This is a response to fellow classmate Susan “Ming Jee” Kim’s “Product Placement”

I recently watched the new 007 James Bond movie, Skyfall andI couldnt help but notice the ridiculously large amount of fancy luxury cars in the film. Nowadays, product placement plays an extremely large role in movies. However, I could not imagine how many different brands of cars were included into the english action thriller when usually, movies would only have one automobile brand. With Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Jaguar, and of course the infamous Aston Martin just to name a few, Skyfall definitely makes the other action movies feel mediocre.

Although like my class Susan, who’s tempted to purchase certain products after watching a movie, I am not capable of buying these luxury cars. But I did take one thing out of watching the movie, and that is how important a brand is for a company. It is all about advertising and brand positioning. Thanks to the marketing lectures, I can learn to appreciate my favorite movies even more by understand the caliber of the movie based on how many product placements they have.

I’m writing a response to Garry Marr’s “Why we’re ‘in the back of the class’ when it comes to financial literacy” on the Financial Post.

In his blog, studies taken by The Brondesbury Group over 1000 Onatario citizens, showed that Canadians scored 53% of their 21 questions correctly.  91% of Canadians would know that longer debts result in more costs to way in total. However, they fail to understand that a mortage of 25 year amortization is more than a 20 year amortization, which essentially is the same as what they already knew! The only difference is that the words are switched up with fancy financial terms and Canadians suddenly do not understand.

The blog states that Canadians are still lacking in terms of daily financial literacy which will greatly hinder their financial position.

I took great interest in this blog because it I am surprised at how little average Canadians know when it comes to financial literacy. These are words and terms that I learn in business school, and I would hope that one day, if The Brondesbury Group does a survey in Vancouver and I get these questions, I will be able to answer them. Hopefully my financial position will be better off too!

Traveling by flight is not a cheap expense. I traveled to Hong Kong for a vacation this summer and my flight ticket was not cheap. This is why I greatly related to fellow classmate Ariel’s blog about Air Canada’s new low-cost carriers.

Air Canada understood the market need for a cheaper, less inexpensive flight travel and I believe it is a market they can thrive in. After doing some research on my own, their new low cost airplanes will have approximately 50 more seats than the preview regular prices flights. Compromising leg room for a cheaper ticket is definitely a choice many people will take and I believe this will help Air Canada’s profits.

Linking this to my Comm101 Class regarding our business tools, Calin Rovinescu, Air Canada’s chief executive said “We’re looking at this thing as being a significant tool in the Air Canada tool kit.” I believe it is similar to brand positioning, a tool I learned in my earlier classes. I believe Air Canada will do well by creating a new line under their wing using the Air Canada brand, which is still the strongest Airline in Canada.

The recent election was a typical bipartisan division between Americans. Some of them stayed Democratic, others stayed Republican. Year by year, most states don’t change their political views much. For example, California is always blue on the map, while Texas is always red. It all comes down to a few “swing states” that make the difference.

In addition, after, I also noticed the amount of celebrities that have backed up the two candidates as the elections progressed. According to Policymic, by August 2012, the celebrities supporting Obama raised $75 million dollars to support his campaign while Romney, minus Oprah’s millions, raised astounding $105 million dollars.

Money played an extremely large role in politics. As a business student, it was very interesting as to how much business, money and celebrities are involved in politics.

According to the financial post, Canadians have been on a steady decline in using cash as debit cards and credits have been used more frequently. However, Bank of Canada Review states that Canadians have begun to increase the value of their bills used at a rate of 5% per year. This means that Canadians are using more and more of their larger bills!

I found this article interesting as the new $20 banknote has just been issued and I was wondering how Canadians are reacting to it. I’ve many heard stories about how these new bills melt in heat, and shrinks after being soaked and thrown into the dryer.

After reading this article, I see that Canadians have begun to use larger bills like the c-note. Partially due to inflation as the penny and nickel seem obsolete to daily purchases, I began to wonder how much of an impact the $20 bill will have. It’s no wonder why they leave the $10 bill last to print because it creates a far less of an impact in our daily lives than the c-note will.

I’ve always been astonished at how well Canada’s economy is doing relative to the global uproar. Especially for our neighbors south of us, the US has been suffering from the weak economy greatly with numerous large firms closing or having financial losses. On top of that, Canada greatly depends on the American economy yet it is impressively stable.

According to Forbes, the top five Canadian banks own approximately 90% of all of Canada’s banking assets. Foreign banks have also begun to diminish in asset shares with only HSBC having a significant piece of Canadian’s banking assets.

So does this exactly mean? Well a law passed in 1967 nicknamed “widely held” rule, prohibits the ownership of banks. Much unlike the capitalistic approach in the states where every bank can be owned by an individual or group, the law declined the demand of takeovers of Canadian banks. This in turn resulted in a less urgency to produce large short-term profits but instead focus on the long run. Forbes also stated that the stocks for RBC and TD bank both increased eight and five folds respectively while the best bank in the states, JP Morgan Chase only increased 13%.

I personally understand the importance of how our Canadian banks differ from the Americans’ because my mother works at a bank. She told me that TD recently bought out a bank in States. This shows how much Canadian banks are improving compared to their American counterparts.