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I was flipping through my classmates blog when I came across a fantastic entry by Daniel Kim (here’s the link to his blog: Daniel Kim). He was discussing how our emotions are the number one trigger when looking at the way marketing effects consumers. He focused in on car brands, BMW specifically, so of course I was interested in reading this post. Daniel made a fantastic point when he said

Daniel’s point is a valid one. I am a prime example of someone who plans to purchase a BMW, but not just any standard off the lot beamer. I plan to get a top of the line M5 or M6. Then sending it off to customize all the bells and whistles. Blacked out windows, black rims, blacked out BMW logos. It’s gonna be beautiful. I mean I love and want this car so much, I’ve had it as my computer screen background for the past year or two.

The brand is not the main pull for me. Yea BMW intrigues me since it started as plane company and now creates magnificent cars, but that’s not the main thing. It’s the body style of the car that I absolutely can’t get enough of! There is no car out on the market right now that looks like this:

The lines on the car are fluid and sexy. The lights on the back of the car look like eyes staring at you as it speeds by. To me, the car emits passion, power, luxury, and speed. I don’t know when this strong emotional tie began for me and M6 coupes, but it’s building by the day. I get butterflies in my stomach when I see one speed by me on Broadway or flashing by my apartment. If I see a really nice one parked, I can’t help but take a picture and send to my dad and brother. Perhaps my love for this beautiful car began when I started going to car shows with my dad… No matter when or where my love for cars started, I without a doubt have an emotional tie to BMW and am determined to work my a** off to get one by the time I’m 30.

Wish me luck..

Happy Friday everyone! I’d like to talk about the marketing tactics that companies use to sell food in grocery stores. Last night I went on a dietician led grocery store tour at the downtown Choices Market. For those of you that don’t know, Choices is a natural and organic food market, much like its competitor Whole Foods. The grocery store tour was focused on reading not only the nutrition fact label, but mainly the ingredient list. On almost every food the dietician picked up, she brought up the fact that companies have limitations and boundaries for what they can write on the product in order to market it to consumers. These limitations and boundaries aren’t slim at all. For example, a bread company can write that their bread is made with ‘wheat flour’ which is simply a twisted way of saying ‘white flour’. To most consumers, seeing the word ‘wheat’ in front of ‘flour’ immediately sounds healthier than just ‘flour’. My dietician went on to say that you know it’s healthy if it says ‘whole wheat flour’. You need the words ‘whole wheat’, not just ‘wheat’, in order for the flour to be healthier. All this twisted marketing really got me thinking about what we as consumers choose to buy, and therefore eat. Many things that we think are healthy, are in fact just marketing schemes by large companies to sell their products. Even at a health food store like Choices, there were various products that were truly unhealthy, yet they were still being sold.

This takes me to another element of skewed marketing with relation to the food we purchase in grocery stores. Many companies have jumped on the ‘organic’ trend. In other words, many products are labeled as ‘organic’ or ‘natural’ and able to be sold at higher prices than non organic foods. The Rag Blog comments on this topic (read their blog here), stating “A multi-billion dollar marketing empire has thus arisen based on the unsubstantiated theory that “pure” organic foods are by themselves an important addition to health and longevity.” Is this concept of organic being healthier really true though?

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I was recently fishing through my marketing classmates’ blogs to find an interesting post to comment on and I came across a post by Naz M (read the full blog post here). She discussed an interesting billboard campaign created by Leo Burnett for the company Koleston Naturals. The product is natural hair dye, and they used a silloutte of a woman’s head contrasted against a beautiful ocean background to color her hair depending on what time of day it is. Check it out:

This blog post was in Naz’s ‘Just For Fun’ folder, so since it was an extra post, there wasn’t much analysis written. I’d like to expand on this marketing strategy and take a closer look at the company that is responsible for this campaign, Leo Burnett. When you first enter the Leo Burnett website, you can tell that this is an artistic company with a fantastic website designer. Each page is interactive, attractive, and just plain eye catching.

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Today I’m going to skip down the magical path of a type of marketing called product placement. This is the idea that products are placed in videos that wouldn’t normally include advertisements, like a music video, TV show, or movie. This trend became popular in the ’90s, I continue to see it today.

One of the reasons product placement is used in a music video, tv show, or movie is due to the sponsors. A good example of this is how coke sponsors American Idol and the judges are always drinking out of a Coke cup (not sure if they’re actually drinking that syrup waste), needless to say, the viewers are constantly seeing the Coke logo throughout the show.

American Idol judges drinking out of their classic Coke cups. A prime example of product placement.

Mr. Mike, a fellow blogger, expressed how he saved up Coke points to get the original Coke cup so he could drink out of it while he and his family watched American Idol. Check out his blog here: http://munrohouse.wordpress.com/2009/03/07/american-idol-coca-cola-judges-glasses/.

This is a prime example of how product placement IS working. Viewers see people they admire doing something, and they imitate. Coke has done a fantastic job with product placement, making viewers of American Idol crave their product.

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Hello again! I am always excited when I see a new, unique form of marketing. Especially when it goes as far as to incorporate the public into the advertisement. One of my favorite types of advertisements I’ve seen have to do with transforming bus stops into extreme advertisements. Some are hilarious, others make you take another look, but either way, a ton of creativity goes into creating these masterpieces and I as a consumer that enjoys humor, I get a kick out of seeing them. This unconventional approach to marketing is called Guerrilla Marketingand was coined by Jay Conrad Levinson (www.gmarketing.com). This concept of marketing by interacting with consumers in a casual environment, such as a bus stop, has proven to be much more inexpensive compared to large scale marketing campaigns and has proven to be more effective as well.  Jay Conrad has written various books on this thinking out of the box vision of marketing and has given lectures at universities such as the University of California, Berkeley. Jay’s new approach to marketing hasn’t been all smooth sailing. In Janurary 2007, Jay launched a campaign for a popular animated TV show, Aqua Teen Hunger Force’s new movie. The campaign included placing various LED images of one of the show’s characters around the city of Boston, Massachusetts. Police Officers interpreted the LED characters as possible home made bombs and the campaign was criticized as ‘going too far’ with their marketing approach. Many newspapers targeted Guerrilla Marketing as going too far with the advertisements and it gained negative press. Is there a line that Guerrilla Marketing is crossing when it comes to extreme and unique marketing for companies? Personally, I think that this new approach to advertise is refreshing and I enjoy seeing what Jay Conrad is going to come up with next. Marketing is about targeting your audience and captivating them. By bringing an extremely creative alternative to the table besides the common magazine and Facebook ads, Conrad has been able to reach a worldwide audience in a cost effective way. What company wouldn’t want that?   Here are a few bus stop advertisements that I just couldn’t get enough of!

Another one of Jay Conrad's Guerrilla Marketing bus stop advertisement that he created for Quicksilver. By adding a skateboard ramp to the side of a bus stop, the bus stop unit becomes more than just a covered bench, and transforms into an interactive public space. Love it!

Hi everyone, and welcome to my first blog post! My name is Diana Franklin and I am a 4th year exchange student from California. My home university is the University of California, Merced (you may not have heard of it because it’s the newest UC)! I am taking this course for two reasons, (1) it is a requirement for my management major and (2) I want to learn more about marketing elements.

My experience with marketing has of course been as a consumer, and specifically I can think of watching Super Bowl commercials since they never cease to make me laugh..

Check out some fantastic Super Bowl commercials from last year..