Marketing was not at all what I expected. I was expecting a class that would drive me insane with coming up with different creative campaigns to get people to buy your product. I was pleasantly surprised to find this was not the case! I learnt that the creative part of marketing, isn’t actually really done by the marketing department, but the marketing department assesses market conditions and does research into what needs to be fulfilled by different segments of potential products to determine what products to develop and sell. Marketing actually turned out to be the course I enjoyed the most as it is all situation based and you can take it any direction you want and reason it in the way that makes sense to you, and as long as your logic is sound and fits the situation, you can’t really be wrong! Marketing was such a positive experience for me and I feel that it is a field that can be useful no matter where my business degree may take me, that I am going to complete a double option in marketing with my original option of finance.

I also learnt another important lesson from this marketing course: for group projects, as nice as it may be to believe that you can rely on your group members to do their parts, you better know their parts inside and out to ensure that the work gets done. i have never really had a group project turn out like this before where the majority of work is done by one or two members of the group, but it just reinforced that knowing every detail about everyone’s part is best because if something comes up and a group member cannot complete their part as they had originally hoped, you can easily complete it for them without tearing your hair out figuring out what they were trying to say!

For my external marketing blog, I stumbled upon this very interesting blog post for Nintendo’s new gaming system, the Wii U. Now, in my opinion the system takes away the fun of gaming with friends and encourages kids to not be social as they can ignore other people in the room and still play their games. But this is not the most shocking part. This campaign should raise a few eyebrows!!

They are comparing it to their own product, and pretty much saying our other product is bad so don’t buy it!! How does that make any sense!! The Wii is already known to be a bit of an inferior system to the PS3 and XBOX 360, so it should be comparing the new features of the Wii U to these systems and showing how these new features make their system more appealing for younger children who want to play video games (as that is the segment that Nintendo serves). This contradicts basic marketing strategy; you want to differentiate yourself from your competitors, not yourself!! This will only hurt sales as it pretty much trashes their own system, and those who don’t like the idea will behind the Wii U, but are told by Nintendo that the Wii is not as good as the Wii U the customer does not want, will just take their business to either Sony or Microsoft for another game system, and Nintendo will loose sales. I am in full agreement with the blog post I read, as it is just absurd that this is a marketing campaign that a company would use for their own product as it hurts themselves in hopes of attracting customers to their product. But the bigger question is, anyone interested in the Wii U will not be interested in the Wii as they will want the newer system, so will the comparison provide any value to them if the Wii was never an option for them.

The last two movies I have seen in theaters have had some odd advertising. I’m used to the generic car  and cell phone commercials as I am a frequent visitor to the movie theaters, and 3D movie trailers for new movies coming out in 3D. But these times, I experienced 3D commercials for Cover Girl makeup and the Black Berry Z10! I was extremely confused by these two marketing campaigns as to me the 3D part seemed absolutely absurd and not needed!

3D is cutting edge technology, as proven with movies, but it needs to be paired with the right movie and done properly. And its taken Hollywood a few years, but they are finally learning how to use it. But here we go all over again with companies marketing their products. I don’t see the reason for having the commercials in 3D as it doesn’t make the product seem more life like (the makeup maybe to show how real it looks, like its in 3D! You can see the colour on the eye lashes! I don’t, I’m a guy!) This seems so irrelevant as products are we something we can touch, feel and interact with, so 3D seems to have no place in the marketing campaign. I understand the purpose for movie trailers in 3D, as the final movie is in 3D so it gives you a short idea of what the movie is about and how the 3D aspect of the movie feels. But its pricey to convert to 3D, so why are companies using the technology on basic marketing campaigns. It seems like a waste of money as the trailers are when so many people run to the washroom or to the concession stand to get food before the movie begins, which begs the question: if they are spending all the money on 3D technology for their commercials, who is their campaign reaching if half the theater isn’t watching it!

In response to Jonathan Harrison’s blog post on using viral videos on the internet to market products, as they are rapidly shared by people to all of their friends and colleges is a great idea, but I see one problem with this type of marketing: creating the right type of video for it to be successfully viral is incredibly complex. Many videos hit the viral status, most recently Gangman Style, but when I think of a extremely popular viral video I immediately think of Rebecca Black’s “Friday” music video. There is no need to link the video as there is almost a 99% chance that you have seen it or know what happens in it. And that’s because it went viral, but for companies to copy this and get that type of viral awareness so that everyone knows who you are from one video can be very risky. Why?? Because many videos, such as Rebecca Black, get the unbelievable amounts of views due to the fact that everyone thinks they are awful and great for a laugh.

