Blogging Sauder

While going to class should be strived for it is inevitable that there is that one class you will miss due to external reasons.  Even if you dont miss any classes you always have that one day where you just aren’t interested in listening to the professor.  You’re there for participation marks, to meet up with a friend, or for any other reason.  However, eventually an exam will appear around the corner or the due date of an assignment and you just realized that class you missed is a biggie on the exam or important to getting an A for your assignment.  How to get around this???

Marketing Teacher is the Answer!!!

It has powerpoints, breakdown of topics, definitions and Marketer’s favorite SWOT analysis.  A SWOT done for many different companies ensuring you know how to do it right.

Nevertheless missing a class in the 21st century isnt as bad as missing on back in the 90’s.  Thank goodness for technology!

Facebook the website that is so popular it has its own movie.  The website that is so popular that it has surpassed Google in time spent on its website.  A website so popular that it has people from every walk of life on it communicating on a daily basis.

Its the popular kid on the block, more like the king on the block, it just lacks one key element outside marketers salivate over; the ability to effectively advertise on its site.  That is the argument at least by digital inspiration, claiming only 18 people clicked on the ad out of a total of 350,000 impressions. Surprisingly enough this wasn’t way back in the beginning of Facebook but rather in July of this year itself.

On the other end of the stick Ian Fernando believes Facebook to be very profitable. You can read about it by clicking on the blue link and make your own opinions.

Was the Ad campaign that only got 18 clicks just a flop or is Facebook actually a bad place to market???

The friendly confines of the yellow pages used to be a marketer’s dream.  Before the internet became accessible to everyone, the only way to find out about what services and products are available in your vicinty was through the yellow pages.

People would flip through them searching for their desired service while stumblind upon ads of other products not in their current evoked set and ads that are directly related to their needs.  Marketing couldnt have been easier with yellow pages, especially considering that everyone had one.

Now a days thought that is not the case as yellow pages are going into remission and have been taken over by the prowness of the internet.  Currently in the US several cities have stopped printing and sending out yellow pages to every house.  Canada is following this pattern as campaigns pressing the yellow pages to quit sending books is making headway.

Black Friday is the favorite “holiday” for shop-a-holics.

It brings about great sales, promotions, and deals that just can’t be passed up on.  It also brings about swarms of people by the thousands which the merchants hope to claim as loyal customers.  According to Black Friday promotional schemes by merchants to draw in customers have been unveiled since Nov 7 of this year, starting off with Macy’s.  Target followed suit shortly after revealing theirs on Nov 9, which broadcasts an array of promotions such as but not limited to:

$3 appliances, most electronics at 50% off, Winter clothing for children at $5, and gift cards given out on top of that for some purchases

It used to be that most companies would hold off on revealing their promotions till a week or so before Black Friday actually occured.  This is not the case anymore.

A reason for this deals with consumers retrieval sets.  The more you are able to advertise directly to a consumer instead of hiding in secrecy, the greater your chances of tapping into that consumer’s retrieval set are.  By tapping into the consumer’s retrieval set and staying their for a long lapse of time (3 weeks currently instead of the previous 1 week) the greater the chance that your company will become the evoked set and hopefully the purchased brand.  By increasing your chances to be the purchased brand through an extra week of advertising your chances of gaining a new loyal customer skyrockets exponentially.

While customer loyalty isn’t recognized in the purchase phase but the post-purchase phase, in order to get to the post-purchase phase you must have consumers enter your store and purchase.  This is exactly what the Black Friday advertisements our aiming for.

Thus, the science of marketing is the key to understanding why Black Friday promotional schemes are being revealed earlier.

We all have our own learning styles whether it be reading the textbook, going to class, sleeping with the textbook in front of us hoping for osmosis to occur or a combination of all three.  Aside from that we also have our individual strengths and weaknesses.

A marketing student tends to be strong in business knowledge, creativity, and visualizing the next great thing before it becomes great.

What happens though if your life though revolves around equations such as F=MA (Newton’s Second Law of Motion), and your business aptitude is relatively low?  Well chances are marketing probably isn’t your major of choice but nuclearphysics might be, or is it?

TED talks shows us an insightful way how Marketing can be explained through the medium of physics allowing all the Science lovers out there to understand Marketing in a simple and comparitible way.

This week I just picked up the new Office Mac 2011.  I certainly didn’t need it, but like many other mac products it just sucks you in.  The features are amazing, and is major upgrade from Office 2008.

The thing I noticed about Mac though is how high they are on Customer and Product Excellence.  Like I stated earlier I have only used it the new Office 2011 for a couple of days and it has totally blown me away.  Here is a video showing off some of its features and what the makers have to say about it.

The next part is their customer excellence.  The salesmanship at the store was remarkable as expected whenever you enter any store.  The feature that stood out to me the most though about Mac’s Customer Excellence is it’s Help Phone Line.  My mac had some programming errors (no clue why) which momentarilly didn’t allow me to enjoy the wonders of Office 2011. The Help Phone Line Guy though talked me through everything and reconfigured my computer and hardware for me.  It took a long time, over an hour, but the genuine want he had to help and his clear love for the job made it seem like I was talking to a friend.  Normally its a drag to get help over the phone, but Mac has definately made such hassles an enjoyable time as you learn about both your computer and how to fix it so you can get on with enjoying it.

