Boris Cheng's Blog

Mobile marketing is marketing that is done on a mobile device, most commonly a cellphone. There are two main types of mobile marketing, one is through text messages and the other is through custom made apps. Companies can design apps which allow customers to view the restaurants menus for example or a company’s products. They would also update their app to inform customers about new products and promotions. Game apps could also be designed to allow customers to further interact with the brand. Text message mobile marketing is simply where, customers can text a certain promotion code to a certain number and get discounts or free products from a company. Text message marketing is also used primarily to take advantage of the increased amount of time that people spend on their cellphones. With all the new smartphones that everyone is talking about, consumers are using cellphones to access the internet and stay active online much more then before. It is very common for consumers to browse the internet on their smart phones while watching television or waiting in line for food. Nowadays with all the noise and clutter, companies who want to be successful have to find methods to get through the noise and differentiate themselves from their competitors. With the raising amount of people on their mobile phones, companies have started to include mobile marketing as part of their overall marketing plan. Earlier this year, Facebook stocks dropped a lot and several companies opted out of Facebook advertising due to the fact that Facebook’s mobile app did not display advertisements to the users. This goes to show that modern day companies care a lot about mobile advertising.

While I was taking the sky train home the other day, I noticed that A&W is doing a text messaging mobile advertising strategy. There were many advertisements at the sky train station about texting the keyword “burger” to a number to receive a free papa burger. The purpose of this marketing campaign was to drive more traffic to specific franchise locations. The campaign was extremely successful and the amount of responses exceeded initial expectations, there were over 36,700 responses in the first month. Amber Hampshire, account supervisor at AFA Krause Advertising, claimed that they were overwhelmed by the success of this mobile campaign.

While listening to the Sonic Station (104.9) on my way to school, I heard Kidd Carson talk about Brad Pitt’s new commercial for Chanel.

A few things are pretty unique about this commercial, and definitely caught my attention as something special. First off, Brad Pitt is Chanel’s first male spokesperson seen in advertisements. This alone is a pretty special point for those familiar with Chanel. Why would they go with a male spokes person instead of continuing their usual trend of using women. Secondly, in the video, Brad Pitt is delivering his monologue in a monotone like voice. He rambles on about philosophical life mysteries, such as “It’s not a journey. Every journey ends, but we go on. The world turns, and we turn with it. Plans disappear, dreams take over. But wherever I go, there you are, my luck, my fate, my fortune. Chanel No.5, inevitable”. The whole commercial shows Brad Pitt simply talking in the fashion mentioned above. In addition to the content and “dreamy” voice, Brad Pitts eyes are seen to be wandering and staring in space through various times during the commercial, trying to give a deep thinking impression. Thirdly, the entire video is in black and white which gives the perfume a prestigious and valuable feeling. Nowadays, most advertisements contain more dramatic effects with different vivid colors and lots of action sequences. This ad really contrasts to these “norms”.

This advertisement has definitely gone viral with the help of the countless parodies that arose from this commercial. Tons of people have made parodies on YouTube, giving this Chanel commercial lots of free airtime. If this was Chanel’s marketing idea, they have definitely succeeded as their commercial has gone viral and tons of people are talking about it. A commercial going viral is usually a good thing, as more consumers will know about this product and there will be more conversation about it. For this Chanel commercial lots of parodies are making fun of Brad Pitt and a lot of parodies are giving people a negative impression of this commercial. These funny parodies will spread quickly through the internet and through word of mouth. This ad has definitely gone viral, but is this the type of marketing that Chanel hoped for?

Derrick Rose is a star point guard for the Chicago Bulls. Rose injured his anterior cruciate ligament during the first game of last years NBA playoffs.  Rose is definitely one of the star players in the NBA, he won the NBA MVP in 2011. He is currently being sponsored by Adidas and has his own line of basketball shoes with them. For basketball fans out there, many of you have probably already come across something called “The Return of D.Rose.” This is a series of short online videos created by Adidas to help fans “join in” on the recovery process and return of Derrick Rose.

If Derrick Rose is injured then NBA fans won’t see his shoe line, this is usually the worst case scenario for your brand if your star NBA endorser is injured. However, Ryan Morlan, the director of marketing for basketball at Adidas, has taken advantage of a very unique opportunity that has arisen from Rose’s misfortune. Morlan and his team created a series of online videos to show Derrick Rose in his recovery. The thinking process behind this campaign was to let fans “join in” to the recovery process of Derrick Rose and make them feel like they are apart of the process. Some of these videos have over a million views on YouTube, and while enabling Rose’s fans to join him in the process of recovery, Adidas are also successfully marketing their sneakers to the viewers. I feel that this is a brilliant campaign by Adidas, not only does it let fans feel more engaged with their idol, it also gives an opportunity to show fans that Adidas supports his recovery. This will give off a stronger brand image, as fans will associate Adidas with the recovery of Derrick Rose, which will definitely drive sales. In the current digital age, it is very important for companies to take advantage of any arising opportunities to differentiate themselves from other competitors. As mentioned above, usually your basketball endorser getting injured is an extremely negative situation for your brand, however, Adidas has definitely been able to turn this situation around and create an effective marketing campaign.

