Speak Up!

Many people dislike group challenges, especially the ones that last the whole term and you didn’t get to choose your group. However, although I do believe that they are hard, I also think that these projects help you grow and improve your abilities/skills way more than an individual project would.

Working throughout the term on the company “Zara” and getting really invested in their mission, business model, marketing mix, and different strengths and weaknesses helped me tie the theoretical stuff we learn in class with how that looks in a “real world” example.

Working with a group I learned to listen and was taught on how to be listened (if it makes any sense). You realize that the people in your group may have different personalities or even points of view towards the company and you have to learn to communicate effectively what your ideas and opinions are, listen to their ideas and opinions, and then try to combine everything into a one whole group idea.

I learned that everyone has things/skills they are really good at, and if you don’t take the time to talk about things and discuss the steps that need to be taken you would have never found out that your group member loved to do videos, had worked in that company or maybe even loved to proof-read assignments.

This experience has helped me understand my skills better, and trust the people around me in terms of working in a group. It also made me understand and be more interested in understanding how companies have to act/work/operate in practice instead of listening to theoretical examples in class.

THANK YOU for an amazing term and experience! J

The other day I came up with various blogs, amongst them one from “Boomerang, digital communications” that had responded with sad comments to Dove’s supposed recent decision to abandon the “Real Beauty” campaign directed for women of all ages, shapes, sizes, ethnicities and backgrounds. Unilever global communications marketing manager Stacie Bright has pointed out how Dove’s campaign for “Real Beauty” started a global conversation about the need for wider definition of beauty in 2004.

However, now they want to create a world where beauty is a source of confidence and not anxiety, giving all women the opportunity to join. This decision has been done in order to focus more in Social Media sites like Facebook. This new campaign will be called “Darwin”, and it will divert away from the body image message and focus on helping women feel more confident in their appearance, focusing on “body language” and it will show how Dove products make you feel confident and attractive.

Michele Miller, another blogger shares the same concern as women all over the web regarding the termination of the Real Beauty campaign. After her blog post she received a message from Dove where they say they “remain committed to using real women in their advertising and not models”.

However, I share the same concern as this bloggers but I believe that this is the next step Dove has to take. We all relate Dove to powerful campaigns that criticize the way the fashion industry and advertising worlds are ran. I believe that having all types of women was the first step Dove needed to take to change the industry, and now they have to focus on how to make every woman comfortable and self-confident in their own skin. They have to grow from accepting every type of body to making those girls be confident about whom they are and how the products they use contribute to the image they want to portray.

After reading Sheida’s comment on “the soft side to marketing” I couldn’t help but agree in that the advertisements that really stick with the audiences are the ones that make us feel something and where we completely think we forget the brand that is being advertised until we have to face the decision of buying one of their products (which them of course it pops back up).

As consumers we want to think that companies and brands care about who we are as people than selling their products. That’s why I feel these advertisements to be more effective, since they address the topics EVERYONE is concerned about. Topics much more relevant than if in the ad the mother found the whitest detergent available.

Brand recognition has proven to be one of the most important aspects of a company. People have to know your brand in order to buy your product, and the marketing department faces the challenge of “how they want their brand to be remembered by” and what type of customers do they want to target.

This video, is an example of ESPN that recognizes all the problems that the world is facing, and reminds watchers about the one sport where we all agree on one thing, the sport that makes us proud of our country and shows “fair game” between the nations.

ESPN recognized that they don’t have to advertise their channel for people to watch the different events they cover. They decided to emphasize the “human” aspect the FIFA World Cup has on people around the world. Which then increases the viewers of these sport and simultaneously the viewer ratings of their channel.

We are all familiar with Domino’s saying of “if it takes longer than 30 minutes then the pizza is free”, but now this chain has found out some of its consumers don’t equate speed to quality and therefore is trying to slower its delivery.

Consumers perceive slower preparation and delivery time with pizza that is of higher quality and is better tasting. That’s why Domino’s to attract these customers is trying to change its process. They have decided to partner up with CP&B to create a TV spot and show its consumers how Domino’s used to be, and how it is now. Introducing its new “Pan Pizza” they are showing why is that they will not deliver in 30 minutes.

