I hope it’s not too late for me to find out that Macdonald is offering free small coffee again.
I was actually very amazed by this promotion at the first time when I heard about it but my second thought was: Yeah, they are pretty smart.
the above picture was captured from Macdonald’s Official Websit http://www.mcdonalds.ca/en/index.aspx
Interpreted from the point view of marketing, they are starting another new round to build up their brand loyalty through offering freebies. They set it fairly convenient for customers to get the free small coffee as the customers only need to walk into the store and oder it. As soon as the customers get hooked, they will pick up one cup from Macdonald’s on their way to work or wherever as the coffee is free anyways. As a result, when the promotion ends, customers who get addicted to this kind of coffee would need to pay for it and “Bingo” those customers would be the fundamental loyalty base of this kind of coffee. Considering the fact that we usually recommend good food and drinks to our friends, the fundamental loyalty base would help Macdonald’s spread the word and expand the loyalty, thus the small loss of providing free coffee during the promotion period would be soon covered by post-promotion sales.
Additionally, customers subconsciously got the idea of convenience imprinted into their minds due to the promotion and therefore, Macdonald’s, again emphasizes it’s brand positioning – convenience – through this promotion. As known that brand image, considered as the tangible asset for a company, is very important when customers make their purchase decisions and this promotion helps Macdonald’s again ensure its good brand image and Macdonald’s will definitely benefit from it when considering brand extension or co-branding later on.
I was reading a simple but interesting blog post about playing lotteries and it expresses a fairly obvious but always being ignored idea that from an investment point of view, there is no winners of lotteries and thus posing the question that “How about changing the way you think about the lotteries you enter every day?”.
It is true that if we were asked to do something that we are 99% deemed to fail, we would normally rather do something else and leave it aside even if there is some fun hidden behind it. However, when we put this question into lottery world, the answers would be different due to our high expectations even if the possibility is extremely low. Looking at the simple white advertisement square board with the really high dollar amount that we could potentially win, we are hooked by the idea that why not try once since it’s not expensive to enter one piece of lottery and we would be millionaire if we really become the winner. Some people even got broke due to this thought. But usually the money put into the lottery goes nowhere.
However, if we buy one piece of lottery each time, the opportunity cost would be very small and if we lose, the money we put in last time would be a sunk cost and thus have no influence on the decision we make next time. Therefore, we can go on with this idea and keep purchasing one piece of lottery each time. Then we can come up with the interesting and exactly opposite conclusion that we should play the lottery due to the small opportunity cost.
Here is the link to the blog post I read.
I don’t usually pay lots of attention to what is happening within China though I do know what is happening. It’s not because I don’t care about it but I just feel meaningless of following around and I don’t consider it as what a rational person would do, at least from my own point of view.
Honestly, it’s extremely impulsive in China right now as it’s not only fairly easy for just a random person to become popular overnight as long as he/she is willing to and he/she dare to show something different about him/herself, so is the other way around, it’s also fairly easy to destruct one’s reputation overnight. Fengjie is a perfect example which would fall under this category. I don’t regard it as a good situation and what even worse is that it will definitely last long considering the impulsive atmosphere in China.
There are lots Internet users acting like permanent residents in Internet who always push small news with immediate flood of comments right after the news come out and make it become magnificent and even exaggerate it. As it is quite easy to arise those “Internet Permanent Residents”, we will see that China is never tranquil and always has something “big” happening that everyone is talking about. Furthermore, they consider what they’ve been doing is for justice and it’s right to criticize those people whose behaviors are not recognized by them. Also it’s fair to do the Cyber Manhunt. However, it’s a matter of privacy and no one actually has the right to judge other people. Though I do have to admit that this is a trick as it’s true that everyone has rights to express their opinions.
I do hope that those “permanent internet residents” could be rational whenever they make their decisions to do something and I do hope everyone could focus more on their own life and thinking about their own passion and life-long goal and then fight for it instead of watching others as it’s always easy to say than act. Also, better utilization of social media should be considered by marketers.
It’s been a long time since CCTV (China Central Television) started holding the New Year’s Gala and it has become a tradition and seems to the best choice for each and every Chinese family at the Chinese Lunar New Year’ eve. But the fact that it’s too commercialized is gradually eroding young generations’ interests in it; they prefer chatting with friends on the night off and watching the highly-rated or highly controversial pieces of performances days after instead.
But why is this erosion happening?
First of all, I believe that thinking too big is probably one of the most important reasons. For example, one of the skits on last year’s show was trying to incorporate all the widely-spread and popularly-used phrases during the past one year, instead of making it funny but making all the show lame and thus not only failing to achieve its expected performance effects but also stirring up a huge criticism flooding onto the website right after the performance. Yes, people do want to watch something related to our daily life and amusing as well, but improperly piling up bunch of funny stuff won’t necessarily make the entire show interesting and most of the time would make it the opposite.
Second important reason is the gap in between the rumors spread beforehand and what is exactly performed on the day off. Too many misleading rumors would increase the level of surprise of a good show but also would amplify the level of disappointment if the show is way below expectations. More importantly, we can be disappointed only once but not always.
Admittedly we can’t just blame CCTV as it can be understood that it’s really hard to put on a show that satisfies all the generations but CCTV can’t just dominant all the shows. As reported, there is a regulation saying that the CCTV New Year’s Gala is the only show that can be aired at the New Year’s eve and no exceptions. I would like to consider it as a guarantee of their audience ratings but it’s not ethical as least from my point of view.
Anyways, I do hope to see changes in the CCTV New Year’s Gala either in the content or the promotions and I do hope it could be better and better.
Lastly, Happy Bunny Year to everyone! All the best =]