Elaine P.

In regards to Henry’s blog post on the NBA Play-off Finals, I’d like to talk about how sports integrates with marketing in professional sports leagues. Watching Dallas Mavericks defeat the Eastern Conference champion Miami Heart, 4–2, and win their first NBA title was definitely fun to watch.

Paul Monroe, the Dallas Mavericks VP of Marketing and Communication named talks about how digital and social media marketing strategies are emphasized in this century to engage with their fans. One of the first NBA teams to use blogs, Dallas Mavs adds value of the team from advertising interactively on facebook, twitter, and youtube. Newer strategies like smart-phone apps. adds emotional experience for fans out there showing videos of interviews with Mavs players. It allows fans to understand the internal sides of the team and fans love it. Social parties, before & after game chats, and tickets promotions are different ways for the public to become aware and participate in sports events. Winning the NBA league title definitely adds recognition and sales on its team merchandise, and Dallas fans are more willing to support in the future of the team later on.

Here are some creative promotions that NBA teams have used to attract fans:

College Nights: $5 tickets during all 15 Wednesday night games. The first 100 people that show up will be upgraded to the lower level. Buy a $30 t-shirt and get into all college night games for free.

Ladies Night Out: For $15, get an upper level ticket, a beer, wine or soda, and a $25 gift card to Zen Spa. Includes free parking, as well as $3 u call it drinks after the game.

Meal Deal: For $19, get a $20 upper level ticket, hot dog, chips, and a soda

Meet and Greet: For $40, get a lower level ticket and a post-game meet and greet with a NBA player

Regarding one of my classmate, Khalil, has recently updated a blog post on Social media, I agree with how he explains the old ways of transferring information is becoming obsolete and ineffective, especially when social media kicks into our everyday lives allowing communication to be highly accessible.

As LinkedIn has recently goes initially for public offerings in the stocks market, it has generated a lot of positive attention, allowing its shares to double its price on the first day of trading. Now worth $8 million, LinkedIn has generated enormous revenue just by putting itself into the public.

How does that relate to marketing?

Well, social media is a product that I’d like to analyze through a PLC. Currently, it is going through the growth stage, where I see that many types of social media are generating rapid revenue. Seeing Facebook being valued at $60 billion, Groupon’s currently worth of $25 billion, prices are going up because of increased number of users. The network effects of social networking companies are proven to be a success! Social media companies are strengthening its features, and competition is becoming intensively competitive. Each person deciding to make an profile in a social media website adds value to the product, thus resulting in this madness on expanding the social media market base.

Social media is a product because it is a platform that puts up different organizations’ integrated marketing communication plans. Organizations often need to connect with their target market. Previously, companies need to spend tons of resources and efforts to make integrated marketing communication plans. (Handing out coupons, spending money on recruiting, direct marketing in sending mails, etc…) Now, they can implement all promotional mixes: advertising, personal selling, public relations, publicity, direct marketing and sales promotion with simply efforts on a social media platform!

Having went to the viewing game for Game 6 of Stanley Cup Finals Playoffs for 2011, I was amazed at all the advertising that’s at Rogers Arena for the Canucks. Before entering the stadium, surge of people are wearing their Canucks jerseys walking in. The atmosphere outside with sellers looking for buyers to the game at jacked prices, people looking to sell hornets, fans cheering with their faces painted and huge signs supporting our home team, the team spirit of Vancouver is back since Olympics! In the integrated marketing communications (IMC) I learnt in class, this is exactly a huge selecting demand for Canucks products!

From infomercials I see walking up stages to my seat of Canucks, sales promotion of Canucks scarfs outside my section, personal selling tickets to buyers outside rogers, the promotional mix of Canucks products are everywhere! The direct marketing towards every viewer is amazingly done with a free towel to believe in tower power and cheer for our team! All the effort that Rogers have done with Canucks are co-marketing towards the excitement of seeing Canucks win the Stanleycup Playoffs is awesome! After the win, Canucks merchandise will be in popular demand, tickets will be priced higher as fan base will definitely grow. Let’s all hope for a win tonight!

“Improving Your Amazon.com Rankings” is a blog post that discusses the strategy to receive high rankings on Amazon products is quite interesting and fun to know, since my group project topic is on Amazon.ca.

