Junnan(Jason) Xu's Blog

This is definitely one of the funniest and innovative ads I have ever seen, something that will definitely catch the attention of males.

Olla Condoms – Unexpected Babies

Brazilian agency AGE Isobar organized just such an insidious campaign for Olla condoms recently. The agency apparently targeted specific males and created actual Facebook profiles for their unborn children by tacking “Jr.” on to their names, who then attempt to friend Daddy. Well, is it effective? Although this campaign may be considered insidious and violates Facebook’s usage guides, I still think that it is effective as it acts as a effective reminder for a lot of males despite some may ignore it. Definitely an alarm bell for dissolute males!

Now let’s look at another marketing campaign from class:

MINI vs Porsche

Mini Cooper vs. Porsche 911 at Road Atlanta

Although this campaign did create a lot of buzz online, it had more negative impacts. From my perspective, a Mini verses a Porsche? What a ridiculous idea. The result was that Mini lost by 2 seconds, which is like an eternity on an Autocross course. My question is, why did the marketers of Mini pick Porsche for the challenge? The cars are completely different in aspects such as design, brand positioning, price and target market. It is no surprise that Porsche will win unless a miracle happens. From what I know, Mini is owned by BMW, so why don’t they just challenge a BMW or another brand that has similar price and target market? Proposing a challenge with less hope of winning does not seem smart and could do more harm than good to one’s image.

Just personal opinions, please feel free to comment!

Reference:

http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/friend-request-your-unborn-child-actually-condom-ad-136767

http://www.headlightblog.com/2010/06/the-mini-vs-porsche-challenge-%E2%80%93-more-online-than-on-the-track/

After reading Shayla Hardy’s blog “Using Celebrities in Ads is Not fulfilling Expected Return”, I do not completely agree with Shayla’s opinion that celebrity endorsement is not effective as an marketing strategy.

In her blog, Shayla mentioned that nowadays, celebrity endorsement is a pricy option and is limited in terms of adding value to the product and ultimately winning over the consumer. From my point of view, it really depends on the type of product that we are talking about. In some industries, celebrity endorsement play a huge role in their marketing as the performance of these celebrities directly affects purchase intentions and actual sale of their products. Take sports products for example; the reason why Nike and Adidas are so dominant in the market is because they have most of the world’s top athletes promoting their products. Derrick Rose was named NBA’s Most Valuable Player and as a result, his signature shoe caught the world’s attention. For people who are passionate for basketball, Rose’s performance will definitely have a psychographic affect on their purchase intentions. For me, although I am not a huge fan of Rose himself, I definitely had the incentive to buy his shoes as I imagine myself playing like him on court after putting on his shoe. （Which is unfortunately unrealistic ）. My purchase intention that was raised by Rose’s performance will further stimulate me to do research on the product. Finally, the characteristics of this product such as price, quality and special feature is what will finally influence my decision on whether to buy it or not.

However, it is true that for some products, celebrity endorsement may have a reverse affect as the more commercials, magazines, bus ads consumers see, the more phony they seem. Just as Shayla mentioned, what are the chances of a celebrity using an $8.00 drugstore product. I think that whether celebrity endorsement would be successful as a marketing strategy really depends on the nature of the product and its industry.

Sorry for posting this late! Missed last class due to some personal issues and didn’t check vista during Thanksgiving. Hope it isn’t too late to post this!

After reading Heena’s Blog Entry:“Renovating McDonalds’ Brand Image”, I decided to read a bit more on McCafe, this is what I learned.

According to a previous journal from Wall Street Journal, the reason why McDonald is always at the top of the fast-food industry is its menu additions such as smoothies and oatmeal. The question here is why did they bother adding all this stuff in the first place ? It all started with coffee. According to Jan Fields, McDonald’s USA President, there was a time when McDonald’s coffee was considered the best, but during some period the company noticed a significant decline in its coffee sales when the demand for coffee was going up (Maybe McDonalds coffee really tastes bad…). Well, McDonalds will never allow that to happen again!

