Month: June 2011

This post is a reply to ‘Whopper Lust’ on Adweek.

Burger King recently partnered with Direct TV promoting “Whopper Lust” campaign; the channel viewers can watch burgers spin and get rewarded with Whoppers. It is basically a trade off of time with Whopper.

Promotion

Co-marketing
Just like Mcdonald’s with Monopoly, Burger King also did co-marketing with Direct TV. The food franchise or the media company didn’t create a new product. They just partnered up to increase their sales.

AIDA model

• Awareness: most people already know what Whopper is and where they can get the burger
• Interest: starving people with a lot of free time might be interested in watching the ads
• Desire: the longer do viewers watch the ads, the more desire to eat the burger
• Action: five minutes after watching the ads, viewers will get one free Whopper! and they will go to the nearest Burger King and get the burger out of the restaurant

However, one thing I’m concerned about is that if Burger King offered this kind of sales promotion, I think its profit would suffer. The sales promotion for Whopper is good enough with Whopper day, I believe. Also, I know that Whopper is the best selling product in Burger King, but if the company only focuses its promotion too much on one or two products, its brand image would be fixed in consumers’ brain. Well, it’s good that if people thought of Burger King, Whopper would be the first thing they could come up with. However, as I just mentioned earlier, because people only can think Whopper, Burger King without that burger would be like nothing. Personally, Whopper is the only thing I can come up with when thinking of Burger King. Anyway, what if its product life cycle is at decline stage? This Whopper Lust campaign is really a creative sales promotion, but I think it would be better that the company promotes its other products as well so that people become more aware of the other burgers.

 I always thought that humorous ads work more effectively than serious ones, especially when targeted market segment is young people, because it could remain longer in people’s brain and develop maybe strong attitudes and purchase intentions.

We sometimes buy things just for fun if the prices are not that much expensive, or affordable. For example, I found Axe’s body shampoo very interesting in terms of its promotion, when I saw the product on the shelf for the first time. Even though I knew Axe’s products were not going to work as the company advertised – women would be attracted to a guy if they smelled him – I just chose to buy Axe over its competitors’ products because I didn’t have a preference and its ads caught my attention.

In addition, I believe that the humour used in, for example, beer ads does not necessarily need to be associated with the product as long as the ads catches people’s attention and remain in people’s brain. For sure, it would be better if it’s somehow related to the product. For example, however, the baby carrot advertisement, I couldn’t find any points related to the product, but I only found the ads were funny. After watching the ads, if I went to a store and see Baby carrots, I am sure I would think of its ads and maybe try it.

We often forget about some things how important they are, and just take those for granted. The topic that I want to talk about today is a PILLOW. Let’s say you sleep 6 hours a day on average. It means that you spend one fourth of your day on sleeping, which is a big part of your life! Depending on how deep you sleep, the quality of your life can be improved or worsened. One of factors, which can help you sleep well, is the pillow! If you cannot sleep well and keep tossing and turning in your bed, why don’t you change your pillow?

I recently noticed that there are so many types of pillows in the market.

For example, if you were a side sleeper, you might need the pillow looking like this!

or maybe like this!

Just like this, there is a pillow for a back sleeper and also stomach sleeper!

Moreover, you might have seen the travel pillow or neck pillow.

Isn’t it interesting that we can find so many types of pillows nowadays? From a consumer’s perspective, I would say that the marketers in this industry did a facinating job in terms of communicating with customers and fulfilling their needs and wants.

Here are more pictures of interesting pillows.

Louis Vuitton, as one of the most valuable brand in the world, is well-known for no discount price like Chanel (if we exclude a duty-free shop). As far as I know, the company has never offered a discount for more than one hundred years, even though other luxury brands like Prada and Gucci annually give customers a chance to buy their products at discount prices. Despite the fact, Louis Vuitton generated approximately €2.7 billion in the previous year, which is higher than any other luxury brands. Then, why are customers so crazy about the company’s extremely expensive products? It is because, as we learned in today’s class, the customers perceive its brand value that much! It’s not just about the cost, but value.

I believe that Apple is the company just like Louis Vuitton. The only difference is the company sells different types of products. When I read the article about the cheaper version of iPhone, therefore, I couldn’t see any reasons that Apple wanted to go for low pricing. Instead of lowering the price, the company might want to offer better services to keep its existing customers more loyal to the company. Like classmates said in the class, people buy Apple because it’s APPLE, no matter what the price is. In addition, if Apple lowered the price of new iPhone as a strategical pricing (long-term), it could hurt its brand image, which was my first thought of the article. For example, once customers got used to the cheaper price, they wouldn’t want to buy Apple’s expensive products any longer (like Whopper example in the class). it is aslo likely that they might think Apple were no longer the prestige brand. Moreover, since price is an indicator of quality, lower price could be considered that the new version of iPhone might be less valuable than the previous models or might have some problems.