Jonathan Harrison's Blog

The title is pretty sad. Moving on:

Whats with the swan?

Sorry, impulse url.

Yikes…

Anyways, moving on:

You mean moving swan! … no?

Moving on:

After having completed the Marketing Plan Assignments, I am now reflecting on the experience… and I’ve stopped.

So here’s what I’ve reflected upon; team wise, things worked out relatively well. For assignment 1 and 2 I did feel like the workload was uneven, but I largely brought it upon myself due to me being particularly picky about work with my name on it. So in that sense, I learned a lot about how to complete a full marketing analysis because I went through all of it. I also came to the conclusion I need to delegate less to myself and trust in my team better.

I personally learned (beyond the obvious of the course material) how to use Adobe Premiere and make a video, which was pretty awesome. I also developed my viewpoint on how I see a company’s marketing strategy. I know ask myself what is their target segment and what message are they trying to convey. I feel more confident in my ability to understand a company from the outside based on the channels they are using and I can apply this to companies I am looking to apply for in the future as well as basic curiosity. Further down the road, if I was to ever start my own business, understanding my target audience and going through the appropriate steps to develop a business plan will be vital to its potential success.

If I were to redo the project, I would have firstly delegated less of the work to myself. Moreover I would have done more research into the company prior to our choosing it, because in choosing a company as successful as WestJet, it proven to be quite challenging to find many flaws in their plan that we could relate to their marketing strategy. Lastly, I would have drawn up a better plan for the final project because it was difficult to get everything together while maintaining decent content for the video.

Recently I have witnessed a number of advertisements surrounding politics in BC and I came to wonder what the actual effects of such ads are. I personally rolled my eyes and wondered why the heck I couldn’t skip the ad (I’m usually fairly neutral, ad wise). But something about politics for me just screams it’s just a gimmick to get your vote. I have a fairly negative connotation towards politics in general, partially due to living in residence and being in an elected position. Note, this is not due to a problem with my election results (I was uncontested) but rather some trends I’ve seen working as an elections officer.

What makes a good campaign? At least from a residence council side of things, it’s really not as much on your platform but more how much people like you or what you did to campaign. Which is I suppose why I find these ads so frustrating because there is nothing about who the people actually are, it’s about what they will aim to do. My point is, its like an interview, and you would never get away with just making a bunch of claims in your interview now would you? So why is politics so different?

Honestly, isn’t that what you’d rather see? Someone who has demonstrated actions in the past, and has the team, knowledge, experience and ability to make changes that people seek to see happen. Why even address all these issues in a short 30-second ad? Why not be more general on what you bring forward, rather than make only a small proportion of your target segment happy by focusing on a few key issues when you can be more general and give people reason to believe that you have the capability to make the changes they wish?

This isn’t so much a political statement as it is a marketing observation; after all, no one likes false promises, no less people hiding behind lofty statements, so why doesn’t politics take a more professional and business-like approach to their approach to people and their branding?

Image Site:  http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k188/ArthurTopham/BONDROSENTHAL.jpg

In response to Hassan Packir’s blog post about post-gender stereotyping, I found the women’s pen absolutely hilarious, not just due to the Ellen clip at the end either!

It’s a fantastic example of really poor segmentation.

However, what I am curious about from reading this is can pulling something off like the “For Her” pen lead to more publicity, and actually be fairly beneficial? I mean, unless the perceived PR shows your product as being poor, such as Toyota’s brake recalls, then might it be a decent PR stunt, especially if you play if off as one? In Bic’s defense, there isn’t anything functionally wrong with the pen that I have researched. It may still be ridiculous, but nonetheless I can see it being used as a “joke product”.

As a classic example, April fool’s day jokes like this YouTube collection on DVD. But in all seriousness, I look to someone like Richard Branson who has made Virgin hugely successful through such successful branding, namely through keeping his products and brand active and entertaining. I find it somewhat bizarre how more ads aren’t made to be entertaining, but perhaps that’s just me on a tangent.

