Calvin's Blog

I was rereading an early post by Liam Fast on the UFC which I commented on earlier this term. I want to revisit the topic of marketing in the UFC just because I think they have done an extremely good job at promoting their brand into the most well known mixed martial arts promotor in the world. Dana White, the UFC president, is a visionary of the sport. Passionate and highly motivated of the company he represents, he has worked diligently in making mixed martial arts one the most recognized sports in the world. He has made sure that every event hosted by the UFC is full of excitement and energy for the fans and showcased nothing but the best talent the UFC has to offer. The main events of each fight card are very well promoted through television commercials, media ads, posters in local bars and pubs, and its great reputation has generated a lot of word of mouth advertising as well.

The creation of the Ultimate Fighter reality show, where a group of mixed martial artists compete for a contract with the UFC has also helped propel the once failing company into superstar status. The UFC has been the biggest influence to mixed martial arts and has exposed the world to one of the most entertaining and exciting sports out there.

The way fights are advertised: segments of the fighters training shown on TV, interviews with the fights in hostile settings talking about how much pain they plan to inflict on their opponent, even the weigh ins are extremely hyped up and very exciting even though fighters are not doing anything more than checking their weight and talking to press. But the way the UFC amps up their fights leading up to the event and the fighters also promote the company before every fight, are the reasons why the UFC is able to sell out each and every one of their events in astounding time.

I believe the UFC’s marketing prowess is second to no other firm in its market and its ability to attract people and to create anticipation and excitement at each of their events has led to great success at the present and has paved the way for even greater success in the future.

Promotion of the upcoming GSP vs Josh Koscheck fight for the Welterweight Ttile

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After reading a post from Kimberly Chung about how shopping at Best Buy, I would have to agree with her insight about how retailers place their products on their shelves and how customers appreciate the way they are categorized and organized to make it easier for them to find what they are looking for and to make their purchases. Granted a lot of the placement of products are strategically designed to try and get consumers to buy something they don’t really need only because it happened to be close to the product they were intending on buying. Nonetheless it still makes life a lot easier for the customer when they have something in mind that they’re looking for and be able to look for a big sign with its category and when they get to the aisle, be able to locate the desired product with ease and with no trouble and then purchase it. It saves a lot of time and hassle and most importantly the frustration of wandering through the entire store trying to locate something and searching through every section and asking every sales associate in site. Time is a valuable asset for all consumers and the fact that retailers have put in the effort to ensure that customers have a smooth and relaxed shopping experience really emphasizes the value based marketing concept that some many companies have taken on in this new generation of marketing.

How easy it was to find my favourite movie on dvd!

you can read more interesting insights from Kimberly here:

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On a typical weekday night I spend part of my evening watching one of my favorite sitcoms, Two Half Men. The other day there was an episode of the show that was quite different than the typical episode in terms of content and style. It was a cross over episode with CSI in which the forensic police team investigates a murder scene at the main character’s house with, of course, a comedic twist to it.

Going back to Thursday’s lecture about cross promotion, this episode of “Two and a Half Men” provides a good example of co-branding whereby the producers of both Two and Half Men and CSI have come together to create a new product, being the hybrid episode of the former. One could argue that this may not be considered co-branding since it is still an episode of Two and a Half Men. However, I consider this to be co-branding because although it is under the name of two and a half men, it isn’t the same show that viewers are used to watching. There are aspects of CSI shown throughout the show that make it very different from any other episode of the sitcom. In other words, this is co-branding because the two show have come together and have created a CSI version of Two and a Half Men.

At the time of the release, there has also been extensive promotion of this cross over episode on the broadcasting network in the form of television advertisements. It is difficult for the production companies to find other source of promotion that would reach their target audience and they both probably shared the costs of creating the commercial and the costs of airing it

All in all I believe that this hybrid episode benefited both Two and a Half Men and CSI. Two and a Half Men was able to diversify its content and expand in terms of new comedic material. And CSI was able to gain more exposure through the fan base of Two and a Half Men. Most likely what happened as a result of this cross over was that a lot of Two and a Half Men fans are now CSI fans and a lot of CSI fans are now Two and Half Men fans.

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Today is a major day for retailers in the United States. Black Friday is an epic event every year down south where retailers put on major mark downs on their products and malls and stores are crowded with people looking to get the best deals on their favourite brands. Black Friday is not just a dig deal for Americans, though, as Canadians, wake up before the sun rises in order to make it down to the border where they wait countless hours to make it through.

