Bose’s recent sponsorship deal with the National Football League restricts any player from wearing Beats by Dr Dre head phones. This is being over ruled by Beats’ affiliation with several NFL stars, causing much controversy throughout the league.

Bose attempted to overtake some of the 57% stake that Beats controls in the $1 billion headphone market through the sponsorship deal with the NFL, trying to further position itself in the market.  This marketing plan has seemingly backfired due to quick thinking by Beats’ marketing team.

The NFL, after its deal with Bose, fines any player ten thousand dollars who are found wearing Beats headphones during any televised events to attempt to promote brand loyalty. This rule has led to Beats accepting the fine and directly paying for it. The plan of action taken by Beats has resulted in free (other than paying the fines) advertising across the league. The promotion of Beats by the individual “big-name” players has seemed to overpower the attempts of Bose, indicating that personal branding can potentially have a bigger impact than an entire organization, depending on the marking strategy.

http://www.thestar.com/business/sportonomics/2014/10/27/nfl_and_bose_fight_losing_battle_against_beats_by_dre.html

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000408187/article/kaepernick-fined-for-wearing-beats-by-dre-headphones

http://www.bose.com/controller?url=/promotions/entry_pages/soundlink_nfl/index.jsp&src=OCG00001

Recently, Taha Bhopalwala wrote a blog discussing the depletion of the electronic department stores and how one past giant, Best Buy, is gradually running out of business.

In a recent effort to counteract the revolution from big box stores to online shopping, Best Buy have announced the addition of the past president and CEO of Domino’s pizza, J. Patrick Doyle, to its board of directors. Doyle became the CEO of the struggling pizza chain in 2010, and since this change he has managed to double their profits and watch their stock rise 600%.

An article by Rich Duprey highlights Doyle’s dramatic turnaround of one of the largest global pizza chains, with Best Buy hoping to receive the same improvement. Although the trends are against Best Buy because of online competitors, the article states, “analysts find the company has almost reached price parity with Amazon.” This gives confidence for the foreseeable future of Best Buy if Doyle manages to find a way to engage the customer and create a point of difference in order to stay alive in this competitive market.

https://blogs.ubc.ca/tahabhopalwala/2014/09/27/is-it-really-the-best-buy/

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/11/07/can-a-pizza-guy-turnaround-best-buy.aspx

I am writing in reply to Tamara Giltsoff, to build on her blog post on Kickstarter’s creation of shared value. Tamara shares an interesting view on an innovative company and how they create shared value in the global community.

The concept behind Kickstarter’s business model is to bring aspiring entrepreneurs together and give them an opportunity to pitch their ideas to the world, in hopes of gaining financial capital and starting their dream business.

This innovative concept goes against the norm of capital investments CEO Perry Chen explains, “People are supporting projects because they want to see them happen. It’s so different than giving money because you want to make a profit.” Chen is letting everyday people contribute to ideas that they want to see succeed, in hopes of gaining nothing in return but gratitude.

Kickstarter is giving each of its customer’s an opportunity to succeed and reach their goal, while still being successful itself. This business model creates value for each entrepreneur that uses its service, generating economic benefits, and gives the global community an opportunity to support one another, developing social prosperity. Kickstarter is a perfect example of creating shared value because of their values that strive for joint company and community growth.

Interesting Kickstarter example!

http://tamaragiltsoff.com/blog/kickstarters-and-shared-value/

http://allthingsd.com/20121105/kickstarter-ceo-no-ipo-for-us-and-no-equity-crowdfunding-either/

https://www.kickstarter.com/?ref=nav

Google Wallet Ad

In response to James Lau’s interesting blog post on Apple’s new technology, I wanted to further develop the comparison between Apple Pay and its main competitor, Google Wallet.

Google Wallet has been available on Android devices for the past few years, being released into the US market in 2011, but has not caught on like its new Apple counterpart. After the release of Apple’s payment service, a tech reporter compared the two rival products to see how they matched up. His discoveries can be found in this article.

After the analysis, both Google Wallet and Apple Pay stack up to one another quite equally, so what has made the latter so much more successful?

Apple’s marketing strategy, unlike that of Google’s, has taken a direct approach to their customers giving the general consumer the idea that Apple has created a point of difference. This false PoD is a perfect example of how great marketing can make up for late entry into a market segment. Google’s product might contain all of the same innovative elements, but Apple pay has exploded in sales through the use of their disruptive marketing tactics.

https://blogs.ubc.ca/jameslau/

http://business.financialpost.com/2014/10/28/apple-inc-pay-signup/?__lsa=f41a-b5dc

http://bgr.com/2014/11/03/apple-pay-vs-google-wallet-comparison/

http://www.engadget.com/2014/10/29/week-apple-pay-google-wallet/