So here comes the company’s strategy: Make everything that its competitors make, whether direct or indirect. People like sweet beverages, then McDonald’s will make its own smoothies. People get oatmeal at Starbucks? Now they can get oatmeal at McDonald’s. People want coffee? Then McDonalds will sell it for a cheaper price than others. If you are a smaller restaurant chain and you have a moderate degree of success selling a product, guess what? McDonald’s will sell it better than you. “Change is a part of our business to keep up with customer demands, and there have been a lot of changes,” says a management executive. As mentioned by Heena, McDonald’s market strategy is successful because it creates value for its customers by continuously adapting to its customers changing needs.

Sina’s Weibo, China’s domestic Twitter rival, dwarfs twitter with overwhelming scale.

According to statistics, around 56 million accounts have been opened on Twitter, yet only an estimated amount of 21 million users actively publish each month. On the other hand, Sina Weibo has 140 million users and 50 million active monthly users. According to a recent report from China Daily, Sina claims that with 10 million new accounts signed up each month and it is expecting significant revenue growth from Weibo in the next two years. Weibo changed millions of people’s daily life by becoming an indispensable part of it.

Marketing is playing an essential role here as 60,000 accounts of Weibo are verified accounts for celebrities and major brands. Yes, major brands! Weibo is making itself a successful marketing intermediary by enhancing marketing for brands and products using promotions and videos (e.g pushing campaigns out at peak times – 10 to 11.10am and 2 to 3.30pm – and looking at other chargeable service for brands). Marketing authorities predict that Sina’s advertising revenue will grow about 50% due to this phenomenon. A very good example would be the top 100 “grassroot” accounts have created profits of about 20 million yuan from advertisement since they opened their accounts. Sina Weibo appears to have become the social media of choice for most brands to stage their engagement with the Chinese market. Twitter should definitely be aware of that.

Reference:http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/pda/2011/jul/15/weibo-twitter-china

    One of the most important lessons I took away from Comm 299 Class was how to focus on developing on one’s strength. After completing Strength Quest, I was able to find new qualities that I did not realize I possessed before. I know that by focusing on developing these qualities I will become a more competitive person. In addition, Comm 299 taught me how to behave professionally. The interview tips taught in Class were extremely important as I learned how to shake hands properly, how to get a great first impression of the employer and how to build my brand more efficiently to catch attention. The mock interview was a good experience as it was really similar to that of a real one and everybody had to prepare as they would in a real interview. I would say another really important takeaway from the class would be how to write an attractive resume and cover letter. From Comm 299 class, I learnt how to choose words efficiently and grab the attention of employers by combining my experience with reasonable data. Furthermore, I learned to be more cautious with my resume and cover letter assignment and treat it as if it was in reality since the marking standards were pretty harsh. To be honest, I have never written a proper resume or cover letter before and I was not that confident about myself. After Comm 299 class, I feel more confident and I believe that would be essential for my further career development.

The greatest lesson that I learned from Cristiano Ronaldo, one of my idols, is how to combine personal talents with a group in order to benefit the whole team. Even in his early career, Cristiano Ronaldo displayed amazing talents with a soccer ball and was considered to have the potential to become the best player on this planet. Unfortunately, as a young talented player, Ronaldo was arrogant and over-confident with his skills which eventually caused him to become a personal showoff on the pitch instead of helping his team to win matches. As time passed by, more and more fans and even his teammates started to criticize him for his selfish behavior. However, in 2007, people began seeing a new Ronaldo on the pitch as there were more passes and interaction between him and his teammates. In 2008, Ronaldo reached the peak of his career as he was named FIFA player of the year. In his speech after receiving the award, he thanked his teammates and stated that his great improvement was based on the fact that he realized “nobody wins unless everybody wins”. The power of one is no match for that combined of many and it was only under the support of his teammates was he able to unleash his full power.

As a student at the Sauder School of Business, I have had opportunities to carrying out what I have learned from Ronaldo. In projects for Comm 101 and Comm 292 last term, each member of the team was able to combine their talents with the team and we ended up achieving good results. The effort of a group rather than an individual can eventually make everybody’s work easier and more efficient.

Recently I have had troubles with my phone plan. Every time I call customers service, the person who picks up the phone is an Indian as you can tell from their accent. I mean no offense to Indians, but sometimes the customer service representative’s problem solving skills were just terrible and sometimes their attitudes make me angry and frustrated.

