Blog of Jeannie Tse

I feel like one of my favourite things to blog about happens to be brand management and how a company needs to treat it’s customers well no matter the monetary cost.

In light of the horrific Japanese earthquake and subsequent tsunami, Softbank’s CEO Masayoshi Son offered free phones to earthquake orphans among other things. For those who are unfamiliar with this company, Softbank is one of Japan’s largest mobile company, they are very popular with the general population.

Image from http://www.ipodschool.com/

Masayoshi Son, after visiting Tamura, a city heavily affected by the nuclear disaster, announced that Softbank will provide job positions and help relocate citizens in the city. They will also cover a year’s worth of living expenses, including commute and food. Softbank is also using their existing promotional campaign site to organize requests for emergency supplies.

Finally, in another use of social media, one of Masayoshi Son’s followers suggested that Softbank should provide orphaned children with free phone credits in order to contact their friends and relatives. Masayoshi Son retweeted this idea and announced that the children will receive free phones and call costs will be waived until they are 18 years old.

It’s amazing to see this outpouring of compassion, especially from someone as high up as a CEO of a large corporation. Most wealthy individuals tend to just write a cheque and forget about the matter completely. However Son did the extra mile and offered something that will allow suffering individuals the ability to contact friends and receive help. Not only does this reflect positively on the company and brand as a whole, those children are likely to become lifelong advocates of Softbank. And although marketing is far, far from anyone’s mind in this situation and building customer loyalty is most likely not the ultimate goal, it just goes to show that when a compassionate individual does something good for the society, their actions can speak for themselves.

This is an amazing example of using social media and genuine goodwill to help others.

Geoffery Colon from Advertising Age recently wrote a post on how one company’s use of social media and CRM (customer relationship management) restored the faith of an upset customer, namely, himself. Geoffrey’s Volvo randomly overheated as he was driving to work one day. Upset and frustrated, Geoffrey decided to leave a comment on Volvo’s Facebook page to see if anyone would respond, and whether that response would just be another canned “Thank you, we’ll be looking into the matter”.

Image from http://carsoncontract.co.uk

To his surprise, within 12 hours, Debbie Lentz from Volvo North America left a voicemail on his machine. The person who managed the Facebook community contacted her and she apparently had tracked down his phone number from his purchase of the car. Debbie had already contacted Geoffrey’s purchasing dealer, reimbursed him for the rental car and gave her direct phone number for future contact in case anything went wrong.

It is really nice to see an extremely large company (Volvo) take it’s customer satisfaction so seriously. The fact that a single post on Facebook led to such quick and decisive action is amazing. What started as a negative situation (faulty car) has turned into a situation where the consumer feels glad that they chose a particular brand. This is the type of action that can turn someone into a brand loyalist or even a brand advocate.

It also highlights the changing environment associated with social media. Customers have so many channels to communicate satisfaction and displeasure now. No longer are they constricted to just calling a 1-800 phone number, or emailing the customer support department. We can now just post something on a Facebook page, or quickly tweet something directly to a company’s twitter and we expect quick responses. The problem now comes from whether or not a company decides take advantage of social media and start to engage and respond to these messages.

Photo taken by Jeannie Tse

Recently I was walking downtown on the ever-busy Granville Street when I came across a rather new coffee shop situated, BG Urban Cafe. I’ve passed by many times before since it opened a couple of months before, however this was the first time I took a good look at the store front.

Located just steps away from London Drugs and two Starbucks, BG Urban cafe had a very “cool independent” coffee shop feel courtesy of their name, logo and store design. It seemed like the type of place where young professionals would sit back, relax and purchase expensive lattes with elaborate latte art foam.

It was almost refreshing to see something that wasn’t a chain store occupying the touristy street. However, upon closer inspection, I discovered a sign that said “Bread Garden cafe: We have a new look!”

I was taken aback completely, for me, Bread Garden symbolized a tired, old chain store that sold mediocre sandwiches and passable coffee. I knew of no one in my age demographic that frequented this store.  Since when did they become a “urban” cafe?

