Kenneth's Marketing Blog

Its once again Black Friday SALE!!! If some of you haven’t heard about Black Friday, its the Biggest sale of the year in the States. It starts on the day after Thanksgiving and the duration of the Sale depends on each store.

So my friend Riyandi and I planned to go down to Washington to get some good deals and experience this craziness. Before we started the trip, i had done some research on how to prepare for Black Friday Shopping on the Black Friday Blog. Dustin, the main blogger on the site, wrote about a Family that camps outside of Best Buy for a full 9 days to be the first in line for Black Friday sales. The Family takes shifts to stay in the tent. Setting a world record for the earliest start of the line up. Best Buy rewarded the family an ipad for creating awareness for their store :D. in the blog also mentioned another couple who got married in the Black Friday line up last year!! Man… that’s scary. This made me reconsider my shopping plan.

However, when we made our day trip down the States on Saturday, things went surprisingly smooth. we got to the border at 6:30, and it took less than half an hour get pass. my theory is they want to get people through the border so more people can shop in their country to boost its economy.

the outlets are surprisingly empty. The sales are still amazing but the traffic was not anymore than the other times I’ve been there. Where is all the craziness that everybody told me about? Is it because we went on a Saturday instead of a Friday?

So what im telling you is that, black friday shopping isnt as difficult as what the media portraits. its just a good time to get amazing deals.

Marketing is about creating, communicating, delivering, and capturing value. i found some Yu-Gi-Oh trading cards lying around the house today and suddenly realized how marketing has created value for these cards. Its marketing is brilliant!

The marginal cost of making one of these cards is barely anything. Its just a printed card. however, they are sold for im guessing around $5 for a pack of 6 cards? Some individual cards can be sold for hundreds of dollars.

So i wondered, where did the value come from?

The developers made Yu-Gi-Oh cartoon series its aired in the Europe, Americas, Australia, and East and South-east Asia, to gain recognition and reach a significant audience. When there are enough people watching this cartoon in one area, they start to have interactions and will likely to purchase the cards and make their decks of 40 to 100 cards and play against each other. to build stonger deck, these people start to trade their cards and buy/sell online and this basically created a free market in which the value of the card is determined by supply and demand of it.

The increase the value of the cards, the producer create special limited editions of certain cards that many players and collectors would pay high price for. Also, cards with stronger ability in the game play is also less available so its demand is high.

Started in 1998, Yu-Gi-Oh is still playing on TV internationally and there are people holding tournaments and community games regularly. Having sold more than 22 billion cards in 2009, Yu-Gi-Oh is named the top selling trading card in the world by Guinness world records. Although i dont know a lot about it, wikipedia says it continues to gain popularioty in the world.

My mom identifies her need of an all wheel drive SUV before the heavy snow hits vancouver this winter. but since she knows nothing about cars besides the perceived status related to them, she needs an influencer or even a decider when it comes to which car she should choose. so i spent last weekend with her and my friend Riyandi exploring options and enjoying the test drive and car shopping experience.

When we were at the Porsche dealer, the sales agent was excited to share with us the positioning strategy that his company is using. i was very interested because that’s what we covered in marketing class last week!

Like what Riyandi has said in his blog, Porsche, Audi, and Volkswagen are all subsiduary brands of the VW group. Partly because of this, their SUV’s Cayenne, Audi Q7, and VW Touareg share the same chassis (skeleton of the vehicle) and many of the same technology, such as 4-wheel-drive, bi-xenon headlights, and our favourate panoramic sunroof. Basically, besides the difference speed, these 3 models of SUV’s can you the driver the same benifits. 

So why would consumers spend over $100,000 on a Cayenne when they can buy a Aidu Q7 for $80,000 or ever better a fully loaded VW Touareg for $60,000? the dealer explains. The selling strategy of these 3 companies are different. VW targets the general public with highly funtional cars with luxurious features for a modest price. they are often in stock so a consumer can buy it within a week or two. Audi targets higher income families with its emphasis on design and marketing at high-class events, well of course it has excellent performance. Since its often customized, it often takes time to get them in so people will have to wait for what they really want. its not as available. on the other end of this, Porsche Cayenne is Fully Customized. the buyer can basically design his/her own vehicle from appearance to performance. To increase its value even more, the quantity of production is limited to… i forgot… 200 per year in Canada? The dealer doesnt even have to sell very hard because of the high demands. People who are willing to wait half a year or 8 months for the car must also be willing to pay a high price to it too, the dealer told us half-jokingly.

