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A year ago around this time everyone was writing off the rapper Kanye West and calling his career finished.  Infamously declaring to the world on national television that “George Bush doesn’t like black people” after hurricane Katrina had just rocked the nation, which George Bush recently said in an interview was one of the lowest moments of his time as president.  Kanye managed to follow up those antics at the VMA’s when he went up on stage and stole the mic away from Taylor Swift who had just won the award for best video of the year to tell everyone that Beyonce should have won.

While everyone said how Kanye ruined his career because of these things, I want to argue that while these things were not right, in the end they have not harmed Kanye’s career.  In class, we’ve been talking about how getting people talking about your company, product, or service is a very good promotional strategy.  In this case, Kanye’s extreme antics caused an outrage across the nation and everybody seemed to be writing him off, apparently he would never be the same again.

His latest album just came out, and not only did it do well, it did double the predicted sales amount of 250,000 in the first week. Impressive for an artist who was being pushed to the curb just a year ago.  While I agree with the majority of people that what he did is wrong, maybe there is a method to his madness.  Throughout everything Kanye has been able to end up still at the top of the music industry.  It seems as if these controversial stunts garnered enough attention from the world and actually may have helped Kanye’s career in the end, keeping him relevant and making for everyone to continue talking about him

This weekend the UFC released it’s promotional trailer for their next event: UFC 124.  While it’s pretty standard for the UFC to release the trailer for their upcoming event during the PPV of the event before, the trailer left me very intrigued and I wanted to share my thoughts

Most UFC promotional trailers in the past have been pretty standard.  For the most part, like the one I posted earlier in the year, they have the same generic voice talking about the fights as they play highlight clips of the fighters involved.  I’ve always been a fan of these trailers but this one was so different that it stirred up discussion across mixed martial arts websites all over the internet as fans like me were discussing their thoughts of this new style of trailer

The video starts off by showing a clip of the two fighters in the main event from their first fight about 3 years ago.  From there, the voices you hear are from the actual PPV broadcasts and not a generic voice telling you what fight is on the card.  Past fights are shown by the two fighters and with every win, a picture of their opponents face gets ripped down. In ends with the final two faces being Georges St. Pierre and Josh Koscheck; the two men that will battle in the main event, still no words by the usual voice of older promotional trailers have been spoken.

If there is one thing I could criticize about this newest trailer it is the fact that they have focused all of their efforts on the main event. Below I have linked another video from a past UFC event which shows the normal setup for these trailers.  In the past I have admired how the UFC differs from most fight promotions by not focusing on simply the main event but on the card as a whole.  But with GSP being the sports biggest star and the way they have crafted this commercial, it stands out to me as being one of the most interesting and effective commercials in quite some time for the UFC who seem to be continually pushing to develop their marketing tactics as they expand throughout the globe.  It is evident that the UFC marketing team is using strategies to mix things up in order to keep the fans attracted to the sport and to their promotion and even thought MMA is the fastest growing sport in the world right now, I expect them to continue to change the trailers as well as other marketing strategies as they move forward into new markets.



I just read a post on another classmate’s blog about the NHL history will be made ad campaign in which he, like me, thought that this was a very good campaign.  The reaction from hockey fans seemed to be the same as they got people talking and many people even created their own history will be made commercials and they spread like fire on YouTube.

In his post, Andrew points out that these ads are something different which is why people might have generally liked them and how they generated such a good response.   In my mind these ads were brilliant as they re-lived great moments in NHL history.  I’m very interested in sports marketing and my first reaction when seeing this post was comparing them to the NBA “Where amazing happens” commercials.  Both used a very similar tune in their respective commercials that gave me chills as I was watching them.

I think that major sports fans would be their main targets in both of these commercials but at the same time I think that these commercials could appeal to all different types of sports fans because of how different they are compared to most commercials.  In watching both campaigns, I wondered which one came first and after a bit of research I found out that the NBA were the first ones.  Obviously the NHL marketing unit must have seen how popular these commercials had become and how they were spreading all over the internet with people talking about them.  I think it was a great idea by the NHL to jump on board and create their own set of commercials which were similar, but different enough to create more and more buzz with sports fans everywhere.  The two commercials obviously have features about them that are different but they both do a great job in promoting their respective leagues in an attempt to break away from other sports leagues throughout North America.

As I’ve talked about in many of my posts, the most effective marketing strategies in my mind are the one’s that are completely different than anything else.  I find that the things that stick in my mind the most are the campaigns that are so much different then anything else before them.  This exactly what the campaign for the Last Exorcism has done for me.

