A Marketing Blog

The BusinessInsider published an article on why Facebook will never get old.

1. You’re not going to go back to waiting an hour to send an email to 30 people with 40 photos. Attached.
2. How will you remember anybody’s birthday?
3. How will you stalk your college boyfriend’s new fiance?
4. Without Facebook, what are you going to do when you don’t have a friend’s email address or phone number? Facebook messaging blows. But at least you know you can reach anybody with a Facebook account.
5. Forget Facebook. 87 million of you are addicted to Zygna’s Facebook game, FameVille.
6. It takes 2 seconds to “join” a new site through Facebook Connect. It can take a good 10 minutes doing it the old way.
7. How will you hear about parties? How will you remember where and when those parties are? Evite?
8. You don’t care about Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg’s sometimes sketchy past.
9. Sure, Facebook has privacy issues, but you don’t care about privacy anymore. Remember when you wouldn’t use your real name on the internet?
10. You’ve never quit before. Remember News Feed? Beacon? you didn’t quit then and won’t now, either. Not even if you want to.

Facebook has expanded throughout the world, and made itself too easy to use.

Product: Facebook around the world is essentially the same product.  But it is because of this, that it isn’t allowed in certain countries (China, Egypt, Mauritius, Morocco, Iran, Syria, Vietnam).  They will probably have to adapt their product strategy to figure out what they need to get into these countries.  These regions (especially China) represent a significant untapped market.

Price: Who can argue with free? Facebook primarily funds itself with ads.  With the online ad industry booming, and the ability for Facebook to drill down and specifically target users with personalized ads, this is a match made in heaven.

Distribution: Facebook is distributed through the internet.  Even so, around 30% of the world’s population has access to internet.  What about the rest of the 70%?  Facebook should lobby countries to make “Access to Internet” a right, as it has been made in countries like Estonia, France, Finland, Greece, and Spain.

Communication: The extent that Facebook has done to be able to effectively communicate with its customers is to simply let their customers choose which language the site will be displayed in.  More work needs to be done to get Facebook into untapped markets.

With the widespread use of smart phones and the availability of cellular data, many businesses have begun integrating QR codes into their set of marketing tools.  These QR codes can contain text, URL, or other data.  Most businesses embed a URL and redirect the customer to a more interactive website.

In Drew McLellan’s post, “Stellar QR code example – WorldPark”, he talks about the usage of this bit of technology in a rather unsuspecting environment.

The way NYC’s Central Park integrated it is quite interesting.  Even though a lot of people have their cell phones in their hands all the time, they don’t take the time to take a picture of these codes.  But these are strategically placed at “Kodak Picture Moments”.  So now it becomes convenient, and the capture rate of the barcodes greatly increases.

This technology is quite old — it was invented in 1994 by Toyota to scan motor parts.  But it is slowly making its way into North American society.  Here is a timeline of the QR code:

Along with my daily dose of caffeine, I’ve been able to get some free music, often from an artist I’ve never heard before.  These “Picks of the Week” aren’t your typical cobranded products — they’re 3-pronged! To be able to offer a product like this, there must be cooperation between Starbucks, iTunes, and the artist/record company.

And from the success of this partnership, Starbucks has begun to incorporate more of Apple’s products into their offerings.  Here are some of them:

Starbucks + iTunes: a collaborative effort to offer a special “iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store” that can only be accessed when at a Starbucks.

Starbucks Mobile Card App: Through this app, you can pre-order drinks, use it to display your Starbucks Card barcode, or locate the nearest store.  It sure has become popular as it was used by more than 3 million people in 3 months in the US.

I think that this partnership between Starbucks and Apple will be valuable to both firms.  Not only are both firms high recognizable, but they both target the same market.  They target Generation Y-er’s, and that is sensible as they would have the longest customer lifetime value.  Good job, it looks like I’ll be downloading my music from iTunes and getting my grandes from Starbucks for the foreseeable future!

It’s that time of the month where all these McDonald “BUY ONE, GET ONE FREE” coupons come out in the mail.  It got me thinking, are these actually such a great deal?

We all love big discounts and great deals whether you’re buying food, clothing, or anything in between.  These types of promotions are definitely an attention grabber — what word in the English language would be more enticing than the word “FREE”?  Businesses use these types of promotions to generate more consumer traffic to their stores.  These promotions are effective because the consumer doesn’t have to do any work to get these deals and they get an opportunity to save money or get a better value for our money.

There are also books of coupons for sale year after year that contain many of these “BOGO Free” coupons.  The big one would be the “Entertainment Books”.

What’s more enticing than “hundreds of 2-for-1 and up to 50% off coupons” then? I think 50% getting these coupons is!

But we must step back and think — Are these coupons actually giving us more value or are they simply causing us to spend unnecessarily just for the sake of “saving money”?

Following up on my post on Facebook personalizing ads, I present you with fingerprints!

Now, I don’t mean using a fingerprint reader or a scanner to put a your fingerprint on the computer.  I’m talking about the ability for companies be able to identify your computer and be able to build a profile for you.  They can do this because when our internet browsers connect to the internet, they upload a lot of different information (which will make your computer distinct) to whomever.  When companies can build this type of database of profiles, they can personalize their internet ads to match the person.

