uncertainty

I bet anyone who are studying in Sauder would have heard about this ‘Nestea – The Recruit’ competition at least once  throughout their school years.

During my 1st year, I came across it on facebook after the Team of UBC’s audition results were out. Not until this year, I got invited to its facebook event page and teamed up with 2 of my lovely fellows for the audition just past this friday! (Real hope I can get in since it would be an amazing opportunity to greet and compete with students across Canada and challenge ourselves through using our marketing skills and knowledge, to initiate marketing campaigns for Nestea. 🙂

Speaking of Nestea, I have always been amazed by Coca-cola’s marketing strategies and the team behind it who plans and implements all these unique and ‘long-lasting’ ideas. Examples such as back in the time the video promo ‘I’d like to teach the world to sing…’  , and the ‘Coca-Cola Factory’ etc.

For the Nestea The Recruit, in my point of view, on surface it is a recruitment event that Coca-Cola hosts that aims to extract marketing talents across from Canada’s universities. From another point of view, its simply another marketing campaign, that utilizes students’ interests, competitions across universities, and internships, to promote Nestea through students’ creativity and word of mouth. I mean, in Coca-Cola’s perspective, hiring a team of 3 students (only the 1 winning team across canada will be hired to work for Coca-Cola over the summer) wouldn’t cost a lot, especially if they are only interns; however, the market potential that students can reach into would be far more effective then any formal marketing campaigns, like tv advertisements and booths etc.

On top of that, they hire representatvies (2-3 i think) on each campus to supervise the competition and help in drawing students into the auditions. And i believe there are incentives for reps to create the most appealing auditions in their university since there were a bit of competitions going on the Nestea The Recruit facebook page.

And speaking of facebook, i realized there are no formal website or whatever promotional materials for this Recruit/competition, but rather its solely base on social media, word of mouths and a few posters.

So in conclusion, its very prominent that the cost of hosting this Recruit is extremely low, but in return, through students engagement, internships incentives and competitions across campus, its already enough to market a product into students community, especially it’s the favourable Coca-Cola’s Nestea drink.

Lastly, let us enjoy this video production did by my fellows, last year’s winner, the UBC RePresent team. 😉

This year, being the CUS Visual Media Director, is definitely a challenge for me.

I’m not talking about how much editing behind the scene i have to do, or how much coordination i have to make with my team and various committees across the Commerce Undergraduate Society. All I wanna say is, how i can bring the CUS Visual Media from last year’s awesomeness, to another level.

CUS Visual Media serves as one of the communication portal to all Sauder’s undergraduate students, as well as to alumni, and business professions. Undergraduate students in particular are the main target of us because we aim to promote all conferences and events that are going on with the CUS during the year, through delivering substantial visual media (photos and videos) coverage.

We have the equipment and team, and all we need is branding and exposure, so to make our coverage and hard work more effective in terms of promoting CUS events. That being said, right now we are in progress of implementing so many ‘new initiatives’, such as creating our own

website/blog…

Twitter…

Youtube channel …

Facebook account/ page…

and sweater …

… on top of what we have been doing since last years, including Flickr, business cards, and buttons.

All of these initiatives are solely aiming to establish a closer connection with students – through social media and branding in particular – get them to be familiar with us, and to be informed by us, and lastly being interested in joining us in all CUS events.

So what is the challenge then? Lol. Well, this goal definitely requires time to be archieved. Like, we are not a conference that needs the tickets to be sold out, nor a club that needs tons of membership support. We can’t do it in a pushy or extremely pumped way to get ppl attractions in a short time period because we are not aiming  for profit/revenue (at least we don’t have any kind of income). These are the constraints to our goal, and we are kinda different, and unique, from other parties within the Society. We act sort of like a free advertiser for CUS, and keeping the professionism at the same time as we kinda represent the CUS.

Hard to say, and hard to describe. Like I (or I should say My Team and I) have so many ideas that I can imagine them realistically in my mind, yet it always takes a while to archieve it. And that ‘a while’ could be a  month, a year, or forever. And i really hope i can get something out of my Marketing class (Comm 296) so to advance my knowledge and skill in marketing, and hopefully, shortening that ‘a while’ to archieve my goals. 😉

Lastly, please join me and enjoy a relaxing slideshow featuring photos from last year’s events, captured by CUS Visual Media Team 09-10′.

This time not only 240 countries are pariticpanting in the largest World Expo ever, each province in China also has their own pavilion to show off their uniqueness and traditional culture. There are also 6 corpoerate pavilions themed as state grid, oil, information and communication, ship building industry, and space.  Having the maximized attention from across the world, sponsorship in each pavilion would be costly yet beneficial if one aims to develop business overseas. Speaking of the US Pavilion, for example, Pepsi is already become a prime sponsor, same as Walt Disney (as their new Disney World is in contruction progress in Shanghai). Coca-Cola is also the global partner/sponsor in this massive event. It would be very interest to see how Coca-Cola and Pepsi compete, especially in the US Pavilion.