With so many Canadians flocking to the States to fulfill their shopping needs, many retailers in Canada are trying their best to show their customers that the shopping experience is just as good at home by offering their own promotions.  Granted that discounts may not be as amazing as in the United States, it is still interesting to see stores making an effort to give Canadians the opportunity to save money on products without the hassle of traveling all the way to another country.

Going down Robson street on this rainy winter day, retailers display big signs outside their stores, advertising the different promotions they’re offering.  It only makes sense that when American stores are offering major discounts, Canadian ones follow suit in order to better compete against their American counterparts and try to curb the amount of people going south. During weekends like this one, Canadian retailers often lose much revenue with all their customers finding relocating their shopping. Offering their own discounts is their way of reclaiming a small portion of what’s lost.

Unfortunately Canadian retailers have neither the capital nor resources to offer the kind of promotions that they have in the States, thus they are constantly losing out to American retailers during major shopping seasons.

However, traveling all the way down to the United States is not an option for me during this time, but I did manage to do some shopping today and lucky for me the stores I went to had some sort of small discount. Nonetheless savings are savings so I guess I can’t complain.

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McDonald’s is a global icon in the fast food market and recognized throughout the globe. It has experienced great success in its decades of operation and the reason why the company has been able to establish such a strong position in the market is through its marketing strategies.

McDonald’s has realized the difference in taste and preferences of the many segments it serves and has adapted and adjusted the way they presents its products to consumers.

In North America, the restaurants have undergone sizeable renovations in recent time, in an attempt to create a dining experience that is suitable for just about any occasion. Many McDonald’s locations now have a homely environment with comfortable seats, fireplaces, and flat screen TV’s to attract those who wish to relax and enjoy time with their friends with a nice meal. Children still compose a large part of McDonald’s target demographic and so restaurants also offer booths that are big enough to accommodate the typical family. Individual seats are also available for those who only have time to stop in for a quick bite on their lunch break before having to get back to work. These upgrades that McDonald’s has made to their restaurants has not only improved the customer experience but has also expanded its range of consumer. The product is the same, but they have managed to attract more people to the market and thus generating more growth and revenue.

Aside from the physical marketing strategies of renovating existing restaurants, McDonald’s has also gained success through its advertising campaigns.  While the “I’m loving it” campaign has been widely successful in North America, McDonald’s advertises itself differently in other parts of the world. For example, in France, McDonald’s promotes the idea that everyone is welcome at their restaurants, regardless of any differences. In a recent French television commercial, McDonald’s, which shows a French teenager talking to his boyfriend on the phone while looking at a picture of their class. The teen hangs up the phone when he sees his father approaching with McDonald’s food in hand. The father, who does not know of his son’s sexual orientation looks at his class photo and jokes that it is too bad his class is all boys because he would have been really great with the girls. After the son gives his father a puzzled look, the commercial ends showing the words “venez comme vous etes,” translated as come as you are.

McDonald’s understands that not all their segments are identical and so takes on a different approach when marketing to different segments. Their understanding of the need to diversify their marketing strategies has greatly improved their appeal around the world. The “come as you are” campaign has been around in France for several years now and has increased McDonald’s market power as a result.

It is important to realize that although one strategy may do well in one segment, it does not mean that the same will the true for another segment. The best way for a company to grow is to be able to bring its product to different segments and to position themselves positively to those new segments. To do so effectively, a company must do ample research of their target segment in order to know what their preferences are, how they behave and what the best course of action would be to attract them.  Diversification is key to gain competitive advantage, but this applies to the marketing approach as much as it does to the products a company offers.

Click here to watch France’s McDonald’s Commercial

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This week the new blackberry bold 9780 will be available on different carriers in Canada. I’ve been waiting for this phone to be released for some time and have been researching and trying to find out as much information as I could about the new device. However, as I was researching I couldn’t help but notice the a different price for the same phone on different wireless providers.

Telus prices the phone at $99.99 on a 3 year contract, Bell is selling it for $124.99, and Rogers is by far the most expensive, advertising the phone at $149.99 on the same term.

When I went to a local Rogers retailer yesterday and asked about the price differences, he didn’t seem to know the reason behind it. He simply said “it probably has to do something with the marketing.”

It really got me wondering about how Rogers hopes compete with Telus and Bell if they price the same phone higher than their competitors. It didn’t make sense to me at the time. First, it’s the exact same product, the bold they sell at Rogers is exact one they have at Telus, minus the carrier name branded on the phone. Wouldn’t Rogers lost market share if they price significantly lower than other providers? There must be some marketing reason behind it.

