Henry's Marketing Blog

Original link: https://blogs.ubc.ca/zoeyang/2010/11/18/hm-and-its-marketing-strategy/

I finally realized where my girl friends went on a Saturday morning a couple weeks ago. They told me they went to line-up at H&M 7am in the morning to buy some clothes but did not manage to get them. What!? Well, later in that day I saw a status on Facebook that that girl went to line-up the evening before the clothes were released. Why are these ones so popular? Are they really worth lining-up for 8, 10 hours? After I read this post, assuming this is the case, I really admire H&M now. HAHA=)

~Henry

Arriving passengers were given a welcome home to remember at Heathrow Terminal 5.

The moment Liverpool Street Station danced to create this special T-Mobile Ad.

Both of them will make you smile or laugh, but what do you think? Life is just so beautiful. T-Mobile has done a very excellent job in attracting people’s attention. While normal sales ads are all over the place, these creative ones make existing and potential customers feel love and willing to watch again. Smart =)

Life is indeed for sharing. Good job T-Mobile UK.
~Henry

Well, I just booked my first trip with WestJet. As usual, I took a look at its reward program but ended up being very disappointed.

WestJet introduced its new program on March 4th this year. The program allows members to redeem travel dollars for full or partial travel with no black out dates. Basically you will put your WestJet dollars towards the purchase of any ticket at the going rate from WestJet. The more dollars you have the bigger the discount towards that travel.

In order to earn those WestJet dollars mentioned above, you must spend at least $1500 in a 12 month period with WestJet flights only. The 12 month period begins from the day you sign up with the WestJet Frequent Guest Program. The $1500 you have to spend is on base airfare excluding any taxes, fees or surcharges. Once you reach the $1500 level, you will receive $50 WestJet Dollars and then be able to earn 2.5% in WestJet Dollars on all WestJet flights after the $1500 level as well as 1% in WestJet Dollars for WestJet Vacations purchases. You will receive more WestJet Dollars and other rewards once you reach higher annual spend levels. You get the highest $300 WestJet Dollars when you spend $7500.

Well my main point here is the program’s downfall: First of all, the $1500 annual spend level will keep the most leisure travelers away unless they sign up for WestJet’s MasterCard or so. The spending is also per person based. For example, by booking your family of four a trip and spending $2000 in base fares, each person will only have $500 towards the first level.

The 12 month annual spend levels will make it tough for the less frequent flyer to accrue WestJet Dollars. While Air Canada’s Aeroplan has a 12 month inactivity rule, all you have to do is earn 1 or redeem 1 mile to keep your account and balance active. With WestJet if you don’t hit that $1500 in the 12 month period, say you spend $1350, you won’t get anything.

The 5 Year expiry on your earned dollars is about average for the industry but only for programs that have life span regulations on earned miles/dollars. Many Asian frequent flyer programs have a 3 year life span and in Canada Aeroplan has a 7 year life span while others have no life span as long as you have activity in your account.

~Henry

Hey AIESEC!

If you are a student with a global mindset and great leadership skills but haven’t heard about AIESEC before, you are out-dated! AIESEC is the largest student-run organization in the world. Its core part is the Global Internship Program.

How do we AIESECers manage to brand this kind of worldwide organization?

First, the AIESEC brand is more than a name or logo – is our promise or a contract with every stakeholder we are dealing. A brand cannot be created based on artificial definitions, but from the ideological concept of our organization. All AIESECers are the brand. How we behave is the stakeholders experience of the brand and no advertisement can overcome this impression.

Here’s something I have been doing:

1. electronic photo: put an “I am an AIESECer” frame for profile pictures on social networking websites.

2. IM or social networks statuses: always put some motivational messages, such as “I am busy with changing the world”.

3. email signature: add something special to email signature, for example one of the AIESEC values”.

4. promote stakeholders already emotionally engaged to AIESEC: in external campaigns, use videos promoting stakeholders that are already emotionally engaged – a video that expresses the difference that AIESEC made for them.