 

Shanghai Expo 2010 model

 On the Shanghai Expo 2010 website, i couldn’t find any information about ambuse marketing protection or any other policies to protect sponsorships’ marketing. But for tickets, i found the below picture that educate the crowd on identifying official tickets.

 At present, all pavilions are undergoing trial run, and within 10 days, each pavilion from across the world would shine and intensely compete for attentions. Same as various sponsors would implement various marketing campaigns to leave the best impression to visitors from the world and the Chinese citizens. So let’s wait and see how it goes starting on May 1st.

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One more thing, there is a recnet scandal accusing  the theme song of Shanghai Expo was copied from a famous Japanese song. In my opinion, both songs do have high similarities, but i bet once the Shanghai Expo is officially opened, no one would remember about this scandal, but would be more focused on the prosperity of this world class event. Anyhow, wish the Shanghai Expo would be another successful even after Beijing Summer Olympic 2008.

 As there are 20 millions costumes in storage and everyday employee needs to take out costumes before work, it is really time consuming to lineup for it.  Now using the RFID system which also records employees’ costumes and their sizes, employee  can hit their employee ID card on the sensor, as well as their costumes, to take out within a few seconds.   

 The chip that Disney uses can be ironed and washed up to several hundred times. Besides, the system can have accurate inventory records, which makes restocking much easier and precise. Now Disney even plans on applying this technique into visitors’ entertainment acitivites, and it would possibly bring many surprises to them.

I have seen RFID technology being used on languages’ tags and products retailing, and i believe it can be applied to a wide range of services, such as attendance and library items take out. It can also apply to clothing store such as Zara which requires employees to count stocking everyday after closing.  

Original news story:

http://hk.news.yahoo.com/article/100403/4/hc4b.html

Out of 10, my carbon footprint is 6.725, which is really high comparing to what i have expected.  

daily commute almost 0.93/10| long distance travel 2.5/10 |food 2.4/10 | home 0.84/10

Daily commute : I believe 0.93 is reasonable because i always commute to school by translink’s bus and skytrain. On campus, I always walk rather than bike, even though both do not emit carbon dioxide.

Long distance travel: during the summer, i would likely to travel around, such as going to US for a couple of days, or travel to Asia countries such as Hong Kong and China, to do sightseeing. The most efficient and direct way is by plane, and so that’s why i believe this categlory has a high index among the others.

Food: To be honest, i didn’t realize the amount of food i consumed have relation to carbon emissio because of the production process. Now when i think about it, it is very true, considering all those intermediate steps such as raw materials extraction and processing, packaging, transporting to various location, all involve the use of transportation and machineries from the origin to customers’ home. For sure there are ways to reduce my emissions at food. I believe i should eat less snacks, not only because of consideration of my health, but also the possible carbon emissions within production processes, and the cleaning process that transfer the garbage to landfill.

Home: In constract, expense at home such as electricity and water boiling are far more less than what i expected. But i believe the amount of water i usually use can be reduce as sometimes i think i leave the tap open when i am brushing my teeth. For electricity, i try to work efficiently to reduce the time i have to spend on computer and to recharge bettery, but it is indeed a difficult process as computer is my main source of information and communication to others (not to family…).

I do have the determination to reduce carbon footprint and energy usage, but it is very hard to reduce it all in a sudden due to efficiency purpose and routine. But knowing my carbon footprint would be a good step to initiate my reduction on carbon emition, at least i would remind myself to reduce 6.7/10 down to under 5 if possible.

If you want to find out your carbon footprint, try the link below:

http://www.go-beyond.ca/carbon-footprint-calculator

To be honest, visiting CTV’s Olympic site becomes my daily routine during the Winter Olympic period. On the website there is a blue  ‘Facebook Connect‘  button which i keep seeing it in other websites, such as the Mint Pavilion site. At first i didn’t really know what is it, so i clicked it. A small window popped up showing a double arrow from facebook to the site and said something about my permission. I didn’t bother with it as i was in a hurry to check out olympic results. Until today when i was watching the Canada vs Slovakia semi-final hockey game online, i realized there was a box with choices of live blog, facebook, and message on top. I clicked the live blog and chat instantly with other online viewers. Then i moved to the facebook option and found out my facebook-ctv connected friends’ status updates, and i could choose to updates mines and expose to everyone not only friends.

