Month: February 2013

Following the ethics post and lecture, I stumbled on this marketing blog post by Tom Cleeland that was motivated by a video by documentary maker Ken Burns.  The post highlights an idea that you don’t realize at first until someone else has told you.   The idea is that ‘manipulation is present in every story whether we like it or not’ which makes advertising in its purest form manipulation.  Whether through social media, commercials, or posters, it’s easy to try to tell story and to craft an ‘emotional hook’.  This gets the viewers engaged and moved, even sometimes to tears.

The question becomes if advertising is manipulation, when is this okay and when is it not?  In Tom’s perspective, “manipulation is okay when it’s rooted in the fabric of the story we’re telling and not rooted in a sales pitch or promise.”   He then elaborates on a commercial about a little boy waiting anxiously for Christmas to give his parents a present.  The ending of the ad is touching and relatable to everyone who knows the joy and love that the Christmas spirit brings.

In my opinion, telling a story and influencing people to take action in a positive way is perfectly reasonable.  But of course, like everything in life, there needs to be a balance.

A slightly different example I can think of is the ads run by the Canadian Cancer Society.  As I volunteer with the organization, I was recently sifting through their ad campaigns on YouTube to pick out specific videos and found many that stood out for me.

The focus of many of their campaigns is to tell a story and find ways to connect and relate in viewers.  In a way, the Society manipulates viewers to recall their own experiences and feel a sense of sympathy for those who suffer or relief that they are healthy.  But the end result of these advertisements, the positive impact the organization makes on people’s lives, and the change they bring is more substantial than trying to make a sales pitch.  I know the organization’s mission and values and therefore can trust their advertisements, but this may not hold true for other organizations.

After the initial launch of the new BlackBerry 10, the company still saw shares of Research in Motion Ltd., plunge even with positive reviews for the new smartphones.  After resisting the trend of full touch-screen displays for so long, the company has jumped onto the bandwagon and is trying to compete with the giants of Apple and Samsung for a share in the market.

A bold move that was also announced by RIM was to change the company name from RIM to BlackBerry, with the ‘BBRY’ symbol on the stock exchange.  I believe this was a good move for BlackBerry.  The fact is, most people didn’t even know what Research in Motion was and didn’t know the connection with the BlackBerry brand.

On Sunday, for its first time, Blackberry launched a costly commercial during the Superbowl in an attempt to attract as many viewers as possible.  The unusual ad features completely out of the ordinary incidents that happen for a Blackberry user, including growing elephant feet and a truck exploding into millions of rubber ducks!  The ad then ends with an announcer mentioning “in 30 seconds it’s quicker to show what it can’t do.”  According to the chief marketing officer here, they “wanted to let people know that Blackberry is back and that Blackberry 10 is worth checking out.”  Personally, the ad didn’t resonate well with me as there was too much going on and I wasn’t intrigued. I would have preferred to actually learn about the features right away and be able to research more if I was interested, instead of having to look it all up myself.  But if you want to, you can see more of its features here.  Blackberry most likely paid a hefty cost for that ad, with estimates of $3.6 million to $4 million for Superbowl prime time so Blackberry better hope that it made others, if not myself, interested in checking out the Blackberry 10.

Take a look at the commercial below and tell me what you think!

The Blackberry Z10 was launched in Canada today, and according article in the Vancouver Sun, there has been a very positive response from customers.  Albeit Blackberry could not entice customers to camp out overnight and wait in endless lines, as they have been willing to do for previous Apple products, sales have topped expectations and were even sold-out in some locations.  Shares of BlackBerry have now been rising with Bernstein Research’s predictions at a $20-25 range for shares instead of its current value of $16.

Being the sole main Canadian telecommunication company, I hope that BlackBerry will be successful and regain its stance in the telecommunications market.