I do not personally think that I will be writing anymore blog posts after this class. I did not enjoy, nor did I dislike writing the blog posts. I just do not believe that anyone reads blogs very much. Due to this, I feel as though I am writing something that is getting as much exposure as if I wrote it on my computer and didn’t post it online.

One positive thing that the blog assignment did for me was that it caused me to think more deeply into advertisements that I had seen in the past and had not put much thought into. I have seen the E-Trade baby commercials and the Dodgers and Ryanair commercials quite a bit, but being forced to write about the ads caused me to think more deeply into them.

It was also a very good way to test my knowledge about the concepts that we were learning in class. I was able to apply them to the ads that I was writing about.

E-Trade does a very good job with regards to marketing. I say this because when the average American sees a talking baby, they usually automatically think about E-Trade. No other online broker has such great brand recognition as E-Trade. Its competitors include TD Ameritrade, Scottrade, etc. When you think of online brokers, you automatically think about the E-Trade baby.

If it is legally possible for E-Trade to expand, I would recommend that they move north of the 49th parallel into Canada. There brand recognition is already quite large in Canada, even though we are not able to use their services up here. In that sense, I think they would be able to gain large market share right away. Most of the major banks have their brokers, but their fees are much larger than the online brokers. The other option in Canada is Questtrade, which most people I know have never even heard of. The increased market size would benefit them as well. They could use acquisition to acquire a Canadian firm like Questtrade to be able to operate in Canada. They could also go into a joint venture with one of the Canadian banks. It would be easiest for E-Trade to simply move into Canada, but the Canadian laws most likely would prevent that.

Due to the great marketing work by the team at E-Trade, they have turned themselves into one of the most recognized brokers in North America and have potential to use this recognition to benefit a potential expansion.