This policy has been something that characterizes the brand; however, it hasn’t been in effect in over 15 years. Every pizza box comes with a disclaimer stating “Because safety is a priority 30 minutes is just an estimate, not a guarantee. You may get more.” (Video that shows the clear disclosure of the terms and conditions for the “30 minute” rule)

They use this 30 minutes campaign in order for people to recognize their brand, and think of Domino’s as the fastest pizza delivery chain. However, since this campaign hasn’t been on effect for a long time, in my opinion it makes sense that now Domino’s is trying to change their slogan and position themselves as a more gourmet option to fit with the new trends that are emerging.

In today’s post I want to talk about Karma Exchange, a Vancouver based Social Enterprise that in my opinion has used marketing to help change the world.

Karma Exchange is the new way of social buying that offers you amazing ways to indulge yourself, explore your city (Vancouver), and directly contribute to a charity that is helping to break the cycle of poverty.

Karma Exchange uses its internet page to advertise local businesses that have committed themselves to changing the world. They feature different “Karma” deals that these businesses have created to support Karma Exchange’s projects and charities in Africa, one of them being Karma’s own charity in Northern Ghana “Create Change”

They seek to change people’s mindsets when it comes to charity. Instead of changing people’s habits and lifestyles they want to include options where people can still do their daily activities but choose a certain option by shopping with heart.

I feel like this is a great way to capture the attention of both retailers and consumers, since today’s trend is wanting to change the world and indulging yourself with activities that will help you sustain that image of being a “conscious” person that thinks of helping less fortunate people.  Karma uses its promotions to show how every time you purchase one of their deals, you are helping someone climb out of poverty and you are creating this impact that you always strived for.

They have not only attracted people through their websites, but they constantly remind media users through facebook and twitter about the different deals they can get around town to help change someone’s life.

Our world’s population is increasing, and so are the resources that we use to produce goods we buy every day. Rory Sutherland in “Life Lessons from an ad man” talks about the power of using advertising to add value to a product by changing consumer’s perception, rather than the product itself. However, with this type of advertising and emphasis on consumer’s perception, consumers pay what you think the product is worth. This is happening everyday with our overall consumption; people may think it’s unfair to charge prices that are way above their costs. However, most of the time people buy “apple products” because it’s the trend and they perceive them to be of higher quality than other brands just because everyone else thinks so.

I find it really interesting how many successful businesses may depend highly on the psychological aspects and people’s perception of their products than on the actual product itself. McDonald’s is not selling us their hamburgers because they are the best thing we’ve ever tasted, but the experience of not having to cook for ourselves and getting tasty food at a really low price. That is something its consumers value, and that value McDonald’s and many other brands have created for themselves is worth a lot more than the physical aspects of their companies. Rory Sutherland talks about how changing the perceived value of a product can be just as satisfying to a consumer as what we consider “real” value. This means that brands have the power of changing their whole image by providing the right message through a new advertising campaign.

Advertising creates intangible value to solve problems of consumer’s perception. “Placebo education, education doesn’t actually work by teaching you things, but it works by giving you the impression that you had a very good education, which gives you an insane sense of unwarranted self-confidence, which then makes you successful in later life.”  However, I wonder if we don’t focus on changing reality, but only changing on what we think about reality then are we actually improving our world or only the way we see the world? And which would be more important?

Social and environmental ethics affect the image of the company and consumer’s perceptions. McDonald’s is a company that is known all around the world, and that has recently tried to convey a CSR image to its products.

However, this fast-food giant has been linked to bad ethical practices throughout the years like:

• Quality of the food offered in stores.
• Exploiting children with advertising.
• Animal treatment before killing them to turn them into fast food and the methods for doing so.
• Reason for child obesity in the US and other developing countries.

How can we distinguish something ethic from something that is not?

Ethics are subjective and they are based on our values and beliefs. “Corporate Social Responsibility refers to the economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic expectations placed on organizations by society at a given point in time” (Carroll and Buscholtz, 2000).