Knowing that Amazon is building their own distribution centers right now, Canadian consumers can purchase Amazon products at a lower costs by 2012 with decreased mailing costs. Currently, products are either shipped from the states or around the world to Canada since Amazon’s been blocked to have its own distribution centers here for years due to government’s regulations.

In Canada, our government is very sensitive towards big corporations trying to enter our market and take foreign control of the cultural industry. To keep Canada with its cultural values and beliefs, it is important for our government to do what it takes to protect domestic businesses.

The post itself allowed me to understand the strategic planning publishers use to make sure their marketing campaigns result in a great boost in sales with the variables that Amazon uses to rank a Sales number. I didn’t know Amazon’s ranking system is secretive, and many researches have been done to understand what variables are used to calculate Sale Rankings. Presumably, I thought total sales were the approach Amazon takes, but now, I’d understand why manufacturers and publishers have marketing campaigns focused towards Amazon’s top 1000 reviewers, and professional bloggers who often write about the pro’s and con’s of the products.

Writing out from expression and personal interest, what reviewers write affects the sales of the products greatly. A good feedback from a well-known blogger gives a second chance of life in the market. Nowadays, people in the community read reviews before buying anything. It is important to know what your product is ranked and how to target the product towards potential reviewers!

Today, I realized a lot of products I encounter in life is all about branding and positioning. Professional and personal growth in me is also part of branding my image and positioning my values in this market for recruitment.

Since every individual has different thoughts, emotional drivers, values and beliefs, I need to target a particular group of recruiters when it comes to job searching in the future. To be communicate my ‘brand’ to companies is to position myself in a particular category for my ‘brand’ to be reminded in their minds when it comes to hiring.

In particular, a positioning statement should be tailored to my job description in the future.

Recently, I’ve started reading a book called “Position: The Battle of your Mind” by Jack Trout and Al Ries, and the strategies with many great examples they’ve used is inspiring. Though many of the situations they’ve described are on products, but when I think back, these situations would come across during recruitment as well, when many commerce students are competing for similar jobs. To position myself and stand out in areas that is beneficial for me will results in chances of receiving interviews. What I learnt is how the ‘human mind’ works, to be able to position myself in a category that allows recruits to think of ME first. Rather than focusing on efforts to compete in areas where I suck at (from the examples mentioned that big companies don’t necessary win all the time), I realized that it is better to sell what I’m good at than to improve what I’m bad in. In particular, when Hertz tried to compete with Avis to be the top car rental company, the tactics they used for their advertising is very smart. The idea that Avis knows it can’t beat Herts allowed Avis to tell everyone out there that because they are No. 2 in car rental, they’d try harder” putting the ‘against’ position of winning sales instead of face to face battle with Hertz, telling others that we suck because we’re No. 2.

Many of the examples used in the book teaches me not only about positioning for marketing, but learning about how to position ideas in people’s mind in general.

Being surrounded by advertisements that sell ‘green’ or ‘organic’, everyone seems to be raging about eco-friendly products. Target’s commercial last week on using a Recyclable bag reminded consumers to do the right thing. By bringing up the guilt in consumers, the concept of green marketing to improve sales is becoming a trend. The requirement for brands to engage in green marketing is to fully support environmental impacts. Once green marketing is used to attract consumers, the brand image is now seen has a responsible brand by the public. Long term investment on this approach is what brands need to be committed to in order to continually attract consumers. If promotions were done improperly, and media finds out about other aspects of the brand that is not as eco-friendly as it seems to be, backfiring effects can harm the image greatly. However, green marketing often cause consumer confusion. The meaning of green is different for every product, and comparatively the degree of being ‘green’ is often ambiguous. Even if it gains consumer’s interest and education on going ‘green’, the market needs certification on all green products to ensure a clear understanding of how ‘green’ the product is compared to similar products.

Currently, I don’t see monitor programs or organizations that define the certification process for all green products in the market. This is an industry that can guarantee the positive global impact from the small lifestyle changes we make. Green marketing is a great start for businessmen to bring attention on sustainability to consumers, but monitoring is the real answer to the problem. By measuring benefits of going green, it is the true success to comply consumer’s desire to take action on social concerns for our environment.