5. make stakeholders understand their unique contribution. In partners meetings or BoA meetings, express how important they are for LC.

That’s it. For now.

~Henry

Original link: http://mikeabasov.com/post/1594465822/what-social-media-every-sudent-should-start-using

Nowadays social media becomes an important part of our life, same for the students. While a lot of students are stuck in Facebook 50% of the studying time, they should start using those social medias that will help them develop. As Mike said, it is a skill, it is interesting and it will be beneficial.

I totally agree with Mike that LinkedIn and Twitter are both good to start. Through LinkedIn, I have made contacts with hundreds of professionals and alumni which has given me a good idea how I should start with my career. Twitter can be very random, yes, but it is also where some business people and companies post their latest news, which means you get first hand news.

I personally do not Twitter but I follow people on Twitter, you are more than welcome to add me on LinkedIn where I am more active with.

~Henry

I read a few articles that discuss about Southwest’s success. And the points below are a summary of those articles and can reflect the majority of the discussion on the web.

1. One Plane Fits All: Unlike the network carriers and their commuter surrogates, which operate all manner of regional jets, turboprops, and narrow-body and wide-body aircraft, Southwest flies just one plane type, the Boeing 737 series.

I just realized this point. By purchasing same type of aircraft, Southwest has saved millions of dollars on the cost of mechanic  trainings and maintenance.

2. Point-to-Point Flying: Network carriers rely on a hub-and-spoke system, which laboriously collects passengers from “spoke” cities, flies them to a central “hub” airport, and then redistributes them to other spokes. Not Southwest. Most of its flying is nonstop between two points. That minimizes the time that planes sit on the ground at crowded, delay-prone hubs and allows the average Southwest aircraft to be in the air for more than an hour longer each day than a similarly sized jet flown by a network carrier. Southwest’s avoid-the-hubs strategy also pays dividends in on-time operations. According to FlightStats, Southwest’s 78 percent on-time performance in June is eight percentage points higher than the industry average and higher than that of any of its major competitors.

This is just opposite to my experiences. However I do agree that Southwest does an excellent on-time performance.

3. Simple In-Flight Service: Business travelers haven’t always loved Southwest’s über-simple service, but it’s looking better and better as competitors cut back. There is just one class of service, a decent coach cabin that is slightly more spacious than those of Southwest’s competitors. There are no assigned seats. There have never been meals, just beverages and snacks.

Keeping everything simple makes unloading, cleaning and filling another flight of passengers really fast as well.

4. No Frills, No Fees: As other carriers have rushed to remove perks and pile on fees and restrictions, Southwest has kept its customer proposition streamlined and transparent. The airline only sells one-way fares and only in a few price “buckets.” That not only keeps costs down—complex fare structures are expensive to manage—it convinces fliers that they are getting value for money. Prices are all-inclusive too. Southwest doesn’t have fuel surcharges, doesn’t charge for standby travel or ticket changes, and continues to permit travelers to check two pieces of luggage free. And since every seat on every flight is virtually identical, travelers know exactly what they will get when they make a purchase.

Southwest also has a strong management method and a relatively happy workforce. Aggressive fuel hedging is also one of the key factors to bring Southwest to success, according to the article.

~Henry

If you are seeking a hot pot place in China these days, Haidilao may be the choice. Haidilao, a company not focusing on profit when started, has a yearly revenue of $50M.

The restaurant’s most famous part is its waiting period. The line is long. There is an actual story that a customer went to the place at 10 pm one day and was told better to come back early tomorrow; and it was still 3 hours till closing.  However, waiting is one of the reasons that makes Haidilao popular. When a group of customer comes, they are seated at tables in the waiting area where they can enjoy some services. For example, there is board games available; also ladies can do fancy nails for free. Plus, the server will keep filling in your snack dishes and drinks. All for free. I have been there more than 3 times and the average waiting time was about an hour. But I didn’t feel like waiting.

