The Altered Perception

http://www.takaratomy.co.jp/products/gigapudding/

What is the point of making such a product?

The key to the answer is that in Japan, there has been a trend to make things extremely big, especially food items.

let me give you another example…

This is a tower burger of lotteria Japan.(a fast food chain)

As  you can see having MEGASIZE food has been a pretty common trend in japan for the past year or so.

It is important to follow the trend and introduce the right product at the right timing.

http://www.whippedlightning.com/

This is what the world has come to create, alcoholic whipped cream.

This is a newly introduced product originated in the United States. It is I believe now in the introductory stage of the product life cycle. What is interesting about the product is that it will also compete against already existing product, which is whipped cream. People who put whipped cream on their beverages might start putting this alcoholic whipped cream instead, causing the alcoholic whipped cream to steal the market share from regular whipped cream.

I would like to introduce another clever marketing strategy Mcdonald’s Japan has imposed recently.
Starting this year, Mcdonald’s Japan has been releasing multiple chicken products on their menu. It is said that they’re trying to appeal to consumers to be known for not only burgers but also chicken. Sole purpose of this campaign is probably to take away some of the market shares from other fast food restaurant for example Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Just as a knowledge, in Japan, people eat fried chicken for Christmas. KFC sure sells many boxes of fried chicken during Christmas season.

This year, along with their chicken campaign, Mcdonald’s Japan came up with this product.

It is a Christmas special chicken package by Mcdonald’s.
They’re priced slightly lower than the equivalent products of KFC.
I would like to see how much of the KFC’s Christmas chicken market share Mcdonald’s would be able to bite off.

I am pretty sure if you live in Vancouver, You see this guy somewhere on the street at least once a day.

He is the Mexican wrestler guy from the Koodo mobile advertisement campaign.

I have always been curious what Koodo was and I looked up a little bit and found out that it was created by Telus.

Koodo is technically a new product line targeting customers who do not want to get a contract for their cell phones, who they do not want all the fancy stuff that come with you phone.

Telus created a brand new company just to provide the service because what Koodo does is totally different from what Telus had been doing. Also, Telus was probably willing to have koodo appear as something brand new and innovative. There was a need for a construction of a new brand.

http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/2010/11/28/2010-11-28_forget_black_friday_spend_all_your_christmas_savings_on_a_tree_from_soho_trees_r.html

First I would you to take a look at this article.

When I read it, I was very surprised by the price the guy charges his customers for a Christmas tree. As I read through, I was starting to realize that he was actually imposing a right kind of pricing strategy for the target market he is looking at. He looks at wealthy, quality seeking Manhattan living high class people.

The article indicates that the guy has been quite successful with his business. It indicates that he has successfully employed his pricing strategy to raise the price to make some people believe that the good is worth something.

I find Mcdonald’s Japan very creative in terms of their marketing strategy.

Here’s one of their  advertisement campaign I found very interesting.

Before going into detail I would like to explain that cell phone straps are very popular in Japan, especially among youths. Many of them wear more than one straps thus it has become almost like an accessory for cell phones. Also, there has been a trend of putting miniature food.

Mcdonald’s Japan took  it as an great advertisement opportunity.

They ran a campaign in which if a person orders a meal with large fries and a large drink, they would receive one of those miniature Mcdonal’s products like burgers and fries.

It became a great hit. It was so great that people were dealing  these miniatures on internet auction websites to collect all the miniatures. At the same time, Mcdonald’s got their advertisement done because people wore them on their phones, bags keychains etc…

I was browsing through Youtube and found a new advertisement campaign by energizer.

energizerca

This is consisted of several videos of little characters representing household electronics for example; cameras and TV remote.

It is a reminder for the consumer reminding them the high quality of energizer batteries and what they are capable of doing rather than introducing a brand new product.

I have purchased a laptop recently through sonystyle.ca, which is an official online shopping website for SONY products.

It was a form of a direct distribution from the manufacturer.

I came to the realization when I got my tracking number. I tracked the package and it was shipped from Yantai, China. Where I assume their production plant is located.

Sony providing a direct distribution allows for easy product customization(I actually customized my laptop a lot), allowing more choices consumers have to make.

I felt great about being able to customize my laptop to honest. I could not find the right computer I wanted at retail locations. I was also very pleased with what they had to offer in terms of color variations. (I got a green laptop!)

As a consumer, I felt more safe to buy my laptop direct from the manufacturer than from a retail store.

Just something I got puzzled over fedex’s transportation was that I do not think my shipment had to be carried all the way to Tennessee when it was coming from China to Vancouver. 😛

Its nothing new, but something i thought about recently.
I recently had a chance to play a PC game called “devil may cry 4”

After playing the game, I looked up the information on wikipedia to find out more about the series.

What caught my attention was that in Devil May Cry 2, which was released for Playstation2 did a little collaboration with DIESEL ;an Italian clothing company.

In Devil may cry2, players are able to unlock costumes for their characters including ones that are designed by diesel

I would like to say that this is an interesting form of marketing to advertise products such as clothing within a video game.  In Game Advertisement is a form of advertisement that occurs within a video game. It is usually in a form of a product used or in the background of the gameplay.

In Game Advertisement has several positive effects for example reduce in production cost. For newer consoles such as Playstation3 and Xbox 360, cost of releasing a title could go somewhere about 20million per title. In game advertisement reduces the risk of coming up with a new title for producers and allow them to come up with more innovative gameplay and ideas.

I went shopping on Robson street last week and found something interesting I would like to share with everyone.

Please check out the following link

http://www.theunbrandedbrand.com/

I found the unbranded brand at a store called plenty, which is a clothing store I have always wanted to check out since I came to Vancouver.

What I found interesting about the brand was its slogan:

“The Unbranded Brand is jeans with no branding, no washes, no embroidery, no ad campaigns and no celebrities. So, all you pay for is the product! Made from top quality rope-dyed selvedge denim.”

I had never heard of the brand till then(probably because of no ad campaigns).

What amazed me about the brand was the price. The price of a pair of jeans by them was around 80 dollars without tax.

While I am not a fashion specialist, their target seems to be people who are willing to purchase a good quality pair of raw jeans at a lower price.

At the moment, they can only be purchased at plenty on Robson Street. I would like to see the outcome of their branding strategy.