Having grown up in Europe – Orangina quickly became on of my favorite beverages and part of my daily routine. Its been a drink I’ve loved ever since I was a toddler since it was a beverage always present on my dinner during speical occasions. Orangina, with its many competitors, such as Coke and Pepsi, is not a particularily known brand in North America and Asia (although I did see it more in China when I visited Hong Kong last year than I have seen it around North America).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_WuWMgED4Y&feature=player_embedded

Ad Number 1, shows Richard Gere in France in 2012. The ad has been tailored to Japanese audience – as its captions are in Japanese language.

Recently, thanks to Orangina’s new ads which portray actor Richard Gere as a “hapless traveling salesman from an iconic series of Japanese films,” according to the Wall Street Journal‘s Real Time Japan blog, Orangina’s sales in Japan have skyrocketed since the ad quickly went viral and Orangina sold millions of cases in the first four days of the commercials debut according to a recent blog about Orangina on Brand Channel. I believe that the online marketing orangina used was indeed very effective since they tapped in to the consumer’s emotional appeals knowing that the Japanese love the character Tora-san, the lovable loser in Shochiku’s popular 48-film series of Japanese comedy movies – which was the diligent character Richard Gere played in the advertisement. The blog mentioned mentioned above said that “The heady mixture of a sentimental heartthrob playing a sentimental heartwarming role has so far proven to be the perfect recipe for uncorking Oranginas drink’s local market potential”. This is certainly a sign of very effective advertising and shows that tapping into the Japanese consumer market has indeed been very successful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_HMLj4HLes&feature=player_embedded

This video here depicts the character Tora-san that Richard Gere play’s!

Certainly Orangina’s adroit sales promotion has proven to be very effective in the new Japanese Market and I can only hope that Orangina is just as inventive with the North American Market as they were in the Japanese market so that in the future Orangina will be a well known product in the North American market.

It starts off like this #stopkony or watch this video now or make him famous. According to YouTube, the video produced by the charity Invisible Children has been watched a total of 72,433,716 times around the world – so far. Some don’t know what to believe, others are for it other against.

Its exhilarating to see how powerful marketing can be so raise such a controversial issue, bring it to public light and have the world see it and change their opinion all within 30 minute video. Sometimes I don’t know what to believe is true anymore. Although its meant to be a great cause it could turn into a disastrous situation. What inspired me to write this blog was when I was flipping through the blog roll and came across my classmate Simrat Tatla’s Blog; Unethical Marketing towards Children in the sense that we always use kids to portray unethical issues and put them in the middle of the spotlight to gain emotional appeal from our viewers. In KONY 2012, the producer of the video used his own son to immediately gain the viewer’s interest, through emotional appeal just as the kids in Simrat’s blog are used either unethically or ethically (depending on your views) through emotional appeal.

So this has to be real right? Supporters of the campaign include Barack Obama and Bill Gates, yet I’m still not convinced. The fact that support packages cost $30, and a bracelet with KONY’s face on it costs $10 on their website makes me believe that all this is just a fad driven by consumer enthusiasm and immediate product or brand popularity. An article from the Daily Mail UK stated that essentially by focusing all our attention on the fading warlord the KONY 2012 movement were diverting millions of dollars away from charities to cut out AIDS, starvation and other corruption which are issues that affect African’s far more than a single warlord.

What to believe or not to believe yourself, that I will leave up to you.

While finding information for my stock project in finance I came across a very interesting article, similar to the one my classmate David Huynh posted about RIM. He mentioned that “Research in Motion clearly needs to rethink it’s marketing strategy to survive” – which turns out to be very true.

Blackberry taking a hit at Apple!

According to the article posted Yahoo Finance: APPLE “”Nearly all of the top companies in the Fortune 500 now approve and support iPhone on their networks” where a few years ago very few companies, let alone Fortune 500 companies supported the Iphone, simply because the network RIM was operating was much safer than the network both Andrioid and Apple are operating on. Yet, big companies such as oilfield-service giant Halliburton are slowly making the switch from Blackberry to iPhone and that is simply because the majority of U.S. Blackberries still run on old operating systems in compare to the new iPhone which runs on ISO5. Simply, consumers are slowly loosing their faith in RIM and would much rather switch to the iphone, since it basically has all the same features as the blackberry (including the new iMessage which is very similar to BBM) but also has a great camera a fabulous music player, a greater variety of apps and a larger screen.

To prove a point…Apple say’s well Blackberry can never take a shot at us…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-Q6NBp8bCA

My dad was a true RIM fan – and would of course never admit that the iphone was better than the blackberry, but he got an iphone from his work and has been using it and even he, with his stubborn way now agrees that the iphone has taken over the cell phone market and according to the UK Telegraph “Apple’s share of the US smartphone market doubled to 44.9 per cent in the final quarter of last year” which absolutely blows my mind. We briefly talked about APPLE loyalty in class and I believe once you get familiar with the APPLE product, especially the iphone, there is no turning back. Whatch out, while Apple may be at the forefront, technology is ever changing and there is always another company around the corner that could flip things around fairly quickly as RIM had so nicely demonstrated for us.

