dlehnersauder

As I was sifting through my classmates’ blog posts to write my final Comm 296 post I came across Chris Choi’s blog post regarding differentiation through product innovation, “Marketing blog #2 (Braille Burgers).” His post reminded me of a new phenomenon in dining (and service differentiation) that I became aware of this past summer – dining in the dark.

“Foodies” – fine dining aficionados – are constantly striving to find the best eating experience. A new trend of serving guests gourmet meals in pitch-black restaurants is supposed to enhance the flavours of the food by employing sensory deprivation. Depriving sight from a diner is supposed to increase customers’ feelings of taste and smell for an enhanced dining experience. Servers are often completely blind or are visually impaired in dark restaurants.

Some might argue that these restaurants are simply the creation of avant-garde chefs who regard food and flavour as an artistic expression. I, however, choose to look at these restaurants from a marketing perspective. Restaurants are commonly perceived to be one of the most difficult businesses to start and maintain. There are thousands of substitutes for an individual restaurant so differentiation is difficult to achieve.

The dark restaurants compensate for this shortcoming in the restaurant market by offering innovative service differentiation. Instead of simply trying to promote that one’s restaurant has the best food, the best service, or the best atmosphere, the dark restaurants are promoting an entirely new service offering. This type of service differentiation serves as both a unique product but also a means of promotion. The uniqueness of the service offering is enough to engage and capture a target market of not only foodies, but individuals looking for a novel experience.

I may be reading too much into the marketing mix of dark restaurants – the restaurants could simply be the creation of chefs and restaurateurs driven by their passion for flavour. Or maybe I’m one of the few to not have the wool pulled over their eyes by noticing the marketing brilliance of dark restaurants.

Daniel Boissonneau-Lehner

Craig DeWolf, a channel management professional, wrote a blog post titled “The 3 Basic Tenets of Channel Marketing” which breaks down the 3 most important aspects of channel marketing that are often overlooked or violated. The 3 tenets are:

1)The channel is made up of independent businesses—each having their own agenda.

2) Channels are about efficiency–they should be the preferred alternative to you engaging customers directly.

3) Your channel strategy should be aligned with how, and where, your customers want to buy.

His blog post reminded me of a blog post I wrote last year about Best Buy’s difficulties in managing their marketing channel during the economic recession. After reading DeWolf’s post, I would like to reexamine Best Buy’s channel strategy failure as defined by the “3 Tenets.”

1)The channel is made up of independent businesses—each having their own agenda.

Best Buy failed to fully align their market strategy with their suppliers. Their largest failure in this respect was recognizing the differing lifecycles of their partners’ products and adjusting their engagement strategy accordingly. Best Buy typically orders their products 6 weeks before they want the stock on shelves, which is often not enough time for suppliers to meet demand. Demand declined during the recession and retailers cut back inventory orders so suppliers frantically decreased production. Retailers were understocked and unable to meet consumer demands and upkeep with product lifecycles – which is relatively short in the consumer technology marketplace.

2) Channels are about efficiency–they should be the preferred alternative to you engaging customers directly.

“Unsold inventory only loses value as newer technologies hit the market.” Therefore, efficiency is essential. Best Buy’s indirect sales model is becoming outdated. In the age of online sales, consumers can peruse through a larger variety of consumer electronics and components at cheaper rates than offered through Best Buy’s retail experience. An indirect marketing channel will result in more inefficiency than a direct model – with more levels comes a longer process and higher final price on the final good. Best Buy has failed to effectively address this issue in their channel strategy.

3) Your channel strategy should be aligned with how, and where, your customers want to buy.

Predicting consumer trends is a very difficult aspect of marketing. Because Best Buy is not a trendsetter – but simply a retailer – they must market themselves as completely up-to-date in technology trends. DeWolf states that Best Buy is dying because “[it is] no longer the preferred shopping outlet for consumers.” Best Buy has not aligned their channel strategy to efficiently move their products to end users – a trend that began during the recession. With online sales, direct sales and various other channels for consumers to buy products stocked in Best Buy’s stores, Best Buy is failing to deliver the shopping experience favored by consumers. This is largely due to their antiquated channel strategy.

Though I can point out some of the flaws in Best Buy’s marketing channel, I do not have the expertise (or appropriate word count) to offer solutions. Best Buy is experiencing what countless other companies are experiencing – uncertainty in an everchanging market. It’s going to take a team of highly trained professionals to solve Best Buy’s channel problems. I just hope I got the ball rolling…

Daniel Boissonneau-Lehner

My classmate, Josh Andler, wrote a blog post titled “Brandwashing in movies?”commenting on the abundant amount of product placement in film and television. As a movie-lover, I wince when I see blatant product placement

Product placement often takes me out of the narrative and forces me to question the motives of the film. Can product placement detract a brand’s target market from purchasing their products?

