Month: November 2010

During the last lecture of Comm 296 (marketing class), my professor, Tamar talked to us about the product placement promotional strategy. Her example of product placements in movies captured my attention. She talked to us about FedEx appearing in the movie Cast Away and some other examples. These examples made me wonder if there were other product placements in the movies that I’ve seen in the past, so I did some research and came across a very amusing website called Brandchannel.com. In the Brandcameo – films section of this site, “Brandchannel tracks  brand appearances and product placement in each week’s number one film”. This site is amusing in that it is cross-referenced by brands and movies so I can find out all the movies that featured a certain brand or all the brands that appeared in a certain movie.

Here, I found out some brands and product placements that I have never noticed or thought about before while watching the movies. Some of the brands in the films that I’ve seen include Bud Light, Burger King, Sony, Cheerios and more in Paranormal Activity 2; Hummer, Desert Eagle Pistol and more in Resident Evil: Afterlife; Coca-Cola, Mercedes, Range Rover and more in Inception; Cheetos, NBC, Wii and more in Despicable Me; Apple, Barbi, Corvette, eBay, Monopoly, GI Joe and more in Toy Story 3. In this site, I also learned that the leading brand appearances of this year are Ford and Apple.

Next time I watch a film (which will probably be none other than this week’s number one film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1), I will be paying more attention to the appearance of brands. This movie was this week’s tracked film in the Brandcameo section and it tracked Amaretti Del Chiostro, Belstaff, Samsung and Sanyo.

Kori Ellis brought up a topic of an interesting promotional campaign held by IKEA called The Life Improvement Project in his blog.

I think that this campaign is very original and engaging to their customers. With the tag-line, “Improve your community. Improve your life.”, IKEA will capture the interests of many customers to participate, as well as encourage and influence them to improve their own homes by using the IKEA products. This campaign creates a company image to the many consumers that they “care” not only for their own sales and profit but also for the community and for the good of their customers to improve their lives. Also, the contest gives a very valuable opportunities for their customers with no risk involved and people are always attracted by opportunities.

This “The Life Improvement Project” is a very creative campaign that is related and unique to the company. I am very curious to find out the project of the winning customer’s creation in the contest.

CLEAN WHAT?! Clean BALLS!?

While I was watching some TV today, I came across a very “interesting” commercial of Axe Detailer. I’ve always known Axe for their “unique” commercials but this one that I saw today particularly stood out even from their unique collection of commercials. I said an “interesting” commercial because it was hard for me to find the one right word to describe it based on my attitude. My attitude created the two words that are distinct from each other; disturbing and funny at the same time. If you watch the video above, you will know exactly what I mean.

This commercial made an obvious sexual image by using sports equipment balls to refer to as the testicles of men. They used different types of balls to describe the different stereotypical testicles: Old rugby balls as an old man’s testicles, big soccer ball sacks as a black man’s testicles, fuzzy tennis balls as a hairy man’s testicles.

While these analogies made me laugh, some features such as the old woman’s expressions and the spokesperson “playing” with the balls disturbed me as well. Also, an immediate question that came up to my mind was “Is this even APPROPRIATE to be shown on TV?!?!”

In order to take advantage of the holiday season, “financial giant” Chase began its annual Ultimate Rewards promotions on Nov. 3. This holiday promotions include “Give a gift, get a free gift card,” “Cyber Monday,” and “Eight is Great” which offers cardholders with rewards points and bonus gifts cards in limited-time deals.

On top of this, in an effort to promote these holiday promotions, Chase created a microsite that features print advertising, e-mail marketing and promotions on Oprah.com.

I think that these promotional strategies are in good timing for the holiday season which creates an extra value to the customers. The rewards that Chase offers to the customers will definitely encourage them to spend more and effectively using Chase’s card.

I can see Chase having a great financial success through the usage of marketing strategy for this year’s holiday. Plus, their company name itself sounds great! CHASE! (that’s my name!)