Social Reference Groups: Lady Gaga

During our last lecture when Lady Gaga was used as an example on social influence in class, it interested me because I realize she is a pop icon in our society today who I am curious to analyze. As a performance artist, there is nothing she will put on her body without knowing the concept and reference behind it. The amount of energy and research her team puts into her every appearance requires tremendous amount of marketing for her to become so famous this fast. How she uses a lot of past references toward her image to create noise and attention washes our brains. Let’s discuss why her actions are sometimes quite extreme. Her new album ‘Born this Way’ music video is a great example. When the audience sees her shiny blonde hair, she doesn’t want us to remember Cher, just think of Lady Gaga. When she shows her unashamed gapped front teeth, don’t remember Madonna anymore, just think of Lady Gaga. When we see a performer dancing with white gloves on stage, don’t think of Michael Jackson, think of Gaga.

The incredible amount of research and referencing that her team has done is unbelievable. Her formula to become this famous is to do everything to catch consumers’ eyes and let the media hype up her image.

By putting tons of pop icon references on her image, she makes her actions subjective and hysterical. Her marketing team probably knows she can’t sell her beauty, nor her singing (not that she can’t sing, but there are tons of people out there who can sing better than her) therefore, highly entertaining and innovative performances is the key to create gimmick for media discussion and win her popularity. By wearing raw meat clothing, puking blood on stage, dancing intimately with 15 male dancers wearing high heels, screaming ‘I want your disease….’ loudly, she is communicating the concept of outrageous and bizarre. It makes me realize her road to fame is not about her songs, is all about her as a person, as an image, as a representation of ‘diva’ to become one of the world’s most outrageous pop stars. All of this is a result from her team’s meticulous planning and implementation of her icon characteristics.

I can’t say I admire her, nor can I say I feel negative about her. More or less, I want to bring attention to the remarkable planning that has put in to market her business model. By using references in the past, her icon exposes society’s collective consciousness towards modern pop culture. All this hard work results in her No. 1 place on Forbes’s Celebrity Power List 2011 that was announced on Wednesday, topping Oprah Winfrey.

Recently, Starbucks is offering ‘Happy Hours’ promotion that sells half-price Frappuccino blended beverage of any choice (and size of course) from 3-5pm at participating stores. We can customize our drinks by deciding the flavor, choosing the intensity of coffee, and picking the combination of syrups or toppings.

Just happens to be,  McDonalds is located 3 stores down the block of Starbucks at Steveston (where I live)  Their Dollar Drink Days are back! From April 19th – September 6th, any sized soft drinks are for only ONE dollar! I’m sure many of you have heard about this, since this promo has been going on every summer for the past few years. However, this year, they have included Iced Coffee, which was not offered in the past years.

What does this mean?

DIRECT COMPETITION!

Growing up in a period seeing the Starbucks brand from nowhere to everywhere, I’ve never recall Starbucks having any promotions or deals. Tim Hortons always offered Roll Up the Rim, McDonalds offered their free coffee promotions for periods of time in the year along with monthly coupon flyers sent to my house. Starbucks always stood as the classy high-ended international coffee business that didn’t need to offer deals to capture its target market. However,  low priced coffee is becoming popular among price sensitive customers and creating new competition for Starbucks. It is most likely that sales has dropped to a point that is critical for Starbucks to take action.

I’m sure the Happy Hour promotion has caught massive attention for coffee lovers, but it doesn’t mean that sales will keep increasing. As the promotion ends, sales will be dropped back down to its previous level. I’m guessing that is why they try to DIFFERENTIATE themselves from other coffee beverage places. To compete, price differentiation or product differentiation are ways to stand out from the crowd. Starbucks’s campaign to launch ‘However-you-want-it Frappuccino’ allowing customers to create their perfect blended beverage. This is a different customer experience that Starbucks is offering to their customers, stepping away from the typical fast, quick, best price coffee market that we are geared towards. By adding the ability to personalize their drinks to customer’s lifestyle and taste preferences, customers who are looking for quality coffee now has a popular demand offered by Starbucks.

So…what?

Well, for one thing, I know consumers are winning. Looking at different promotional campaigns that are out there right now, I see that Canadian coffee beverage demand is huge and appealing. As a consumer, I feel appreciated to be offered with so many choices. It will be harder to decide where to grab a quick drink next time though. 🙂

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