It is always great to have groups projects for a course because it gives me the opportunity to meet new people in my faculty and work with others in the class. During our first few group meetings we had to come to a consensus of which company to choose for our assignment which we ended up choosing Coca Cola! To be honest, I didn’t have much background knowledge about the Coca Cola company itself. This assignment was rather interesting for me throughout the whole term as I was able to research and find interesting facts about Coca Cola. For example, I had no clue about how long their product line for beverages are, about 80% of what I drink and purchase on a daily basis is all manufactured or some how under the Coca Cola brand name.

In addition, this assignment didn’t not only allow me to learn about the Coca Cola company but I was able to apply class marketing material to my studies and use various of tools such as SWOT, CDSTEP, and STP to analyze Coca Cola’s current situation and to make marketing recommendations as to what they could potentially do in the future.

I really enjoyed how the assignment was broken down into 3 different parts, as it allowed us to focus and tackle a situation one at a time and to learn the materials bit by bit. Furthermore, in a group context there’s always different strengths and weaknesses between different members and I thought it was smart to divide the assignment into both written (part 1 & 2) and visual (part 3-video) aspect of the work, because personally I would say my strength is more visual with the video editing aspect whereas majority of the group members strength were the visual part. So I thought this assignment was well balanced and was a fair assessment as it was able to maximize group potentials.

In response to my classmate, Taylor Fabbi’s Blog post on “Holt Renfrew for the holidays”, she mentioned the luxurious products that Holt Renfrew sells and the store holds a prestige brand image. However, she argues that Holt Renfrew is trying to reach out to a broader target market of customers, by firstly promoting the holiday season of Christmas by decorating the department store with a “northern noel” christmas theme. Secondly, making their windows interactive to captivate consumers to target their attitudes to make them FEEL like they are a part of Holt Renfrew.

Not only does Holt Renfrew have to worry about attracting new customer, they have to maintain and keep their potential customers because earlier this year, in the central shopping district of Vancouver Downtown, Sears was shutdown in summer. Nordstorm, a primary competitor of Holt Renfrew is opening in Sears’ old location. Much like Nordstorm, Holt Renfrew being a high-end Canadian department store means competition is coming its way. However, from a customer’s perspective, this is good news as we now have a broader variety of choice when shopping and more accessible products from both stores.

Despite Nordstorm hasn’t even opened for business yet, Holt Renfrew has already taken actions new promotional acts in response to the emergence of a new competitor. Holt Renfrew has been actively promoting itself to attempt to retain their current customers by increasing sales and promotions to attract buyers with lower income to captivate a wider range of customers. Holt Renfrew is currently pushing strongly on their promotion for Black Friday, of a sale up to 40% on selective items.

Further promotional strategies Holt Renfrew are acting upon is gaining customer informations, such as asking for customer’s phone number and name after a purchase in the store to keep record. With this information, they can now use social media to send mass emails of their upcoming promotions or a $10 discount card if you refer a friend for example. Overall, both firms excellent but Holt Renfrew is taking strong actions to gain a competitive advantage over Nordstorm before their opening while they have the opportunity to do so at the moment.

Talyor Fabbi’s Blog Link: https://blogs.ubc.ca/taylorfabbi/

I came across an external marketing blog about Virgin’s new airline safety video on MARKETO BLOG. Let’s be honest, when was the last time you actually watched a pre-flight safety video from beginning to end? I bet that was a long time ago, so imagine watching this video instead of all those old boring safety videos on the airplane, would you watch? I sure would!

Virgin already known as the hip interactive airline had stepped it up with this all new safety instructional video, it even features a young kid rapper giving instructions. All emergency scenarios are covered using professional signers and dancing in a flawless choreography directed by John M. Chu the director of the classics, “Step-Up 2 & 3” and Justin Bieber’s 3D concert film “Never Say Never”. Some of the dancers from those movies even appear in the video and including former contestants from “So You Think You Can Dance” and “American Idol” participating from singing, rapping, breakdancing and contortion trying to address the message of flight safety guidelines.

Not many competitors have the musical roots as Virgin and this is what I believe what gave them the hook for the video. Also, Virgin’s focus and value on their customers gave them this spark, as they want their airline experience to be different and unique so they could connect with their customers.

Despite safety guidelines being a legal law there’s no Federal Aviation (FAA) rules saying it has to be something that reminds us of something soulless bureaucracy, instead Virgin’s marketing strategy is rather clever by innovating this brand new idea and entering a new market segment for airline safety guidelines. From this innovative and differentiated idea, it’s like a musical that makes buckling a seat belt seem like fun yet maintain their core brand identity and reputation. Virgin being the first airline to take such risks in manipulating an old concept of flight safety tips into something so modern and unique that people are seeking to watch this interesting video. The video was released on the web a week ago (Oct 29th 2013) and became a YouTube hit with more than 4 million views.