After googling what is facebook connect, now i understand that it allows CTV to access to my friends list and i can publishing activites through CTV on facebook. Great, one simple click that connects the world, and i just helped to promote CTV.

Besides, asking me to facebook connect, the website also asked me to register with CTV, and so i did. And I ended up receiving more than 10 emails a day about olympic events alerts and news. Great.

On many other Olympic-related websites, there is also a ‘NewsFeed’ icon, and it directly links to their Facebook fan page. Well, I usually click to become a fan because its not a big deal. Plus, I enjoy reading other fans posts, especially on the official Olympic fan page that i can browse through others unique olympic news and photos.

Social media marketing also appears @ my olympic workplace, the Coca Cola Pavilion.

Inside the Coke Pavilion, there is a Photo with the Torch section (you can take a free photo with the torch). Sometimes my role is to tell visitors to go home, visit the website printed on the little bar-coded card they received after taking the photo, and they can directly download their pictures from it (so they don’t have to do it on site, even though we do have acer computers setup for it). Later i realized this is such a great marketing idea, because people would check out other information when they head to the site and look for their photos. Well, if they choose to do it right on the venue, they can also share the photos instantly on facebook, and after they approved it, it will post on the facebook newsfeed and all the friends would know about it.  One click spreads the news with no returns, and you just can’t get rid of social media.

Social media started off as a individual’s networking among its friend-hood. As more companies participates, the network expands and social media marketing becomes an inevitable trend for any company to promote and contact with potential customers online directly. Ways of communication change, same as ways of doing business. Its very interesting how one can now sell products without having an actual store/booth and how one can promote a product without a powerpoint or display board but simply having a button, a click and a website.

If you have visited any Olympic Venues during this amazing Winter Olympic  game period, you would definitely realize almost every drink that people were holding is a Coke product – coke, vitamin water, sprite, nest tea, etc. Almost everyone knows what Coke is about, so how can Coke keeps on promoting or polishing its brand?

The answer is PlantBottle.

Newly introduced during the Vancouver Winter Olympic 2010, PlantBottle is made up to 30%  of sugar cane waste that would usually go towards landfill after being extracted to make the syrup, and 100% recyclable. It is truly a brilliant idea that plant can fully be used to make a product. It is also a valuable opportunity for Coke to establish an sustainable and corporate social responsible image, and wash away the on-going criticism about its negative health effects and monopolistic practices. I wouldn’t agree that it is ‘Greenwash’ which certain people thought of. Coke did quite a bit of contribution back to the community too, including a $20 million global multi-year partnership with World Wildlife Fund in preserving animals projects, a outdoor athletic facility for a community centre in Vancouver’s Eastside based on the recycling efforts happen during the Winter Game, as well as a contour bottle design competition that aims to generate proceeds for the Aboriginal Youth Legacy Fund. I am definitely not praising Coca Cola although i do work at the Coke Pavilion at Yaletown. Yet i am truly impressed by their brand development once i got in contact with them.

If you observe their past slogans, advertisements and the stars they hired to be their spokesman, they were all carefully implemented. From ‘Refresh yourself’, ‘Its the real thing’, to ‘Open Happiness’, their goal moves from the product itself to the customer’s perspective. Somehow there are some kind of regulations saying that they can not sell Coke to child under 13, yet they got the Minute Maid 100% orange juice for them. You think coke is too sugary? They have Coke diet and Coke Zero for you. You just can’t get away from Coke products.

In comparison to Pepsi, i remembered back in the 2006 Pepsi was quite popularized, at least i still recognized some of its funny commercials. I realize a lot of its commercials are soccer-related, and i think Pepsi is slightly more popular in Asia countries than Coke, because Pepsi promoted its brand with stars as spokemen earlier than Coke did. At least i remembered who was the spokeman of Pepsi in Hong Kong when i was very little.

For now, Coca-Cola seems to become more diversify and more engaged than Pepsi. After this Vancouver Olympic, Coca-Cola for sure will gain substantial new customers in Canada (at least the Coke Pavilion is surveyed to be the top worth visiting site). As Olympic for many fast developing countries (like China, Russian, South Africa) is being viewed as an opportunity to shine to the world, Coke being the sponsor of Olympic (i believe till 2020) will be ahead to enter these new market than Pepsi and it would be very interesting to see how Pepsi and Coke compete in the future.

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Below is just a banned commercial from Pepsi. Smile 🙂

And Here is just an article about brands preparing for marketing in 2012 olympic.

USB is fast enough for transferring folders or simply word documents from one computer to the other. Right now the Light Peak technology is invented, what else can i look forward to in the future ?

