Month: October 2011

If you are a UBC student, chances are that you’ve probably been approached by a young male or female asking if you’d like to enter a draw for a free one-month Gold’s Gym membership. For those of you that have been approached, you’ve probably also been contacted a few days later by a representative from the gym telling you that you’ve won. And finally, for those of you that actually decided to redeem your prize, you’ve probably been disappointed at what they actually have to offer and all the little details that they “forgot” to mention.

At first glance, it seems like a pretty smart idea on their part: giving out free memberships so that students can try out the gym and see if they’d like to sign up for a full-year membership. The problem is, by redeeming the prize in the first place, you’d have to sign up for the full-year membership. It’d be fine if they mentioned that, but they don’t actually explain this “forgotten” detail until you go in to their office to redeem the prize, and by then it’ll already be too late to back out.

Thankfully, I found out about their poor business ethic practices before I actually went in. Just search “Gold’s Gym” and you’ll find hundreds or thousands of people who have had horrible experiences with the company. From what I’ve heard, their manager uses forceful marketing techniques and pitches in order to get you to sign up for their full year membership in order to redeem your prize. Sounds like a little controversial marketing technique marketers like to call Bait and Switch.

I don’t know about you, but I really do believe that there’s a fine line between “smart marketing” and what Gold’s Gym has decided to do in order to grab customers.

Recently, well-known actor and martial arts master, Jackie Chan, has been recruited to be part of Campbell Soup’s new marketing campaign for its V8 drink. This is part of Campbell Soup’s plan to revive and push their sales.

This is obviously a huge jump from V8’s usual marketing campaigns. Jackie Chan’s appearance in their new commercials promotes more action and aggressiveness, while their older campaigns were generally way more traditional and reserved.

Because the market for juice, especially vegetable juice, is growing rapidly as a result of consumers wanting more “healthy choices”, it’s no surprise that Campbell Soup also has to pick up their game and come up with new ways to promote their product in order to differentiate themselves from other brands. Perhaps they are hoping that by having Jackie Chan as part of their marketing campaign, they can create a new image of their brand in existing consumers’ minds, and possibly attract new consumers. Fortunately for them, it seems to be working, as this new marketing campaign has caused people all over the world to respond, especially in the world of social media.

As part of creating a new image for themselves, V8 is also coming up with brand new drinks on top of their traditional vegetable juices. This includes vegetable energy drinks, smoothies, and vegetable fruit juices with green tea.

So what do I think about all of this?

I personally don’t like to drink vegetable juice, and having Jackie Chan promote vegetable juice to me isn’t going to make me want to drink vegetable juice anymore. Then again, perhaps this campaign will appeal more to an older audience who actually see Jackie Chan as a huge cultural icon and celebrity.