Last friday was so called “Black Friday”, which is the America’s biggest annual sale events after Thanksgiving holiday. It’s my first time hearing this name – “Black Friday”. The Black Friday means that retailers make enough sales to put themselves “into the black ink”. It starts from midnight of Thursday or Friday early in the morning. People get in line and wait for a few hours to get big discounts. There were many marketing and ads for this biggest events. I can find some good and bad examples from the blog. (http://www.rohitbhargava.com/)

There’s similar marketing events which give special discount on big holiday season in Korea as well. (I’m pretty sure all over the world.) Especially big brand companies give discount in this time. It is effective strategy because the brand-name products have big price elasticity of demand. Just lower the price little bit, the companies can increase profit a lot. But there are some differences. In Korea, usually the sale starts before the Thanksgiving and focus on thanksgiving gift for others. Therefore I can easily see the special gift goods in the mall. In the contrast, in America, sale starts after the thanksgiving and mostly focus on individual products.

This can be explained by culture differences.I don’t know perfectly, but Thanksgiving in the states is having dinner and spend time with family. It is same in Korea but our family gathering is usually bigger. From grandparents to all the cousins. It’a big family time who we couldn’t meet often. Thus we usually give each others small present when we meet. We go to mall to buy gifts for other family members. For these reasons, when I go to mall during the Thanksgiving sale season, there are lots of gift goods. But Black Friday in America is focus on individual consumers. This is why the America’s Black Friday starts after Thanksgiving and focus on individual items but in Korea, sale starts before Thanksgiving and focus on gift for other family members.

Sometimes we can see the ads that compare their product with competitor’s product.

This is the Pepsi advertising, which comparing with Coca-cola.

This advertising is pretty fun. In the ads, polar bears are tanned. Polar bear is the symbol of Coca-cola. By tanning the polar bears, it gives imgae of having Pepsi during summer time is so much fun but Coca-cola is boring.

But I have doubt that how effective this ad is because right after I watched the ad, I got hostility. It criticizes Coca-cola directly. Even my friends who watched this ad together said they got offended by this ad because it’s too direct comparative and people still have more positive feeling towards Coca-cola. Also some of my friends said they thought this is Coca-cola’s ads because we have concept of ‘Polar bear= Coca-cola’. So I don’t this this comparative advertising is successful.

Comparative advertising can be fun and effective ad strategy but have big chance to get offended. Those ads by Burger King are pretty funny. It can give a bit of smile while watching them.

Also comparative ads can give information about the product effectively by comparing. This Burger King ad gives the information about its size effectively by comparing with McDonald because everyone knows that arch M stands for McDonald and McDonald is known for small size.

This week, I can hear the word “Halloween” everywhere. Everyone is talking about this coming Halloween weekend plan. Every store sells Halloween products or promote products relating to Halloween. For example, restaurants decorate inside and outside the restaurant as Halloween. Make it dark and put scary dolls on the wall. Also waiters and waitresses wear Halloween custom. To make the restaurant different from others, they promote lots of event and provide gifts for Halloween. But this common Halloween Party is totally new to me because we don’t celebrate Halloween in Korea. I know Halloween because I have seen this culture in movies or dramas. I’m so excited that I can experience new culture this time. But at the same time I thought the importance of culture in marketing.

Therefore understanding culture is important for marketing. Depend on how well you understand the culture and make proper strategy, the result can be totally different.

After I came to Canada, I watched TV and realized that the advertisements are much different from Korea. In Korea, most of advertisements are shown by celebrities. Pretty actresses advertise cosmetics, clothes, even food, and appliances. But in Canada, usually by normal people, and feel like they are more focus on sending information about products.

This is Korean version of by Yuna Kim who is famous Korean figure skater.

Actually we learned about the power of using celebrities on advertisements. They have social influence, so they have bigger power to affect people. But more than this, the company try to make their brand image by celebrities. For example, one actor in Korea has great reputation like kind, honest, and sincerity, so he gives image of good friend, nice son, and great boyfriend. For these reasons, he is modeling for more than 5 different companies, like cosmetic, appliance, food, bank, and clothes. By buying these product advertised by him, people feel like they can be like him. I think this is connect with ‘self-concept’ which is mentioned by Kelsey Ingham(https://blogs.ubc.ca/kelseyingham/), one of our classmates. She mentioned that by wearing a brand clothes, she get self-concept from the brand. I think this is company’s goal of using celebrities on their advertisements. Using celebrities is good way to express their company’s ‘mission statement’ because celebrities already have their own images, so they just have to choose the right celebrity who fits to their company’s image or the image company want to get. For these reasons, lots of companies sponsor celebrities in Korea. Especially they sponsor on drama, so that people can see their product naturally during watching drama. Besides, the actors and actresses have their own characteristic, so it is more easier to get image from them. For instance, by sponsoring the rich, handsome, perfect guy in the drama, company gives people the image that ‘this product is used by perfect guy, so if you buy this product, you can be like them.’

Canada also has celebrities advertisement but not as much as Korea. I just guess that this is cultural difference. Maybe Korean people get more social influence. So it is important for them to know how others think. By wearing the special brand advertised by popular actress,they feel like they can be like the girl in the TV and follow the current trends. Because of this, celebrities advertisements are more effective in Korea.

Thinking about what should I upload for my first post, I suddenly think about ‘Blog Marketing’. I’m posting about marketing in the blog…so those two are just came up in my mind together. Because the power of internet is getting bigger and most of the people all over the world can share the information, the influence of blog marketing is huge. In this post, I want to share about my experience about blog marketing.

Actually lots of people have their own blog these days, some blogs are just individual blog that they share their daily life. They post the stores and restuarants they visited and share the information and their thinking. Lots of people can get reliable information from the blog. Because people think those information is not from company, but from actually costumer like themsleves. For this reason, companies want to make their own companies blog which can give more information about their product on internet in natural way. For example, I saw the blog which is run by one employee of cosmetic company. She posts about products after she actually uses them. She writes about how she feels after using the product. Also upload pictures of product, and way to use product.

On the other way which actaully affected me to buy some product is the ‘Blog Event Marketing’. The company lends their product to about 200 people and requires them to use the product for certain period of time. After they should post about their thoughts about the product on their own individual blog. After that, the company chooses the best 3 bloggers and actaully gives them the product as reward. The benefit of this blog event marketing is it can give more reliable impression to people who search for the product because they think the information is from normal people who is not related to company.

Therefore we can say that the power of blog marketing is it gives more neutral information to people so that they can trust more. But actually both employees who post about their products and the events participatants are affected by companies.

Hello,

I’m Jieun Kim who is taking COMM296 with you! Before posting the marketing post, I want to introduce myself briefly and my blog.

I’m exchange student from Seoul National University which is in Seoul, Korea and I will stay in UBC for only this one term. I’m so glad that I can take class with all of you guys. But for this reason, I want you to understand my English. English is my second languege, so maybe some words and expressions are not correct, then please let me know! I’m still in my way to learning English 🙂

Also, about my blog. I’m going to post about marketing which I actually experience and see. I hope this blog is the way I can express myself and share all of our experience together. For that reason, I thought posting what I actually experience and writing about my thinking and feeling is the best way to use this blog. So that this blog might be less professional but I hope it’s easy to read and easy to drop by!

and I’m Planning to post some example of Korea’s Marketing because most of my knowledge is base on Korea and it might be interesting for you guys to know about other country’s marketing example and you can also know about Korean culture, too!

Hope u all will enjoy my blog!

Thank you,

Jieun Kim