After completing the three assignments, I roughly understood how marketing firms figure out a marketing strategy for clients. It is very detail-oriented and teamwork is of utmost importance. In order for our group to produce a good marketing strategy, we have to agree to disagree on many things. For instance, all of us have different ideas on how to approach BlackBerry’s target market but we all found common ground by selecting the best approach.

Throughout the project, all of us found out what each of us were good at and we delegated work according to our strengths. This made it much easier for us to reach our goals for each deadline. On a personal level, I realised my strength lies in video editing which made our last assignment much easier for others. My group is fortunate to have strengths in all aspects of the project such as researching, editing, Prezi presentation etc. Overall, our group worked perfectly well together, with very little conflict or disagreement.

With respect to what I would do differently, I would make our work processes more streamlined. At times, we could not figure out what our assignment rubric was. In this case, we could save time by asking around what the assignment wants exactly instead of coming up with many solutions to the problem.

The lesson I would takeaway from this experience is the deeper understanding of marketing processes and analysis that go with it. A marketing strategy is effective only when it properly analysed and executed.

I read this article from the Globe and Mail and thought that this was such an innovative idea for marketing companies.

Link: Marketing tomfoolery: 9 memorable April Fools’ pranks from the ad world

On April Fool’s Day, many well-known companies decided to join in the fun and come up with creative pranks to fool their consumers. Personally, I feel humour attracts consumers the most compared to other genres of marketing advertisements.

The only drawbacks from this sort of “April Fool’s” campaign would be that consumers might really think that it is real. One example of this situation happening was when American Eagle Outfitters announced that they were going to sell “skinny skinny jeans  products” but in fact, these were just denim coloured body paint. Customers actually tried to buy this product and it was really interesting.

Another interesting April Fool’s prank was from Burger King. They came up with the ‘left-handed whopper’, rotating condiments 180 degrees around.

Overall, this April Fool’s campaign by marketers probably brought in much attention during that period. By selecting certain dates to be creative about, marketers are able to come up with imaginative advertisements that suits the event.