Photo taken by Jeannie Tse

I believe that the company realized this and decided to completely re-brand their store into something that is currently very popular with the younger generation, the “independent” coffee shop. This is evidenced by the popularity of stores like Cafe Artigiano, JJ Bean, 49th Parallel and more.

And it seemed to be working so far, the store itself was rather busy and you could see groups of 20-somethings sitting in the comfortable plush seats by the window chatting up a storm.

However, I still associated the brand with the old, little shop by Metrotown, a new name and store atmospherics has not been able to change my view so far. It really highlights the difficulties companies face when they try to completely rebrand and change their image.

This habit of buying products I have no real need for.

Case in point: this box of tea that just happens to be in my possession after today’s shift at Chapters.

http://www.smithtea.com/

The packaging really caught my eye. Especially the folder like string tie used to close the box! And the wonderful paperlike, vintage style quality of the box itself. It feels like something that would be used during the early 1900’s, on a boat like the Titanic.

Never mind the fact that I have no use for tea given the fact that my parents have our cupboard routinely stocked with various tea (Chinese tea and the standard Tetley brand).

Other things I have purchased in the past include greeting cards with nice boxes, various notebooks with nice covers, and even cd’s that have unique covers. I don’t have a use for many of them, I buy them solely because:

a) the packaging design is nice or

b) the item itself is nice

Someone stop me!

Like earlier classes mentioned, packaging pays an important role of fulfilling their functions (keeping food safe for example) as well as catching the eyes of consumers. These objects and the companies behind them has certainly succeeded in the area of catching MY eyes. Their prices are usually never low (nicely packaged items tend to be more ‘luxurious’ and costly as of result) which makes it even more astounding that I would pay for these things.

However, they do provide me with some sort of benefit, otherwise I would never have traded in hard earned cash for them in the first place. I believe that one reason why I buy them is because of the feeling they give me. The feeling that comes from the knowledge that I am lucky enough to be have the money to spend, how nicely designed products make me feel “cooler” than buying boring ‘economy’ products and the fact that after I’m done using the item (drinking the tea, sending out cards) I can use the boxes and packaging to store trinkets and display proudly on my desk.

Mr. Steven Smith describes it rather well in this video interview: “It’s packaging that stops you in the aisle, it’s packaging that, when you’re ten, fifteen, twenty feet away, and you look down the aisle you can see a different block of products. Once you’ve got them to look and if you can get them to grab the package, we’ve got you.”

He has definitely got me and now I’m off to try a cup of tea. Hopefully the taste will give me more reason to buy more of these delightful little boxes.

thirdi.com

Wow.

It’s really quite hard to believe that one year has already past since the Winter Olympics last came to town and took over the hearts of all Vancouverites. I can still feel the energy thrumming in the air; I can still remember walking downtown at night and soaking in the atmosphere, the pride for our Canadian athletes.

The last weekend saw Robson Street and Granville Street closed to celebrate the one year anniversary. And even though it just wasn’t the same as 2010, the crowds were aplenty.

What helped to create buzz for the event?

I believe that Twitter, word of mouth, radio and the longing for the Olympic experience played a large part. All throughout the week leading up to the “Relive” event, I heard radio ads, I saw bands Tweeting that they were going to be playing, and certain Vancouver based blogs and Vancouver Tourism trying to add in some interactivity with facebook and twitter games. For example, if you tweeted something with the hashtag #relivedowntown, the tweet would show up on a projector on Granville Street.

It helps that I have a RSS feed that aggregates all my blogs and facebook invites for me.

Also, while walking around downtown, I also grabbed a lot of free swag. One set of freebies particularly stood out for me.

Foam finger and stickers galore!

The website links to Canada Tourism’s Facebook page where for every ‘like’  they receive on their page, $1 goes to Canadian athletes. I thought this was a very nice way of promoting Canada and it’s athletes by capitalizing on the Relive Olympics weekend and the social-media savvy population. Nearly everyone is on Facebook these days, and people don’t mind doing something as easy as just liking a page for a good cause.