When there’s a vacant table, the waiter will direct you to your seats and provide elastics for ladies to tie their hairs, aprons, cell phone covers to prevent any damages when eating. If you order ramen which is something almost all tables will order, then the cooks will come out and perform a noodle-dance, basically making those noodles in front of you. Most importantly, for such an “over-served” dinner, it’s not so expensive.

These are some things that make Haidilao unique. But how do they keep customer loyalty? How do they attract people who are not willing to wait? How do they differentiate themselves with other hot pot places? Or, how do they make profits if they don’t charge higher than other restaurants for such an experience? These are to be discussed.

Henry

I am a somehow crazy traveler. One thing I would keep working on without procrastination, if this weren’t counted as one, is searching air tickets. Then I am on the way. When I was in OB class in first year, I studied a case on WestJet, a so-called low-cost airline company. But I found this wasn’t the case. For most flights the tickets were as expensive as those from Air Canada. But it was the same time that I knew Southwest Airline.

I didn’t get to fly with them till last winter break when I solo traveled to 10 cities in U.S. within 17 days. I concluded some findings why I thought Southwest was successful:

1. Simple in-flight service. No matter it’s an one-hour flight or seven hours, they don’t serve food. You can buy chips if I remember it. It cuts down their cost and so I get to pay less.

2. Online deal. Southwest’s web only deals are so damn cheap. All my flights were like $49 for short trips or $99 for longer trips. But you need to book early. Of course.

3. Their routes. This was something I found interesting but not confirmed whether this was always the case. The cross-country routes always have stops at their major airports, such as Midway, Chicago. So the basic idea I thought was they gather all passengers to their “hubs” first, and then distribute them again to their destinations.

4. Constant savings. I hate receiving subscribed emails…they are just annoying. But hey, if you pay attention to the flyers Southwest sends out, they always offer good deals, and most importantly, they normally don’t have black-out dates!

Anyway, these were what I found out after traveling with Southwest for 9 times. I am actually going to do some research on how they really succeeded as a low-cost airline company. Maybe I will have another post for my research results. I am just interested.

~Henry

Original link: https://blogs.ubc.ca/lilwicks/2010/10/03/guerilla-advertising/

This piece of blog was written by one of my team members. I was very impressed to see this kind of advertising as I had never seen them before in real life – I would definitely remember it if I saw one.

These days when the traditional advertising methods no more attract people’s eyes, these gigantic works do! If you google “Guerilla Advertising”, you will probably just be surprised by people’s imagination.

Good job!

~Henry

It’s almost X’mas time! Only two months to go! I will be going to California Adventure for the fourth time during my four years in Vancouver…=) Minnie Mouse, Pluto and Stitch are just so attractive; plus the California Screamin’, not the scariest ride I’ve been on but for no reason I just love it.

Okay, obviously the main point of this post is not to express my love to Disney parks. As it was reported that Disney is currently building its third resort in Asia. Shanghai! And it will be much larger than the one in Hong Kong.

A fun fact: There is already two amusement parks in Shanghai. The newer one, The Happy Valley, similar to Six Flags in U.S, just opened a couple of years ago which attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists every day. All those heart-bumping rides.

So why did Disney still plan to build Disneyland Resort in Shanghai under the fact that 1) they have two strong competitors; 2) there is already one in Hong Kong?

I believe that Disney’s target market is way larger than its competitors which satisfies the needs of all age groups. The story-telling strategy is just so amazing that I believe it will live for a long period. A few months ago when Disney just announced the Shanghai plan, there was a vote on Renren.com (Chinese Facebook) on whether you supported/would like to visit the one in Shanghai. Not surprisingly a majority of the users voted for it as they (including me) grew up with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. The only concern was that whether the Disney culture would be changed in the Shanghai Disneyland. Since a large portion of visitors would be from Mainland, I was doubting if Disney would change its strategy to fit in the local appetite. Disney made only some insignificant changes in Hong Kong but I  still couldn’t have the same feeling as I visited the Disney parks in Paris and California. Hopefully they can figure out a way of not letting me lose that feeling because I am really looking forward to it!

~Henry