PLEASE DO NOT MARK. When we talked about TOMS in class yesterday I wasn’t sure if I truly believed their marketing strategy, especially with the controversy going around lately. Some people say TOMS shoes is good marketing but a bad aid (http://goodintents.org/in-kind-donations/toms-shoes). I disagree. After doing some research and looking into what TOMS really does, they are truly doing good, but of course there are always individuals who try to ruin that and destroy the company because they are envious and jealous. Why not embrace a company such as TOMS? As our textbook states “Critics worry that cause-related marketing is more  a strategy for selling than a strategy for giving” – not in TOMS case. The really great part, from a marketing perspective is that where a “typical company spends about 20% of sales on advertising, TOMS has not spend a single dollar on it!” Yet, they are incredibly successful and they are not just dropping the shoes off in countries, they are actually putting the shoes on these kids and taking the time to do so. So why is this one-for-one idea TOMS created so popular, especially during this economic downturn? TOMS believes that “with the rise of social and Eco-consciousness and the economy in a downturn, people were looking for innovative and affordable ways to make the world a better place”. When I bought my first pair of TOMS that was my exact reaction, and besides TOMS are incredibly comfortable and stylish, so WHY would I choose to buy Keds if I could by TOMS and contribute to the betterness of the world? At last TOMS founder Blake Mycoskie said ” My thinking was that TOMS would show that entrepreneurs no longer had to choose between earning money or making a difference in the world. Business and charity or public service don’t have to be mutually exclusive. In fact when they come together, they can be very powerful”. Indeed they can. GO TOMS!

Well, that might seem like an awfully boring title, but when we talked about it in class it fascinated me. I never even deeply thought about the fact that there are two main types of data; primary and secondary, although I’m sure I have been the subject of both.

Lets quickly review what these are. Primary data is data that has been created by yourself, or your company. It is carried out through paper survey’s, online survey’s, social media, telephone etc. By collecting this data we then come up with results that help us analyze customer behavior and most importantly come up with a research plan. A good example used in our textbook was Red Bull – and how they wanted to add a line of enhanced water to its already extremely successful line of energy drinks! I mean, I personally never even use the world “energy drink” anymore, I just say Red Bull because that’s how its been placed in my mind. This reminds me of how my mother used to always refer to tissue’s as “Kleenex” – and well that I adapted at an early age also. Regardless, I feel that Primary data can be almost revolutionary for companies in that they discover things they have never seen before. Results like these could never be attained through secondary data – because most of the time the data we need can’t even be found in secondary data.

So what is secondary data? Its basically the data that has been created by others. Its easily accessible in databases such as Statistics Canada (www.statcan.gc.ca), very cost effective and pretty easy to use. I feel that in some cases, secondary data can be great – especially for smaller companies starting out that need some statistics in order to properly market their product, yet I believe if one truly wants to market its product and go above and beyond, they should take Kimber-Clark’s Huggies brand as an example, where parents wore camera-equipped glasses at home so that they could see what the consumer saw while changing babies diapers.

If you truly want to fall in love with huggies and their marketing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpZH7L-9rRE

Hello, Bonjour, Gutentag, Hoi, my name is Céline Grootes, and I just said Hello to you in all the languages I speak. Why do I speak all those languages? Well long story. I was born and pretty much raised in Switzerland and moved over here 6 years ago where I attended Highschool in West Vancouver. My parents are different nationalities, which makes me half dutch and half swiss. People don’t believe me anymore. Apparently I am too “Canadianized” now. Anyways, I’m currently in 2nd year of Sauder – and although its been pretty tough I’m still liking every aspect of business and would never even consider transferring to another faculty.

Here is me as a little girl. I love this picture, because I think It truly still does reflect my personality. You will see what I mean.

Basically I am taking Marketing because well it was in my STT and its a graduation requirement (I know that’s the wrong answer so keep reading!). If Marketing was an optional course I think I would still take it because I feel that Marketing is an important concept everyone should learn, especially since we are exposed to Marketing a billiiooonnnn times a day. Literally.

I’ve had pretty little experience with Marketing myself concerning jobs. The closest I have come to Marketing was during my summer job this year where we used social media and post cards to Market our restaurant. That was pretty cool to see. As a consumer I would say my Marketing experience has been pretty extensive since we are exposed to marketing every single day. Even every day I enter the Sauder main Hall I am exposed to plenty of marketing by the booths that are placed around Sauder and well the hall itself is marketing; CA HALL.

My favorite ads, would have to be Diesel’s “Be Stupid” Campaign. I like their ads because they are silly and provocative. Not something you usually see in the everyday ad. Also it really fits my generation and at last I am a big fan of diesel jeans.

Something personal about myself is; I live by the motto everything happens for a reason and so far that has really brought me far in life. On a lighter note; I am Swiss which means I eat a ridiculous amount of chocolate.