Lydia Wu's Blog

Google is ranked the first place in 2011 world’s most valuable brand ranking according to a brand evaluation company – Brandirectory. The monetary amount for the brand google is valued at $44.2 billion this year, up 23 percent from $36 billion last year.

Google indexes billions of web pages. Every day, over millions of users search for the information they desire, through the use of keywords and operators on google; that is to say, there is a huge market exist for google; and undoubtedly, google knows that and has used a variety of ways to play with its logo in order to promote their mission or advertise and deliver the messages they want to convey to their users.

Google has done a really amazing job being consistent with their logo, but at the same time regularly playing with the logo in various ways to celebrate special events and holidays, which reveals that ‘even with a consistent brand image, they are not afraid to venture outside of typical “brand guidelines.” In many ways, allowing their logo to be “remixed” in various ways adds to their brand strength instead of diluting it’. By doing so, google may also receive recognition from people all around the world or some specific segment that google specifically wants to target.

Here’s a video showing how google played with its logo to celebrate its 12th anniversary

So I was browsing my classmates’ blogs and found Fion Lee’s post on Starbucks’ new logo. Undoubtly, Starbucks is perceived as the leader in the coffee retail industry, but why does it suddenly change its logo?

I agree with Fion that most of the consumers might feel indifferent with the change of logo. However, since Starbucks decided to change its logo, which is a very essential factor of the company, there must be some signal changes made in their produtcs in direction to appeal to new audiences or existing consumers.

According to Starbucks’ Chairman Howard Schultz, they are “trying to restore some of the goodwill and warm feelings for the brand that have gone by the wayside because of increasing coffee prices, machine-made lattes, and bad press.” This was from a recent article in Business Week. In addition, Schultz also announced just couple days ago that Starbucks will be competing with other brands in consumer packaged-goods industry. In my opinion, Starbucks might already have plan to start its consumer-packaged-goods business way before the modification of its logo since by removing the word “Starbucks” and “coffee”, its grocery business can be expanded beyond coffee into tee, juice, and a variety of other products.

So I talked about the very famous Japanese brand MUJI in my last post, which made me think of another brand, Daiso, the largest franchise of 100-yen shops in Japan.

Just like MUJI, Daiso sells a wide range of products, from stationary, Japanese snacks/beverages, groceries, accessories, toys, kitchen appliance, cosmetics, to Japanese traditional items…etc, total over 100,000 goods. Daiso is ranked the top 1 livingware supplier which offers all kinds of daily necessities and convenience goods at highly competitive prices. Daiso is adopting the strategy often used by Walmart, keeping prices low by purchasing directly from manufacturers in very high volume, and increasing profit by having highest sales. In Japan, all the products in stores are selling at price of 100 yen (around CND$1.2), except for the items such as children’s clothing and large toys which the prices are specially labeled. Indeed, the deal is really attractive, especially for those price-sensitive consumers.

At the same time, Daiso has put a lot of efforts in the quality, design, and packaging of its products, comparing to the goods elsewhere that are offered at the same price. The company has constantly devoted in developing new products. Daiso releases around 1000 new products each month to meet the consumers’ needs. Also, all the products are claimed to be designed by Daiso’s own designing department, with 60% of the products are made in Japan, which I believe gives value to the consumers since “made in Japan” is equivalent to a certain degree of quality assurance to many of the consumers these days.

Here’s the link to the Daiso official website http://www.daiso-sangyo.co.jp/

They even offer website in Englsih, Chinese, French, and promotion video in Italian and Spanish!

So I was browsing my classmates’ blogs and found Iris’ post on Muji really interested me. Muji is a global retail company originated in Japan which mainly sells household and consumer goods. I have known this brand for quite a long time, but never realized that the translation for the brand “Muji” is actually “No Brand Quality Goods”. So when I think about it, yeah, the brand deserves the name!

I strongly agree with how Iris stated “Muji products are of high quality, yet reasonably priced” and “associated with simplicity and user-friendlyness”; these important attributes along with ever increasing awareness of “Green Marketing”, as mentioned in Iris’, are definitely bringing success to the company.

Moreover, even some of the guesthouses in Japan and Korea are now offering “Muji rooms”, which the rooms are only equipped with furniture and appliances from Muji. Comparing to other regular rooms, Muji rooms are offered in a higher room rate; this surely shows Muji has already achieved the level to which consumers perceived its products possess a certain quality.

 Muji rooms (pictures above and below)

The release of Kinect for Xbox 360 was said to open the new era for gaming industry. Players of Kinect would no longer require to use game controllers to play games, but simply by just using gestures and spoken commands. It is also a new technology that will grow with time and eventually adopted by its competitors.

