Month: November 2010

In my older post “The Decision…Spoofed?” I spoke about what I saw as a failed marketing attempt by Nike, since they received incredible backlash for it from various locations. I believed this to be true… until I saw this new commercial :

Before I continue, you should know that both Michael and Lebron’s shoes are made by Nike.

This latest commercial is, in my opinion, one of THE greatest response commercials I have ever seen. Michael is known as one of, if not the greatest, basketball players to have ever played the game and for him to respond with something like that.. I’m speechless. One word: Brilliant.

Brilliant because both shoes receive the exposure. Lebron James’ is now seen as the pupil who didn’t follow in the great footsteps of the one who came before him, which A LOT of people can relate to. At the same time MJ maintains his image as a great player who worked for everything he did and fought for every championship, which A LOT of people strive for.

Whether or not Nike had been playing to do the MJ response from the beginning or not, it was brilliant. I am a HUGE fan of this commercial and have already spread it to many of my friends. Props to Nike on a situation well handled.

At this point, pretty much everyone has acknowledged the fact that Facebook and Twitter are not only social networking sites, but are also two of the heavier hitters(not heaviest, that would be youtube) in social media advertising. They have managed to place their brands in the consciousness of pretty much anyone who has access to the internet. What then, is there next step? Do they want to stay put being the middle men in some products cases, or should they attempt to expand and step into a different market, such as shoes?

The blog post Dislike from one of the top blogs world-wide, Gizmodo, examines this.

They’ve posted what are dubbed “concept shoes”. These shoes have the colors that are associated with Facebook and Twitter, as well as each brands logo. Facebook simply being the word “Facebook” and Twitter’s being their little bird.

While I’m not positive if these are truly concepts, or if it was someones way of taking a stab at the popular media giants, I feel like you would still have some people who would buy them. They could choose to market them in two different ways. The first one being that they could attempt to sell them in numbers at a cheaper price in hopes of enticing more consumers. The second, which I feel would work better, to limit the supply and sell them in ‘select’ higher fashion stores, where you would find the people attempting to stay ahead of the style curve, most likely someone attempting to be a hipster.

Would I buy them? No.

Do I think they will probably be made at some point? Probably.

Kevin Grewal mentioned in his blog post, The Decision, a new ad by Nike that was released in an attempt to ease their consumers negative views towards Lebron James’ decision to leave his home town.

It was a good preemptive strike for them to take in an attempt to settle the minds of countless customers and for them to be able to continue to use the marketing machine that is Lebron James. However, I’m sure they didn’t predict the backlash that their ad would receive.

Kevin pointed out that had they waited even a few more weeks, the fans would have been able to see what it was that made Lebron so great – his abilities on the court.

Instead they now face a backlash from the city of Cleveland that mocks the commercial they tried to put out.

Not only do they have to deal with that, but they also have to deal with the fact that it was made fun of on Southpark. SOUTHPARK! Southpark managed to make Nike’s use of rhetorical questions funny, at the same time as they were able to compare Lebron to BP’s C.E.O(which is not something anyone wants).

Should Nike’s marketing department have foreseen these likely scenarios? Probably. Did they? Not that we can see. I assume that they figured any form of retort would not have been able to achieve as much exposure as their advertisements on T.V. They seem to have miscounted YouTube….

The Call of Duty franchise has been one of the premier first person shooter franchises over the past few years. Their previous release, Call of Duty : Modern Warfare 2, won numerous awards including Best Game of the Year from multiple sources. Their newest thriller, C.o.D: Black Ops had quite the reputation to uphold.

While I have yet to play or buy the game, I know I will. The success that the game will have will be because of how well its past ones have been accepted. They have successfully created a game that is ahead of the competition in graphics, content and play style, and that is unquestionably one of the best video game experiences.

The newest trailer released on YouTube is not the most detailed, but it does what it has to, to remind viewers of what they get out of their games – the ability to go to war, but not die. You are given an experience where you are able to be that “guy who saves the world” but you put nothing at risk

When I was shopping for my first laptop a little over a year ago, I was faced with the ultimate choice – Mac or PC? This is a choice that every first time laptop user has to go through.

In order to figure out which one is ‘right’ for us we turn to many different sources in our attempt to get the DL on each product and hopefully figure out which is superior. In my journey I asked friends how they felt about the different kind of computers and I found those who had PC’s swore by them and those with Macs said they’d never go back. I slowly realized that just by asking my friends, I wouldn’t figure out which was ‘better’ because everyone liked what they had.

The next thing I did was turn to the internet. I googled(searched) for hours trying to find anything that separated the two. But, just like with my friends, every article I read was biased. At this point I was starting to pull my hair out.

Ya, ya, ya. I know, this is just as bad as all the biased articles I had read, but it was amusing and in was finally a way for PCs to fight back against all the “I’m a PC , and I’m a MAC” commercials.

What I decided from my digging around was that Mac’s and PC’s fill the same need. PC’s have been widespread for longer, so they are more universal and are larger in the business community. Mac’s offer a fresh look and have programs that are more for the casual computer user.

The difference: Branding and what you want from your computer.

What I decided?

Need I say anymore?