Most people these days have heard about chat roulette in one way or another.  But as see in the video below, the Last Exorcism took chat roulette to a new level.  They had a recording of a girl pretending to take off her shirt before her eyes roll to the back of her head and she basically turns into a demon.  The reactions from the people watching this on the other side of the screen are hilarious as this was probably one of the last things they were expecting.  At first when I saw this I thought it might have been pointless because it only can advertise to a couple people at a time on chat roulette but then I saw that this video has generated almost 4 million views on YouTube!  This obviously has had many people talking about it and this simple, but very unique idea has turned out to be a huge success in my mind.

Just a heads up the video contains some “strong language”.  Enjoy

I read an interesting post on a fellow classmates blog the other day.  The blog talks about a certain band named the Wilderness Crew who are relatively unknown yet very, very good.  He asks the question about what it takes to make a band popular and maybe why this certain band isn’t popular.  I’ve listened to a bunch of their music now and i agree with the blog that this music is very good and I’m also surprised to see they have had very little exposure.

So after seeing this i did a little bit of investigating to see if they’ve been trying to market themselves and if so, how have they been going about this. They have a very well designed website with information about the band, their music, and links to purchase this music.  They even have a Youtube channel where they have posted videos for fans to get to know the band even better (see below).  The one thing the website is lacking however is news about upcoming concerts.  They have a section on their site devoted to this but the last post on that was all the way back on June 1st.

Along with their Website, they also have social media accounts such as their Twitter, Facebook, and myspace pages.  Obviously this is a smart idea in promoting a band as is it a free service that can be seen by anyone on the world.  But yet again there is a problem with the way these accounts are being handled. The last post on their twitter page as well as their Facebook fan page is from September 26th which is more then a month without a post.  Maybe they’ve been busy over the last little bit but if they were serious about becoming mainstream they would receive a huge boost by simply spending a bit more time managing these pages listed above.  The music is so good and it is amazing to me how they are not well known yet, I feel that if they focus their efforts in the promotion of their band a bit more then they are now that they will gain huge success in the music industry, because they certainly have the talent to do so!

Marketers are always looking for ways to mix things up, to separating themselves from competitors by having advertisements that are unique and that stand out.  But sometimes, as this website points out, marketers may cross lines or take things a bit too far.

Everyone’s judgement is different when it come’s to determining if an advertisement is out of line.  Obviously in the case of the company that used Barack Obama’s picture without his permission was the wrong thing to do, but what about the other billboards such as the one for the funeral home.  Although most likely a joke, this company is pretty much telling people to jump onto the subway tracks in order for their business to increase.  To me, something like this should not be allowed to be advertised.  Sure the company would probably say it’s all fun and games but the point where a billboard advertisement is pretty much telling people they want them to die is where it crosses the line.

My question is simply this.  Is there a limit to how a company can advertise or is it more about whatever you need to do to sell your product. To me as long as an advertisement is not blatantly offensive to a group of people then I think it can probably be considered fair game.  What does everyone else think?

The UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) has a big weekend ahead of them as the heavyweight championship of the world is on the line.  Although this alone is exciting enough for me it might not  be as interesting to you so I decided to take a look at their marketing plan for this fight card.  In the championship fight, the UFC’s biggest star and WWF machine turned UFC fighter  Brock Lesnar is set to face off against a man who is at not even close to the same level of popularity Cain Velasquez.  Since Brock Lesnar entered the UFC, the Pay-per-view numbers have never been higher, so one might think that on a business level, the UFC is really hoping that Brock Lesner wins and remains the Heavyweight Champion of the world, right? Well take a look at the official promo for the fight and think about what the UFC might be doing.

There has been a lot of discussion on why the UFC would play the race card like this in promoting the fight but in my mind this is a brilliant strategy.  It’s clear that they have identified a huge opportunity in the potential Mexican Segment and want to try their best to enter this market.

The Large Mexican market is currently primarily a boxing market and one that hasn’t been tapped into by the UFC.  Recently efforts have been made to enter into this market (offering PPV broadcasts in 100% spanish) but the UFC has never tried to market a Mexican fighter like this.  To me this is a fantastic strategy because even if Brock Lesnar, the biggest Star in the Promotion, was to lose, the UFC would still come out happy as this would spark Mexican interest immensely.   The part about this that I find interesting is the fact that Cain Velasquez is not even born in Mexico.  The UFC doesn’t care about this however, he has a clear Mexican heritage and this marketing scheme has basically turned the fight on Saturday into a win-win situation for the company, no matter what the result.