Josh effectively explains the need and outcome of product placement in media. From a marketing perspective, framing a scene to include some popular brand names and products is an incredible advertising opportunity that can be more than enough to spark consumer interest and shape consumer buyer behaviour.

What motivated me to write this blog was an article I read regarding product placement and the new James Bond movie. Apparently, a third of the 23^rd James Bond movie’s budget ($45 million) is coming from big brands. Though I recognize that James Bond is entertainment for entertainment’s sake, my love for the franchise was slightly besmirched when I saw 2006’s Casino Royale in theatres. The product placement littered throughout the movie served as a consistent distraction that took me out of the movie’s plot developments. My reaction to the blatant product placement can be described as irrational resentment towards the advertised brands.

For example, Sony VAIO – a brand that took up as much screen time as James Bond himself – conjures up feelings of bitterness and anger, not desire.

Why use James Bond?

James Bond is widely considered to be the  archetype for male suaveness, masculinity and “coolness”. I believe marketers recognize the value of James Bond in advertising to a large target market of males who strive to achieve the masculine image that James Bond represents. The character has always been associated with cosmopolitanism, nonchalance, and debonairness. If you can’t be like James Bond – and seeing as he’s a fictional character, no one can – then you can at least use the same products he uses.

However, a major problem is encountered when trying to reach your target market through James Bond. In the pre-Daniel Craig era, the goods and gadgets Bond used were either fictional, or luxurious to the extent that they were unaffordable to a huge portion of the population. The new phase of James Bond movies, however, circumnavigate this flaw.

The new James Bond doesn’t use fictional gadgets – he uses consumer products. The new James Bond drives a Ford – an affordable and available product – as well as an amalgamation of lavish vehicles which are necessary to upkeep his image as debonair man of luxury. The new James Bond is an advertiser’s dream man – a platform to reach the highly lucrative males aged 18 – 54 target market. But does it work? I fall into James Bond’s target market and James Bond hasn’t influenced my buyer behaviour in any way – or at least not in favor to the products placed in the movies.

Daniel Boissonneau-Lehner

In recent years I have abandoned watching television the traditional way; opting to avoid paying for cable, sitting through commercials and adjusting my TV-viewing to network schedules. However, under extraordinary circumstances, I am subjected to sit through traditional television and suffer through masses of trite, seemingly endless commercials.

Because I am rarely exposed to the conventional 30 second TV commercial, I have become hyperaware of an apparent advertising strategy trend that is applied to a vast range of household goods.

Approximately 75% of household shoppers for goods such as food, household items and children products, are women[1]. Marketers are very aware of this statistic and thus cater their promotion to appeal to this demographic. Advertising for household products has largely been targeted to women and some contend that the prevalent advertising strategies of consumer goods have shaped archetypal female identities since the 1950s – when advertisers first realized the buying power of women.

At first, it was the marketers who created the female archetype of the housekeeper, however with the rise of feminism and growing number of women in the workforce marketers had to react and adapt. In recent years, their adaptation led to the creation of the “superwoman”: 

However, advertisers noticed the “superwoman” archetype was met with some negative response as the depiction of women in the advertisements were received as unrealistic and in some cases depressing. This marketing strategy created the sentiment that women are inadequate if they are unable to meet the improbable standards depicted in these commercials[2].

The quandary for advertisers then is how best to reach women (the target demographic for household goods) who are largely of the baby boomer generation and are therefore aware of the paternalistic imposition of the submissive housewife, and yet is daunted by the expectations of the supermom archetype.

Enter the “super idiot” – the advertising trend I picked up on.

In many commercials for household goods, men are being portrayed as foolish buffoons. This strategy enforces the notion that it is fine to fall short of the supermom standard while maintaining the woman’s relative superiority to her male counterpart. The danger of this technique is that it may alienate the other 25% of the household product market.

Though the textbook (up to chapter 4) assesses the social  criticisms of marketing, the creation of negative stereotypes through advertising campaigns is not suggested. In effect what these advertisements are doing is creating a negative archetype of men that mirrors the negative archetype of women created by advertising campaigns in the 1950s. Should the social impact of advertising campaigns be taken into consideration by marketers in developing a sustainable promotion campaign? I think from now on, I’m going to stick to downloading TV programs…

Daniel Boissonneau-Lehner