Charlene Ng's Blog

Sitting at the back row in Henry Angus’ room 098, I am always able to have a view of a full on Tetris Battle tournament between students. Tetris Battle is a remake of the classic video game developed in the 80s with additional features that include numerous types of multiplayer modes with enhanced competitive aspects. There are over 3.1 million active users visiting the social game each day and 80% of users are a result of word of mouth promotion! One might ask, what is the key to Tetris Battle’s success? After reading the article titled “Inside Tetris Battle, Facebook’s top multiplayer arcade game” found on a social gaming blog site, I was fascinated to learn about the large amount of marketing efforts put into developing each tiny aspect of the game. Unlike usual Facebook games, Tetris Battle does not have an obligatory friend-adding mechanic where a player cannot continue playing unless they send game invites to friends; instead, players are intrinsically motivated to share the game with friends to generate a greater pool of competitors and to fuel their competitive standing in the game. Other pull strategies to encourage continued engagement include the following:

–          A leveling system to pair themselves with other players with equal skill and to unlock new game modes

–          A daily bonus spin that offers players with special items as a reward for playing the game consecutively

–          An energy meter that drains after each round but replenishes over time or through monetization

I believe that the core success of Tetris Battle is due to the quality of the game (competitive aspects) itself coupled with other strategies that encourage continued engagement.

Here is a link to allow you to visualize the intense competitiveness of the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt49XuMB0Ks

In preparation for a late night mid-term cram session, I stopped by a convenience store in search of a thirst quenching and possibly caffeinated drink. I was choosing between a bottle of Coke or VitaminWater and I ended up purchasing VitaminWater after rationalizing that it must be the healthier choice. I was feeling pretty self-content about my decision until I took a look at the nutritional facts on the label. It turns out that I had just chugged 33 grams of sugar and consumed 125 calories (the marketers had ingeniously displayed the calorie amount of 50 for a half serving of the product so the nutritional information should be adjusted accordingly) which is even more than the sugar and calorie amount of a bottle of Coke!

My topic relates to Josh Andler’s blog post titled “Vitamin Water? …more like Sugar Water”. Josh elaborated on how the company was able to reach a broad target audience by transforming mere sugar water into a rejuvenating miracle elixir through various marketing strategies. VitaminWater takes advantage of the health conscious movement in society by creating a product that gives an illusion of wellbeing through its clean cut packaging, empowering flavor names (“endurance”, “energy” and “focus”), nutritional statistics, and bright colours. All of the above play a role in misleading customers into believing that they have selected the healthy choice when in fact they are just consuming sugar water. Isn’t it ironic that VitaminWater’s slogan is to “hydrate responsibly”? After my personal brand experience with Vitamin Water, I am more convinced than ever that one should engage in further research before believing everything that marketers put forward to prevent  being just another misinformed customer.

Here is a link to an insightful article that presents details of a lawsuit against Coca Cola Company (VitaminWater is owned by the company) charging for misleading advertising.

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2007106,00.html

After reading Jenny’s blog post titled “No Frills is full of Thrills” describing her dilemma in choosing between two major supermarket chains, I was inspired to reflect on the factors that affect consumer behavior and the different stages of the buyer decision process. Jenny first outlined a few attributes of supermarkets that she values such as convenience, quality, and price then she ranked each brand accordingly; her thought process was that although No Frills was no match for Safeway in terms of quality, its lower prices appealed to her which greatly influenced her buying decision in favour of No Frills.

As you can see, each customer has their own subjective beliefs and attitudes towards brands. This is why I am amazed by how marketers are expected to interpret buyer’s convoluted and at times, irrational minds in order to determine methods that can effectively influence the buyer’s decision. From reflecting on various marketing strategies learnt in class, I believe targeting and positioning a brand’s products to a particular segment is most effective as this allows those customers to voluntarily take action to purchase products that best reflect themselves in terms of their roles and status, lifestyles and personality.

They look and act like rock stars, and some earn the money of rock stars too. Only they teach children English

Just last week when I was in Hong Kong over Christmas, I couldn’t help but notice the many ostentatious banners and billboards advertising tutoring institutions. Growing up in Hong Kong’s highly academic focused culture, I wasn’t at all surprised about the mass promotion of education as a major product. What shocked me was how these education providers, better known as “Cram schools in Hong Kong” or the “Hong Kong Tutor Kings”, promoted themselves by using celebrity power to attract students; they transformed top university graduates into personalities with celebrity status. These “tutor kings” claimed to guarantee dramatic improvements in students’ results and promoted high consumption and high spending lifestyles; they became well publicized in tabloids and gossip magazines. Many students’ incentives behind registering for such cram schools were not only to radically boost their grades but also to get to meet these celebrity tutors in person.

I found this to be an ingenious method of advertising education. Why not draw upon teenagers and young adults attraction to the high life to promote the most unlikely product of education?

Here is a video that I found on one of the celebrity tutors, Richard Eng. He owns 12 tutorial schools, has 15000 students and 300 staff and earns 1.5 million USD a year.

Tutors Turn Celebrity

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