Recently I saw lot of recruitment TV ads from the Canadian force, so I decided to visit their website. The website is great! The setup is clear, everything is nicely categorized, and I can find all the things I am looking for on the main page. The Canadian force has done a great job breaking people’s stereotype about the army.

http://www.forces.ca/en/media/photo http://www.forces.ca/en/media/photo

In those recruitment videos, the duties those soldiers are performing are full of excitement, and those soldiers show passion and love towards their jobs. It makes people believe the army is our destiny. Those videos are telling people that the army is not a boring place; the soldiers actually have challenging jobs and duties all the time. Also many people think going into the army is really dangerous, but those videos give great explanations. For example, in the army there are many different positions.

http://www.forces.ca/en/media/photohttp://www.forces.ca/en/media/photo http://www.forces.ca/en/media/photo

Soldiers are not really fighting at the front line all the time. A soldier can be a mechanic, an engineer, a sonar operator, and etc. There are so many positions to choose from, and many of them will never end up fighting at the front line. The Canadian Force also has done a great job to show their demographic diversity. For example, both man, and woman are welcome in the Canadian Force, also all women in the Canadian Force have equal status with men. They also perform duties such as artillery soldiers which we usually believe are performed by men.

The Canadian Force also uses great benefits to attract more applicants. For example all accepted applicants’ post-secondary education will be paid by the Canadian Force that also includes all expense on textbooks. Applicants will also have a guaranteed job after university graduation. In returns, applicants will serve the Canadian Force full time for 36 to 48 months. The pension plan in the Canadian Force is one of the best in Canada, such as retirement plan, moving cost, vacation, full medical and dental care, maternity and parental leave, and etc. As a result, I was shocked that joining the Canadian Force is such a great opportunity. You can serve this great country, and in the end you receive generous reward!

We buy things all the time, and some times we are not satisfy with our products, so we demand products with more functions and features. However there is a price we need to pay for those demands, but we pay way more for those extra functions and unique features than we should. But how many extra functions and special features are worth the money we paid? Not many, so offering extra functions and special features have became a great method for the marketers and companies to earn extra cash from customers. This phenomenon is extremely common in the car industry, both normal cars and high end cars companies use the same strategy. The car manufactures charge a lot more for a car just because they offer customers some extra functions and features. In the following I will talk about some specific examples.

Everybody knows Audi, it looks cool, run fast and German engineered. Many men including myself dream to drive an Audi if we are wealthy one day. But before we get into the beauty of Audi let’s talk about the price and the features Audi offers. Let’s take the A4 for example, the MSRP for A4 is $37,800 which is not so expensive for a luxury car. However let’s take a look how much a customer needs to pay if he or she wants some more functions. If a customer wants a 6 speed manual, the customer needs to pay 2000 dollars more. Therefore it is 1000 dollars more for each extra transmission. How about for those cusomters who want to enjoy driving? And they want both manual and automatic? Then the customer will need to pay another 2000 dollars more. So a customer needs to pay 4000 dollars more just for two more extra functions, meanwhile the horsepower stays the same. However the car will have virtually the same speed if it has the same horsepower, and without a good horse power a drive can never experience the awesomeness of speeding. A4 also offers customers with the quattro premium version, however if a customer choose the quattro premium version, they will not get  the tpitronic (both automatic and manual transmission) feature but with 6 speed. However the customer has to pay 6000 more for quattro premium, and the customer is still getting the same horsepower. So are those features really worth that much? does a car really feel different with those extra features? The answer is no, for most of the drivers on the road today, 95% of them are just normal drivers, and within those 95% normal drivers another 90% dirvers are driving on automatic, and a lot of the drivers can’t even feel the differences with those add-on features. therefore those extra features are not worth the money you are paying.

Another example is  the gaming industry, whenever a great game comes out, there will always be a collection edition or a special edition, and if a customer wants the special edition, he or she will need to pay a lot more. Let’s take a look at how much more the customer needs to pay for his or her special edition game. Recently Microsoft luanched a new Halo serie named Halo Reach, and it is a big hit. First there are a lot of Halo fans, second the story plot happened before Earth got invaded by alients, so players who are insterested in the entire story line of Halo are extemely likely to buy that game. The game also has great graphic and sound effect. However if a customer is a serious Halo fan he or she needs to have a deep pocket, because the legendary edition is way more expensive than you think. The normal edition is sold for $59.99 however the legendary edition is sold for $119.99 almost twice as expensive as the normal edition. And let’s take a look at what does it feature. First of all the legendary edition offers a statue of the Noble team, second it offers a special armor effect when player plays the game, third it offers a really big box which is the container of the game and the statue. As a result Halo fans are paying $60 more which doubles the normal price to get a toy statue, a special effect when playing multiplayer, and a really big box which contain the game. Is it really worth it? From my perspective no.

Do customers really get what they pay for? I don’t think so, companies and marketers always try to lead customers into trap like this. Customers are paying way too much for those little features. Therefore as customers we need to carefully weight what we pay for and what we get out of it, and always try to stay away from a trap like this.

The media channel of marketing had changed a lot scine the invention of  radio. Back to the old days, especially in the 20s and 40s radio was the only way for people to receive marketing message besided newspaper. They listened to all kinds of stuff, news, matches, and etc. But the effect of this kind of channel is really limited, because customers can only hear but they would have a hard time to visualize  the product. Therefore it is hard to attract customers and provided them the motivation to purchase. 

In the late 40s television was invented and it was proved to be a brand new form of communication channel between the marketers and consumers. Veiwers would spends hours and hours to watch television including boring advertisments. And many people no matter young or old would turn on the TV at once when they get off from work. Back then, companies were spending a lot of money creating new TV episodes, mives, all kinds of things that people could enjoy by watching TV. In the first time of human history, consumers can actually see what their products looks like and analyze the the function of the product through their eyes. People who wanted to buy cars can see how awesome their car looks like and its performance on the street. This new revolustion help marketers to attract customers much easier because they can visualize the products.

Though TV is still an important communication channel, it was not as important as it used to be. Right now, people spend way less time watching TV compares to other entertaining activities such as video games, movies, surfing the Internet and etc. Right now the gaming industry is proven to be the second largest entertaining industry just after movie. There are many video games that earn amazing profit within 24 hours.

Starcraft 2 which I personally play, and like it a lot, came out during July 2010. It was such a huge hit that many starcraft fans were lining up in front of the video store over night just to get the game. On the first day of its release, Blizzard sold one million starcraft 2 copies worldwide, and in the next two days, it sold additional 500,000 copies, and Blizzard sold a total 3 million worldwide in the first month. The game itself was sold for 65.99 before tax, therefore it is an approximately 198 million in revenue! There is not a single TV show can achieve this kind of revenue.

Starcraft 2 isn’t the only game which is make legends in the entertaining industry, other games such as Call of Duty Black Ops made the biggest hit ever in the entertaining industry, achieved a sale record of 650 million dollars in the first five days, and its sales had surpassed 1 billion by December 22nd.

In conclusion, the gaming industry is growing exponentially and it is earning more and more revenue as time goes by. I believe the movie and TV industries should work together with the gaming industry. For example they can make a TV episode about a popular game or make movies about the game. As the gaming industry is growing and they have more and more loyal customers, the marketers should consider video games as a new form of communication channel with their customers, also most of the buyers of video games are young adults they have not yet form a conisitence preference of a certain brand or company, therefore, video games is a great mothed to reach this kind of individuals, and build up trust and believe for these individuals.

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