David Dana's Blog

Hello blog readers:

This might very well be my last marketing related blog in this series of blogs I have posted throughout the last semester. As a goodbye I would like to leave you with a good saying: Write your own future.

As you might be expecting I have a sports commercial by Nike, that was released right before the world cup, and it talks about writing your own future. This commercial used certain sports idols to promote their product, idols including Cristiano Ronaldo, Wanye Ronney, Homer Simpson, Kobe Bryant, and some other more. The commercial shows how every action during life (or in this case the world cup) leads to all the reactions in the future. So sit back and enjoy this Nike commercial; it was a pleasure writing for you.

Hello fellow readers:

As you are probably expecting another sports related blog I had to post about a commercial I really love. I actually found out about this commercial by another blog, the marketing blog UK. A commercial in which Novak Djokovic gets on top of a bi-plane and plays tennis while the plane is going at 150 miles per hour. Yes, you read it correctly, he played on top of a moving plane. I have no idea how much Head had to invest in this but it was worth it. I took out three things from this commercial; first Djokovic is one hell of an athelete, Secondly that must be one good tennis racket (if it works on a plane it must work on a court), finally and most important, that looks so awesome I neeeed to do it someday. Here is the video in case you havnt seen it.

David Dana

Hello fellow blog readers;

The subject of today is no laughing thing, it is related to carbon emitions, global warming and the end of the world! (ok that last part went to far… or did it?)

I was recently reading Tom Rattray’s marketing blog and found extremely interesting a post regarding carbon offsetting. And I read about this company called Carbon Offsets, and their projects to reduce carbon emissions. Within their website they posted a series of ideas to reduce carbon emissions, and a simple calculator to calculate how much it would cost for you to balance those emissions with carbon offsets. Despite the fact I really liked the intention of this company I did not agree with most of it.

First off many of the information contained in the website is measured as an estimate, and as standard throughout different situations. Secondly it has many “green ideas”, that when measured in a complete life cycle analysis they will produce more carbon than what they are earning. For example the use of ethanol instead of gasoline for automobile combustion. Even though the ethanol burns cleaner than the gasoline and does not release as much CO2, it is really hard to produce. In fact to produce ethanol one needs to use more energy than the extracted ethanol is producing.

The Carbon Reduction company has a great goal and is really advanced in the topic. But they need to conduct  far more research into their ideas, inovations and measurements. Especially before charging 150 dollars to a person so they achieve “carbon neutral”.

But then why do people or businesses pay so much to be branded with this inaccurate,  “carbon neutral” stamp?Because of the image this brand portrays. People want to buy from a company that is not killing the world. That has been the emphasis of Toyota and it has worked perfectly. Few people know that the manufacturing of GM is far more environmentally friendly than that of Toyota. And this information is really hard to get, specially since Toyota does not release public statements regarding the environmental footprint of their productions.

David Dana

Hello readers:

The last couple of weeks I have been learning about and analyzing different segments and how companies choose their target segment and position themselves where they want in that segment’s mind. And this reminded me allot about a superbowl comercial, the 2011 Dodge Charger comercial.

Dodge knows that the people that buy a Charger do not buy it because of its fancy gadgets, they buy it because of the muscle car spirit the Charger possess. They are targeting the car lovers who can stare more time at a car engine than a TV (unless there is a car show on the TV). These people love to drive, it can relax them, make them happy, and many times their driving can define their day. And posing the idea that with the other companies, soon they wont be able to drive… the cars will drive themselves. And they went even farther as to make reference to Matrix, a movie most or all of their market has seen. And they make reference to this dark future controlled by robots. So Dodge differentiated itself and established itself as “the leader of the human resistance”.

David Dana

Greeting’s blog reader

Marketing can be seen everywhere. I did not believe this three months ago, but now I simply cant find anything that is not related to marketing. So on an enlightened new view of things, I decided to look at the marketing of my favorite subject, sports (no not parties, those go second). But sports, more specifically the FIFA World Cup. And during this browsing I came across a commercial which appeals to affective and cognitive (you could argue that also behavioral) attitudes.

This TV add shows the power of football. How one month, every four years, the entire world puts all their problems aside and only focuses on the world cup. People care more about Football (soccer for those of you who think football is played with pads) than global peace! you can see this by simply seeing that FIFA has more countries affiliated than the UN. And we can use this to help us solve conflicts between countries. A great example of this is when Ethiopia agreed to a cease fire during a civil war so FIFA could organize a game of Brazil against Ethiopia, and people would stop fighting so they could have the chance to see Pele play.

