Hello world,

As an entrepreneur, and owner of a clothing company, I often look for new cool ways to advertise products. I recently came across a fantastic example of minimal, in-plain-sight awesome advertising. The genius marketing came from Legoland, and was focused on placing mini bilboards that looked like they were made of lego. The article can be found at

http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/legoland-places-miniature-billboards-made-legos-around-london-139394

This strategy works because lego is so recognizable that all they would need to do is put a sign made of Lego, advertising anything, and wouldn’t even really need to mention that it’s for Lego. People would just know. This allows them to have this sneaky campaign that I absolutely adore. Good on you Lego.

http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/legoland-places-miniature-billboards-made-legos-around-london-139394

There is a lot to marketing. A LOT. Most people think of marketing as just billboards and tv commercials like this: Old Spice Commercial. They think it’s all the promotions and advertisements. While this is certainly a big part of marketing, there is so much more to it. As Sofiya Pylypenko said in her blog post, “What Marketing Means to Most”, marketing is a sophisticated art and science. I’ve started a company that sells designer clothing, and pre-launch we spent over two months just doing market research into what people want, how we can deliver that to them, and what to do with our 4 P’s.

What should our product look like? What do people want from this product? How do we promote our product and get the name out there? How do we make a high-value name for ourselves? How do we communicate value to the customer? How much should we charge and which pricing strategy should we use? If we are going to have promotions, which ones? Do we pay for marketing? What kind?

These are just a few of the many, many questions we had to ask ourselves during the pre-launch phase. It took a lot of analysis, research, opinion polling, interviewing, market research surveys, sampling, and prototyping to finally get a line of products to launch with that we felt would best capture market demand, and provide value for the consumer. This process is going to have to be repeated on an on-going basis as we launch new products too. Marketing has become so much more to me than just promotions and advertisements. In encompasses almost everything about the product and method of selling.

After reading Landon Goold’s post about marketing using lifestyles (https://blogs.ubc.ca/landongcomm296/) , I quickly realized just how many companies market their products in ridiculously over-the-top ways. So many companies try to make you think a certain way, or feel a certain way, about their product by advertising it in absurd ways. Axe advertises itself as a product that will get you laid, if you’re a guy. Old spice advertises itself as a product that will get you ladies and make you suave. Apple advertises itself as a product that will make you better than the masses, and a step above everyone else in the world (unless they own more apple products than you, of course). One of the most absurd is car commercials. Most of the time, they show cars ripping around racetracks or pulling incredible maneuvers. Not only is that not the intended purpose of the vehicle, but the things they show are actually dangerous and sometimes illegal. Only a car company could get away with boasting a 5-star safety rating while showing a driver speeding through a busy street at blazing speeds or narrowly avoiding crashing while racing around a set… Zoom Zoom

Hello World,

The thought of price often comes to mind when it comes time to purchase an item. It seems like we’re always assessing an item’s value by it’s cost. You wouldn’t buy a Porsche for five thousand dollars because you wouldn’t believe it was real, or working. There MUST be a catch right? What if a Porsche only cost five thousand to make? and you were being offered a deal by the manufacturer? Why is it normally so much more expensive then? We as consumers assess price, and often find it difficult, and need to compare similar products, but we rarely think about the process of pricing an object. As an entrepreneur, I’ve often had to give my goods or services a price. This has proven to be one of the most difficult business decisions to make. I am currently starting up a designer apparel company. What should I charge for a t-shirt? If I charge 15 dollars I may get more sales… but are they good sales? Do I want my brand to be known as a 15 dollar shirt brand? I could make a shirt that looked like a Lacoste shirt for roughly one tenth of what they charge for them in stores. Lacoste has better, and cheaper, production means than me. So they probably charge even more than ten times what it costs to make the shirt. That being said, there are still people willing to buy, and Lacoste still makes money. There are so many factors that go into the pricing of an object that I can’t even scratch the surface with this post. From brand image to supply and demand economics, it’s a tough decision to make – to say the least.

Stay Smart Sauder,

David Polsky