You can expect to see the new video on board on flight as of November 2013.

ARTICLE!

External Blog Link: http://blog.marketo.com/blog/2013/11/the-power-of-human-content-virgin-americas-new-safety-video.html

In recent years sales for orange juice have been declining while prices were rising due to many substitutes and competition in the juice market. Resulting, in Minute Maid’s core product, orange juice to be at risk of facing the decline stage of the product life cycle. The real question here is can Minute Maid recover its lost market share?

Coca-Cola then answers that they will start ramping up advertising to support their Minute Maid juices to bring young adults and men into the picture. Despite the atypical approach, which generally targets the primary grocery shopper (moms), Charles Torrey, VP-marketing at Minute Maid states that “consumption data shows that men and young adults are also purchasing and consuming plenty orange juice”.

Minute Maid is now branching out their target market by creating advertisements specified to men but how would the influence of male generate more sales to regain their lost? Statistics shows that the highest volume growth of where men make their purchases are at gas stations and convenient stores. At these locations men are looking for quick and easy purchases, so if juices are more accessible and purchasable, then this channel may result more male purchasers than female. In addition, these locations are typically where men make their OWN purchases without any other social or family factors affecting their buying decisions.

However, focusing on men won’t completely help recover the lost of market shares but what Minute Maid is really looking to do is to gain share by increasing consumer consumptions. Thus, there’s much more opportunities to grow the brand by increasing its demand during different time of the day other than breakfast itself. What about drinking Minute Maid after workouts as a substitute to water?

Overall, it’s a brilliant idea for Minute Maid to expand their target demographics. If they succeed in regaining their lost shares, it’s because they have found a method to keep a balance when targeting the two groups of consumers (male and female) without alienating one or the other.

ARTICLE:

http://adage.com/article/news/minute-maid-taps-quirky-campaign-mom-buyers/148560/

The question I asked myself over the weekend was “why people buy the things they do?”. So I was once asked “Do you think people buy TOMS Shoes for the design or because of their One-for-One initiative?”.

I would think the answer would be “Both” – Take Jill’s personal recollection of her decision-making process when it came to TOMS. She was initially attracted to the style and comfort of the product, but it was the cause that tipped the scales and ultimately drove her to purchase the shoes. The original question made me think hard though – Are there actually people who would purchase TOMS Shoes solely or largely based on simply the cause?

This brings me to the theme of this post:

“People buy WHY you do it, they don’t buy WHAT you do.”

I, for one, am not a big fan of the design of TOMS Shoes, but their buy-one-give-one shoe initiative most definitely gives me a big push towards that act of purchase. In fact, I don’t even like the shoes! But I want to help. I believe in their cause and beliefs. On one hand, I don’t identify with the actual product, but on the other, everything about TOMS Shoes feels right.

At the end of the day for me, it comes down to a basic cost-benefit analysis. Can I afford $50 to re-enforce my belief that helping people the TOMS way is right? An interesting perspective to explore, is the possibility of putting a monetary value to a firm’s set of believes, or purpose. For instance, if I value a pair of TOMS Shoes at $30 (while in reality it retails at $50+), can the firm’s purpose justify the additional $20 I’d be paying for its product?

In this competitively intensive era, brands now more than ever need to clearly communicate their philosophy, mission and purpose, as these are they key decision criteria behind a consumer’s purchase intent.

I believe Tom’s is pursing “cause marketing”, where brands and non-profits are able to spread their message in new ways through the power of social media and user-generated content. It’s true – the internet opens the door to boundless opportunities for firms to “touch” consumer lives.

Nowadays it is what you’re saying that counts not how or what you’re selling. Bringing purposeful, interesting and entertaining ideas to consumers is the new focus in order to develop stronger relationships and foster brand loyalty.

When you walk into McDonalds and purchase a pack of Chicken McNuggets, you would think that you are receiving a piece of pure fried chicken because McDonalds advertise on TV saying that they are made with “100% white meat chicken breast”. However, according to scientific research they prove McDonalds wrong. Not to say that McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets contains 0% chicken meant but in fact they add plenty of other ingredients to fill up the nugget, your stomach, and their pockets. This isn’t only a problem mainly on the ingredients of how McDonald process their chicken but rather how they false advertise their product which could potentially lead to serious health concerns such as, digestive and kidney function problems.

As a kid, i was a rather picky eater because all my friends would be eating burgers but all i could eat was Chicken Nuggets. Up until recent years, I have been managing my diet more carefully and read stunning articles on what was exactly in a nugget from McDonald. I always thought I was purchasing fried pieces of white chicken breast, however, “fat, bone, nerve, connective tissue, and epithelium” were present in equal or greater quantities than chicken meat. In addition some of the chicken were processed in countries with “low food safety standards”.

