Katie Fang's Blog

I think Comm299 saved me a lot of effort in actually going to interview experiencing the shame of saying something wrong or  unprofessional.

The other important lesson is that the job market is constantly changing, and 299 saved me a lot of time in researching for the current trend of the job market, i.e. what employees are looking for in terms of personal traits, and  quality/value. It also allowed me to be updated with the latest career tool that is available to me in school.

A few weeks ago, HollyWood star Charlie Sheen generated a big fuzz over every single media channel. His crazy lifestyle and behaviour got the whole world talking. After getting himself excused from the popular TV show Two and a Half Men, he started his own tour around the States, and now the show is even coming to Vancouver.

   So what’s the trick? Some say it’s called crazy, and other say it’s courage.

I think it’s all just about business, more specifically, it’s just his own marketing strategy to get himself out there and being noticed.

So now what? After some crazy months, he has gone a little quiter in the media, however, he isn’t resting, and he has gone tweetting about his life! He was the one that broke the Guinness world record of reaching 1 million followers in the shortest time.

I guess, celebrities are all marketing geniuses, they know how to grab people’s attention, know fan’s interests, arouse fan’s desire, and finally, they posses a strong call to action.

To answer Mandy Chow‘s question, “are vending machines suitable for cosmetic products”, I would definitely say YES!

For most of the girls, make up has become a daily essential, and girls shop for makeups on impulse. Picture a situation where you realize you didn’t bring your mascara or lipstick to the destination of your trip, and now you are about to go on a very important date, what would you do? Probably panic in the hotel room?  But what if, you have a cosmetic vending machine down the hall of your hotel room, wouldn’t that be just fantastic?

The question might be what is the incentive for building such machines? I would say, because cosmetics industry is in its maturity stage, where competition is fierce, and every brand is trying to come up with new line extension to survive this battle.

So in order to get more market share and extend the product life cycle, companies should consider using vending machines to sell its products. This approach increases customer base, could potentially increase the frequency of use, and most importantly, this is an innovative way of stimulating demand.

Bill Gates- once the world’s richest man, and now he is giving up his wealth to live up his motto once again – change the world.

At first, he changed our world by introducing us to Windows. It changed our way of living, and changed our perspective to technology. That innovation made him billions of dollar, but he seemed not satisfied by having tons of money. And now, he chose to live a simple life-style, and donating almost all his wealth away.

There are so many lesson can be learnt from Bill Gates. But of all, I think that his motto of ” change the world, or go home” is the root cause of his success. Not only, he taught me how to be ambitious, but also he taught me life is about constantly updating your goal, and make your life worth living by making an impact on others’ lives.

“If I’d had some set idea of a finish line, don’t you think I would have crossed it years ago?”

– Bill Gates

Wandering around the supermarket, couldn’t help to notice that junk food aisle has some new members – Doritos A and Doritos B! I was really amazed by how the packaging color changed from red to complete monotone. To be honest, I was quite disappointed at first. But curiosity hit me, and I actually googled about change.

It is a newly launched campaign that aimed at the junk food lovers to vote for a new flavour of the Doritos, and also encourage voters to submit a creative idea of how to destroy the other unpopular option. The most creative idea will be shot into an ad, and also winner will receive $2,500 and 1% of the sales revenue.

This campaign has allowed customer input to create its new product,  and also increased the perceived value of every purchase of Doritos, because you think you are a part of something big and meaningful, and you might get a chance to win that grand prize!!

The industry is almost at its maturity stage with fierce competition, and constant launch of new product lines. And now, Doritos has made its bench mark of being the leader of this industry, since it was able to understand how to increase its product depth with customers input, and clearly deliver the message of how they care about its valued customers’ opinion!

I don’t know if you are getting tired of receiving flyers in Sauder? But I AM! Probably budget is a big concern for clubs and events, however, delivering ineffective and boring flyers is wasting money as well!

So I found a marketing campaign Unicef was doing, although it is 2 years old, but I still want to review  it, simply because it made me become super aware of the fact that marketing isn’t about spending big bucks to get your brand on the most popular TV channel.

So basically, Unicef had a very unique strategy in making people become more aware of landmines. What they did was to design self-adhesive stickers that has a top coloured as the floor, so people would step on it, and have the stickers sticked on the bottom of their shoes. On the other side of the stickers is a picture of a landline and a message from Unicef.

