Here it comes! We have been waiting for it. For more than 10 months we have been planning the meal, complaining about all the gifts we have to buy; finally the day is near, Christmas is right around the corner!

But despite its beauty, excitement and all its expectations, it also comes with something terrible, that we hope each year will finally disappear… The Christmas Sweater!

#My own creation!#

Because everyone knows that it’s a “must do” and that even if it goes against all the trends people will buy and wear it, Coca Cola Zero came up with a very innovative idea: The Sweater Generator. Anyone can create their own Christmas Sweater on the website, post it, and wait to get as many “Likes” as possible, because the top 100 of them will be created and sent to their designers!

David Kiefaber points out this kind of unique marketing tactic in his blog post, because it is not actually related to the brand (there is absolutely no link between Coca Cola Zero and a Christmas Sweater), but in the end, it will advertise their brand. It is a very good example of public relations. Except from a small logo which will be on the sweater, no one will notice where people got it. It is only the excitement during the competition and the word of mouth created by it which will market the company.

It benefits both the people taking part in the competition and the brand, because the person will get a free Christmas Sweater and a lot of fun, while the company only had to pay for the website where the competition was held, and the production of the sweater, for which the price is really low comparing to a TV ad or a billboard. As Coca Cola is also criticized because of its possible involvement in obesity, it also permits them to make some kind of indirect marketing, so that people don’t only associate Coca Cola with sugar and weight gain anymore, but also with Christmas and fun!

After all, Santa’s red and white costume is sometimes said to come from a Coca Cola ad campaign…!

I love travelling.

I’m not really fond of taking the plane, but I’m not scared of it. But there is one thing that I don’t like, or at least I just don’t really care for (and I guess 99% of the population agree), which is the safety announcement before taking off. You have been waiting for your trip to Hawaii for almost half a year, and a boring (and bored) cabin crew member delays your arrival to the white sand beach by the longest 5 minutes of your life…

Virgin America recently found a very interesting way to change this (boring) moment into a very engaging one: by launching a pre-flight safety video which is actually a real musical!

That was the subject of Jeffery’s 4^th Blog Post, which really caught my attention compared to other Blogs I visited.

Airline companies currently have two main kinds of differentiation strategies: either lowering their prices, or increasing their service quality. But once they have positioned themselves in one of these strategies, how do they attract new customers? How do they continue to maintain the loyalty of the current ones?

By launching this video, Virgin America reinvented the (boring) safety video, common to any airline company, even making it into a new asset and a way to differentiate themselves from their competition.

This won’t increase the service quality, lower the prices, or change anything within the company, but it will instead create a huge Internet hit, and appeal to people who didn’t know about, or haven’t flown with Virgin America before. Because travelers will associate a positive emotion to the company after watching this video, they are more likely to fly with this airline instead of a random unknown airline.

This is a perfect example of market penetration!