Mike Adams conducted an investigation at the Natural News Forensic Food Laboratory where he put Chicken McNuggets under a high-powered digital microscope to see what exactly was used to create the nugget. He soon discovered strange fibers found embedded inside the Chicken McNuggets. This included dark black hair-like structures, light blue egg-shaped structures with attached tail-like hairs or fibers, odd red colouring splotches in several locations, and spherical green objects that resembles algae. All these unexpected findings were clearly something you as a consumer didn’t think you were paying for and definitely weren’t aware of eating such ingredients processed by McDonalds.

In conclusion, from a business perspective McDonalds could be facing ethical issues of how they advertise their products to what exactly they are serving to their customers. But from a scientific perspective, it goes beyond ethics of business but rather health concerns of Chicken McNugget consumers, thus I draw the conclusion for consumers to look more closely at what you eat before you eat it and ask questions about where your food really comes from and what’s in it.

Article: Two Things You’d Rather Not Know About Chicken Nuggets

The Bank of Canada has recently announced the release of the new polymer $100 bill. This new bank notes is “secure”, “durable”, and “innovative”, which has now made it harder to counterfeit. Their future goal is to abandon paper money, as this new polymer bill is said to last “twice as long” compared to paper money and includes various of “high-tech security features”.

By only implementing the new $100 bill at the moment, I believe it’s a market strategy for the bank of Canada, as this would allow them to do further research and see the affects of this implementation. By introducing the least commonly used bill first, allows the bank of Canada to investigate in whether or not to proceed this implementation with more commonly used bills such as the $20 and $10 bills.

However, introducing the $100 bill first, business may not want to accept this new polymer bill and might find it suspicious as the currency is so big. Despite the new security checks, society aren’t familiar with the bill yet and might find difficulties identifying the security clues when it was their first time seeing such bills.

Source: BBC News Magazine

In addition, the polymer bills are recyclable, making the bank of Canada a greener business. This makes the business more ethical as the new polymer bill is claimed to be cleaner than paper bills. Therefore, this implementation would be beneficial for both users and producers.

I have recently found this blog website titled “Duct-Tape Marketing” created by John Jantsch who is a marketing consultant who was, “award(ed) winning social media publisher and best selling author Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine”. He, “trains and licenses small business marketing consultants around the world”.

I havejust read his post on, “Facebook Changes Present Interesting Business Dilemma“, I actually found Jantsch’s article on another blog called, “Blog Lovin’“. I found his post rather interesting because he discussed about the usage of Facebook. How there is now “public” and “personal” profiles. In my opinion, Facebook users have increased significantly within the last year and will continue to increase, so from here I think Businesses, celebrities, authors and experts could make use of this online tool.

As there are currently Facebook celebrity fan pages, charities, and events being posted on Facebook. Perhaps in the future, there might be a potential opportunity for firms to enter this market as there are large number of “customers? (users)”.

Overall, I found the Duct Tape Marketing blog to be inspirational as he focuses his articles on marketing which is an area I am planning to specialize in. In addition, the Blog Lovin’ blog website was also interesting as it targets many different business categories and integrates other Blogs, which I recommend and is worth reading.

From reading a blog written by my fellow classmate Maddie Erjavec. She commented on how Google is now shooting the interiors of stores and putting those photos onto Google maps. I agree with Maddie that this new Google project is a way for other business to market their business because Google is one of the biggest businesses with a extremely strong brand image.

Looking at this from Google’s prospective, I think Google has simply expanded their service line for “Street View” and took advantage of the technology they already have. By having this additional service, it would furthermore differentiate Google from other competitors and businesses. In addition, Google has also introduced “Street View Snowmobile“, which again makes Google a unique business.

From this, it doesn’t cost Google much from offering this extra service for other businesses, plus this services is voluntary for other businesses to use, so it would be costless to them.

From my own perspective, I would say that Google is offering this service voluntary is to avoid intrusion issues as stated by Maddie. I consider this to be Google’s strategy, as they often make their money in a unique way or different from usual business.

According to my classmate, Bryant Hsiao’s blog post, he said that H&M has announced their collaboration with Versace. Using Porter’s Generic Strategies, H&M would be considered “Cost Leadership” and Versace as “Focus” strategy. He stated in his blog that there might be a, “confusing image of brand” as H&M is targeting low price products and Versace is the complete opposite, by targeting high and expensive price products.

However, I disagree and see this being a positive opportunity for these two businesses. Versace and H&M already have a strong brand image and reputation, and collaboratively they could use this to their advantages. For example, they could easily develop a “combination brand names” for the new products that H&M and Versace produces.

I see this as an opportunity for H&M and Versace because I think they are spotting market gaps in their markets and building new products for it. Perhaps the product they sell here would be middled price and this allows the collaboration of the two business to have a well-rounded product life cycle.