In Drew Marchand’s post, he talks about one issue this technology can bring — is this invasive or awesome? His opinion on this matter is:

“I’ve read blogs from people that both love this service and hate it. As a marketer, I think it is great. As a consumer, I admit to being a bit nerved at the fact that my likes and searches are fed back to me but in the end, I believe that I will see more relevant ads based on my interests and that my ‘click through’ rate on ads will increase.”

I agree with him.  From a marketing student’s perspective, this will let our promotions reach the target audience more effectively.  From a consumer perspective, the ads that hog up space on the screen will actually relate to me (no more watching the Baby Bullet commercial 10x during my TV shows).

I can’t wait for the day that personalized advertising becomes like this:

‘tweeting bird’ as in Twitter, but I’m not implying that it’s gone, or anywhere near collapsing.

Twitter has been around 2006, but I had only signed up for it recently.  I just didn’t find much use for it.  If I wanted to talk to someone, I would call them or instant message them.  If I wanted to read some of the latest news, I’d go to Google News.  Oh, and I didn’t really want to hear people randomly babble about themselves (which apparently accounts for 40% of all tweets according to San Antonio-based market-research firm ‘ Pear Analytics’).

from Pear Analytics via Wikipedia

Although Tiffany Mah states in her post, “Grey’s Anatomy goes ‘Tweet Tweet’‘”, that

“Twitter has grown to be a strong presence online. With the help of TV shows, like Grey’s Anatomy, Twitter is able to target many different types of people- from business professionals to bored teenagers to marketers.”

I believe that it’s the other way around.  I think the popularity of Twitter amongst the everyday user is what made it a part of that particular episode of Grey’s Anatomy.  More than product placement, I see it more as a mutually beneficial arrangement — Twitter gets to pop up on a hit TV show, while the tag #greysanatomy possibly becomes a trending topic that can bring in more and more viewers.

As I was microwaving some leftovers for dinner last night, I realized that I only know a handful of people that are my age and can actually cook.  I don’t know if it’s because the majority of us have not moved out, and haven’t been required to cook for ourselves, or are we just lazy?  Either way, I think this would be an excellent opportunity to do an Segmentation-Targeting-Positioning analysis on the makers of Hungry-Man, Swanson Meals.

Segmentation: Food.  Everyone needs food, so the consumer base is enormous.  This means that there can be countless ways to segment this market.

• Demographics: Seniors that can’t cook for themselves anymore, adults that are too busy to cook, young adults that don’t know how to cook
• Gender: Hungry-Man for the macho man, Healthy Choice for the healthy woman (Sorry for the stereotype :()

Targeting: Let’s say that Generation Y is indeed inherently lazy (I wouldn’t disagree).  And that the guys will never learn how to cook.  Just think about the lifetime value of having a male Generation Y.  I think we found our target.

Positioning: Swansons has to decide on their marketing mix.  They are priced affordably for customers in this generational cohort.  The product itself is big enough (1 lb) to fill up most people.  They are placed everywhere, including grocery stores and supermarkets.  And lastly, they promoted in commercials during sport events on TV (even had their target customers in mind)!

After reading Joshua Wu’s post about Windows vs Macs, I had to disagree with a point in his post.

In his post, he says that,

“Even if Macs have the cool factor for teenagers like us, with its sleek cuts and beautiful desktop designs, this only covers 1 consumer group which is probably not that big of a portion.”

Apple is, without a doubt, targeting teenagers.  But they are also widely used in the industry for film, video, photography, and music.  All of these industries that use Apple products have the potential to become large influences on the general consumer who watches movies, looks at pictures, and listens to music.

Secondly, and more importantly, “Customer Lifetime Value”.  By targeting teenagers, Apple is able to turn casual users into loyal supporters or advocates.  They have been quite successful in this aspect.

from "http://marketingabstraction.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/dressmac.jpg"

Apple has successfully been able to create this idea or concept of a “Apple Community”.  The users of these products (while sometimes blindly) are huge supporters of the pieces of hardware they own.

*Disclaimer: I don’t own a Mac and probably never will*

I think the above picture explains a lot about what distracts a student (or just about any consumer) whenever they are trying to do something productive.

With all this time consumer spend in this so called “Bermuda Triangle”, what can marketers do to tap into this medium?  Well a lot of them have done so already, but let’s just take a look at what Facebook has been able to do.

You might have noticed a while ago that Facebook has managed to match your profile settings and show you personalized ads.  If you enable this “instant personalization”, partner websites will be able to take your information and further personalize their ads to target YOU.

honestly, i’ve never paid much thought to the marketing that goes around.  every once in a while i’d run across some funny commercials or advertising campaigns on youtube.

these ads are just hilarious.  i can watch them over and over again and they never get old.

these ads were such an internet phenomenom/meme that even grover (from sesame street) made a parody!

old spice also had some that were… quite disturbing before.

even though i found these ads funny, i actually never decided to switch brands or even decide to try old spice products out.  but the one thing i did do was send it to many of my friends.. does that make me an advocate?