Anyways those are my thoughts, it’s interesting to take a step back from watching a sport like this that I like so much to see all the marketing factors and strategies that go into each fight card, which normally I might not have noticed.

For most of us, hearing that the Olympic Organizing Committee (IOC) decided to add in an additional 1 minute of snow clearing time per period during the Olympic winter games last February in Vancouver wouldn’t mean much, but for the IOC and companies everywhere this was a big deal in terms of marketing.  As posted by the Marketing Magazine , the simple additon of 3 minutes of broadcast per game had a very big effect on advertising and money received from this additional advertising.  If the number are correct, the three extra minutes resulted in an additional $7.8 million in advertising revenues for the IOC.

I wanted to talk about this because I am very interested in sports and the marketing side of sports has also always been interesting to me.  $7.8 million seems like a large number for such a short period of time but when sporting events such as Olympic hockey is on, companies are willing to pay a very high price to advertise their product.  Looking at the gold medal game in particular, the article says that companies will pay around 315 thousand dollars per 30 second spot.  This number which seems very expensive, doesn’t even compare to the amount that companies pay to advertise during the super bowl

If these companies are willing to pay such a high price to advertise, they better put that cost to use by creating an effective commercial which people will remember. This could be a reason why some of the funniest commercials always come out during huge sporting events like these. There are always discussions after the super bowl, people dissecting the commercials they have just viewed to see who the winners and the losers of the advertisements were. The Super Bowl for me is one of the only times all year where i actually like to watch commercials. Here are the top 10 Super bowl commercials from Super Bowl 42

Sometimes the most simple of marketing plans are the most effective.  Shreddies is a company that managed to take something so simple and make it into a genious promotion.  I’m sure everyone has seen what I am talking about at some point.  Shreddies took their old product and changed it into the new and improved product. They transformed their product into a new and improved state by simply turning their old shreddies and creating diamond shreddies.

This idea apparently originated from an intern at the agency who thought it was a funny idea.  What makes this marketing strategy so effective in my mind is the fact that we’ve never really seen something like this before.  It’s obvious that it is the same product just turned sideways but even something as simple as that had consumers talking about shreddies again.  The next step to this campaign was to promote mixed boxes that were filled with diamond and regular shreddies.  Being the first company that I know of to do something like this made this campaign a huge success as it got people talking about the product again without changing it in any way at all.

4 years ago, a select number of people knew what twitter was or how it was used.  Currently however, there are over 100 million users registered on twitter with a daily growth rate of over 100,000 users.  According to facts about twitter, there are around 640 tweets sent per second on twitter.  For a lot of users, twitter is simply about following celebrities to see what they’re up to in their lives, but for some, including the celebrities, twitter is a form of marketing and promotion that is growing at an amazing rate each.  It’s hard to believe that a service which allows users to send messages of 140 characters at a time over the internet could become so popular but since it’s creation in 2006, its popularity has skyrocketed.

I’d like to examine a specific case in this blog. That case is the UFC’s (Ultimate Fighting Championship) use of twitter.  The president of the company, Dana White, was one of the first people in the company to start using twitter and he now has close to 1.2 million users following him.  He uses twitter as a way of interacting with the fans (in a way which otherwise would be much more difficult), giving fans a behind the scene look of UFC operations as he tweets pictures of his work days, announcing news about the UFC, and even giving away tickets to events during fight weeks.  Take one example that happened a couple months ago to show you the power of twitter and how it can be used for marketing and promotional events.  In the days leading up to the big fight, Dana White tweeted that he was at a Dave and Busters and that he would be giving away tickets to the event for people that came to meet him there.  Within seconds of tweeting this, fans were already at the Dave and Busters saying they had saw his tweet and were looking for tickets. The video below is from his official video blog and shows just how quickly fans started to come in looking to get their hands on tickets to the fights ( starting at 4:40 )

The UFC has caught on to the twitter boom by giving twitter seminars to all of their fighters which allows for more interaction between the fans and the fighters.  The reason I chose to blog about Twitter and the UFC this week is because it is amazing the power that a program allowing you to send a 140 character message over the internet can have but I expect that over the next few years, more and more companies will catch on to this and Twitter will continue to expand at as it has done in the past few years.