To learn more about the amazement of Apple Joey’s Blog has the scoop.

Searching the web I came across an interesting Marketing Blog Article (How to Defend your 2011 Marketing Budget) talking about Marketing as a force to increase the bottom line of a company.

We all know that Marketing makes brands what they are and is an important driver for sales to specific segment bases.  The question is however, do companies really think Marketing is that big of driver for sales and total revenue at year end.

According to Lee Oden this is not the case as he outlines that CEO’s and companies treat Marketing Divisions as Cost Center’s slashing their yearly budgets instead of relying on the potential revenues that can be incurred through marketing.

Are CEO’s and firms really this ignorant to recognize the potential revenues gained from Marketing or is their more to the picture of Lee Oden’s experience.  That I don’t know and is up to the rest to debate.

Jonathan Mui‘s blog talks extensively about Youtube and three major components it offers businesses and consumers when it comes to marketing.

Reading this made me think about our school, The Sauder School of Business and how Youtube’s 3 components of keeping it fresh, real, and in the loop with total views, ratings, comments…

Looking at this video from an outsider’s perspective it makes Sauder jump off the charts with all the different elements of marketing it portrays putting Sauder out their as a world class Business School with extras that no other school can compare to.

It’s definately fresh, real, and in the loop.

McDonalds Corporation is back at it again with Monopoly.  Buy some food from Mickie D’s and there you go, could be rich, an instant winner or both.  I just played my luck today and got an instant win for any baked muffin, as well as property number 767 and 768.  Now all I need is number 769.  Wonder what my chances are, more importantly how big is this marketing scheme for McDonalds as a whole.

It’s ENORMOUS!!  Humans are a high reward risk seeking species wanting to obtain the greatest reward even if such a reward comes with magnificent losses.  Playing on this McDonalds Corp. has become the new Las Vegas, the new Power ball and it has some flavor to it to go along with your winnings.  Why not munch on some fries to the tune of winning, or at least fill up your sorrows when you realize you have come short.  Short by a long amount.

McDonalds seamlessly taps into our ‘get rich’ mind-frames only to crush those hopes just as fast. Only catch is, those crushed hopes don’t die forever as the next time you pass a McDonalds or a sandwich place selling the same price food, you’ll take your chance on ‘get rich’ quick scheme of Mcdonalds for the thrill of maybe becoming a couple grand richer.

McDonalds wins by a large amount, as the chances of the consumer winning a large reward is slim to nothing, keeping the consumer constantly yearning for more while the boardroom of McDonalds just counts its greens.  With this, McDonalds clearing steals the product part of the marketing mix analysis as its product stands out like no other on top of a pedestal when thousands of dollars awaits the buyer.

In the day of the Romans the image was clean shaven, chiseled frame, and a stoic look.   Those with beards were looked upon as oddities and potential threats giving light to “barbas,” the latin word meaning beard which eventually got transformed into our present day english word, barbarians.  Then came the age of adorning purple colored clothes and jewlery to show off ones wealth and influence for being able to obtain such treasures from the far off east.  Next came the style of fat-bellies portarying a man so rich that he doesnt even need to raise a finger to work but rather everything is done by a servant or a slave.  Now the fat-belly look is out the window, same with everything purple, trending towards the Roman look but one far distant from it at the same time.  No longer are the bodies chiseled and stoic looking but rather sickly looking as the current market fad is being too small to fit into your newest pair of jeans.

Fashion Moguls and marketers got this burning rage of “new beauty” by throwing Size 2 models and above out the window, turning a 6 foot healthy model into an instant twig.  The beauty that they were striving for, however, ended up being a very harsh beauty, one that purges on eating disorders (such as Bulimia and Anorexia) and kills the body, sometimes even killing the individual.  Jeremy Gullitzer a male model who all the girls loved fell into this trap slowly watching his body perish to a weak 66 pounds before dying because of the need for being too thin to funtion in today’s fashion eyes.

Besides the fashion industry this fad has grown too all areas including Hollywood, clothing outlets and numerous other industries.  A number of actresses have fallen into this trap, notably Nicole Richie and the Olsen twins, while those who didn’t such as Jennifer Love Hewitt were lambasted for looking like a normal person.  Clothing companies like Ralph Lauren have followed eagerly in suit portraying the super skinny to be the perfect size and today’s “normal.”

Is this extreme twist of reality being pulled by marketers and firms alike fair and ethical or should the real reality be shown to the public?  Dove believes the real truth should be leaked and capitalized on.  It’s a product that is a lone fish in an enormous ocean trying to revert us back to what “normal” actually is.  I believe more companies should stop the lies and hidden truths of reality, degrading our human population as a whole, but rather follow in suit with what Dove is doing.