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I remembered that there were a few months that some TV channels were full of the “Slap Chop” commercial:

It played almost every 5 minutes and it drove me crazy…But it tended to be the only product commercials that I could remember (should be “I couldn’t forget”) since I came to Canada. I accidentally watched it again on Youtube and found out that it’s still popular and people just love talking about it. What the heck! Why would people even bother talking about it if they thought it was kind of annoying? Well, it is not that annoying compare another two below.

The first below is a most famous and ridiculous commercial shown during 2008 Olympics. If you know little Mandarin or even if you don’t know, what all this commercial says is “Hengyuanxiang(which is the name of the company), rat rat rat; Hengyuanxiang, blablabla…”which the pattern repeats with all twelve Chinese zodiacs. Despite of tons of negative comments, this piece is considerably successful in China. People of all ages know this brand now.  (Note: this company is a very famous wool-products manufacturer in the world.)

The second one I’m sure is very well-known commercial for North Americans.  It’s similar to last one and I did get pissed off. Not sure about other guys.

I can’t think of any deep reasons why these annoying commercials were so successful. To what extent could a commercial be so annoying but can still attract viewers? Any ideas?

Henry

Read from Metro Vancouver newspaper on Tuesday that “Washington stat officials say the second Amtrak Cascades train service to Vancouver is being cancelled due to higher fees imposed by Canada”.  I felt really unpleasant when I saw this news as I consistently used this services several times every year. The financial problem which “the Canadian federal government said it would require the Washington State Department of Transportation to pay nearly $550,000 a year for border-clearance services” is not the only issue raised on this route. I read earlier that the low ridership is also one of the main issues.

From my personal experiences joint with some stuff that my marketing prof covered, I made a tiny list of  SWOT analysis of this beautiful train route on northwest coast: (Just because I am interested)

Strength – convenient and cost efficient. There is two reasons that I use this route: 1) I love travelling. Flying domestically from Seattle to other U.S. cities  is way cheaper than flying from Vancouver. 2) No need to worry about the congested highway (I-5) compare to taking a coach bus (while there’s almost no price difference)

Weakness – low frequency. Currently there’s only two pairs running between Vancouver and Seattle and there will be only one pair running everyday from November due to the issues mentioned above.  Limited choices limit the ridership.

Opportunity – beautiful scenery and green travel. The view of the Pacific coast is gorgeous and that is why I prefer train to coach buses. Especially day times. Also as the train is more energy efficient than cars, buses and planes, higher ridership could be expected.

Threat- lack of support from government. That’s the only threat I can think of so far and that’s why the second train service is being cancelled.

Anyway, if you hadn’t got a chance to ride with the Amtrak Cascade service, I would recommend you to try it. For the amazing view and comfort environment at a relatively low cost. It’s totally worth it.

~Henry

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