McDonald’s has worked to promote a more ‘ethical’ focus on their company after being involved with many lawsuits that questioned the ethics of their business model. It has recognized the importance that “corporate social responsibility” will have in years to come, since customers will seek for companies that affiliate to their values and have proof that they are helping the world we live in. It has been proven that people are willing to pay a small premium for ethically produced products or would choose them over other products, and they would expect lower prices from unethical products in order to buy them.

What have they done to fight these ethical issues? 

• Highlight its efforts to offer healthier options (salads, apple slices instead of fries, milk and juice instead of soda)
• Emphasized where do their ingredients come from
• 
• Hired nutritionists to alter the menu
• Promoted the importance of exercise by sponsoring the Olympics 
• Increased recycling and reduced waste in stores around the world
• Is there enough information and proof to say that McDonald’s has embraced this new “Coorporate Responsible status”? or is McDonald’s only doing a Cooperate Responisbility Report in attempts of portraying itself as being a corporate citizen and gaining back long-lost customers?
• Launched a social media campaign to answer questions and foster transparency

In my opinion these are just attempts of McDonald’s showing the new phase it is trying to get to. Sponsoring the Olympics is not related to McDonald’s ethics, if it should be linked to someone’s ethics it would have to be to the Organizing Committee, I feel McDonald’s is trying to put itself as a reward from doing exercise to motivate customers to do so. However, is this just a tactic used because they know customers want socially responsible companies to buy from? Or is McDonald’s really trying to promote better/more ethic business practices and give an example as the fast-food leader? Is it ethical to use a trend to increase sales?

Healthier ad’s?

In the end, does it really matter what McDonald’s effort’s come from if we are all being positively affected by its results?

I found Yang Gu’s blog post discussing Benetton’s “UNHATE” campaign really shocking, since Benetton is known for fighting racism in advertising by featuring people from every race, size, age, etc. and this campaign seems more like an “eye catcher” than actual advertising. It makes me wonder if they were actually trying to make people UNHATE others or just to get the public’s eye into their next marketing campaign.

I agree with Yang Gu when he talks about it being disrespectful (Pope kissing Imam) for the subjects of the pictures. There are other ways of getting people to UNHATE others without having to make them kiss on the lips, showing other aspects of how you can UNHATE your enemy. My thought is that they were trying to mix different aspects of our lives in one picture, showing tolerance between different political or religious postures while tolerating sexual preferences.

Even though cloth wasn’t featured in the ads, something got across “Benetton” the brand’s name. Even though people showed range and disgust to the images, Benetton got what they wanted “strong reactions” to create debates.

As a company you have to gain permission from the public figures to be featured in such advertisings, since people are not going to think about your brand but about the people involved. That’s why for future advertisings they should do what they do best, be an expression of our time by featuring controversial but respectful campaigns.

Other shocking/controversial campaigns

Jimmy Chang’s blog about “For Chinese Students, Smoking Isn’t All Bad”

I was shocked to hear that schools are sponsored by local units of China’s state-owned cigarette monopoly, considering all the harmful effects that tobacco has proven to have. The national government should ban advertisings on schools that say “Genius comes from hard work – tobacco helps you become talented”.

It may be good for their business to engage young audiences into that habit, but it is something unethical about the company and especially from the government’s side since it’s supposed to act in its citizen’s behalf.  Given this argument, I with Jimmy’s belief that people will get disgusted from this campaign, since we are talking about uneducated communities that have no idea tobacco is slowly killing them.

For harmful substances it should be obligatory in China to include in the products the dangers of smoking, like other countries have done. People have to be educated on the products they are buying, so they have an educated choice when having to make a decision.

What other proof is necessary to show the ministry of the harmful substances tobacco has than having about 1 million Chinese deaths from tobacco-related illnesses every year. It could represent a good opportunity for children related product companies to sponsor schools around the country to educate communities in poverty about beneficial tools that could help them be successful instead of inducing them into an addiction like tobacco companies have.

But in the end what can you do if the only one that can help you solve this problem is the one allowing it to happen?