Image captured from Unicef website

This is a very creative way of letting people experience how easy is it to step on a landline. So, I guess this is a big step up from traditionally flyers that have text and image. Like what we saw in class today, the NIKE wall has provided the opportunity for potential buys to experience. And this, Unicef has done a great job in creating a cheap and yet effective experiential marketing campaign!

Cool. Another ipad.

For some of you, it might just be an ipad. But for some of you, that means a whole new level innovation and advance in technology.

For most of you, YOU WANT IT, BUT it depends on if the bang worth the buck. So does it?

Currently, the ipad 2 is priced at $499 compared to an refurbished ipad 1 is now priced at $399. From value point of view, the ipad 2 does offer 2x faster processor, 9x higher resolution, and a 1/3 less in weight, but do all these values add up to the price? I guess not. The ipad itself offers no more function than an iphone, and still not able to substitute laptop, why would someone spend almost $500 for such a luxury toy?

From pricing point of view, I agree with Jessica,  Apple should lower its price when its still on the peak. At this moment, Apple still have chance for gaining more market share, but when the Apple fetish is over, even lowering price won’t help.

Currently, Apple is using odd pricing strategy with value orientation through communicating its product value to customers on website and through commercials. Unfortunately, when rational consumers are making a purchase, they would eventually compare values between products. Apple will eventually lose on this one if the price persists high in comparison.

High heels, make up, and sexy dresses might make a regular person famous, but how can a celebrity develop his or her sustainable competitive advantage?

I guess the ultimate celebrity Lady Gaga has her own way of sustaining herself in the entertainment business.

1. Never call her fans “fans”!

Lady Gaga named her fans as her little monsters. Oh, don’t get her wrong, they are different from those ORDINARY fans. She loves her little monsters so much that she even tattooed it on her arm and expressed on twitter of how much she loves them. Obviously, since those little monsters have the attention and “love” from the superstar, they will worship Lady Gaga till death!

2. Distinguish Yourself

Lady Gaga doesn’t only sing! Her bizarre outfits and her creativity has made her so distinguishable that probably your grandma even knows her! And plus, her generosity made her share everything with her fans, from her music to her personal story. She is constantly making up something new from the meat dress to Grammy’s Egg. It is always extremely hard to not notice her.

3. Stay Connected

Lady Gaga talks to her little monster through social media. She has about 29,895,203 people like her Facebook page, it is even more than Obama. When she got the tattoo of her little monsters, the first thing she did was to tweet a picture of it. It truly made her little monster feel like she cares about them, and loves them.

It is FINALLY here.

The news of Facebook having its own email service has been around for a long time, and FINALLY FINALLY it’s here. But what makes the Facebook email so special that gmail or hotmail can’t compete with. The answer would be – it is NOT an email per se. It is an integrated message inbox that combines all your Facebook messages, texts, chats, and emails all in one account. It is a cooler and easier way for finding people’s email address and connect with them. Imagine the situation where  you can just Facebook search for an email address, and there is no need to open another window for signing in to your email account.

I guess soon enough the ” taking the experience online” phrase would become ” taking the experience on social network”!

We often see celebrities with strong economic background and a resourceful agency that back them up, but lately, those homemade videos gets thousands, or I would rather say MILLIONS views which made lots of ordinary stay home people so famous. Anybody who is a youtube freak would know about Raywilliamjohnson as =3. His videos hit million views easily within 3 days. so what made him such a popular Youtuber compare to others? Answers lies in Position. He positions himself well in the Youtube market, due to the fact that he understands the concept of youtube, being a channel where people are interested in viewing the best videos of all. So, what he does is that every week he reviews 3 most popular or fun videos at a time and twice a week. You might ask, so how’s that so different from what other Youtubers are doing? Well, it is very different in the sense that he had already done the screening process for viewers. His taste has targeted a certain demographics i.e. teenagers and young adults. It is entertaining to watch his videos.

The other success factor would be engagement. Unlike other Youtuber, Ray engages his audience by asking them to send him interesting questions in video, and he would embed one of those videos in every episode. Due to his popularity level, audience gets excited with this type of interaction with the “celebrity”. As you can see, it is a very effective way of getting reviewers loyalty.

Raywilliamjohnson’s youtube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/user/raywilliamjohnson?blend=1&ob=4