Rogers must be confident that despite having a higher price tag on the new Blackberry, consumers will still be willing to buy it. Rogers has developed a position in the mind of its consumers to be the better of the wireless companies. Even if they offer the same phone at a higher price consumers will most likely still purchase it if it means they will be on the carrier they feel is the better one. It is unlikely that consumers who have enjoyed the services and products that Rogers has offered to switch over to Telus or Bell just to save some extra cash on a new phone.

Rogers has found a way to increase its revenue while still maintaining a solid piece of the wireless market. Its higher pricing of homogenous products reflects the influence it holds as the powerhouse wireless provider of Canada.

I still plan to get my new Blackberry this weekend from Rogers.

Check out the prices and see how you feel about them

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The other night I had a dream about a commercial that I saw that day. What the commercial was about I don’t really remember but it did get me thinking about something. Could it be possible to advertise in people’s dreams? What if companies were able to place ads within our subconscious and then we awaken with a sudden urge to buy a specific product? A scary thought but with the advancement of technology, I don’t doubt the possibility of implementing this form of marketing, if it has not been done so already.
I did some research on the idea of advertising in people’s dreams but it doesn’t seem that there are any examples of the it being used in reality.
However, after some further research I learned that companies have been trying to do something similar to what I have been thinking in that they target the consumer’s subconscious. Subliminal messages have been around for a long time and have been used as a powerful tool to get into the mind of the consumer. They are said to be very effective in persuading and to evoke emotional responses in them. But subliminal messaging has been banned in several countries such as the UK and Australia as it is deemed to be manipulative and violates an individual’s rights and freedoms.
So I suppose that even if firms were able to advertise in people’s dreams deliberately, it would not go over too well with consumers as it takes away from their freedom of choice and what they choose to be exposed to.
But even if subconscious advertisements are illegal, will that stop companies from engaging in them? Something that is so hard to prove and is so easy to get away with for many firms, companies may just disregard human rights in order to gain a bit of competitive advantage against their competitors.
Advertising beyond the consumer’s full range of attention is a hot issue in the world of marketing and continues to be up for debate. So long as there are companies competing to gain a bit of market share, there’s no telling what lengths firms will go to in order to maximize their profits.

click here to read more about subliminal advertising

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Yesterday I went to see the new movie “the social network” and it really got me thinking about the social networking website. The site was started by a Harvard student who first set it up in his dorm room sometime in 2004 and exploded into the one of the biggest online networking sites in the world in just a short amount of time. So what I’ve been wondering about since watching the movie is this: what is it about facebook that has made it such a success?”

To answer my question, I have prepared an informal analysis of its market mix

Product – one of the best things about facebook is its versatility. There is not just one thing about the site that appeals to people. People log on to facebook for a variety of reasons and because of that the company has been able to target a wide array of segments. What does facebook offer that people value? First and foremost, facebook offers people a means of connecting with people all around the world, whether they be you family, friends, classmates, friends of friends, or someone you just met at a party. They provide an instrument to get to know what a person is like, what their interests are or what their personality is like. Before facebook the world of socializing was a bit more challenging, but today with this online tool, it has made it easier to connect and reconnect with different people, to build friendships, and to meet new people who share the same interests as you. Facebook the product is successful because it gives people what they want, and people what a whole bunch of different things. They want to see pictures of their friends, they want to know if someone they just met is in a relationship or if they’re single, whether they are looking for a relationship. They want to know what their friends are up to without the hassle of calling or meeting up with them. Facebook gives people the opportunity to have a quick update about what a lot their friends are doing.

Price – a major advantage for facebook is that they offer their prudcut FOR FREE. People display great value towards the site as seen when people are constantly checking updates, updating their profiles, or viewing pictures. To have this service at no charge makes it an even more valuable product to consumers. They place the services of facebook to be of high value and I would argue that many would be willing to pay for it if there were such a price tag. However, not charging consumers for using the site has allowed for facebook to reach so many more people (over 500 million people in 207 countries).

Place – Facebook is distributed online over the internet. Distribution doesn’t get much easier than that. It’s very easy for users to use the site as you can access your account on any computer in pretty much any country in the world that has internet (however there were many countries that have banned the site). Having the site readily available anytime the consumer wants it makes the product that much more powerful. Facebook exercises a near perfect “just in time” distribution method where at anytime, when people feel the urge, can simply log on to their account and do whatever it is that they do on the site. And with the emerging trend of owning smartphones and the advancement of its technology, the distribution of facebook has been made even easier with its smartphone application.

