If there is one thing everyone ought to know about marketing, it must be that there’s a lot more to it than just the traditional selling/advertising. In fact, you can “change” the world! Well, maybe not you but the winner of the US 2008 Presidential Election certainly did.

“Mr. Obama won the vote of hundreds of marketers, agency heads and marketing-services vendors gathered here at the Association of National Advertisers’ annual conference.”

As you can see, aside from being worshiped as an idol by many of his supporters, Obama also served as an inspiration for marketers. His campaign is one of the largest and most expensive Public Relations(PR) campaign in history and it utilized the most advanced of techniques. For example, they adopted social media as one of its promotional platforms to engage its supporters, allowing them to share their spirit with the rest of the internet. This practice may sound very common and perhaps overused in today’s perspective, but that was back in ’08, a time when some people didn’t even know Facebook existed. As one marketing columnist puts it, “It’s the f**kin’ Web 2.0 thing”.

As a result, a politician of all people topped a long list of corporate elites. Obama came in first with 36.1% of the votes, beating Apple who were at 27.3% while companies like Nike, P&G and Coors didn’t even make the shortlist; McCain was far from the top with only 4.5% of the votes.

So is that how Obama became president; are modern democratic elections really just an elaborate nation wide PR campaign? I’ll leave that for you to figure. The facts remain facts; Obama went from a small time Senator from Illinois to the face of the United States in the span of months. It goes to prove that marketing is beyond just the realm of business. Marketing has very least influenced the fate of global politics, for better or for worse.

Reference:

 Ad Age’s Article

Tema Frank‘s blog posting, “Death of a Salesman … Let Prospects Sell Themselves” , raised some pretty interesting arguments against personal selling. I mean come on, everyone has had some kind of negative experience with sales-people and can find reasons not to like them, but she is proposing we get rid of in-person sales all together and replace them with e-commerce that present the info needed for consumers to make their decisions and automate subsequent transactions.

Her arguments? Sales-people suck and can’t do their job properly while costing companies a fortune in salaries. Computers on the other hand, make less mistakes, provide comprehensive information and present those info on a timely basis to clients’ own homes; Calgary’s Optimum Energy Products Ltd. replaced their outside sales staff with technology and proved successful with a track record of profit growth.

I have to admit she has made some very valid points, at least judging from my experience. For most major purchases I make I tend to do my research well ahead of time. I land on a decision before leaving home and I’m only in the store to carry out the transaction, and yet the sales-person shows-up though I never asked for any help and claims commission for the sale. However, I realize not everyone makes their decisions in this fashion. I’ve witnessed consumers who know nothing of what they are buying and rely on the sales staff completely. To them, this procedure is absolutely necessary, without it they may leave for a competitor’s store due to lack of customer service.

Perhaps in a world where most consumers are self-dependent will this model work. In our world however, especially in B2C, way too many people expect to be served by real people; automation would take away part of the shopping experience.

It was such a short while ago when I met my team and now we have completed the term together. In the last two month we worked cohesively and always completed our work a while before the deadline even. It was a great learning experience for me as well as an awesome team atmosphere where we shared our laughter and joy.

The project itself made us look deeply into the company to come up with insights and suggestions which we would not have otherwise. I didn’t think too much of Lululemon (our chosen company) from my perception but through this project I came to see their unique business strategy. They did many things contrary to common sense but were still able to achieve success, which gave us a lot to contemplate.

I will always remember those long nights when we stayed up to do last minute review and editing. To avoid the confusion caused by all editing at once we broke up the process into sequences by person. So we edited after one another then passed it on to the next person like a relay. We each depended on the person previous and after to do their part correctly and that chained us together, in a good way 🙂

Even with that much rigor we were not perfect in our final results. Now I definitely know what to watch out for in this class (single spacing…) if I was to repeat it again, but given everything else, I have no regrets.

In classes that involve a lot of group work, your team mates make up a least half the experience, and that was a funtastic experience! To any of my team that might be reading this, thank you, and best of luck on your exams 😛

False advertising, the same old same old that I seem to run into every time I look at business news or consumer report. I came across the topic yet again when reading “C’mon, Let’s be honest!” by fellow classmate Chloe Kim where she discussed the infamous case by Listerine in which they claimed their mouthwash products were a cure for everything. This of course, did not end well for the company; they were fined millions for their attempt to deceive.

