I started my day reading some blog posts and couldn’t decide which one to comment on. Then I realized it would have been convenient for me to not only talk about a script that I liked but also about one, which taught me something. Indeed, William Pigott made a very interesting post on web-advertisements. You may wonder what I learned from his comment and the answer is very simple: the use of AdBlock. I am not really a pro with technology and I have to be honest in saying that I am really hopeless at using computers! Getting to know the existence of such a tool, made me google it right away in order to see how it works.

While skimming through the first page I realized something odd: I was the target of an advertisement for a product whose main feature is the elimination of advertisements, isn’t that weird? As many other web-surfers, I get easily annoyed by the dozens of pop-ups that get opened whenever I start watching a movie or a video on Youtube, yet I must say that they do keep you busy while the movie is loading…. Among the many kinds of ads you might encounter there are those that allow you to play games and if you win (which is usually 100% of the time) you are redirected onto a new page that tells you, “You can win wonderful prizes if you buy certain products”. Well, I usually play these games while waiting for my video to load and just close the window once I win. Even if I do not initially make the actual purchase of the product, I am sure that after having played the game two hundred times and seen the product which is being advertized each and every time I do, I will end up thinking it is a good product for the simple reason that I am used to seeing it.

William is saying that our generation is killing advertisements yet I find myself disagreeing with his statement for two reasons. First, I believe that AdBlock would never really eliminate completely these pop-ups because marketers and computer geeks will find a way to bypass this obstacle sooner or later. Second, as I observed before, William is an advocate of the AdBlock product and through his blog post he actually made an advertisement for it! And I am one of AdBlock’s target segment who came to using it because of a positive word of mouth!

Skimming through the Influential Marketing Blog, one article caught my attention: “What Steve Jobs really gave us”. Weird, eh? After Steve Jobs’ death there has been great rumors and uncertainties on the future of his creature: Apple. Many thought that without the talent and supervision of Jobs, Apple would not perform as incredibly as it did up to now. Yet, I think that it will be able to continue on the right path. As the blog post says, Jobs was the charismatic leader and inventor of extraordinary products but more than that he was a man driven by inspiration continuously pursuing his own goals. Moreover, he was not only driven by inspiration, he was inspiring. As the article says, Jobs put passion, love and loads of effort in what he was doing. This is something that he transmitted to all the Apple group and that is why I think there will not be drastic changes in the Cupertino-based-company’s future.

The first time I heard about Jobs coincide with the first time I heard Jobs speaking. It was 2007. A friend of mine showed me a video of 2005 where he was talking to Stanford Graduates. It sounded to me like magic. Jobs was saying that we all have to do what we really love to. And if we do, things will somehow work out. Even if I think that, unfortunately, things are not always as easy, I definitely think that one produces his/her best performances only when he/she is doing what he/she likes. Indeed putting passion and effort in work will eventually turn bad things into wonderful products.

Apple means this to me after having listened to this speech. Indeed it was deeply meant to create interest and appeal to the Jobs character and subsequently to the Apple product. This supports the fact that it is very important to make use of all the existing marketing tools to make the customer aware of the product value.

Apple is the creation of a man, who, with the help of other passionate people, started inventing incredible products that would result in changing the world people used to live. Even if its founder passed away, Apple will still be able to maintain and also increase its outstanding success because it was left with a great inheritance: passion and inspiration. These elements will prove key in attracting new customers and satisfying all their remote needs.

After having read some blog posts, I came across Judd’s work. I really enjoyed it and found the commercial he attached very funny and very effective. Indeed I totally agree with him that “IKEA has one of the best marketing team around”. I definitely remember the first time I saw the huge IKEA store as if it was yesterday: I was impressed by its colors. In particular I have to say that I fell in love straightaway with that brand, even if I didn’t know what it was selling, just because it had the same colors of the soccer team I used to support (I was 10). Nowadays, besides their “supporting to my team” :), I appreciate their products for their simplicity-indeed as Judd said it is very easy to set up an IKEA table- and for their practicality and at the same time beauty. Yes, beauty. Indeed even if IKEA does not produce masterpieces, it still produces very nice products that are sold at a very cheap price.

I think IKEA marketers were really capable of building over time a super-strong brand image that translated in great customer loyalty. Indeed, I have never heard of a single person being dissatisfied by a product he bought or by the service he was given. Last year, my parents had to change the furniture of our summer-house: they directly surfed on the IKEA website. It is really user-friendly (and if I say so, you have to think it really is since my horrible relationship with technology) and you can immediately look for the size of the object needed without physically going to the shop. What’s more? Our house is located in a remote area and the closest IKEA store is 350 kilometers far away, so it would have been pretty complicated to visit it and then go back on the same day. Yet IKEA gives a solution also to these kinds of problems: you can simply order online the product you want, with the size you need and the color you prefer, you agree on the delivery date and it’s done. On the pre-agreed day someone knocks at the door and surprise, surprise it is an IKEA man with your product.

Even here in Vancouver when I first arrived I had to buy some pots and plates and the first place I wanted to go was IKEA. I can say I am on of their loyal customer 😉

Before starting this course, I didn’t really know how a marketing department works and tries to succeed in drawing customers to their product. I was definitely aware of the fact that the intense search for the right colour and catchy phrase was an important aspect of the marketer’s work. Yet I didn’t really imagine that so many other marketing “weapons” could be used and be at the same time very effective.

A couple of days ago, I was at the BC Liquor Store looking for some beers. Since I am not Canadian, I don’t really know which beer tastes best, so I randomly looked around and one brand in particular caught my attention: Cariboo. You may ask why, and honestly, I asked myself the same question when I was there. Apart from the logo, which I think is wonderful, what really made me stare the case of beers for a couple of minutes was a little white circle in the top right corner of the case. Inside it, there was a drawing of a tree and “Support Reforestation”! I started laughing because exactly the same day, we talked in class about the growing amount of firms supporting eco-fiendly missions and objectives in order to further attract customers. As soon as I got home, I decided to google Cariboo Beer and found  http://www.cariboobrewing.com/ . Exploring the website, I noticed once again, that the company is definitely committed to the issue of reforestation, as testified by the nice and funny commercial  http://www.cariboobrewing.com/media/  . In the commercial, a young adult after sipping his Cariboo decides to help his friend, who was gardening, by watering the soil with Cariboo beer. Needless to say, the day after, the man finds a huge tree in his garden! After that, I could not buy any beer, but Cariboo Beer, also because it inspired me for my first blog post 😉