Over the past few years, more and more firms are outsourcing their call centers to developing countries such as India, China, and other South East Asian countries. The reason most firms choose to outsource their call centers to these countries is usually due to the low cost and management in place that is far more affordable than the business itself spending lots of time, resources and labor creating their own call center. However, a big issue with outsourcing call centers is how to guarantee customer satisfaction. Working in call centers can be extremely stressful jobs with increase complexity of technology and supervisor pressure forcing employees to move from one angry customer to the next without any time to take a breather. This pressure can lead to stress and frustration in personal, thus leading to more chances of untrained customer agents. This vicious cycle results in difficulty in providing quality service to customers.

In my opinion, firms should upgrade customer satisfaction as a more important factor to consider when making decisions for outsourcing.

Reference:

http://www.thesocialcustomer.com/douglashanna/32171/outsourcing-customer-support-services

When Case 3 mentioned ambush marketing, it reminded me of an incident in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Li Ning, one of China’s greatest athletes of all time, was secretly chosen to light the Olympic cauldron during the opening ceremony. This honor brought him and his sports company worldwide attention and a prominent spot in Olympic history. On the other hand, Adidas, who spent millions of dollars to become a major sponsor of the Beijing Olympics, had to stand by and watch one of its biggest competitors in the Chinese market steal one of the biggest moments of the games.

Would this be considered as ambush marketing? If yes, it maybe the greatest marketing ambush in sports history. However, choosing Li Ning to light the cauldron is considered reasonable as he is one of China’s greatest sports legends. If it weren’t him, who else would be qualified to light the cauldron?

Another interesting scene is something that happens in almost every major sporting event. For example, we see that the official sponsor of the event is Adidas, but at the same time there are a lot of athletes wearing Nike uniforms. Note that Nike has no specific relationship with the event, but it has stratospheric contracts with a number of the teams and players in the tournament (Notice the boots and the jersey of the player in the picture above). Would this be considered as ambush marketing as well? Unfortunately, in my opinion, these issues are really complicated and there is no way to completely eliminate ambush marketing as long as it doesn’t violate laws.

References:

http://www.suite101.com/content/ambush-marketing-at-the-olympic-games-a168192

Any Real Madrid fans here? Maybe you would know about Rubén de la Red Gutiérrez, former Real Madrid midfield and of Spain’s squad at the victorious UEFA Euro 2008 tournament.

De la Red was a talented player who suffered from a serious heart ailment which put his career on hold for two years, until he finally retired in late 2010 at the age of 25. In January 2010, newspapers reported that Real Madrid was attempting to declare de la Red’s heart problem to be “a common condition”, and therefore find a way to annul his contract. As a consequence, the player would only receive a €1,500-monthly disability benefit, rather than the full wages due from the remaining two years of his professional contract, which was worth millions of Euros.

The case of de la Red actually reminds me of a class when we were talking about assets. What is an asset? By definition, it is “a single item of ownership having exchange value.” According to Jamie Flinchbaugh, assets are on balance sheets so that you can value your business particularly if you need to liquidate it. Banks provide asset-based lending and the assets are the collateral. Should people, or more accurately, employees be considered as collaterals? Basically I have no idea what the correct answer is. Many entrepreneurs emphasize that employees should be treated as partners, but in territories such as the professional sports world, athletes are treated as assets and are sold to different clubs or casted aside when they are no longer valuable.

What do you think?

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rub%C3%A9n_de_la_Red

http://jamieflinchbaugh.com/2010/10/people-are-not-assets/

How does organizational structure affect companies? Issues that Hewlett Packard have can be a good example to this problem.

As the world’s largest PC manufacturer, Hewlett Packard has always been one of the most popular brands amongst laptop consumers. Since 2008 however, many customers have faced a series of issues with their HP laptops due to problems associated with faulty Nvidia graphic chips built into the computers. Many customers experienced glitches such as display flickering,system lock ups, crashes and failed reboots.

Many consumers believe they have been treated unfairly because their laptops have not been added to a list of affected machines issued by HP. This renders them ineligible for free repairs or extended warranties further exacerbating the lack of distributive and procedural justice.

HP’s organizational structure is strong in bureaucracy and it ensures that they are able to perform in a highly efficient manner. However, it creates subunit conflicts and reduces cohesiveness since each department is highly independent. The marketing department views selling the product as the most important task while the research and development department may believe that design and innovation provides more added value to a product, rather than the quality of it. This results in severe miscommunication as the feedback loop fails to function adequately leading to consumer technical and customer service support issues.