Kinect was launched in North America last November and was considered the most innovative console in gaming industry ever. This is also one of the reasons why Microsoft was ranked the first place in “Top 10 Innovative Companies in 2010” released by US weekly publication Newsweek. Microsoft has made Kinect a differentiated product from other traditional motion-sensing game controller platform that it provides a brand-new gaming and entertainment experience with 100% controller-free to its players. Thus, even the gaming industry is in its growth stage, Kinect can still attract a certain amount of consumers to buy the product, albeit the market share it would gain might not be high. Indeed, heavy promotion for Kinect is essential. Microsoft is already doing this by offering Kinect with a relatively low starting price for a game console of only around US$150. Nevertheless, since the product is still in it’s infancy and a lot of product improvement still need to be done, heavy cost incurred in the future might be expected.

Recently, I just tried Kinect at my friend’s house. I think it was kind of cool when first playing it since it was a brand-new experience for me; however, it did have some troubles picking up my motions and being lagged. But overall, I believe this new technology still has a bright future in front and the concept of the technology might one day be applied to all sorts of applications that will deem the buttons that surround us today obsolete.

Here’s a demo of people playing Kinect (Those are exactly the same games I’ve played! 😀 ) 

So I was reading blog posts published by Influential Marketing Blog and had this post really get my attention – “The Best and Worst of Super Bowl Marketing Strategy 2011“.

Since the high popularity of the game, the price of commercials for Super Bowl is rumored at $3 million every 30 seconds. Indeed, this is absolutely a great chance for brands to be recognized and added to their potential domestic or global consumers’ retrieval set or even evoked set when making a purchase decision (news reported that this year Super Bowl has set record with 111 million viewers in US).

Among all the commercials begin listed, I will focus on the 2 commercials which I regard most effective and least effective.

Most Significant Actual Announcement: Best Buy

So Best Buy is now providing this “Best Buy Buy Back Program”, which is a pioneering service in the industry. I agree with the blogger that this commercial is certainly a significant announcement, especially to those who have desire to keep up with the latest technology but at the same time concern about the cost of buying the high-tech products. Moreover, I think Best Buy is more targeting on younger generation consumers, Generation Y and Tween, who have immense buying power and regard technology as necessity in their daily life.

In addition to that, Best Buy is now even auctioning the costumes worn by Ozzy Osbourne and Justin Bieber in the commercial and all the money will be donated to charity, which certainly builds up a good image for Best Buy.

Most Unintelligible Ads: Chater.com

As commented by the blogger, “the creative execution was incomprehensible, offered no details about what the site actually was or why anyone should care”. Honestly, that was the same thought I had in my mind after watching this commercial. It failed to deliver the most important message to its audience. How are they going to expect more people to use their product without telling people who they are and what they do?

As most of the facebook users includeing myself are receiving tons of events invitations every day, the one that actually catches my eyes these days is the grand opening event for Forever 21 on this coming Saturday in Richmond Centre.

Speak of the company itself; it was originally known as Fashion 21, first founded in Los Angeles in 1984 by a South Korean couple Dong-Won Chang and his wife. Their target was initially the Los Angeles Korean-American community; however, people from other ethnicities began noticing the trendy design of the clothes, it became increasingly popular and now Forever 21 is operating in 19 countries around the world.

The Forever 21 Retail Inc. not only sells clothing for women under 21, it also carries men’s apparel, lingerie, shoes and accessories in various brands such as 21Men, Heritage 1981, twelve by twelve, For Love21…etc. Last year, the company even introduced a new product line “Love 21”, a collection of maternity wear which is said to target mainly pregnant teenagers. Apparently, the firm is using a differentiated segmentation strategy to target several market segments with a different offering for each so that bigger share of the market is obtained and the market for their products overall can be increased.

The retail chain targets consumers in various segments with different needs. Among them, tween girls are their biggest target. These young consumers are known to be having significant buying power and strong desire to have the latest fashion accessories. The company has matched its strength of providing trendy products with affordable price with these young consumers’ ability and needs.

Today, the retail chain has been positioned as an affordable trendy brand, with kids, men, and women’s apparel sections inside the stores, where high school and college age shoppers can be found browsing the racks next to career women and moms.

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner. Are you still looking for a special gift for that special someone? My M&M’s is an awesome choice that allows you to make truly personalized chocolates for your lover or friends!

Here’s the link for making your online personlized order! http://www.mymms.com/

So, how it works is really simple. First, you can pick up to 3 colors that you would like to be in the bag and the site actually lets you preview the colors mix you choose. They even show the most popular combinations are mostly pink and red! (probably because of Valentine’s Day!!)

Then, the really neat part is now you can proceed to add image, clip-art, or any personalized or loving message you want, to make your gift become even more special to that person!

Lastly, pick a package that he/she will like. Then, your beloved one will be thinking of you with each yummy bite!

So, why did M&M’s launch this special offer of customized chocolate My M&M’s?

