Month: March 2011

Watch this to understand the blog post!

Hype and build up around a product is a good thing – it is word of mouth marketing and it creates motivation for a consumer to buy and try out a product.  However, a hype too big has reverse effects, especially if the product doesn’t live up to the hype.

My friends and I have a love for the TIM TAM SLAM! The sensation in your mouth when the chocolate reacts with the hot tea is this volcano explosion on your tongue that takes your taste buds to a whole other universe.  The other day, we introduced the TIM TAM SLAM to another friend of ours, she had no idea what it was.  Naturally, we hyped up the experience and made it comparable to no other.  We described it as “out of this world” and some of us couldn’t even finish out sentences.  The conversation went something like this “you have to try it, oh my gosh its the most amazing thing in the WORLD.  You just…oh my gosh its just so good!!!!”

The hype was there and when our friend tried her first ever TIM TAM SLAM and we all awaited in anticipation to see her reaction – she, much to our disappointment, said “oh that’s it? Its good but you guys built it up WAY too much”  Our excitement and slight overreaction to the product ruined the product and experience for our friend who tried the product with extremely high expectations.  Just something to think about and to keep our marketing minds rolling 🙂

Last week I fell into the trap of a marketing strategy.  I was picking up a few daily essentials from Superstore by myself, and not having brought any cash with me, my purchase was going to be billed on my debit.  In other words, straight from my savings account.  So being the money cautious university student, every dollar I spent mattered.  I undoubtedly did some serious price comparing.

Unaware of how much my body lotion usually costs, I was appalled at how much my mom usually spends on moisturizer that I use up like water.  I spent a good few minutes contemplating whether I should wait for a sale, and trying to decipher which bottle size would be a better deal.  My eyes scanned and without much wandering, landed on a medium sized bottle that was priced at probably HALF the price of what I first saw.  I grabbed the bottle right away and continued with the rest of my shopping.

After amusing myself at the self checkout, I went home.  And as I was packing away my newly bought items at home, I realized that I did not in fact buy Aveeno moisturizer.  Rather, I bought an imposter brand that looked pretty much exactly the same – the bottle shape, the colour, the layout of the label.  Basically, everything other than the company name was exactly identical to the Aveeno brand I’m used to purchasing.

And again, being the time poor university student, I gave the bottle to my mom for her to use, and she bought me the real Aveeno bottle, at full price.  The traps we all fall into…

After a week of midterms and assignments, I allowed myself to unwind and indulge in a guilty pleasure – watching beautiful people find love on television.  I’ll be the first to admit I follow the Bachelor series perhaps a little to closely.  But through all this television drama and romance, I managed to pick up a marketing trend – the importance of the target market.

The Bachelor/Bachelorette aims at an audience who want to watch a fairytale ending to a love story.  The dates they go on are filled with romantic surprises and the women are always prim and proper while the men are true gentlement.  On the fifth season of the Bachelorette, fans were introduced to Wes Hayden – the notorious bad boy of the show.  He was a blooming texas musician, who came onto the show to gain fame and fortune.  He played the heart of the Bachelorette who gave up everything to find love.  He made it to the top 4, all the while having a girlfriend and left the show saying “I’m in Spain..and ever’body’s gonna know ma name”.  Fans of the show hated on Wes as he didn’t fit the gentlemanly ideal that they are expecting from the show.  He was labeled as reality tv’s greatest villain!

However, half a year later, the Bachelor came up with a spin off called the Bachelor Pad.  In this show, popular rejects from the Bachelor and Bachelorette were placed in a house together to compete for money and perhaps find lust along the way.  The show was a “trashier” take on the Bachelor.  Wes was on this show as well, and wooed girls with the same song he used on the Bachelorette.  However, because of different expectations, he became a fan favourite quite quickly!  Viewers found him dreamy and swooned over his bad boy image.  His music career skyrocketed afterward as well!

So the importance of your target market really DOES make a huge difference! Not only in selling products, but in selling yourself..or someone else.  Nonetheless, lets end the post with the song that notorious Bad Boy Wes Hayden broke and won millions of hearts with:

I think we’ve all been let down by an advertisement before.  Its definitely not the greatest feeling in the world – disappointed and in a warring debate on whether to still purchase the item because you’ve waited a good while for it!

The topic of false advertising was brought up in my friend, Jordon Leung’s, blog.

He mentions the let down faced when eating KFC, the picture portrays an image of crispy tender chicken pieces.  But in real life, it is, for lack of better words, a muddle of grease and fat.  False advertising is really a turn off for consumers and decreases a customer’s loyalty to a company.  Having worked as a sales associate, I have been on the other side of false advertising and have seen the disappointment and anger of a customer.  I used to work at Aritzia and during Boxing Day, misleading advertisements are used extensively every year.  For instance, among an island of expensive hoodies and a couple of socks, there would be a huge sign saying “up to 30% off!” (the up to being in fine print, obviously).  In reality, however, only the socks are selling for 30% off, the high demand hoodies are actually only reduced by five dollars.  I’ve noticed the different customer reactions to such advertisements: some scoff and laugh at the sillyness of the trick, some are angry, while others unwillingly still pay for the product.  Either way, they’re not happy!

I completely agree with Jordon in that ethics should play a huge role in marketing.  Yes, there are legal boundaries, but the consumer should also be respected and considered beyond those boundaries.

Its no secret that all the second year Commerce students in Sauder were cramming, writing cheat sheets and all around fussing over their latest Statistics midterm.  We complained about not understanding funny greek alphabet signs like “miu” and “alpha”, to name a few.  Moaning and groaning about wishing we paid attention in class, kept up with our readings, and so on, we turned to outside resources hoping to help us.  A few students stumbled upon a website called Khan Academy – a teaching website that provides tutorial videos on various university topics, introduction to statistics being one of them.  This website covered every topic on the midterm and presented it in a simple and practical manner.  Soon enough, the beauty and power of this website spread like wild fire. Khan links were posted on facebook, students were playing the videos in class and during their breaks and links of the website were sent in lots of mass emails.

In addition to learning about statistics these last few days, I also realized the power of “word of mouth”.  The Khan Academy website didn’t have to do anything but provide a practical and useful service.  But because of their high quality service, their users did their marketing for them!  Students passed on the word and sold the website with phrases such as “Khan is God” and “I watched Khan and he saved my life!”.  Further, as a user of “Khan”, I have already found my self subconsciously recommending the website to other students and telling first years about the calculus tutorials they have.  Word of mouth truly is a powerful source, if marketers can claim advocacy in their target market, the rest should sort itself out.