So, creating a video that can get the viral status but is actually enjoyed by the general public and not completely trashed is going to be extremely difficult for companies to do as they need to find the right mix of advertising with comedy, but not to the point that its hated but enough silliness in the video for it to go viral. I think that it would be very costly to conduct research to determine what would meet this requirement, and then all the money spent on the advertisement could possibly be a waste if it doesn’t go viral. In my opinion, I believe it would be better for companies to stick to more traditional forms of advertising (including bus stop ads, TV commercials  and social media marketing) as they have knowledge on what makes an effective advertisement, and leave going viral for people who have time to make those ridiculous videos to entertain the world and don’t care about the possible backlash they may receive from people.

Source: comingsoon.net

One of the most anticipated films of 2013 is without question J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek Into Darkness.  On concept alone, the movie will be amazing as J.J. Abrams has entertained audiences for the past years with such hits as Super 8 and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, but Star Trek Into Darkness seems to be no exception from early marketing for the movie. But my focus in this post is to look at the marketing campaign that is getting the internet buzzing and causing even more anticipation for the films release in May.

Abrams is sticking to his usual marketing campaign of keeping lock down on the specific details of the film to ensure that audiences will be wowed upon the film’s release, but this campaign is causing much more chatter than his previous films. The marketing campaign officially launched on December 3, 2012 when a teaser poster was released featuring a mysterious figure (most likely Benedict Cumberbatch) standing in front of a damaged London with the Star Fleet logo made out of ship wreckage surrounding the poster. Following the poster, a vague description of the movie was released, giving no insight into the film apart from that the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise will be up against a deadly villain.

Abrams added that the film would feature a re-visioning of a classic Star Trek villain, with Benedict Cumberbatch in the role of this unnamed villain. Questions and multiple internet theories have been raised since the casting of Cumberbatch as to what Star Trek villain he will be portraying, with the Khan and Gary Mitchell, but so far no information provided in the marketing campaign has given any hints as to who he is! Fans had hoped that all would be answered when the film’s first trailer was released days after the poster was released, but only more confusion was created.

Through only the release of the teaser poster and trailer, Abrams’ marketing campaign for Star Trek Into Darkness has removed the focus from other summer blockbuster releases, such as Iron Man 3 and Man of Steel, and focused it all entirely on who is Benedict Cumberbatch is portraying.

(Continued in Part 2)

(Click here for Part 1)

Abrams followed along the choices of Christopher Nolan (Director of The Dark Knight Trilogy) to release the opening scene in IMAX in December with the release to The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey as Nolan did with both The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises. The move worked for Nolan, and so far has seemed to work with Abrams as the 9 minute opening scene was met with positive reception and helped set an record for largest December opening for an IMAX film to date. Kicking off 2013, it was revealed that

Source: comingsoon.net

Cumberbatch would be portraying John Harrison, who conveniently enough doesn’t exist in the Star Trek universe so is most likely a pseudonymous which is straight out of Nolan’s playbook as he did the same thing for both Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Marion Cotillard’s characters in The Dark Knight Rises (and in addition to following the same moves of The Dark Knight, the whole marketing campaign is very much mirroring The Dark Knight which is playing on one of the most popular film franchises in the past year to get fans even more excited about the film.)

But Abram’s biggest move was with the Super Bowl. Days prior to the Super Bowl, an app was launeched that allowed fans to interact with images and trailers to gain exclusive content about the film, with a second surprise coming when fans used the app while the TV spot played during the Super Bowl. And now, after Super Bowl, the surprise is something very unusual but exciting: fans who have used the app and interacted with the Super Bowl TV Spot have the opportunity to buy tickets to advanced screenings of the film on May 15 in IMAX 3D (two days prior to the film’s wide release on May 17) exclusively through the app. Still nothing as to who John Harrison is, but none the less fans are dying to know, and this marketing strategy has definitely worked on this fan who already has his tickets via the app for the advanced screening and is anxiously waiting May 15 to figure it all out!

Boxing Day sales are always one of the biggest sales of the year in Canada where it is quite common to find customers lined up for hours starting the night before to be first in line for the item of their desire when the stores open on December 26. But are all the deals and “door crashers” that are advertised to the public, but are these deals really all that they are promised to be. From my own shopping on Boxing Day for mainly movies, I have seen lots of DVDs and Blu-Rays that I bought when they first come out or during other sales and find that Boxing Day prices are the same or more expensive than when i bought them a few months before. This poses the question of is it ethical for companies to market their sales with such promise when referred to as their biggest sale of the year, when their sales are not actually their best prices. Or, is it the responsibility of the shoppers to be critical in evaluating the information they are given before shopping when huge sales are promised by the store.

As much as I want to say this is unethical purely based on the fact that some customers are not getting the best deal on certain items from the same project, I think the company’s are behaving ethically as they are not promising their best prices ever, but just that it is their biggest sale of the year and that consumers are believing that these companies are behaving in their best interests and not as the profit-maximizing businesses they truly are. It’s all in the wording of their campaign, as they will most likely use words that imply the best prices, etc but never actually state this. Instead, consumers should be a bit more careful with their money and evaluate Boxing Day sales to ensure they are getting the best deal and not mislead by the marketing campaigns of companies.