Undoubtedly, chocolate is quite a standard gift that is almost appropriate for all holiday occasions. By having this idea of My M&M’s, it makes the brand itself become more differentiated from others. Moreover, it provides additional value to their customers, which is called value co-creation. This allows their customers have the opportunities to create and add their ideas into the products or services, which makes the products become more valuable and meaningful.

Currently, My M&M’s is having partnership with MLB, NFL, NBA and even Disney. It also allows business to have their corporate logos on their customized chocolate. I believe M&M will definitely attract more consumers in near future as it targets almost all consumers across different segments from kid, teenagers, to adults. Even I am considering having this as birthday gift to my friends!

With the growing awareness towards one’s self-appearance and skin care, the beauty industry has become another huge battlefield that allows cosmetics companies to compete with each other by applying different marketing strategies. Their target is no longer women only, but men as well, with the range coming down to teenagers as they incepts the need recognition inside their consumers’ minds that they need these cosmetics and skin care products so that they can be more attractive by getting started to use them in their early age.

So other than the famous international brands such as L’Oreal, Estee Lauder, MAC which already won a large proportion of consumers’ loyalty, how can other smaller cosmetics brands compete with them?

Taking the Korean cosmetics industry as an example, most of the consumers in Korea have switched to purchase domestic brands since the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, which have given the Korea cosmetics market a lot more opportunities to grow and develop.

So, with the economy is getting better now comparing to ten years ago, why would Korean consumers still choose their local brands?

Well, Korean cosmetics are apparently cheaper than other top Asian and Western brands yet still promising the same quality. Also, they give away free samples really generously. Another fact that you cannot ignore is the creativeness of their products and packaging design.   

Can you imagine they are cosmetics products? These are Eggpore series from Korean cosmetics brand Tony Moly. The really special feature is that after you are done with the product, you can remove the cut out part on the top of the egg and use it as a plant pot to grow plant where they already put a seed in!

This super cute green apple is not the one for decoration! But the peeling cream from a Korean cosmetics brand! 

Many of the Korean cosmetics products are now claimed to have their products produced from natural ingredients with no chemicals, which the use of natural ingredients has played a significant role in their success today since people are becoming much more health conscious. In addition, Korean cosmetics brands have used a lot of celebrity endorsement to increase their sales. This factor along with the ever increasing popularity of the Korean wave has provided these brands a greater opportunity to be accepted in the market place. This also attracted many foreign tourists to buy cosmetics in Korea. And many of the franchised stores in Korea are now providing customer service in English, Mandarin, and Japanese, which really enhance the customer experience with better serving quality.

Korean cosmetics brand “Etude House” uses fantasy, cute, lovely and Princess style as their shop design theme. White house furnishings and interior design layout of a home gives their customers a sense of mood to relax. Etude House seize the customer needs and specifically create a relax shopping environment.

Currently, Korea is the 7^th largest cosmetics industry in the world and is considered a high-growth cosmetics market, with an average annual growth rate of 9.7 percent in the last four years. This is significantly higher than the 0 to 1 percent growth in stagnant markets like Japan, U.S. and France. With all of these marketing strategies, I believe more aggressive expansion of Korean cosmetics brands is expected to continue in other emerging Asian markets in the future.

The word “Hallyu” (a.k.a Korean Wave) has been created since 2000 in order to express the phenomenon of the increasing popularity of South Korean culture around the world. This strong wave has swept across almost every single country in Asia especially China, Japan, Taiwan, and now it is even increasingly beyond that, credit to the globalization of the mass media and internet.

For the most part, Hallyu is overwhelmingly driven by Korean dramas. So you can imagine when Korea Communications Commission, which regulates broadcasting, eased up regulations regarding product placement in TV programs only a month ago, Korean dramas suddenly became saturated with all types of brand names and products appearing in many scenes.

As a big fan of Korean drama myself, this reminds me of a very popular Korean drama called “Playful Kiss”. There is one scene the main character tries out the fancy feature of her cell phone to test her luck by simply shaking her cell phone, then the outer screen of the phone becomes a slot machine. I was totally impressed by the creativity of this feature! Then I started googling the name of the cell phone and found out that many of the people who were asking the information about the cell phone online have also watched the drama.

Here is the official CF I found on YouTube and they even create a song for this cell phone and demonstrate many of the very attrative features of the cell phone. (including the slot machine one!)

This proves that product placement really is an effective way of advertising. Of course, no one would be willing to give up the opportunity that makes their brand be recognized by all the Korean drama fans across the world with this Korean Wave. However, businesses and program producer have to be aware if they are having too much product placement, which might detract viewers’ interest and eventually become a threat to the drama as some dramas fans already posted their complaints on the dramas’ site.

So I guess It is just a start for this new marketing field. I am interested in seeing what follow-up will be brought about!