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