On the flip side of gaining PR for the hilarity of the product, I do recognize the negative PR for something like the “For Her” pen can have on a brand’s image. That said, as long as it is made clear that it truly is a joke, it would probably work out. But as I can imagine, as in personal branding, it takes a lot to build up your brand, but one or two stupid moves later and you can be back at square one (depending on how strong the brand begins as).

As for Bic, dumb move, but good entertainment for me!

(also found this, just for fun: Ten Real Products We Wish Were April Fool’s Jokes)

In light of the recent “Harlem Shake” and other such viral nuances, I wondered what the possibility for creating advertising designed to go viral in the future was? If it could be at least moderately predicted the behaviour of a video or such a social trend, imagine the power and outreach such a campaign could achieve!

I look at Old Spice as an example, and I wonder how it couldn’t go viral, its hilarious and ridiculous, but not so silly that it would ward off people from sharing it with their friends or colleges. And I believe that is the key, that people will be excited to share it, isn’t that what viral is all about? And yes, of course it is, is the answer. People (in my opinion) want to have things to share and add to their discussions, its up to the marketing people to give them their stories to tell.

Now perhaps I’m being naive in how the social universe works, but I can think of so many examples of this phenomenon, and in the vast majority of cases I either discovered them on my own, or, as the case more often is, I was informed of it by a friend. So why don’t more companies aim to incorporate the viral platform to their advertising? It’s fairly cheap, effective and entertaining!

I found this slideshow about “The future of advertising in 2020” to be interesting, particularly slide 33 which emphasizes how we need to “properly understand how things spread through populations,” took the words right out of my blog. If this could be better understood, I think the power to deliver more meaningful advertising would be hugely significant to the way companies spread their messages. Advertise on a more human level and more humans will talk about it.

As a fun example, Doritos’ contest for their super bowl commercials. Genius, free marketing, and even the “loser’s” ads still ended up racking up views. And to help my point throughout, here is the winning Doritos commercial: Goat 4 Sale

Image: http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2012/09/24/24-psy.o.jpg/a_250x375.jpg

This is a brief rant in reply to Rohit Bhargava’s blog post on 5 World Changing Ways to Avoid BS And Be More Believable in marketing.

Here are Rohit’s 5 ideas:

1.  Share the truth, not the facts.

2.  Let actions speak louder than words.

I would be surprised if there aren’t many other students posting about the December lawsuit over the improper marketing of Amgen’s anemia drug. What did they do (other than pay a lawsuit of $762 million)? Well, they advertised the drug as being ok in higher doses than what was recommended, told people they could use it as a cure of things it couldn’t, and bribed doctors to prescribe more of the drug than needed. But hey, they made sales of $2.3 billion in 2011 and in Amgen’s company values they include being ethical, trustworthy and ensuring quality…

There is clearly something mighty wrong with this whole scenario. Now, I’m not here to discuss this particular issue, its more the moral of the story I’m somewhat more concerned about, specifically, how on Earth could something like this happen? This is meddling in people’s physical wellbeing! How anyone could be so careless as to market and promote potentially harming large numbers of people for profit is beyond me, especially in the “developed” world such as it is.

The worst part to me is that how many people do you have to have on board for such a thing to operate so successfully? All the doctors, execs, the marketing team, the list goes on. This is only one of several examples I’ve been able to find. I find it unnerving, how can people know what is safe and what is just false marketing? I certainly wouldn’t recognize the difference. What also concerns me is how can it be assured that companies won’t try these practices again? The government likely can’t cover the costs of heavy regulation, so where is the solution? I find it shocking how the only consequence of this and other incidents has been fines, perhaps its time for harsher penalties?

Image Site:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-42843360/aranesp-suit-what-did-amgen-ceo-sharer-know-and-did-he-read-it-in-his-companys-powerpoint-slides/

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