Dota2 is an upcoming online battle arena game developed by “Icefrog “at Valve Corporation. The game currently still in beta, but it is set to release with a free to play business model sometime in 2013. This will enable users to download the game for free on the Steam platform. Dota2 has an interactive online community, with lots of user to user interaction. This led me to think about several of the concepts regarding online communities taught in class. On the official Dota2 website (www.dota2.com), I can see lots of different aspects of the 7 C’s being put to use. The site has good context and content, as there are game and user interface updates weekly. There are also links which connect to sponsors and forums where players can talk about different guides and strategies on how to play the game. Despite all of these things, the main focus on this blog post is the Dota2 Workshop.

Up until a few months ago, Valve was the sole developer of cosmetic items that characters in the game could wear to differentiate  from the basic default model. For example (refer to the picture below), there is a default helmet that a certain character wears, however, there are other special helmets that you can equip onto your character to make him more special.

Players can obtain these items simply by chance from playing the game or purchasing them from the cosmetic store.  Recently, Valve has created something called the Dota2 Workshop. This is a feature that allows users to design cosmetic items and submit them to Valve, so they can implement into the game as actual items. The process of whether the item actually gets implemented is based off several different things, one of those is user votes. Players can go on the Dota2 Workshop site and vote up for items they would like to see implemented and down vote cosmetic items they dislike. The nature of this process enables a lot of user to user interaction as well as user generated content. By starting the Dota2 Workshop, Valve has enabled “creators” to contribute to the items in the game, this allows a much wider variety of items as well as saves Valve the time of actually designing and making items themselves. This is definitely a healthy strategy for promoting the game and developing more of an online community where users will talk about Dota2. As an extra incentive for users to submit their designs, Valve has promised to pay the designer a portion of the sales on the item they created. This gives an opportunity for players to share their ideas as well as make some money. Ever since the Dota2 Workshop, there have been many more threads about item trading on Reddit and Twitter. There are also a lot more players talking about cosmetic items in the game. Overall this workshop has further developed the online community and has promoted user to user interaction.

Nowadays, many companies are offering certain incentives for customers to like their Facebook page. It is a common thing for companies to offer a chance to win a product in exchange for likes on their Facebook page. Other companies are offering discount coupons for everyone who likes their Facebook page. In one of the Ipad games I played, one way to get “free” gold (as opposed to purchasing it with real cash) to buy items, is to like the company’s Facebook page. The UBC bookstore also had a similar promotion where they were handing out free t shirts for people who liked their Facebook page.

These incentives will push many people to like a company’s Facebook page to get the free benefits. Generally speaking, without incentives, many users on Facebook won’t like a company, even if they use their services or purchase from them, simply because they are lazy. One might ask, why is it so important to companies that users like their Facebook page? Why would companies go as far as giving away free products just for “likes” on Facebook? In addition, many of the likes on Facebook are done by users who are already customers, so why does it matter if this customer likes your Facebook page or not, if they already purchase from your company.

It is true that individual likes on Facebook definitely create brand awareness and promote the brand, however there is a more important reason why companies put so much emphasis on Facebook likes. The real value of Facebook likes is not only the person who liked the page, but the friends of those people. It is very common for people to ask friends about which companies they buy/use products/services from. Even if the person who liked a company’s Facebook page is already a customer, they probably have lots of friends who aren’t. This is an effective method for companies to hit multiple “birds” with “one stone”. From generating one like on Facebook, a company can potentially get all of that person’s friends to be customers. This method truly shows the effectiveness of raising brand awareness and being associated with your customers. This also shows the importance and effectiveness of word of mouth from customers. Word of mouth makes it essential for companies to leave customers with a good impression, as this could easily backfire if customers have negative things to say about your company. If a customer feels that a certain company has poor customer service, they would spread this to all their friends and that company would potentially lose a lot of customers.

I’m sure that many of you are aware of Felix Baugartner’s supersonic free fall from 128,000 feet. This video was just put on YouTube a few days ago and it is already one of the most popular videos with a few million views.

The Red Bull’s Stratos website has a section where it talks about the jumps background history. It says on the website that setting records wasn’t the main goal of the mission but rather to gather scientific data.

