Josh's Marketing

Thinking back to the first day of class, I thought I understood marketing. I thought I knew its main purpose and how it was accomplished. However, these past 3 months have taught me alot. I now look at Marketing in a whole new way and I love it.

Here is one of my many examples.

I live with two other commerce students one takes Marketing and the other doesn’t. Ever since we have taken this class we look at commercials differently. It has become so frequent for me and my friend to analyze commercials now that we joke around and just say: Target market: xxx Message: xxx Purpose: xxx etc…

The best part about it is how we analyze commercials that none of us can identify the point of it. The other day I asked “whats the point of this commercial.” My friend who wasn’t in marketing responded “there’s no point, its just funny.” When he said this, me and my other friend looked at him and thought, are you serious! every commercial has a point. I mean why would they spend so much money on funny when they could be communicating their message through other channels in different ways to different segments!!!

This was the moment I realized how much I had grown and how much I had learnt and I think that everything can be bettered with a little bit of marketing thrown in.

Crystal Chu

Looking at Crystal’s blog, I realize how soon Christmas will be here. That is one thing I haven’t thought of for a while, another thing I haven’t thought of before is the business of Christmas.

If you look at its (Christmases) origins, it comes from religion. The only way that it has changed and become such a commercial period of the year is because of marketing. This is an extreme example of how powerful marketing is. It managed to changed the philosophy of a holiday from religion to commercial. Now, for many companies Christmas is there most successful time of the year. They can sell everything and anything to anyone. The only problem for these companies is the competition.

I think that the Christmas spirit has been created by marketing. People talk about presents, lights, trees, food, family, cold, etc. Although its wonderful to have these things, they are not important and actually have no reason to really be around Christmas. Yet they are, Christmas has been commercialized and the marketers that did this were extremely smart and successful.

I recently read a blog from a fellow classmates, Berent Hagen, who discussed temporary tattoos that stay on for a couple of weeks and how companies are paying people to get these tattoos. I would like to take this idea a little further into how some people get real tattoos of a company.

Take, for instance, this guy. I do not know specifically why he got this tattoo but I do know people who have been offered thousands of dollars to have a companies logo tattooed on themselves.
I question the morality of this all. Has advertising gone to far and has it broken too many ethical boundaries. I understand that companies are always trying to gain the upper hand over their competition but I do not see that this is the best way to do that. In fact, I think that this might have a negative effect on a company. I know personally that I would dislike a company if I saw their logo tattooed on someones body, but who really knows. I mean, I’m just an average ordinary consumer like the rest of the world…..

http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/social-media-secret.html

“Most people fail miserably at Social Media Marketing! Why? Because they don’t really get what it’s all about. They think it’s about promoting their companies. It’s not; it’s about MAKING FRIENDS.”

I do not claim to be a social marketer, in fact, I far from that. However, I seemed to have surrounded myself with people who are always online doing social media and marketing themselves.

When Facebook, Twitter, and other forms of online communication first arose I was hesitant to get involved. I seemed to be the only one who didn’t have Facebook and the only friend who refused to use Twitter.

Nevertheless my perspectives have now changed. I see how my friends talk to each other online constantly, they are always in  contact with each other and always know what each other are doing. In addition to just themselves, they have begun to meet new people online. One of my friends has formed a friendship with a UFC/MMA fighter called Pat Berry and he has also managed to get an interview with him. Another friends that I have starts many of her relationships online. When she first meets someone she adds them. Then she talks to them online and eventually they become friends. She networks like crazy meeting so many people that I just can’t keep up.

This is why I have realized that social media is not about promoting themselves or their companies, its about making friends with everyone online. Its about forming bonds with the people online to make them feel like individuals instead of part of a corporate chain.

The media blog that I have linked this to taught me a lot as well as solidify many views that I previously had.

So I just watched the “facebook” movie. It was excellent. However, the biggest question that the movie left me with was how did facebook sell for so much money?

People say its about the marketing rights that facebook grants. This is how they sell advertisements to different companies and the companies advertisements give facebook its wealth. I wonder about this though, they claim facebook is a marketers heaven, yet when it was sold there was no extential marketing happening on facebook, no Coke adds, no Macdonalds adds, no CJA adds or anything else like that.

