Usually when I fly I have the misfortune of being seated next to either the oversized man who takes up his seat and half of mine or the first time mother who has not yet realized her baby doesn’t understand English, and that simply saying please stop crying for half an hour won’t actually stop the baby from crying.

So naturally this Saturday night when I was flying back from Calgary I was prepared for worst, but to my surprise not only was there a free seat in-between me and the next lady over, she was also really nice, not carrying a crying baby and a the west coast distract manager for Coach! Naturally I asked her every marketing question that came to mind because Coach has been brought up at least five times in class. Although though she was nice enough to answer all of my questions she pointed out that all her answers could be found online, so I asked her to tell me something that I couldn’t just simply Google.  She then told me about Coach’s new product plan, something the company called “The next chapter”. She described it as a transformation of the company’s brand, instead of focusing on leather handbags for women, the company would be expanding their product line and capturing a larger demographic by focusing more on leather apparel for men and women. When I asked her how much this apparel would cost, she side stepped the question and just told me that the apparel would be amazing quality and that it was “an affordable luxury product”. Later on she told me that a leather skirt would cost $800, clearly Coach hopes to achieve a competitive advantage in quality not in price.

When I asked her how Coach intended to market their new leather apparel line she told me how they intended to write articles in fashion magazines about the New York stories of three popular models. One model was Carly Clause from Victoria’s Secret, one was Lu Wen from China, and the third I don’t know much about because she said it was a guy and I zoned out for a bit. My new friend seemed very confident in Coach’s new direction, when I asked her why, she said she knew her company could handle it as change was nothing new for Coach, after all the company did start as a male’s leather luggage retailer before expanding into female hand bags. She was so confident in Coach’s new product line and marketing strategy it made me want to invest my own money into the company, but then I took a look at this semesters tuition bill… I guess I will just have to settle for flying Coach instead of owning part of it.

Today as I was walking to class I saw a little girl driving a Ferrari with pink rims. When I saw this 3 thing rushed through my mind. The first was, how many banks would I need to rob to be able to afford one and if the jail time was worth it. The second was, oh my god I hate this girl for ruining my dream car by putting pink rims on it. The third was, why is she driving a Ferrari? Her parents clearly bought it, I get that but why would she want one? Than I thought why do I want one so badly? It is then that I realized the Ferrier commercial played in class a few weeks ago was the very first direct advertisement for Ferrari I had ever seen.  It took some thinking but after examining the 4 Ps of the marketing mix, I finally discovered how they had had marketed their product to me in a very clever way that was so slight I didn’t even realize it. To begin with although outrageously priced, if I had all of Jay-Z’s money for a day, on of the first things I would do, between ending world hunger and renting out the playboy mansion, would be buying a Ferrari.  So clearly it is in the right price range for their exclusive target market. The product itself is unarguable along with other cars such as Lamborghinis Mercedes and Porsches at the top of the line in terms of luxury cars, plus they all look really, really cool. The placement of the product is not the greatest as there are no Ferrari dealers around me, however due to the magic of Google, I found a dealer willing to ship me a Ferrari today! And it would only cost me $670 000! The really impressive thing Ferrari has done is the promotion of their product. Although I hadn’t realized it, Ferrari had been promoting their product to me since I was a child without me even noticing. Just like a ghost in every scary movie, I hadn’t realized the advertisements until it was too late. This had been done through clever product placement in movies, TV shows, music videos and video games. I had never seen a Ferrari ad, poster or commercial before the one shown in class, but as a child I played need for speed where a Ferrari was one of the fastest cars, and I still remember the episode of That 70’s show I watched 7 years ago where Fes pretended to be an heir to the Ferrari fortune, I also remember watching Nelly pick up a bunch of girls in a Ferrari in one of his music videos, plus I remember the red Ferrari in the first Need for Speed movie. Similar to how McDonalds markets to kids through happy meals, Ferrari has grasped the desire of every child by exposing their product to them in popular media channels. Ferrari’s subtle advertisement to the youth is a great strategy because if any of the kids grow up and are anything like me plus 1-2 million dollars than they are sure to endorse the product.

When I was young, I thought you had to be incredibly stupid to buy a MacBook pro.  I couldn’t comprehend why anyone in their right minds would buy a $1400 Mac when they could just buy any other laptop, which does the same job, for less than half the price. In my first year of university I quickly found out that just because two products do the same job does not mean they have the same value. In first year I bought A Dell I was very pleased with it. It took my class notes and played movies, which is the only thing I used it for. I felt like a geniuses in comparison to my friend Andy, whom I mocked for spending $1400 for a Mac in comparison to the $ 650 I spent for my Dell that did the same job.

(Happy singer Adele)

My contentment lasted for about a week, I soon discovered my Dell’s battery could not last an entire class and I found myself fighting over plugs in class with other PC students, while the Mac students who had a much longer battery life enjoyed uninterrupted lectures. This resulted in Andy mocking me for my troubles in class due to my short battery life, but all hope was not lost as Andy’s mac crashed in the second week of school. He had to go into the Apple store to get it repaired, thus he was without a computer for two days. I had a good laugh at his expense until week 3 when my dell crashed and I had to ship it off for repairs, after a 2 hour conversation with a very annoying automated machine. The repair took 3 weeks and my dell never worked properly again.

(Sad singer Adele)

After a year of both hardware and software issues and annoying conversations with automated machines I decided to pack it in and get a Mac. After getting a mac my whole life changed. I discovered that the value of Apple’s products was actually worth the additional cost to me. This was due to Apple’s approach of relationship/value marketing instead of transaction based marketing. When I bought my Dell there was the transaction and very little communication between Dell and me, unless I was having technical difficulties. In contrast when I bought my Mac they continued to email me with new offers for not only their laptops but cellphones and music players as well.

Originally I didn’t pay much attention to these emails but when I started having issues with my Mac and took it into the Apple store I received such great customer service that a part of me felt as though I owed it to Apple to read their emails. My Apple geniuses Frank was really kind, fixed my laptop in a timely manner and when he was done asked me if I was interested in any of their offers sent to me via email. As a result of Frank’s excellent customer service, I read the email offers and am now a loyal Apple consumer. I am now a proud owner of a MacBook, iPhone, and iPod. Apple through their great customer service has created a value for me that matches the price and has turned me from an Apple heckler into a complete Apple consumer.