Month: February 2011

In Keith’s blog he talks about how e-sports is an field where new entrepreneurs can start up a new business. I believe this to be 100% true, especially in North America

First of all, as Keith mentioned e-sports is a huge growing trend world wide, which I believe to be completely true. This is what gives rise to opportunities for entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs or current businesses can market their product to this huge growing segment of people “e-gamers”.

For example, in Korea where e-sports (Starcraft 2) is already a huge sport, we see that many big companies are already sponsoring professional “e-gamers” to endorse their products. These types of sponsorships seem to be quite effective, as many novice players look up to these professional gamers as an aspirational social reference group; so novice players would pay close attention to and purchase the products, equipment and tools that these professional gamers use so that they themselves could improve their game play.

So given how e-sports can be a perfect area of opportunity for investment and how e-sports is a continually growing trend in North America, and around the world, I would not be surprised to see if businesses to start to invest heavy marketing initiatives into e-sports in the near future. In fact, it is even possible that North American professional gamers could eventually attain celebrity status like how some have already in Korea.

In conclusion, I agree with Keith and how he says e-sports is segment where businesses should really take advantage of, because of its growing size and it being a relatively untapped market, in North America.

This past weekend was Superbowl weekend which meant Superbowl commercials! Marketers from many companies worked hard and planned hard for their commercials to rise and stand out of the rest, because of the huge price tag (3million dollars for 30seconds of air time). So what I want to talk about is about two commercials that promoted their product from different angles

1.

This commercial seemed to try to appeal to an audience that wanted power and the cool feel from a car. It also tried to build on the idea that Detroit is the motor city, and it even brought in Detroit’s Eminem to further this statement. What made this commercial so memorable for me was due to the cool presentation of the commercial coupled with the awesome background musics, however this commercial might not be so popular with those unfamiliar or dislike of Eminem.

2.

This commercial came from a different angle then the Chrysler Commercial, as it seem to stay simple, short and sweet as well as promote some family value in the end. This one stood out for me because it was short and sweet and had a touch of humor which made it a memorable commercial.

So which one is the more affective commercial? For me the I believe Volkswagen commercial is more affective and memorable commercial because of the fact that it did not a have a big name celebrity in it, which could actually take spotlight away from the product. Also, I believe the Volkswagen commercial to be more affective because it invoked humor, which I believe is actually very strong because it is much more entertaining than hearing facts about the car, therefore it is more memorable that way.

Facebook is a site that most of us visit everyday for social purposes. Many of us love to use Facebook because of the many things it offers us, at zero cost! So some people might wonder how Facebook makes money because it does not directly sell us any specific product. Actually, Facebook is actually a huge marketing operation. What Facebook does is it collects data about our preferences, likes and interests. So Facebook could be compared to a big data warehouse, possibly a MkIS. With all this data Facebook collects, Facebook could execute data mining on this data to find social trends and what each user specifically likes. This is the information that Facebook uses to market specific ads to us, such as the ads we see on the side bar. Furthermore, with this huge database, maybe it would be possible for Facebook to allow companies to view this data for marketing research, which could potentially benefit us, users, because companies could produce more of what we see as valuable. However, if Facebook were to allow companies access to this data, some users might be resistant to this idea. Which is where a ethical problem arises, is it okay for Facebook to sell your personal information.

I personally do not mind allowing big companies access to the information I place on Facebook. And by allowing companies access to my likes and interests, it could possibly allow them to make better value products for us, as they will have a better understanding of our wants.