Promotion – Facebook uses the strongest form of promotion to make itself known to people, which is word of mouth. What started out as a Harvard exclusive site, its expansion to different schools, cities, and eventually different countries had such a prominent effect for the company because people who used the site liked it and wanted their friends to know about it and use it. Its promotion was simple yet so effective. People use facebook because they want to connect with all their friends. They cant connect with people who aren’t part of the site so they tell their to join. People join facebook because they see that their friends are on facebook. Thus, it’s an automatic way of promotion that saves the company millions in advertising expenses (have you ever seen a commercial about facebook?) “Facebook me” has become a regular phrase in our everyday language. Word of mouth spreads fast, hence facebook’s rapid growth over the past half decade.

Facebook did not just launch in 2004 and that was it. Since then they have made a lot of changes in terms of its displays, functionalities, and expansion of its services. Facebook understood that people are always changing and looking for the next big thing, so they must keep changing and adapting and remaing “the big thing” in the minds of the consumers. And the way things are looking, Facebook is at the top of its game and isn’t showing any sign of slowing down.

Facebook 2004

Facebook 2010

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I apologize for the delayed post but with the stress of midterms these past two weeks, the blog was the last thing on my mind. But thankfully midterm season is over and I can finally get back on track.

So the other day while finishing up the second marketing assignment about market research, I began thinking about what it be like to actually do this as a full time career. Actually to be honest, I thought more about what it be like to start my own market research firm. I wondered about how the different market research companies out there get themselves noticed by big organizations to be hired by them to help with their marketing strategies.

Do marketing research firms do their own research about things like consumer tastes, market segments, and emerging trends and then sell their findings to the highest bidder? Or are they hired by big companies like coke or nike to help them promote a new product, to attack a new market or enhance their image.

Now that I think about it, I guess a market research company could do both. So if there isn’t a company out there looking to outsource their marketing projects, the firm could always find work by selling their own primary research.

From the second marketing assignment, I found the most tedious part to be administering the survey as our group chose to use the more direct approach and asked participants to fill them out in person. One of the biggest challenges I found was trying to get random people to fill the survey. It’s not the occasional rejection that I found to be somewhat annoying, it was the amount of time it took to have such a small amount to surveys completed. I can understand now how those people, who stand outside various places asking if they can have a moment of your time to tell you about some new product or service, must feel in their everyday work. It’s not easy job and I commend those people for sticking it our even when most of the time people have no interest in talking to them.

Marketing is not always the most glamorous or sexy field of commerce. Like any field, there are areas that require hard physical work. Someone has to be responsible for being out in the field and collecting data first hand or else there would be no point to the whole principle of market research. Its because there are people that go out and find and collect data from consumers that companies have information that results in better development of goods and servives. In the end these goods and services are passed on to the consumers. That’s the whole point of asking them what they think and trying to understand how they buy things. So in my opinion if consumers want to see better products out there for them, then it may be a good idea to take a little bit of time to contribute to the market research that is trying to do just that.

Nonetheless, the idea of market research sparked a great deal of interest in me as I was fascinated with our groups results from the surveys and saw different trends and patterns in the data.

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Usually when we think about marketing, we think about having a product and trying to let everyone know what it’s all about. But marketing can extend to so much more than individual goods that are fun eat or will make you smell great. Marketing is such a broad and creative area of business that is so easy to utilize and yet can be used as such a powerful tool to put something on the map.

What I’ve come to learn, after many classes and much reading of the textbook is that anything can be considered marketing. As long as you are doing something that is worth something to someone else and have a way of doing it, you are engaging in marketing!!

So if I pull into the ubc bookstore in my aston martin (no i actually dont have one but let’s for a minute pretend i did) and someone stops to admire my ride, I have just engaged in marketing. I have just marketed the awesomeness of my car to someone and by even looking at it, that someone has just gained value (being able to go home and dream about a nice fancy car) from that experience.

But of course its never that plain and simple. A lot of time marketing goes much much deeper, extracting the ideals, behaviour, and tendencies of the consumer. But if one is able to understand the basic fundamentals of the subject, they will be able to unveil the vast and unlimited potential of marketing that has made so many brands and products major successes.

One major aspect that we tend to market daily is ourselves. And through technological advances, it has been increasingly easier to be able to do so. Mediums such as facebook and twitter allow people to build their profiles and put themselves out there in a social network and in the process, has resulted in developing many new relationships sprung out of common interests, mutual friends, etc.

Marketing is an easy yet powerful tool that can help one to express their uniqueness and personality in a variety of ways for all to experience.

Here’s a link to a local youtube superstar hopeful who uses the site to express and market his unique brand of comedy.

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