Boris Cheng's Blog

Many people are now playing the new Pokemon black and white versions that came out recently. I decided to write about Pokemon in my blog to address the target market of the game and how the different Pokemon games have changed throughout their development. The first 150 Pokemon along with the first 2 game-boy games (red and blue) came out in America around 1998. For the average 19 year old in 2nd year of university we were born in 1991, so at that time we were around 7 years old. Little kids/children at that time were the obvious target market of Pokemon when it first came out.  Throughout Pokemon history, there were always a team of bad guys (originally known as Team Rocket) who attempted to capture Pokemon to take over the world. However when the new black and white versions came out, I think that Nintendo considered the fact that their original target market (children at the time) were growing up so Nintendo  put certain new aspects into their new games. One obvious example of this is the fact that the “bad guys” in Pokemon black and white are known as Team Plasma. However instead of selfishly capturing and stealing Pokemon to try to take over the world they are actually considering the ethical aspects of having Pokemon. Throughout the game Team Plasma talks how about humans and trainers are capturing Pokemon and using them to battle for their own selfish reasons, and the fact that they never actually considered the feelings of the Pokemon and whether they wanted to serve their trainers. The issues and conflict in the game are now more mature and serious issues, addressing morals and ethics. I think that Nintendo is doing this to address the growing up of their target market.

The creator of Hon, s2 Games, announced a new promotion for the Japan Earthquake. They increased the amount of gold goblin coins that you would get when you use real money to purchase them. In addition to this benefit they announced that they will be donating 10 % of their revenue through this promotion to help the people in Japan.

All it is, is the picture of the heart next to your user profile to show that you support the recovery of Japan after the earthquake. The interesting marketing aspect of this is the fact the the heart is a “premium” item (as talked about in one of my previous posts). This is a premium item that can only be bought with 25 gold goblin coins. However the only way to get gold goblin coins is to purchase them with real cash.

The picture above is a direct screen shot from the coin purchasing menu in the game. As you can see the least you can buy is $10 USD which gives you a total of 840 gold goblin coins (thanks to the promotion of extra coins to attract users to buy coins). However as mentioned above the Japan heart only costs 25 gold coins, so basically if you wanted to show your support for the people in Japan through this Hon promotion you would have to spend minimum $ 10 dollars just to donate 10 % which is $1 dollar to help Japan. By using this promotion Hon is saying it is trying to help the situation in Japan however, when users purchase even the bare minimum to afford the heart icon, they are giving $9 dollars to s2 Games and only donating $1 to help Japan. This is an intelligent way to use events around the world to make money and promote the game. There are many fundraisers or charity organizations which are donating far more then 10 % towards the tragedy in Japan. Although this is a brilliant way for S2 Games to make money, how ethical is it?

@ Darren Yaneza’s Blog

My classmate recently wrote a post about craigslist in their blog. The link is above if you want to view what he wrote! Darren mentionsin his post that people can market practically anything on craigslist for other users to view. This has recently peeked my interest more then usual because my family just recently sold our house and we are looking for a place to market some of the furnature we have. The first place that I suggested to my parents was craigslist. It is a great place to advertise old items that you would want to sell. As Darren mentions the 4p’s are clearly exposed to the users when using cragistlist. The product and price are clearly displayed and you know the “place” on how to contact the seller if you are interested in the product. In addition, the “place” is acutally really accessible because anyone who has access to a computer and internet can go on craigslist to find things they want to sell or buy. The promotion basically takes care of itself, as craigslist is already well known and has many users. Craigslist has allowed many users to interact with eachother on a C2c (consumer to consumer) style. This is brilliant because if you have older things, its usually not easy to sell them. The stores definitely don’t want them. The alternative before the exsistence of craigslist was garage sales. However, craigslist is superior to garage sales in many ways, in terms of the p, place and promotion. Craigslist wins hands down. For a garage sale, maybe only people around the neighbourhood would know about your garage sale and then they have to travel to your house to look at the items. However craigslist is much more accessible and much more convinent for users.