At the end of the day, my mom cant wait still next year for a car so we have to say no to the Audi or Porsche. But man, im glad we visited Porsche for this marketing lesson, and test driving a car with 400 hp was really thrilling.

Many of you probably have seen this commercial. You may be doing your marketing assignments on Unilever Axe. You may have seen this on entertainment channels on TV. You may have heard about this from your friends.

without a doubt, this commercial must be very effective at reaching its target audience and creating awareness. However, although I think this is quite entertaining, it doesnt make me want to buy the Axe Detailer and Body Wash. The effect of cleaning the variety of balls in the commercial is really exagerated. this is funny on one hand but it may lead to the audience to question Axe body wash’s superiority in the ability to clean a man’s testical. Common sense tells me body wash that cleans the rest of the body well could also clean the balls. so, i dont think axe differentiated its product from other body wash.

Even if someone believe the commercial that Axe products are better at cleaning testicals, there probably isnt a substential audience who has that special need….. or is there?

A few days ago. Tamar showed us a very stimulating marketing campaign in class. it is a revolutionary packaging and product positioning campaign for baby-carrots. Rather than having me describe it, here’s a link to this hilarity that you must see for yourself.
http://www.babycarrots.com/

Didn’t you just have so much fun reading the packages and watching “Chip and Abdul”? =] even reading the nutritional info is full of surprises (try it if you haven’t already done so)!

anyway, lets put aside the fun and actually evaluate the effectiveness of this campaign.

at first thought, this campaign will for sure increase the demand for the baby-carrots because it reminds people that they are fun, convenient, and nutritious snacks. Now more office workers will bring baby-carrots to work; more moms will pack baby-carrots in the kids’ lunch box; and more individuals will consume baby-carrots as snacks because they are crunchy, sweet, bite-sized, and leave their hands free of oil and salts. however, although this campaign increases the preference of the brand “a bunch of carrot farmers”, i dont think it differenciate the product enough to be able to raise the price of this packaged baby-carrots. what i mean is, now more people would buy baby-carrots, and they would want to buy the junk-food packaged ones. but if “a bunch of carrot farmers” decide to charge a premium on their carrots (because they spend $25 million on this campaign), they would not be able to do so because people can buy any brand of baby-carrots and it will give them the same benifit. 

that was my first thought. after looking more into this campaign, “a bunch of carrot farmers” packaged carrots do provide more value than other super market baby-carrots. what we learned in marketing, its all about creating and communicating “values”. i’m just gonna list the points i thought of that consumers will pay extra for “a bunch of carrot farmers” carrots:
– package size: good portion, easy to store and transport.
– placement (distribution): sold in vending machines, easy access, able to charge high prices because its competing with other junk food.
– this campaign also has stronger impact on students of all ages because it creates a social trend. packages reflect idendity (packaged: fun loving, futuristic, classy v.s. non-packaged: cheap and no-style)
– having a brand: consistence is quality and experience. gain trust in buyers.

kay that’s all for now. i’d add more if i think of any other reason why i, or anybody would pay extra to buy this crisp and fun packaged baby-carrots. in general, i think the campaign is a success. well i love it and i would pay a dollar or dollar fifty for a pack of this healthy junkfood. but $25 million marketing expense is too much for me to comprehend, im guessing their tarket market is in billions.

please comment, or link to my blog for your extra blogging mark, fellow students! thanks for reading and welcome back.

Hello Tamar, Shalina, and fellow students! Welcome to Kenneth’s Marketing Blog. What you can expect to find here are regular updates of some thoughts on marketing activities that can be found all around us. This is my first time blogging and im really excited to learn about all the functions and what i can do with my blog. I know everything looks really plain right now, but it will look better as i learn. 

Thanks for reading and welcome back!