I think that it was a brilliant online marketing move for Red Bull to sponsor this mission. I feel like this is a very extreme but effective way of marketing their brand. This Red Bull’s Stratos Jump is one of the most popular videos on YouTube, has 714,000 likes on Facebook and 26,000 tweets on Twitter. Tons of people are talking about this jump on the most popular social media networking sites. Everyone who visited the website or read any information about the video knows that Red Bull is involved. This is an extremely effective way for Red Bull to raise awareness  or remind customers of their brand. In addition, Red Bull’s slogan is “Red Bull gives you wings” this is definitely related to a crazy free fall video. This might enable customers to have a longer lasting memory of the brand, as they can associate it with this new free fall video. I feel that something like this really shows the power of online marketing and online social media in modern society today. Videos can go viral within days and reach out to millions of people.

In the last few years social media and online marketing have definitely grown and there are more and more users on social media websites and more companies paying attention to Facebook, Twitter etc. Below is a info-graphic showing some growth of social media compared to previous years.

There are also a series of pictures on Search Engine Journal regarding the growth of social media that can be found in the link below, http://www.searchenginejournal.com/the-growth-of-social-media-an-infographic/32788/.

With smartphones becoming more and more popular, this will also increase the popularity of social media and online interaction more then ever before. People will have 24/7 access to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter etc. They can also get updated news and watch new videos on YouTube at any time.

Recently, even US president Obama is acknowledging the vast online community, by hosting a Q & A session on Reddit. This goes to show that online social media and networking sites are becoming more and more prominent.

It is a known fact that there are many people on Facebook. In fact recently, there are almost around one billion users on Facebook. However, just because there are a lot of people on Facebook does that mean that it is an effective place for advertising? This is a question that is important to many companies.  There was a study done in May 2012 about the click through rate (CTR) of ads on Facebook.  According to this website http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/does-facebook-advertising-work-1658078.htm, the average CTR of an ad on Google is 0.4% which is almost 10 times higher then the CTR of Facebook which is around 0.05%. In addition to CTR, Google advertising offers many more formats then Facebook. General Motors also had an article on Forbes in May 2012 saying that Facebook Advertising doesn’t work and they are withdrawing large amounts of money.  In addition to all of this Facebook stocks have been steadily dropping ever since their Initial Public Offering (IPO). One reason for this is that companies are starting to question the effectiveness of Facebook advertising.

I think that Facebook is a place where people log on to be updated with whats going on with people in their network as well as interact with close friends. This is Facebook’s primary service to public users. A lot of users on Facebook don’t view the ads as their objective while being on Facebook is usually not to purchase things. If they wanted to purchase items, they would go on Amazon or Craigslist. The fundamental difference is that people will go to Google, if they are looking for something. In particular Amazon or Craigslist if they are looking to buy something. Users on Facebook are there for another reason, which is why Facebook advertisement might not be very effective.

Since May of 2012, Facebook began testing a feature in New Zealand where users can pay a small price to “highlight” particular updates or statuses. Normally Facebook’s news feed algorithm emphasizes updates from close Facebook friends or posts that have generated a lot of likes or comments. This new highlight feature allows particular status updates or posts to be seen on more peoples news feeds as well as stay there for a longer period of time. The idea behind this is that if your status updates stay longer on other users news feeds then more people will see the update.

I feel that this is an interesting move by Facebook and could either turn out well and create another stream of revenue or it could backfire and upset users.  I can definitely see many useful applications of this feature, such as a person who needs to sell textbooks and wants to try to “advertise” on their status. I would also think that this might strengthen the confidence of current shareholders and maybe even attract new shareholders. This shows that Facebook is a company that has new ideas and isn’t afraid to test out different strategies to generate revenue. However, I feel that this idea could also backfire as it might give users the idea that their news feed will be polluted with people who paid to have their updates and statuses highlighted as opposed to connecting with close friends or viewing posts that have generated a lot of activity.

It is very important to companies to find out Google’s algorithms in attempt to get their website ranked as high or near the top of the page (for natural/unpaid) as possible.  The main reason for this is related to click through rates (CTR). There is a huge between the 1st link of the search even compared to the 2nd or 3rd link let alone links that are not on the first page. According to this website, http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/blog/search-engine-optimization/click-through-rate, it clearly shows that the first link on Google, has a CTR of around 18%, while  the second and third links on the page drop down to 10% and 7% respectively. The CTR only continues to drop after that. It should now be evident why companies invest so much effect on search engine optimization (SEO). The difference between being the first link that shows up when a user searches something on Google and the second link is already a huge different in clicks. Therefore companies will try to understand Google algorithms to increase the chance of being the first link. They might even resort to SEO methods such as link spamming or keyword spamming that doesn’t add any content value to the users but is just a way to “trick” Google.

Now think about this from a users point of view. When you are looking up something on Google, chances are if you don’t find it within the  first few links or even links on the first page you are likely to refine your search and try new keywords as opposed to looking on page 2, 3 etc and so on. If you find what you are searching for, you will most likely click on the first link that shows up. This matches the numbers that the link above is suggesting for CTRs.