Kim Choy

Does anyone even know that Lululemon has a men’s line on sports clothing and equipment? To me, it was shocking for me to find out because it was such a female focused brand that to have a men’s line makes the men’s line slightly … feminine. It is a brand oriented towards sports and athletes after all, it is only normal to design products for both female and male.

If we take a look at the pieces of clothing, it’s actually I would say pretty decent sports wear, given the right prices (in my opinion, it is a little overpriced) I would definitely purchase a few products. However, the main problem is their branding. If my friends ask me where I got that kick-ass sweater from, it won’t be very kick-ass after all if i reveal where I got it from just because Lululemon is very female dominated. People usually associate Lululemon with yoga clothing for females, which it is, this is the case because as more females from the working class and student body picked up yoga, Lululemon saw the opportunity in providing the necessary equipment (tight and bright clothing) and hence became a success after. It portrays how people using the brand usually lead a healthy and sunshine lifestyle, further penetrating into the yoga working class/ students market.

Having said all that, it is quite queer to launch a new men’s line especially when it doesn’t portray a hardcore sports attitude which many of the other brands such as Nike and Adidas is trying to do. REAL ATHLETES won’t go for Lululemon… because most men would much prefer the hardcore dude image. Nevertheless, Lululemon was VERY successful in capturing the people in between, for those of you who love/hate the brand or is just neutral… how would you place Lululemon in your branding map? Will Lululemon’s men’s line ever break free from the female oriented image?

I have recently watched a food documentary called ‘Food Inc’, the impact it had on me was controversial. It totally changed my views on how food is produced and the evilness in MNC’s, what they are doing is basically controlling the food supplies to the general public like us by forcefully restricting the output of smaller farmers which is not owned by the company themselves. By doing so it is creating for itself a larger market share and monopolizing the industry for itself. This can be seen in many meat products such as chicken, beef and pork. In many cases, those local farmers delivers a more healthy and safe type of food, but because the way in which MNC’s raise their animals (restricting their movement, injecting them with excess growth hormones) it is often cheaper for them to produce the same product but less safe and not as healthy. As a consequence, the lower prices will drive the local farmers out of the industry! This is a perfect example of the Lemon Car model in the field of Economics but applied to Food industries. The deadweight loss are the GOOD local food producers, driven out by the BAD MNC’s producing unhealthy food.

An important point is that MNC’s often delude the consumers by packaging the product with misleading information, talk about BRAND NAMES, DEL MONTE, DOLE, these are all american companies but with slightly mexican or tropical sounding brand names. Why? we associate tropical foods from the tropicals with quality. How then, can we create an ethical marketing campaign? Does it necessarily have to have a GOOD supply chain to be able to market its product ethically? For example MNC employing cheap local labour, they  pay them more than what they usually make. Both sides are happy… but some people accuse them of child abuse… Would these grey areas ever be eliminated?

I recently watched Morning Glory and was surprised how good it was, it exceeded my expectations for the movie before I went in and was surprised how so many other people thought the same way…

The main stars in this movie were Rachel McAdams, Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton, after this movie my view for Rachel McAdams have changed. SHE IS NOW MY IDOL. She was also starred in ‘The Time Travellers Wife’ where she played her first ‘main role’, the energy and enthusiasm that you could see from her character, a morning news producer, from the movie deserves credit because in my opinion, it is a very hard role to play unless some of that character is in you already. How is this linked to marketing?  The trailer….

in my opinion, the trailer wasn’t very well made… ALSO in my opinion, the advertising lies in US as the audience, if we like it we would definitely spread the word and the word of mouth type of advertisement I FIND the most influencial and useful. For example, I say that I’m very good at basketball, ok…., Ben my good friend tells you that I’m very good at basketball, wow …, Your close friend who’s best friends with Ben told you I’m very good at basketball… now THAT something isn’t it? this is huge… (Direct quote from Brian Graham)

Therefore, In my opinion, if a movie is confident in itself and is sure it is a good movie, can it save some money in the trailer? and just make a mediocre one and let the audience themselves do the advertising? AS the saying goes… ‘a good product sells itself’. For those of you who watched the trailer AND the movie. what do you think?

I have been casually chatting with my roommate who also is in Commerce, we talked about how marketers today involves the consumers more in their marketing process. For example Car wrap advertisements, it is very popular especially taxis to have their car’s ‘wrapped’ in readily designed and printed advertisement. What other better ways can you think of which can show and advertise your product/company in everywhere you go? Essentially a ‘moving’ advertisement.

The car wrap below, I find incredibly suited for the advertised purpose. Tap out is a very male dominant area of entertainment and by printing its advertisements on race cars ( also very male dominated) it will very likely attract the anticipated target market. Another big advantage of car wraps is that it catches the attention VERY QUICKLY, it can also market/advertise the product or the service in places where no companies can reach e.g. the highways which gets you from states to states. Besides, you’re getting PAID to drive your own car!

