Categories
MARKETING

Unethical Marketing: Heineken Vs Bavaria

In the last mini-case, we briefly discussed ambush marketing, and the ethical issues behind those practices. It reminded me of two Youtube videos I came across a while ago. bavaria-beer-spoofThe first one was the walk-in closet advertisement for Heineken, and the second is a parody of the first (except with alternate ending) that advertised Bavaria (another brand of beer). When the Heineken commercial was first aired, people responded well to it. A few months after, Bavaria, Heineken’s competitor, responded by using the wide exposure of the Heineken commercial to its advantage by airing a parody of the first. After conducting some research, I found that Heineken and Bavaria do not operate under the same parent company, which means the management of Heineken probably were not too pleased by Bavaria’s parody. Although Bavaria did not portray Heineken negatively in their marketing video, the consumers who have watched Heineken’s original video would see Bavaria as superior. Heineken-Grolsch-BavariaBavaria leveraged the fame of their competitor’s successful advertising campaign to their advantage, and bypassed the anti-negative advertising laws to put down their competitor. I believe Bavaria’s method of advertising is very clever, but unethical.

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Categories
COMM486G

Social Media and the Information Age

I agree with the suggestion in the Social Media Revolution video that social media is NOT a fad. It is “a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.” I believe social media is here to stay, and that there should be new areas of study established in educational institutions dedicated to examining the effects of social media and how we can better employ it to communicate valuable information.

Even now, the rate and the manner of how we communicate is amazing. The emergence of social media such as blogs have allowed people all over the world to share their ideas with the rest of us.

For example, the novel ways of presenting data is very interactive and extends the time that the people will view the data. Schools should incorporate some of these modern information-sharing methods into their curriculum.

Visit Gapminder and Information Is Beautiful for some examples.

This is a screenshot of one of the graphs on gapminder.

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This graph is found on the Information Is Beautiful website.

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If you are interested in more information about social media and how it is impacting our lives, check this out!

Shift Happens.

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