Truth be told, by examining how we can improve a company’s current marketing strategy, I learned a lot about how to apply marketing concepts that we study in the classroom to a real company. I personally really enjoy case studies and find them very interesting and constructive. So there is no doubt that this assignment was a very useful and worthwhile homework. However, I was disappointed by the fact that we had to produce a video rather than presenting our marketing plan to the class. Making video takes too much time and is not very useful. In many groups, many members (I was one of them) do not know how to make and edit videos and to be honest I do not see its usefulness for students who do not consider Marketing for their career. As a result, this caused that one student in every group who knows how to use iMovies to work three times as much. At last, making videos for many students is not a transferable skill and I do not see why did we have to spend so much time making and editing a video.

On the other hand, lets consider the upside of conducting a presentation to the class. Public speaking is ranked among one of the most transferable and needed skills in business and many students need to learn how to handle pressure of giving speech to unknown crowds. It takes a lot less time to prepare it and it is more compelling and understandable by the audience.

Overall, although making video is a very useful skill for some students who consider marketing as their future profession, it conveys a lot less value to the other ones.

It was very interesting to read Dragana Milisic’s blog about the “Oreo’s surprising slam-dunk advertisement.” This type of unconventional and out of the blue advertisement really helped Oreo to stand out among other Superbowl ads. The unpredictability and the surprise element of such ads make people smile and admire the company’s brilliant marketing methods.

It’s worth mentioning that although these type of creative advertisements do not cost very much in comparison to million dollar Superbowl ads, they are very risky. This type  of “right on the spot creating” has caused numerous crucial problems for companies in the past. Certainly that is why not many brands have the stomach for such a risky advertisements.

This type of risky marketing method begs the question that why some companies can use such methods and some do not? Let me explain this by an example.

Oreo has been around for a very long time and customer’s know this brand by their delicious product and not by their advertising campaigns. Thus even if their risky ads become controversial, not many customers will stop eating their delicious, now 100 years old sandwich cooky. On the other hand the upside of such advertisements are significant. People like to be surprised and this type of creative thinking excites many potential customers.

So overall, the big question is: Would this type of unanticipated advertising change the marketing world for good? The answer is: It really depends. This type of advertising is useful for established companies who can also handle the downside when their risky ads turn out to be controversial. For new companies and products, this method is very risky. This type of publicity have destroyed many emerging companies in the past.

Respond to Us vs US ( by Seth Godin, http://sethgodin.typepad.com)

Although it is a very interesting theory to consider that if we are part of something we will not hurt it, unfortunately it’s not always true. Consider those who in order to get larger paycheck indirectly hurt their company’s business or those who are part of a group but consider to work the minimum amount because they rather be part of their private life first.

For example, let’s examine banking industry. In general, the more risk banks take the higher their revenue will be. However taking high risks, will jeopardize the company in the long run. Now consider the options that a mid level trader who is about to retire in two years has at that particular time. He can either take high risks and get paid well before he reties and careless about the future of his bank or he can play it safe and get his average paycheck. What is he going to do?

As you have mentioned in your blog, there are billions of anonymous people interacting with each other everyday which causes one very big problem: You will not be heard unless you are very LOUD or exciting. Imagine a room filled with one thousand people where everyone is talking (or texting,) and you want to capture people’s attention because you have something very important to say. what do you do? well the obvious answer is to shout or scream at the beginning but to keep their attention you have to talk about a very important topic or simply do some attention grabbing stuff, such as exaggerating or lying. This is one of the biggest problems with social media and marketing blogs today. Many participants of social media would do ANYTHING to keep people’s attention. Even big brands exaggerate their product’s capabilities by making fun (and often irrelevant) advertisements.

Imagine you are watching your favourite show and all the sudden the single most annoying thing that could possibly happen, happens. Commercials begin to play. 

If the whole point of advertising is increasing value of a product or a service in the eyes of potential customers, these annoying commercials drain it all.

Consider those who switch channels during the commercial times or those who begin to dislike the brand  because of their annoying advertisements. I started to genuinely dislike Subway because of their very annoying “5 dollar foot long commercials with that monkey” in the middle of my favourite shows. Is this the outcome that companies and marketers look for? The obvious answer is No.

Now, I am not suggesting that commercial times should be eliminated from TV. I am rather pointing at a more effective way for companies to advertise their products.

I understand without advertisements there would be no show to watch. So how can companies promote their products without annoying their customers? What if aside from buying commercial time, companies would collaborate with movie directors to promote their products in movies? Wouldn’t this approach be more effective? Imagine a very cool character of a famous TV show enters the XYZ restaurant, orders a delicious meal, and gives a genuine complement to the food.  Which one would be more effective?

I believe in this day and age, companies should stop chasing people and let people chase its products and find out more about the unique stories of their products (check out my blog 2). Imagine people search for products and check out a website to find out more about a particular product. I believe this method is a lot more effective than forcing customers to watch a boring ad and expecting them to get excited about it.

Some advertisements have power to touch people’s heart and make a significant difference in the buying behaviour. Let me start this blog with couple of examples. Think about the Apple Company’s “Think Different” campaign, Proctor and Gamble’s “Best Job”,or Nike’s “ Find Your Greatness.” There is just something very special about these ads that makes audience relate to them. I am personally a big fan of these advertising because they are not just trying to sell me another product, but they are selling an idea or a lifestyle. An idea that we can be great in our own way (Nike campaign), we can think differently and change things (Apple’s campaign), and to know that raising a champion is a lot harder than becoming a champion (P&G’s campaign.)

Think Different

Best Job

Find Your Greatness

Although these ads don’t promote any products in particular, they associate these touching ideas to their brand and leverage it in their marketing campaigns. As a customer, I am a lot more willing to spend on those ideas than a pair shoes without any interesting story.

As the world is progressing out of sole consumerism, companies should stop selling products and start selling ideas and lifestyles. As a consumer, when I want to purchase a pair of shoes there are hundreds of brands and thousands of models available for me to choose from. By introducing different stories and promoting ideas and lifestyles, companies can differentiate all of their products from the crowd. This type of approach makes potential customers very open to products as oppose to the classic “by one get one for free” style of marketing.

In this day and age people like to be touched emotionally and want to skip logical and boring facts. This approach of embedding emotional values in advertisements makes watching them enjoyable and fun. Just imagine having fresh, funny, and thoughtful Superbowl ads all year around as oppose to boring Subway’s ads (no offence Subway).

James Vs Howard

It’s hard to imagine LeBron James, Dwight Howard, and Kobe Bryant would have McDonald’s BigMac meal for launch (specially right after practice). We all know how bad McD foods are for us, and technically speaking these ads want to show the opposite with their slick marketing techniques. So are these ads ethical? The simple answer is No. But are they morally wrong? Not really. One could say that these ads are trying to deceive the public into thinking that McD foods are healthy. I disagree. We are a lot more smarter to be deceived by these ads into thinking that McD’s fast food is good for us. We may not exactly know “why” something is good or bad for us, but we precisely know “what” is good or bad for us. However, we often choose to ignore those facts. The purpose of these ads are not to say McD foods are good for you, rather these ads are trying to convey that “it’s ok to be tempted and make mistakes, even successful professional athletes and innocent kids make those mistakes.”

People want to feel accepted even when they make mistakes. One can argue that depression is a lot more serious than obesity, and these ads are doing us a big favour by making us feel better about ourselves. Conclusion ? Don’t judge fast. Nothing separates ethical and unethical except our perception of them and people’s perception differ from  person to person, culture to culture, and generation to generation.

Kobe Vs Kids

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