The foam finger like was extremely popular, and nearly everyone on the streets had one at some point. The facebook ‘like’ stickers are even better as there are many times when one comes across something that they like. Giving these  stickers not only adds value for whoever owns and uses them, the stickers also provide free promotion for Canada Tourism and hopefully more traffic to their facebook page.

Hopefully more of these stickers will turn up around the city. And who knows, maybe the sticker you see on a particularly funny bus ad will be mine. 🙂

…I really do love thee.

I’m sure most of the younger population and general tech savvy people have heard of Groupon and all the other group buying coupon websites (such as Living Social and Team Buy). For those who have never heard of this company though, Groupon’s premise is simple: they offer daily deals that let you save anywhere from 50-90% off a certain company’s goods. You pay upfront for the deal, say $15 for $30 worth of food at a restaurant, and then you redeem your voucher later on. It’s money saving at it’s best, but what really makes Groupon and other coupon sites so popular with both the consumers and local businesses?

groupon.com

At the heart of it all, Groupon acts just like a regular coupon or sale. Consumers are attracted to saving money and they buy the deal, thus saving money. What the businesses hope is that after the consumers redeem their vouchers, they will become loyal customers, or at the very least, like the product/service enough to keep the company in the back of their mind. It helps that once a deal is “tipped”, or once enough people buy the deal, the money is charged regardless of whether they redeem the deal or not. This “tipping” mechanism helps to ensure that the business will have a guaranteed amount of coupons bought.

One major difference between Groupon and normal coupons is the fact that there is a time limit; you usually only have one day to buy the coupon of the day. This sense of urgency helps to push people into buying the deal and redeeming it since they spent money already, as opposed to someone receiving a coupon in the mail and just keeping it in the wallet until they think of the company. Furthermore, Groupon is an online e-commerce site, with an Iphone app and Android app. For today’s tech savvy population, instant gratification is key, the faster people can have access to deals, the more likely they will use it. Think, when was the last time you took the effort to clip out a newspaper coupon and redeem it in store?

I personally love this site, it has helped me find the most amazing restaurants around town. Just recently, I redeemed a voucher for brunch at La Brasserie and it has become one of my favourite places to eat at. Even though I have been meaning to visit this restaurant for a while, without Groupon, I would have never had extra “push” to eat at this place, and I would have never become an advocate of it.
As of result: I win, La Brasserie wins and Groupon wins.

One thing I have realized about marketing is how easy it is to relate to the concepts taught in class. This is especially true with consumer behaviour and the consumer decision process. Every thought on the purchase of a good now has a marketing tinge to it, including my ongoing search for a snowboard.

I started snowboarding recently and even though I still wipe out on a regular basis, I feel the need for my own snowboard gear.

Burton - A brand so well known, that even I recognize it. (Image from Onboard Global Snowboarding)

As I was, and still am, extremely new to the sport, my internal search for information was rather lacking. The only snowboard that I could recall off the top of my head was Burton, which would place Burton as the sole brand in my retrieval set. Why do I know of Burton? Perhaps it is due to how often I come across the Burton logo emblazoned across gear and clothes (both on and off the mountain). Burton has definitely succeeded with their marketing strategy when it comes to brand recognition.

However, since a snowboard was a large financial undertaking for a student and falls into the specialty goods category, as a consumer, I felt the need to gather more information.

And this was where my external search for information comes in.

Wait, you expect me to choose from all this?! (Image from NotB)

The internet is both a blessing and a curse for consumers. Immediately after starting my research I was bombarded with a plethora of different snowboard companies.

However, the internet is also an excellent source of reviews. Armed with my evaluation criteria (quality, reputation, ease of use and price) and compensatory decision rule (quality over price), I managed to narrow down my evoked set to 5 brands: Burton, K2, Ride, Gnu and Saloman.

Now all I need is more research to find the lowest price so I can move onto the purchase and consumption stage and start snowboarding on my own gear.

Hopefully I won’t experience any buyers’ remorse at the end of it all.