Another to-be hot topics within marketing is the new strategy of letting consumers experiencing and using products which aren’t on the market yet. Traditionally this process is only used by the manufacturer, by letting their employees try the car and give them feedback however, by letting potential consumers use the product is a pretty new strategy. It allows them to understand and grow to like the product before it has a price. This strategy also involves the average normal consumer more because they are the ones using the product, they can give feedback before the product is launched (in marketing terms they are co-creating value). In addition, people seeing people with the new products will question “what the hell is that?” –> like how apple first launched its product (ipod) with the white ear-buds. If the company lets enough people try the product, it is hard to determine the potential benefits…

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Browsing through a few class mate’s blog posts, one, namely Seuree Kim have really caught my attention. The idea about exponential growth in marketing strategies, more commonly known as viral marketing. Like a virus it spreads and spreads and SPREADS. This chain effect in my personal opinion may be one of the most influential and powerful effect on humanity. Seuree’s introduction of viral marketing, I feel closely links to the works of a powerful stock researcher. Jonathan Lebed, one of the most influential stock researcher uses precisely this marketing strategy to get his name and his stock picks around millions. How? He actively sends an email every few days to his subscribers, people receiving this would act like advocates in promoting the stock pick. Quickly like ‘wild fire’, messages about that stock spreads. Imagine that the company is only mediocre, because of this effect everyone would buy this stock, prices would go up and self-fulfills Mr. Jonathon Lebed’s claim/speculation. On top of that, Mr. Lebed uses the internet, emails, websites and blogs to promote his research. This approach is similar to a lot of other huge MNC’s, this is interesting in terms of how we use the same platforms to reach out to our target market; whether you are a single salesman reaching out or a gigantic company trying to sell millions of dollars worth of goods. I wonder how many more products/ideas/services uses this approach?

Marketing is a vast and very broad subject, there’s so many questions to be asked about whether a marketing campaign is successful. Does it appeal to the consumers? Does it capture the market’s needs and wants? Does the company have to spend a lot of money in marketing the product or does the product market itself? Questions are endless, that is why we need to focus on the sole purpose of, Why do we have marketing? …. To sell a product. Simple, short and neat.

This century (SO FAR) is filled with complications from privacy regulations, copyrights & patents and the booming technology sector. How does one sell a product? There’s so many products out there over yours, as a chinese proverb states “you will always find a mountain higher, bigger and better than yours” then how do we keep everyone on your mountain even if there’s a better mountain?….

A product may convey a lifestyle, it defines the person using it. What they consume determines what and who they want to become, so isn’t it easy to say… well just make a product which represents what everyone wants to be! Everyone wants to be HAPPY, POPULAR, ACHIEVED and in a lot of cases RICH! This is exactly what I want to elaborate on in this blogpost, a lot of the products today that we find in the market, wether if its in the music industry, car industry or even deodorant industry. Many products or rather companies, APPEAL to their target market that by using the products that they are promoting they CAN become HAPPY, POPULAR, ACHIEVED and RICH! By aligning one self’s attitude in a product it is a strong bond between the consumer and the product, it creates a relationship between the two and is more than a mere product. For example a lambo spyder represents the owner, it does not merely act as a transport tool getting you from one place to the other it is a social status and it shows that you are filthy rich. If we analyze more advertisements we can see that this is true:

As you can see, everyone in the video is DANCING, the color further enhances the joyful and HAPPY feel. what does this tell us? something along those lines as… ‘you won’t be happy unless you get a nano’? to some people this is very true and its ads like these which turns so many millions around the world ADVOCATES for the Apple company. It creates a want and redefines cool!

AGAIN, JORDAN brings out the intensity in which athletes should have, it links this intensity with the product. How does this change the consumers attitude? ‘I’m intense too, but before i go out to train like that i must go and buy a pair of jordans’ it alters how you think, everyone needs a pair of shoes, well… might as well be a pair from Jordan since it successfully captures the intensity of how athletes WANT to train most importantly it captures How YOUUUU want to train, it DEFINES YOU. On top of that if we consider Nike’s commercials it often includes A LOT of people, this plays with the idea of trends and popularity, if you don’t want to be left out or don’t want to be unpopular then use nike because… everyone else is!

As part of blogging for the first time for COMM296, I would like to introduce a little about myself. I am someone who loves sports, food and fun in general. I am also someone who actively search for exciting new products/things/foods to explore and try out. This brings me to the heart of today’s topic, product RED…

Recently, I’ve noticed all around Vancouver that many huge MNC’s like Starbucks, Apple and even Nike are helping to fundraise and promote awareness for an important issue in Africa; Aids. Apple first introduced Product ( Red ) during the introduction of the 3rd edition of Ipod Nano. Sales were as hot as the product, More than 3,800 people die everyday from AIDS in Africa and almost 1000 children are infected with HIV each day, through effective advertising campaigns like this one and slogans such as…

“Play more than music.
Play a part.”

This awareness have quickly spread throughout the world. It is amazing how deep the impact could be when product marketing reaches out to our emotions…

In addition, Starbucks have recently turned from green to red also…