Jennifer Wilson's Blog

When reading classmate’s blogs, I came across one blog post by Eliza Lee that stuck in my head for days. The blog was talking about a crazy marketing strategy targeted towards everyday, busy city goers: Grocery shopping via smartphone on South Korea subway stations.

This marketing strategy I find to be futuristic. Virtual stores located at waiting stations, such as Subway stations, in the form of billboards displaying exact images you would expect to find on Tesco/Home Plus shelves. Instead of picking the items up and putting them in your actual cart, like shopping in store, one would simply use a smartphone to shop! You would scan the bar code of each item and it would go into your ‘imaginary’ online shopping cart. Click okay, purchase and then those items will be delivered right to your home. It is crazy how simple the idea is: “turn waiting time into shopping time”.

Home Plus is able to really stand out from other competitors, Emart, by focusing on the want and needs of their consumers: efficiency! When everyone is coming home from work late and tired, the last thought would be to run to the store grocery shopping. However, by incorporating grocery shopping into everyday experiences, it really attracts those busy, tired individuals and covers their touch points, ease and convenience.

I think this is such an amazing, unique campaign that clearly demonstrated the results Tesco Home Plus wanted. Increase in online sales from these ads by 130% and over 10,000 new consumers checking out the Tesco Home Plus stores!

But are people that busy and lazy these days that they can not find time to take half an hour out of the day to actually go grocery shopping? It is all the new generation’s thrill with advances in technology, and the convenience it brings to us! So who knows what will come next?

Commenting on a blog post in AdFreak discussing Ellen DeGeneres and Keith Urban spoof commercial. [http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/keith-urban-ellen-degeneres-spoof-ad-his-new-fragrance-135771]

Recently this past October, Ellen had Keith Urban as a guest to discuss his release of his new cologne – Phoenix. The release of his new cologne was not the shock and laughs of the crowd, but the hilarious spoof advertisement was.

Ellen and Keith starred in a parody advertisement for his new cologne, shown above. This faux advertisement is going along with the theme of most dramatic, sexual and cheesy fragrance commercials where the voice over is spoken in soft smooth tones and wind is blowing through hair. Ellen and Keith’s commercial takes all these characteristics to the extreme for one funny spoof. The licking, biting, water bottle spraying and ice throwing from Ellen is not out of character for her at all. She is acting in the complete opposite of sexy, yet still attempting to stick to fragrance commercial themes by wearing a long blonde wig and having that seductive look in her eyes. From watching her show religiously, Ellen is not afraid to step way outside the box and make her fans laugh.

Keith Urban also contributes to the craziness by his priceless facial expressions in response to Ellen’s crazy actions. Keith wearing his shirt unbuttoned and wind blowing through his long hair adds to the cheesiness and comedy of the whole spoof.

I think when celebrities make fun of themselves and are able to joke around, it shows that they do not take themselves too seriously and can have a good time. By being a huge Keith Urban fan and Ellen DeGeneres fan, I really enjoyed this ad and thought it was a great laugh overall!
For an extra giggle, here are some outtakes from their commercial!

When reading the blogs, Zhamilya Ayaganova’s blog stood out to me due to her topic of Victoria Secret, which led to me to think even more about their successful marketing strategies.

I agree with Zhamailya, Victoria Secret is a company that has expanded to a number of diverse products. They offer makeup, perfumes, swimwear, lingerie, underwear, bras, pyjamas and clothing. They also have another line called PINK mainly tailored for younger girls. Victoria Secret secures these younger girls loyalty to the PINK brand and as they grow up they can upgrade to the more mature areas Victoria Secret offers. Here it is demonstrated that Victoria Secret does not have a specific age range of who they are targeting to, but simply girls in general.

Another large marketing strategy Victoria Secret succeeds in is their use of catalogues. As a very loyal Victoria Secret consumer myself, I receive these catalogues 9 times a year, and almost always order from them. It becomes a family and friend affair as we all get together and place a large order! These catalogues are simple, easy to distribute and draws the attention of women who want the experience of feeling like an ‘Angel’.

As Zhamilya mentioned, Victoria Secret clearly shows they are defying beauty and glam, but mainly SEDUCTION and CONFIDENCE!  Their annual televised fashion show struts their new line with ‘Angels’, celebrity performers and celebrity guests. The day following my Facebook homepage was covered in updates from not only women but men talking about the fashion show and the news was even broadcasting features from the show. It acts as an inspiration for girls everywhere displaying you can exert that confidence and sex appeal just as the ‘Angels’ do if you wear the Victoria Secret brand.

Victoria Secret 2010 Fashion Show Preview

I am going to continue to purchase from Victoria Secret, because I love their quality, and how easily accessible it is for me to order their products without traveling to the United States.

This past August Fluid Salon, located in Edmonton, came out with a very interesting advertisement that caused some stir in social media. Originally attempting to target women to “look good in all you do” eventually led to targeting major news stations as CTV.

This advertisement shows a woman all dolled up sitting on a couch with what appears to be a black eye and a ‘wealthy’ man standing behind her holding a necklace with a rather large diamond. To me, this does not look like an advertisement for beautiful hair and a ‘look good no matter what’ slogan. This advertisement looks to me that people can get away with with domestic violence by simply doing your hair pretty and getting dressed up.

In a recent CTV article the owner of the salon was defending her choice of running the advertisement and claims that we as the targets of media are perceiving it with the wrong intentions:

“We want people to talk about it. It’s supposed to gear up some sort of discussion,” said Sarah Cameron. “Look at her; she’s not looking at him. Who’s to say she’s not getting ready to get up and walk away? It’s how everybody perceives it.”

[http://edmonton.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20110829/edm_hairad_110829/20110829/?hub=EdmontonHome]

Looking past the message associated with this advertisement, Fluid Salon does show the main reason for their display – Hair! The woman on the couch does have her hair made up rather well showing that you can have this gorgeous hair if you come to our salon.

I believe that Fluid does not have too much competition at this moment in the hair salon industry. Yes, this advertisement worked to grab social media’s attention, but they did this in such a negative manner basically advocating for what most people in society believe is wrong.

Hopefully Fluid can design a new advertisement next time that does not portray the same negativity shown here.

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