Football is a wonderful thing… to the entire world.

David Dana

Hello Blog readers:

I was reading a couple of my classmates blogs (some are awesome by the way…. not all) and I really loved this one in particular.

https://blogs.ubc.ca/sichenliu/

Sichen Liu has this blog post regarding the marketing fight between Coke and Pepsi. So I researched more about these two giants and their marketing war. Watching more commercials I realized that Pepsi makes allot of reference to Coke in its commercials, while Coke rarely makes any reference to Pepsi. And I think this is due to their position in the consumers mind. Coke has historically been considered better than Pepsi (I personally love much more Coke than Pepsi and never trusted many Pepsi campaigns regarding it better tasting than Coke such as the Pepsi Challenge). So Pepsi wants to display Coke products in its commercials so consumers place Pepsi at the same level as Coke. But Coke does not to be on the same level as Pepsi so it will rarely display a Pepsi product in its commercials.

Here is my personal favorite Pepsi vs Coke commercial by Pepsi of all times:

And here is a simply awesome Coke commercial

Dear blog readers:

This past weekend Superbowl XLV took place, an epic game hosting two historically important teams playing in the most expensive stadium ever built. The superbowl was a success (besides the fact the steelers lost) it has been the single, most watched event in the history of american television (As I predicted last week, the superbowl had over 100 million viewers.) And the commercials it had were as successful as the superbowl itself. Once again many companies produced entertaining, affective and informative commercials that made me watch them over and over again. One even makes reference to product placement!

 (Their concept of product placement was off but it is still a hilarious commercial).

I encourage you to take a look at all the superbowl commercials, you can find them here.

David Dana

Hello blog readers:

I must begin this blog with an apology for my delay, nevertheless as it is the week before the super bowl I felt it was my obligation to you make some reference to the huge marketing phenomenon which is the super bowl.

The super bowl is the most seen event of the year since 1986. Since 1986 it has averaged 85 million viewers (Nelson Media Research). In fact last year it had just under 100 million viewers, and it is estimated that this year there will be more than 100 million viewers.

From a marketing perspective, 100 million viewers a big, BIG market. This is why companies are willing to pay 3 million dollars for a 30 second commercial during the super bowl.

So many companies that are willing to pay these 30 million dollars dedicate so much time and effort to these commercials, they tend to be the best commercials all year long. Next is an example of an add by Audi promoting the new R8, which appeared in the 2009 super bowl. This is probably my favorite T.V. add of all times.

This commercial is so well thought, inspired in the legendary movie “The Godfather”, the commercial is affective and it appeals to any carlover. Like myself.

David Dana

PS: Next week I will continue talking about superbowl adds.

As I promised last week I will resume talking about my favorite Mexican beer, Noche Buena.

Their 2010-2011 marketing campaign was really interesting because they did not write a single word in any of their advertisements. They put in many posters around the city a picture of their bottle with a noche buena flower in the background. I personally loved the poster because without any word they were able to capture your attention, and everybody I know that likes beer got exited when they saw the poster. They know their product is so good, and their market loves that beer they did not have to sell you their product with catchy wordings. So they were able to have a artistic, beautiful poster without any words to ruin its beauty. And then I realized, the purpose of the poster was not to introduce their product, everybody knows and loves the product already, but its purpose was to let everybody know the Noche Buena season had begun!

David Dana

Noche Buena

Google Image Result for http://distincionbohemia.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/noche-buena-blog.jpg.

This is one of the best beer’s in Mexico, and my personal favorite. It is called “noche buena” and it has a great marketing strategy. Despite its great flavor the brewing company Cuauhtemoc Moctezuma wanted to set this beer apart from the rest and make it an elite beer. So they decided to make this the holiday beer and they would only sale this beer during winter. From this decision to sell it during the winter they derived the name “noche buena” which means good night but is also a typical Mexican flower that only blossoms during the winter. So they main design of the beer “noche buena” has the flower noche buena and they use it as a crest. So every October thousand of Mexicans eagerly await the launch of the “noche buena” and often buy enough boxes to last the entire year. As if they would sell this beer during the entire year it would not be so special and it would probably have less sells.

David Dana

PS: next blog ill write about the specific marketing strategy they decided to implement for the 2010/2011 winter.