Before you guys judge, I want to clarify that I am not the infuriated consumer who is going to bash the companies because I fell for their tricks. Rather let’s approach this problem from the company’s perspective; isn’t businesses here to make a profit after all?

Indeed they are, in which case they should avoid spreading non-sense about their products even more so. The fines and legal charges are often just the short term downfalls, the bad publicity and damages done to the company’s brand image is often irreversible; the long term effects of which hurts the company beyond measurable figures. You will find companies that have endured through the ages to be ones which dealt in honesty, in relationship building and life time value over the short-sighted transaction based marketing found in these shameless examples.

Check out Chloe’s original post!

Also for some hilarious fail adversing examples from the past XD

As many of you may already know, the former Department of Economics at UBC has changed its name and re-branded itself as the new “Vancouver School of Economics” last year. The VSE plans to add spaces for 328 students and 10 faculties. Along with the expansion, the VSE will also be introducing the new four year Bachelor of International Economics degree with support from the Sauder School of Business. The new program is said to have a greater focus on economics compared to the conventional BA with small class settings and the pairing of international and domestic students (1:1 ratio).

“UBC’s Vancouver School of Economics will expand UBC’s place as a global leader in economic policy,” says Prof. Michael Devereux, the school’s inaugural director. “This new centre will educate the next generation of global policy leaders – both those in Canada and other countries – and help to inform policy solutions for our challenging global economy.”

Coupled with this expansion is a growth of annual tuition to $7,672 for domestic students and $27,731 for international students from $4,700 and $22,622(BA) respectively. Whether or not this increase is justifiable is up to debate. From all the relevant sources I had access to, I learned little more than vague concepts of improvement. Aside from the restructuring inside the Faculty of Arts and increase in the enrollment of internationals, I see few differences in the actual program itself compared to the original BA in Economics. The profit incentive might be obvious enough from the attempt to capitalize on UBC’s international reputation by enlarging the enrollment overseas.

So what do you guys think? Is the new VSE able to follow the successful path set by the LSE or is this just a clever marketing strategy to increase their revenue?

http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/2012/12/05/ubcs-new-vancouver-school-of-economics-to-educate-global-economic-policy-leaders/

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/announces+creation+Vancouver+School+Economics/7656107/story.html

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/economy/creates+Vancouver+School+Economics+updated/7656966/story.html

Modern economic theory has taught us that the market efficient equilibrium is reached through rational choice made by informed consumers. Needless to say, this idea is a long way from the reality of our consumer market, one that is littered with incidences of sub-par product quality and higher-than-competitive level pricing, both elements of market failure. Here I would like to raise the question: does marketing play a role in any of this, and if so, how?

A typical marketer would market themselves to be the agent who helps inform consumers to make rational decisions that best benefit consumer interests. As many of today’s consumer products involve sophisticated technology not understood by most, it makes natural sense to have an intermediary who bridges that gap between our needs and want to the utility that can be derived from complex pieces of machinery. If this were true, marketers are indeed contributors towards an efficient market.

Before we can continue, I would like to ask the reader to watch the following video: The Force: Volkswagen Commercial

Hope that wasn’t entirely boring.

As many of you may already know, this commercial is very well received to the extent some would even consider it as a work of art. However, if we return to our earlier topic; where does this fit in to the purpose of creating informed consumers?

If one were to make a proper, informed decision with regards to purchasing an automobile, you would take into consideration its technical specifications, performance stats and possibly third party reviews. Yet, nothing that is even remotely related to any of those topics is presented in the advertisement. In fact, most commercials provide little informational value at all possibly because they were never intended to have. Not that the companies are necessarily trying to deceive the consumers, but they are definitely managing their impression to draw upon the appeals of their targeted market in order to earn supra-normal profits.

Having answered the question I started with, I would like to raise a new one: are these ads, ones that are non-deceiving and yet non-informative justified, taking into consideration that they add no intrinsic value to the products at hand while being sold at a premium for their perceived worth, or more commonly known as their brand.

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