Monthly Archives: April 2013

The marketing assignments in which we analyzed the company environment, marketing mix, target segment and created a film project, was definitely a great learning experience. The assignments gave us a lot of practice applying lecture material in our analysis of companies we were interested in and helped me understand why we are learning everything we did in comm 296.  The film project  tied all the assignments together and since no-one of my team had filming experience,  filming and editing was a steep learning curve for us. Learning to use the editing software, as well as communicating and managing the different schedules of my teammates to efficiently finish our assignments were key skills developed in doing this project.

The company my team chose was Blackberry and our target segment was the youths in Indonesia, among which Blackberry is enjoying high popularity. In regards to marketing, analyzing the company and Indonesia smartphone industry (fun fact: elementary aged kids own BlackBerries in Indonesia!) taught me a lot about the steps marketers take in determining the 4 P’s. Being too broad was something my team really struggled on and therefore, one of the biggest take-ways from the project was going in-depth and focus our perspectives when choosing our target segment is crucial in effective marketing strategies.

If I were to do a similar project in the future, I would ensure early scheduling and project planning as top priorities, as I felt that the rush we experienced at the end of the project created a lot of stress on an already busy week. However, I would definitely choose another company that I am interested in and learn more about its activities in international markets, as it was incredibly rewarding!
Thanks for all your efforts, Team 7 :).

Consider the statements “For every person who shares this message, we will donate ___ ” and “If 75% of viewers donate, we will ___”. These statements, commonly from a company supporting a cause, have becoming a common occurrence, spreading virally across hundreds of Facebook profiles in the matter of minutes. I have always considered these campaigns the most effective forms of marketing through Facebook but have never really considered what it is about these action-spurring statements that makes it so appealing. In fact, if I had to choose, I would think that the first statement, where every donation is matched, would be more appealing than the second statement, which contains a condition for the donation. Katya, the writer of a non-profit marketing blog, argues otherwise.

In Katya’s blog “How to make your donors twice as generous”, she states that the sense of collective responsibility and shared reward is more inspiring to donors than the knowledge that there will be an guaranteed benefit (matched donation) for our individual decisions. In fact, she argues that donors would be twice as generous if the condition was present , due to the sense of peer pressure. In some ways, I can understand the reasoning behind it. If I were a potential donor, the thought that my action just might be the difference between meeting that target is very motivating. However, didn’t we learn in finance and economics that everyone is generally risk-averse? Wouldn’t I feel safer donating to a cause that guarantees the result that I am seeking, rather than donating while leaving the result in the hands of hundreds of strangers I will never meet?  With this mindset, I find it hard to believe Katya’s claim that that peer pressure is more effective than risk-less giving of a guaranteed reward. The possibility that is it exactly that risk that is present in the conditional sentence that makes the collective reward so much sweeter. Either way, this form of marketing, where viewers and donors feel empowered in that their individual actions shape the result of a campaign supporting a good cause, is one of the best uses of Facebook!

What are you passionate about? What would you be doing if today was your last? Those were a few of the questions posed to us at a PwC “Brand Yourself” workshop I attended a few weeks ago.  The experience of this workshop came back to me when I was reading Ryan’s post “The Truth of Marketing Yourself”. In this post, Ryan discussed the importance of not presenting an artificially perfect image of ourselves, but rather an honest impression of who we are, with our strengths and our flaws and consequently finding a job that truly suits our personalities.

As consumers, we scrutinize marketing tactics and advertisements for authenticity – our interviewers do the same to us when recruiting. In the PwC workshop, the campus recruiters ended the workshop by commenting that when we are talking about our passions, our faces light up and our excitement is evident in our voice. That is the authenticity that they look for, the genuine interest that colours our conversation that makes one candidate stand out over another.

Ryan utilizes the STP model in suggesting that we segment the jobs available on the market, target ones that complement our interest and position ourselves. I would like to take a different approach on the STP model in a way that reinforces comm 202. When applying for jobs, I tend to end up with a variety of jobs that I am interested in, reflecting the different sides of my personality. For example, some may be community-initiative positions while others are corporate analytical positions. In terms of STP, we can segment the different sides of who we are to determine the various jobs that are compatible with our personalities. We can choose which jobs to target by considering level of interest, chance of success, etc. We can then position ourselves to a particular job by determining which qualifications/experiences are applicable (comm 202!). While we are presenting ourselves differently for different jobs, it is still who we are and therefore genuine.

Someone once said, “Rather than striving to do your best to meet expectations, you should be your best self, in every situation.”