Led by one of the the largest CPU producers Intel, information transfer has now entered a new revolutionary era. Applying the Optical Fiber technology invented by the Nobel Prize Winner Professor Charles Kao 高錕 into a computer CPU, information transfer between devices can be done in almost a split-second. US B 2.0, which was not the USB finger that i originally thought but rather it refers to the plug itself, is the popular plug that we can see in common electronic devices like those monitor and camera plugs to computer. Yet Light Peak’s speed is USB 2.0’s times 30 (10Gb per second) as it does not use the usual aluminum wires anymore.

The superspeed Light Peak is already invented and its a tinier router with less energy consume and contains 2 sets of channel that doubles the speed into 20Gb per second. It is even faster than transferring files through online synchronization in the Internet.

“Intel is working with the optical component manufacturers to make Light Peak components ready to ship in 2010”.That means I can transfer my photos from my camera simultaneously to my computer soon! If the internet cable was all replaced with Optical Fiber, speed would not be a problem anymore. Entertainment, information and news can be download, upload and deliver instantly. But keep in mind that more subtles issues such as spread of viruses may arise to become a headache.

More details on Light Peak Techonology can be found @ Intel website.

Early at the end of January, when iPad was introduced to the market, not only there were many criticism across the Internet about its originality, Amazon also launched a ‘fight’ with one of the largest US book publisher MacMillan. Amazon removed the purchase button for all the MacMillan published books and only allow third-party to sell them on Amazon.com. In the past few years, as Amazon aims to obtain large market shares with the best selling ebooks price set at $9.99 each, books publishers have a limited profit margin. In addition, publishers usually sells actual books (averagely at $24 US) before selling eBook online. Hence, as Apple introduced iPad and launched the iBookstore online, publishers favored Apple’s suggestion to allow them to set the price and the online retail agent gain 30% of it as commission. Now the eBook price could be increased up to 12.99 to 14.99 US and Amazon accepted the same suggestion with its publishers. In the future, Kindle may share its current 60% market shares with iPad.

This negotiation progressed only in a few days and Kindle accepted the reality pretty quickly which limits its sales loss during its shutdown to MacMillan’s eBooks. And i realized how one product can affects others’ strategy to sustain its profit margins, and how amazon changes from a price setter to become a price taker following the inevitable Apple trend. As a consumer, iPad current prices is starting at $499, while Kindle is $330. I would rather buy a Kindle over iPad as Amazon is a long standing online retailer with stable and varied product online services.Plus, Kindle is more simple to use and has more reading oriented functions, such as instant dictionary and Wikipedia connect, and i guess the color display is not really a necessary  feature when it comes down to almost $200 price difference. (A comparison table can be found here) Yet I like the Microsoft Courier concept the best and if it could be manufactured and sold in store I would immediately go line up and buy one, because its idea is just addicting and exciting, and its high level of interaction is just like playing a video game where you can have substantial control of your own computer. And I’m sure if Microsoft can produce this, thousands of Apple fans will turn to follow Microsoft.

Yet their latest product the Microsoft’s slate PC is simply like a Window fits into a iPad case, and i would not buy one as i have a laptop already even though its heavy carrying it around.

And here is just a random funny video that i found when i typed in iPad on youtube: iPad on MadTV

Although I am not a big reading fan, I like the Amazon’s electronic book reader Kindle 2 when I just saw its introductory video, and I believe it will continue to become a great hit to many reading-oriented people. With its reader-friendly design, it allows highlight and add note aside, just like leaving pencil markings when you read an actual book. It also provides unlimited wireless access, which means readers can search for books and read online anytime at anywhere. My favorite Kindle’s feature is its text-speech service and also the non-reflective display technology called ‘electronic paper’, so I will unlikely to encounter the situation where I have to adjust my book position to avoid reflection of lights.

One thing that caught my eye when I read the article about Amazon’s success is that Steve Jobs once predicted Kindle would fail because “people don’t read anymore.” I believe that because of Kindle, people can break through the physical barriers of carrying or reading a book (such as carrying a heavy book around or unable to leave a pencil marks on the book) and they would read more in length and quantity. If I could read my university textbooks in Kindle2, I would definitely buy one as I do not have to worry to look for cheaper textbooks or to preserve it in a good condition so that I can resell them at a not-too-low price. My backbone would not be tired from carrying books and walking around campus the whole day. Plus, I could immediately find solutions to some unknown words or concepts through built-in dictionary and direct access to Wikipedia, and I would not have to wait till later to solve them on a computer.

Comparing to Kindle 1, Kindle2 now has picture display,upgraded Oxford dictionary and allows both words and pdf file. In a reading perspective, it seems to become a better reading-oriented tool comparing to some other electronic readers such as Sony PRS-505, which allows audio and memory stick insert, and Fujitsu ebook, which has full color display.