So, Heros of Newerth (Hon) is a semi rpg type game that I play. Hon is a 5vs5 team based game where each person controls only 1 hero and tries to fight to destroy the opponents “sacred building”. The reason why this is brought up in the marketing blog is because of recent marketing strategies used by s2 games (the maker of the game) to make money and promote the game to consumers. Firstly, the game “recently” introduced a goblin coin system where you get a certain amount of silver goblin coins after each game. These silver goblin coins could then be exchanged for character models, character icons or sound packs to allow you to customize your own game.  This is something we learned in marketing class where a strategy of consumer loyalty is to allow the consumer to have a say in the product or allow them to get involved in some way. Hon players can also log on to the forums and request certain models to be made or simply make one themselves and put it online to see the opinion of others before they are possibly implemented into the game to be enjoyed by everyone. However, Hon has now introduced two new marketing strategies in their video game. There is now something called gold goblin coins which can only be obtained through using real cash.  There are items called premium items which benefit users with gold coins  because they cost relatively little gold coins but a whole bunch of silver coins to encourage users to buy gold coins with cash in real life. For example a hero model might only cost 800 gold coins but be worth 6800 silver coins meaning that you either have to play a super super long time to get it or you simply pay to get gold coins and get the model right away.  Another strategy that they have implemented is something called gold avatars (models), where a certain model for a hero will only be available for a short amount of time and then never again. Both of these marketing strategies attempt to make users feel exclusive because not everyone is willing to pay for premium models and lots of people might miss the short amount of time available for gold avatars.

Obviously the tree above is clearly not an ordinary tree. This is the Blossom event being hosted in Richmond Centre. The orange and green colored “things” on the tree are actually suppose to be flowers. The procedure is simple, you get their special “blossom paper” write down your wish in it, then fold it and simply hang it on the tree. They even teach you how to fold on their facebook event site. For every wish flower that gets attached to the tree, Richmond Centre is going to donate 1 dollar to the Children’s Wish Foundation. From a marketing perspective this achieves many purposes at once. Not only is Richmond Centre helping raise money for a children’s organization they are also “marketing” their mall to consumers with this attraction. Some people might come to Richmond Centre to see the wish tree and the wooden bridge its on. This could potentially attract consumers to shop at the mall (because people are already inside Richmond Centre, I’m guessing at least some of them will look to shop around since they are already inside the mall) as well as raise money for Children’s Wish Foundation.  This fundraiser is also great for going into spring. The theme is very fitting with the season change that is about to happen (colorful, flowers).

Roses are definitely something, a product, that capitalizes on the concept of Valentines day. Roses are extremely expensive on Valentines Day and a dozen of them can cost anywhere starting from 60 dollars and up. In terms of marketing this is once again a very intelligent strategy. In terms of the 4 P’s of marketing, the price is definitely inflated compared to normal days because companies know that the demand for roses will be very high. This links into another p, known as place. On Valentines day many places sell flowers and they tend to have extra stock of roses as they know there will be a very high demand for them. However, I think that the most interesting “p” for roses on Valentines day is undoubtedly the promotion that comes with the event. On Valentines day whether you buy roses for your date or not or how many roses you buy is often linked with “how much you like them” (which is obviously not true. More roses doesn’t mean you like someone more and less roses definitely doesn’t mean that you like them less). However the point here is the natural promotion for roses on valentines day due to societal views is that roses on valentines day are linked to love and happiness for you and your significant other. If you buy them roses and bring them on a romantic date they are likely to have a good deal and be happy and therefore this should in turn make you happy. So people are more willing to purchase roses on Valentines day even though they are much more expensive then normal simply because of the day and the mood tone and atmosphere associated with it. It is very intelligent from a marketing perspective to take advantage of this day (by increasing prices, increasing stock to sell more and make more money etc) as the “advertising” aspect is basically free because lots of people know that February 14th is Valentines day, not a lot of advertising is needed to get this across. So simply by being observant of the different events/celebrations on different days, companies can surely take huge advantage without too many costs involved.