Another thing was the opportunities that facebook presents to marketers and I wonder how I would market on facebook if I was hired to. However I have not been so I wonder what your ideas are???

When I’m looking online to buy something and my parents walk into the room, they always cringe. I guess the world I live in is different from theirs because I always shop online. My parents have a great mistrust of the online system. They fear that the product they pay for will be wrong or different from expected, they fear that they will get “scammed” and their money will disappear into thin air along with the item that they are buying, and they also fear that they can’t accurately decide what they want online, for example, if they order a size 10 pair of shoes it will not fit.

I, however dont suffer from the afflictions. When I shop online all I can think about is how much of a better deal I can get online compared to a store and how many more products there are to choose from. For example, I just bought a pair of skis online. These were 60% off their original price, plus an additional $100 off as well as free handling and shipping. This was an amazing deal. I had to spend lots of time on the internet but eventually I found the product that i wanted at the price I wanted it.

I think that the world has changed. In fact, I know that the world has changed. Internet buying is in and its an efficient and cheaper way of shopping. Of course, it has its disadvantages, but I think that if you put in the effort the reward will be greater.

10 years ago mixed martial arts was virtually unheard of until three people came into the picture. The first two are the Fertetas brothers who are the majority owners of a major mixed martial arts corporation, and the third one is Dana White. These three individuals changed the face of the sport and their company, turning it from a brutal and barbaric sport that was never watch to the fastest growing sport in America.
How they did this? you might ask, the answer is marketing.
Dana White is an online marketing genius using twitter and other online websites, he has captured followers and fans who listen to what he says daily and who are constantly updated on MMA facts from websites like bloody elbow and other known ones.
What Dana did was take an old MMA company and buy them out. Keep all their fighters and create his own product. With his company called UFC he has created value for it. By saying that only great fighters fight in the UFC and creating different titles that are only won through the UFC he has created a superior product, effectively branded it, and made it into a well known and liked sport

I have recently found a really cool, really local, and really unknown band called the Wilderness Crew. I think that their music is amazing and that they could be something great. However, they are not well known and barely have any fans.
This has led me to wonder how some bands make it and others don’t, after some research, I have come to understand that they become great because of marketing. What any band has to do is get their music out there; in essence, they have to market their product.
In this day and age the best way to do that initially is online; WebPages should be created, YouTube videos, and other online sites should be created and utilized. After this, bands need to create a physical reality. They do this by performing concerts, touring, and meeting with people. Ultimately, this is all marketing, what a band needs to do is place value on their music, which is one of the definitions of marketing. A band needs a marketer, and a good one, in order to be successful and I want to try to figure out how to do that.

Check them out!!!

When I was nine years old I asked my Aunt why companies marketed. She was a buyer of fashion clothes for a couple of different companies and has a marketing degree. Therefore, I place some weight upon her response. What she said really shocked and confused me because it seemed so obvious and simple but ineffective.

Well here it goes, “Imagine you walk into a shop and you want to buy toothpaste, the question that is posed to you as you stand in the isle is, which one? Now this is where marketing comes in, each product is similar and should have the same effect but each one is uniquely different as well. Therefore, the one what you will probably buy will be the one you recognize and know the best because someone has told you about it. And VOILA, there’s marketing. The larger companies like Colgate have marketed their product enough that when you think of buying toothpaste you automatically think of Colgate and will probably buy it.

Although this is only one minuet part of marketing it is the part that has struck me the most. I sometimes wonder if the amount of money that is spent of marketing is really worth it. However, I know that if you do not have a product that people know about or affiliate themselves with then your product is worthless. This is because one of the definitions of marketing is giving a product value. A product that no one knows about has no value and cannot sell. Therefore, marketing is needed to give that one product value.

Then next point that I am forced to think about though is is the amount of money invested in marketing worth the return you will make. This is tricky because that question can only be answered looking back from the future. At least that’s what I think, therefore, I think we need to learn how to estimate how much to put into marketing to create the product customers want, but will make us MONEY!!!