As tedious as it might have been, I found the marketing assignments to be useful and applicable in the real life world. Of course, there was a limit to what we could do given our experiences and resources, but it still helped broaden our scope in the field of marketing. The freedom of choice given in this project was nice, as each team got to choose which company they wanted to work on

This project is a great learning tool as it is a group project. It gives us students more opportunities to meet new people and to work with new people. We learn each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and build upon that. Also, it’s a lot more enjoyable to complete the assignments as a group instead of completing it individually. Anyways, I learned that there’s more than what meets the eye when it comes to different companies. For instance, it gave me a very good understanding of what components and structures a typical company has in order to function properly and efficiently. I also believe that I improved my research and analysis skills due to the marketing assignments, as I had to look at some statistical reports conducted on our chosen company.

Overall, I enjoyed doing this assignment. It gave me a broader sense of what marketing really is and how it’s more complex than I had previously. A huge amount of analysis and resources go into advertising and promoting, and it still might be a bust or not working as intended. All in all, it was great to work together with different people in a team and help each other succeed in the marketing course.

Healthy soft drinks…

After stumbling upon Piper’s blog post about VitaminWater being unhealthy, it reminded me of Pepsi’s most recent advertisement campaign: “Live for Now”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_2smYVl0zrk

In this video, it shows Beyonce show off some dance routines after drinking a sip of Pepsi because she “Lives for Now.”

As we all know, soft drinks are bad with their huge amount of sugar and other chemicals inside. Pepsi has around 42 grams of sugar per can. In that link, you can see many other types of drink and just how much sugar they contain. This is why I find that the catchphrase “Live for Now” is ironic. Pepsi is trying to position itself as a drink suitable for “healthy living.” They tried to show this in the video with Beyonce dancing, moving actively, enjoy life, etc.
If you truly believe in the commercial and start drinking Pepsi (or any other soft drinks) everyday because you think “Live for Now,” you’re clearly not thinking about the future.
Think about it, the phrase “Live for Now” just by itself is just wrong. It’s as if you’re not taking into any consideration of what might happen in certain actions. Anyways, I just don’t agree with the way Pepsi is advertising its products and it only “looks good” on the surface, but we all know its true intentions are to get people to buy more of its products with little regards to people’s health. Of course, I’m not saying “don’t drink Pepsi” or any other soft drinks, what I’m saying is one should control the amount of soft drinks one drinks.

By browsing around on ADWEEK for any interesting articles, I found one that’s particularly interesting. With the recent launch (March 12, 2013) of Blizzard Entertainment’s “Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm” game, PETA took this opportunity to raise awareness.

For people who don’t know what “Starcraft II” is, it is a science fiction real time strategy game developed by Blizzard Entertainment where the gameplay revolves around the player building an army by mining resources to overwhelm his opponent in online multiplayer battles. This game also includes a single player story mode. Essentially, there are three factions you can play with: Terran (humans), Protoss (humanoid-like alien race with advanced technology), and Zerg (beast-like insectoid aliens).

Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm is the second addition to the Starcraft II trilogy, with this one focusing on the Zerg (first one was focused on the Terran). Since the Zerg are biological like creatures and the main antagonists in the Starcraft universe, PETA invaded the launch day by handing out anti-abuse pamphlets to urge gamers to respect the game’s “pixellated extraterrestrials.” Of course, this campaign by PETA was nothing more than a parody, but I do think it was successful (whether or not PETA wanted it to be).

Because of this “parody” done by PETA, I thought that it was effective in raising some form of awareness among the gamers. Because some were angry about PETA, word of mouth about PETA’s campaign will probably go around and will start spreading to more and more people. In a way, I suppose it was effective in getting the gaming community’s attention.

This campaign’s goal was to remind us that while “while Zerglings are not real, there are many equally “strange” and exotic animals we share this planet with who deserve our empathy.” I believe there is some truth to that goal as we humans are not the only ones on this planet, we share this planet with other organisms and that we shouldn’t “discriminate” against them just because they look “strange” to us.

I recently found an article that was posted on February 18, 2013 that was related to what we have been learning in class last week – pricing strategy!

This article is about Best Buy “killing showrooming” for good and will now price match against local retail competitors along with 19 online major competitors (such as Amazon, Apple, Newegg, Target, etc). I believe Best Buy’s strategy relates to competitor orientation as Best Buy will now price match against its competitors prices. For instance, say Amazon sells something for $200 and Best Buy sells its for $300, Best Buy will match Amazon’s price to you in hopes of you buying it from Best Buy instead of buying it from from Amazon.

I think this is a great idea for Best Buy, as it gets consumers to consider Best Buy as an alternative place to buy products from. Lets assume that there’s a product that the consumer wants on Amazon is priced at $100, but shipping is $50 (I’m exaggerating the price), and Best Buy has it at $200, AND the consumer lives close to a Best Buy (lets say a 10 minute drive), it’ll be worth going to Best Buy, have it price match against Amazon, and then buy it from Best Buy. It’s a win-win situation for both the consumer and Best Buy: consumer gets the item he/she wants (immediate gratification), Best Buy gains the revenue/profit from the transaction.

