t sign up for an interview (I got a bunch of real ones instead). This was because I hadn’t been keeping up online so I had issues creating a COOL account and due to a disconnect in information I attempted to sign up for remaining spaces online which of course, you had to sign up for in person.

So what’s the lesson here besides pay more attention in class? Well apropos to my previous post I learned that without conscious diligence, I could seriously lose sight of what’s important and what needs to be dealt with at an elevated level of involvement. The in-class portion of COMM 299 highlighted the strengths (in that gold mine) I have that I can use to my advantage to ensure I keep the balance that lets me live the way I do (Whistler every weekend? Yes please).

Recognize.

The greatest lesson I’ve learned has come from my father (Cliché? Standard). I suppose this lesson was not imparted on me in the traditional perspective-changing-conversation-with-dad manner, I had to figure it out for myself.  My whole life I’ve really looked up to my Dad and even more so as I got older and became more savvy to the reality of “real” life.  From a young age he was always for playing sports and joking around but when it came to business, when the situation required focus, he was a very serious man. That was something I always admired, the ability to instantly change your whole state of person when the situation called for it.

It wasn’t until I was able to reflect on the events and life lessons of my high school life and all my time up until high school graduation that I attained the necessary scope of experience to put what I had been (metaphorically) staring at the whole time into perspective. All the lessons I learned as a kid were just the details, the important defining points of a larger, encompassing message. It was all about discipline; that intrinsic ability aforementioned is in fact a result of discipline and not ability at all. It’s an understanding that you can live life your way doing what you like if you understand that when it comes down to important matters you have to put all of your focus and energy into it. Thus sustaining your lifestyle. That’s the greatest lesson I’ve ever learned (Tested and everything).

Three dimensional movies have been the major break through in cinema as of late. Every new movie appears to be coming out in 3D, there are even 3D televisions available for public purchase (yes you still have to wear the ugly glasses). Now I’m not sure if this was the most subtle genius the world has seen come out of Hollywood or just some happy accident but it seems this new 3D trend has actually managed to threaten the thus far impervious pirate industry. You simply cannot record and redistribute 3D movies, the cameras cannot catch the image. For all the legal battles, all the gnashing of teeth between both sides when all it took was a little innovation. Now pirates can be innovative too but you have to hand it to Hollywood, that was something a lot of us didn’t see coming.

Tanner Hall, Pro Skier

TRAP! Consider the concept of ambush or guerilla marketing and how it pertains to the sponsorship of events. In class (Comm 101_2) we extensively covered the Bell sponsorship of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games and their conflict with Telus’ presence in Whistler. Telus was everywhere, it seemed Bell had paid a $200 million sponsorship bid only to still be in competition with Telus during the games. Now consider Mountain Dew, in snowboarding, skiing, skateboarding they sponsor The Dew Tour, pro riders competing in cross country venues. Now consider the pros themselves, most are sponsored by energy drinks, Redbull, Monster, Rockstar, etc. So you have riders competing in the Mountain Dew Tour wearing helmets and jackets covered in advertising for these energy drink companies. Is it worth Mountain Dew sponsoring the events if these outside companies seem to be getting all the publicity? Possibly, but that’s neither here nor there, these energy drinks companies are getting better publicity and spending next to nothing, guerilla marketing.

The word entrepreneurship immediately brings forth the image of a keen business man looking to create an empire from scratch. But what about social entrepreneurs? The people who put in an equal amount of time and effort with a charitable twist. Social entrepreneurship is the grinding side of things, it doesn’t get easier in you’re a non-profit organization whose resources are spread thin as is. But what if instead of the structure coming first, the strategy, the organization of the organization, the service came first. Take New York’s Guardian Angels a security service for late night commuters started by social entrepreneur Curtis Sliwa. What started as vigilante  later became one of the most well-known pedestrian security services world wide. What Curtis Sliwa and his friends did was what they considered the “right thing”, only it gained momentum. Mr.Sliwa took this momentum and consolidated it by registering the Guardian Angels as a legitimate organization. This empire from scratch was never meant to be an empire at all, social entrepreneurship by osmosis.

If you’ve been following extreme sports over the last year you will have noticed a number of trends. First off, the quality of video edits being produced has increased tenfold, HD, 3D, extreme sports has kept up with the Jones’. Secondly everyone is filming, your friend, your neighbour, that kid across the street. So what’s going on? Did everyone just decide it was time to invest in the cinematographic side of extreme sports a little more? The answer to that question is that the resources became available. Ladies and gentlemen the GoPro HD camera, shoots in 1080p, water proof, drop proof, just shy of bomb proof, and only $300. If 6 of your friends pitch $50 you can afford to film in the highest resolution youtube will support. As a result these camera’s are everywhere, it would be hard to go a day up at the local slopes without seeing one of these and I guarantee this is only the beginning. Check it out for yourself:

You can collect sub-prime mortgages with of a relatively low B-rating and tranche them creating a AAA bond. Banks cannot purchase B rated securities but they can purchase AAA bonds. What does this mean? Banks are essentially purchasing debt, the possibility of these sub-prime mortgages being returned is extremely low. But my grasp of the economic crisis isn’t quite complete enough to write an entire post about that. Instead it’s the principle behind it that piqued my interested, intangible assets assigned value based on presumed worth. That and a news article claiming a woman now owns the Sun (what?). So how are these related? Well if you’re an individual it is possible to claim ownership of a celestial body and it just so happens I have my eye on the meteor Eros. It’s a reasonably sizeable rock but it just so happens to have $20 trillion in precious metals in it (actually so do most meteors). So by claiming ownership of said meteor I would in theory become worth $20 trillion, wouldn’t I? I mean there was about the same percent chance those mortgages would get paid back as there is me actually getting to Eros and collecting my minerals.

Product differentiation is how your product is set apart from the others on the market. It would perhaps not be too imposing a generalization to say that when product differentiation comes to mind it comes in a physical sense. That is to say there is actually a physical, tangible difference that sets one product apart from the other. But, as the tone of this post may have already revealed, this is not always the case.

Dialogue Headwear is a small company based out of Toronto, Ontario, that produces toques and baseball caps for the extreme sports market with a focus on the snowboarding community. Dialogue has been successful in differentiating their product not through R&D but through social marketing. They made their hats seem exclusive within the market. If you had one you knew about something most didn’t, you were a savvy snowboarder. From this “clubhouse” branding Dialogue actually has managed to gain weight and now has their products carried in some of Toronto’s trendiest stores. They played to the obscurity of fledgling business and managed to use their lack of brand recognition into the defining aspect of their brand.