So with Valentines day coming up and the picture above is about the Red Band promotion that Blenz is doing (this was discussed in class). This is a great creative way to attract consumers to Blenz because Valentines day is a very romantic holiday where you are suppose to have a good time with your significant other. Blenz was very smart to take advantage of this day and try to use it to promote their products. They are using Red Band as a way for others not only to enjoy a good drink on Valentines day but also have the possibly of meeting someone to spend Valentines Day with. This is very intelligent from a marketing perspective because the traditional things on valentines day usually only appeal to couples (roses, take someone out for dinner etc). However, Blenz has taken advantage of the fact that there are bound to be some people who are single on Valentines day and therefore they might be interested to go to blenz for a great drink and a chance to meet other singles to spend the day with. Since this was discussed in class it won’t be the main focus on this blog.

@ Financial Post. The Financial Post inspired me to make a post about the Starbucks logos. I offered my opinion on the matter and what I think about how the Starbucks logo has devloped over time.

@ Andrea Lee. My classmate Andrea Lee has also blogged on this topic. If you are interested in what she said you can click the link above to read it on her blog!

The picture to the left shows the different Starbucks logos and how they have evolved since 1971. In 1971 when Starbucks first started out, its logo was a plain shade of brown and had with significantly more words on it telling consumers what this brand is. In 1987, consumers generally already know what the brand Starbucks is and what they offer so the words coffee, tea and spices were dropped off the logo. In addition to this change, the words on the logo are bigger, so it is easier for customers to see and the color is changed from brown to green (a more vivid and attractive color). In 1992, not too much as changed compared to 1987, however the lower half of the mermaid is gone and the head and upper body is now bigger and more visible. However, the most interesting point is the new 2011 logo for Starbucks that came out on January 5th,2011. This new logo doesn’t even say the words Starbucks Coffee. Obviously judging by the success the company has achieved, consumers can easily tell this is the Starbucks logo without the words because the brand and what it symbolizes (the environment of Starbucks, the quality drinks the service etc) has already been embedded in the logo. Starbucks is confident to the point where the main focus of their logo now is simply a picture of a mermaid. The name of the company is not even present on the logo. They are trying to simplify their brand logo simply because they can. Consumers already recognize the product and make all the necessary links when they see this green mermaid, the words Starbucks Coffee are redundant. This is one of many examples of how a brands logo can evolve throughout time.

So recently I noticed that my friends were talking about Groupon quite frequently (even though its been around for a while already) so I went to sign up for it as well. After researching a bit about how Groupon works on www.grouponworks.com, I started to think that this is a pretty clever idea. This way the Groupon company can be advertised to consumers because lots of people are looking for deals to do a variety of different things that Groupon has to offer. Companies are definitely attracted to give super good deals to Groupon because Groupon helps them attract tons of customers as well as advertise their company and brand for them. If something is 50 % off, lots more consumers will be willing to go try something new, this could potentially help companies attract new consumers. This is a very clever way to widen your companies target market and possibly attract a lot of new customers who are willing to try new things for the first time because of the great deal they are getting. When consumers feel like they are more willing to spend money because they feel that they are getting more value with less money. From personal experience, I saw that there were Groupons for the Greater Vancouver Zoo in Aldergrove. So I decided to go visit the zoo with a few friends. Haha.

So this image is an advertisement for the badminton racket Armortec 700. The piece of paper on the racket head has a picture of the 2008 Beijing Olympics Gold medalist in Men’s singles badminton, Lin Dan. There are many people in china who look at to Lin Dan and watch his videos to learn how to play badminton or cheer him on in tournaments. This is a prime example of advertising using celebrities. Another aspect worth mentioning is the head of the dragon on the racket case. In Chinese tradition and culture dragons symbolize power, strength and good luck. By putting the dragon symbol on the racket and the racket case Yonex, the badminton racket company, is trying to associate their product with these qualities. The royal color scheme of the racket (red and yellow) also attracts consumers attention and fits into the theme of the powerful dragon. Lastly, this racket was especially made for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, that is why it is a limited edition, the regular Armortec 700 racket doesn’t have the same color scheme nor the pictures of the dragons. This makes this edition of the racket an exclusive special edition only available for a limited time attracting consumers to buy the product.