However, from my previous experience with Best Buy, I think it needs its employees to work on their customer services as I find them sometimes unwilling to help you find the item you are looking for or are just not very helpful at all. If this happens to other consumers, it just might put them off and leave Best Buy.

Also, I know Best Buy tends to charge their items very high relative to other stores, such as Newegg. So in the future, I really hope they’re pricing reasonably. If they’re charging something for $80 and I can get it somewhere else for half the price, they just might lose a potential customer.

“Introducing Graph Search”

This new upcoming feature from Facebook is currently in beta, but its functions and capabilities are already listed out to the public. You can join in on the wait list if you really want to have early access to it, or if you live in the USA, you are already in the beta program.

Anyways, about the Graph Search. In my opinion, its really a more advanced way of searching for people, place, and things. For instance, you can search up friends or people who live in a certain place, such as Los Angeles, New York, etc. You can even search friends who might have similar interests as you such as friends who like basketball, gaming, running, etc. Basically, it helps you search people who fit the criteria you want on Facebook. Of course, people get paranoid about privacy on Facebook, so there are ways you can set what can be searched, so there’s no need to worry about being exposed to the public.

In my opinion, I think this can really benefit companies by taking advantage of this new feature. This is because I believe Facebook is already a giant database full of people’s profile. With the Graph Search, I think it’ll just enhance Facebook’s database and make it easier for companies to do some market research since there will be richer consumer data for companies to analyze. Also, the Graph Search connects people of similar interests as Facebook users can connect people who have the same interests. This already helps companies a lot because as long as they have a big presence on Facebook, whenever a Facebook user “likes” their business page, they can just see what kind of people are under certain groups and see what they’re interested in, where they work, etc. This can really fortify companies’ understanding of their consumers in distinct Facebook groups with people of different interests. Although these groups already exist, the Graph Search will just make things a lot easier to find and locate on Facebook. Basically, it’ll be more efficient and less time consuming to do searches on Facebook.

However, I could be wrong with my assumptions as the Graph Search is still in beta, who knows what add-ons or changes Facebook might add before it’s available for everyone to use!

Today, while browsing the web, I came across an interesting article about cars! Since I really love cars and I try to keep myself most up to date with the latest cars, I found this article quite striking to me.

Meet the Urbee

Although that video was posted in 2011, it gives a general background on the Urbee. Engineer Jim Kor has successfully used 3D printing to print the Urbee. The mechanism behind 3D printing is that makes a three dimensional object or shape from a digital model. What’s so special about making this Urbee through 3D printing is that can printer can add thickness and rigidity to specific sections of the car that you want focused on. However, the 3D printing of the Urbee takes approximately 2500 hours to complete. In my opinion, I think 2500 hours to print a single car is highly inefficient, but is a starting for the future of manufacturing cars. According to Jim, 3D printing could revolutionize the way we are currently producing cars, which is typically through an assembly line with robotic arms doing all the welding and such, by having a warehouse of plastic spraying printers producing “light, cheap, and highly efficient automobiles.”

I think the design and values of the Urbee is going is great, as it’s trying to be eco-friendly and trying to be practical using 3D printers. However, my problem is that I wish it would look more like an ordinary car, like a typical sedan, as I feel that a car with that size does not look very safe to me if a car accident is to happen.

For instance, the Tesla, a brand of premium electric cars just clique with me since it’s eco-friendly (all electric car), is a sedan, and seems a lot more safer to drive in.

If the Urbee was to go on the market anytime soon, I would definitely not buy it at a cost of $50,000 (estimated cost of the Urbee prototype) as I feel that is just way too expensive for a car of that size and specifications. Even though it is a very eco-friendly car (or that’s what its vision is), I’d much rather get a Toyota Prius with an MSRP of approximately $26,100. Also, if I really wanted a small car, I’d even look at the MINI’s, Smart, and Fiat, all which I could buy for less than $50,000. If they really wanted the Urbee to enter the already competitive automobile market, I believe they need to rethink the most obvious: its price.

On January 16, a UK television ad for Wii U, a new gaming console released last year in November, has been claimed to be misleading. The complaint described the television ad as misleading because all the features it displayed implied that they were universal for all games. For instance, one part of the ad claimed “Say someone wants to watch TV when you’re halfway through a game…do both, and everyone’s happy.” This is in fact, not entirely true. Third party developers decide if they want to implement certain features in their games for the Wii U. Nintendo of Europe Gmbh, UK branch explained that the commercial was just used to demonstrate all the possible functional capabilities of the Wii U and believed the average consumer viewing the ad would not believe that the features demonstrated in the ad are universal to all games.

When I first watched this video on YouTube, I really thought that the Wii U would include all those amazing features. However, I was wrong, yet I am a casual gamer myself. If I was mislead after watching the commercial, imagine what the average viewers might believe when watching that ad.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) considered the option to switch from gameplay on the TV to the gamepad controller was a feature new to the console, thus consumers would not be aware as to whether this feature was universal or game specific only. Thus, the ASA’s verdict is that the ad must not appear again in its current form.

One thing we can learn from this is that Nintendo should not assume that the average consumers know everything about the Wii U. Nintendo should’ve made sure the ad was clear to the consumers that not every single feature would be available in the games. Moral of this article? Don’t assume and don’t be ambiguous when advertising.