Tang-Yu (Kevin) Tseng

There are a number of things I learned about myself from COMM299. The 2 main things I learned is that I still have a lot of room for improvement in the areas of networking and, setting up informational interviews, and approaching employers. Like many students, I am constantly worried about nervousness and confidence when it comes to approaching employers. Through COMM 299, I’ve learned how to approach these fears and overcome my nervousness with confidence through practice and understanding the general scope and themes to speak to employers about. The direction given by the COMM 299 TAs and instructors were very helpful in directing me to the right areas to focus on. The general templates from the Sauder Career Success Cycle also aided me in specifying my approaches to my desired careers.

The greatest lesson I learned so far is actually from a book titled, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”, written by Robert Kiyosaki.

In summary, the book stresses the ownership of high value assets, rather than being an employee as a recurring theme throughout the book’s chapters. This book played a big role during my decision to switch from Engineering to Commerce and gave me a different outlook on my career and approach to employment. Some of the highlights I learned from Robert include: an unconventional attitude toward money, the value of financial intelligence, and that corporations spend first, then pay taxes, while individuals must pay taxes first.

The biggest takeaway I took from this book was that having a degree will not guarantee any success. In fact, you may get stuck in the rat race based on the tunnel vision that you have created from doing a technical/specialized degree. This is the reason why Robert’s “rich dad”, who became very wealthy and successful without a college degree, had the right networking skills and financial intelligence  to succumb to his shortcomings in education to succeed and enjoy life. On the other hand, Robert’s “poor dad”, who has a phd degree, is always on the edge to paying out his bills – being stuck in his own rat race that he’s created from limiting himself in his own specialized field without any desire for financial growth due to the constraints of the rat race.

In the end, these lessons allowed my current understanding and outlook on career  and life to evolve. As a result, I can say that my personality have changed dramatically from my engineering days and that these lessons have expanded my views in the areas of finance, entrepreneurship, and personal wealth.

Yesterday, I came across the news that Google is planning on acquiring the group-buying service Groupon for a whopping price of approximately 6 billion dollars!

The deal is worth $5.3 billion with an additional $700 million earn-out based on performance. According to some sources, this deal is close to being completed as early as this week! If this deal does follow through, this will be Google’s largest acquisition to date, and will certainly storm the high-tech news for many months to come.

However, the inevitable question has to be asked: Is this a genius move from a marketing point of view? Or another crazy publicity stunt from Google?

First and foremost, $6 Billion bucks! Now that’s a-lotta dough to shell out for a company that was started 2 years ago no matter who you are. Not to mention that Groupon’s value increases by $20M per day, a growth rate like that is very risky similar to the flameout level of Pets.com.

However, what Google is buying is to gain the marketing exposure and to gain the customer base of Groupon. The question is whether this growth from Groupon is sustainable and whether Groupon’s asset is worth billions. Most of the asset from Groupon exists in the form of customer & client relationships, not really physical assets/capital. When I think about this value, I think about why firms are so keen on keeping returning customers rather than trying to attract new customers from the topics I learned in marketing this year. Although the immediate pay-out may be the same, but customer loyalty is what keeps the company sustainable and valuable.

Hence, this is essentially what Google is paying for, the name and brand of Groupon, its clients and customer base, its unparalleled distribution, and its business model on how it operates. Furthermore, if Google is able to integrate its advertising services with Groupon, the revenue growth that Google can generate in terms of internet advertsing can be staggering, potentially leading to a higher return from the buy-out of the initial investment of $6Billion in no time.

Having done more research on this topic, I feel that the following excerpt from Groupon’s wikipedia sums up what many are saying about this acquisition:

The buyout amount is a matter of some debate. Some analysts consider it a shrewd maneuver by Google, which is flush with cash ^[16], giving them access to local advertising revenue they have long coveted.^[17] Others question whether the differing cultures and core values of the two companies might lead to a culture clash. ^[18]

To put things in perspective, I think the Groupon acquisition in many ways similar to Google’s purchase of Youtube a number of years back. At the time, there were many discussions regarding Google’s decision to acquire youtube for $1.65billion, which to many was considered too expensive.
Similar to Groupon, Google saw a potential for youtube to continue growing and become a huge asset for their internet advertising revenues, though no one could be sure how successful youtube would turn out.
It’d be interesting to see how Google handles Groupon in this case and if they will be able to benefit from this acquisition as successfully as they have with youtube.

I have also commented this at the external blog site here: http://mashable.com/2010/11/30/google-groupon-6-billion/ à see comments section under my name

I have always been fascinated by Nike’s take on advertisements all my life. The most memorable one being the Nike freestyle series of ads that were introduced in the early 2000s. I have always been a basketball fanatic and enjoys playing basketball all my life. What intrigues me the most is the fact that in many of Nike’s commercials, you don’t actually see what exactly they’re selling until the very end when they show you the infamous Swoosh at the end.

Furthermore, their approach to many ads include a new-take on the sport that is unique and special which brings out interest and attention from the consumer’s perspective. Not only that, their rythmic beats and simplistic approach to their ads is always addicting and entertaining to watch for sports fans.

From their unique take on the sport, in this case, freestyle basketball/streetball, people get hyped up about it when they watch the commercials and associate a positive attitude with the advertisement, which in turn creates a positive image for Nike. Not only that, the moves that are associated in these freestyle commercials allow the consumer to re-watch over and over again in order to learn the moves and try to perfect it in their own games. Doing this allows them to become more intimately associated with the brand and product. In a way, Nike is using this strategy similar to a “subliminal message”. I say this because, to this day, I am still very attached to these commercials and still associate myself with Nike and its brand as a loyal customer.

A job well done Nike!!!

Following my post last week, I talked about the success of the Google Android phones and how they are taking over the market by storm similar to Apple. I came across an interesting article recently that talks about Apple’s strategic approach to launching products.

Steve Wozniak, the co-founder and a current major shareholder, is a very outspoken individual who “tells it as it is”, sometimes going out of the way to bash on his own Apple products to praise for the competitor’s offering based on how he truly feels about them. Just recently Wozniak states ” that while the iPhone isn’t for everyone, Android is more of an OS for the masses” and that “Apple has the direction for the entire world, but  Android phones have more features”.

Wozniak also claims that Apple’s early success with the iPhone came thanks to a perfect storm of breakthroughs in screen, battery, software, and manufacturing technology and memory. It appears that Apple already had a next-generation phone in development and ready by 2004. However, it did not have enough of a “bang effect”. At the time, Apple was satisfied with the quality, but it wanted to wait for something more impressive and thus didn’t release the iPhone until 2007 when it felt that all the features and hype was ready for the market. In other words, Apple wanted to wait for the ideal product and take the market by storm by offering the first of its kind and revolutionizing the smart phone industry, using this market strategy to allow the remainder of the market automatically assume Apple’s place and leadership in the industry.

Not only did Apple want to surprise the world, they wanted to  have a real breakthrough.  Their marketing strategy is that companies need to wait to capture a market until they have something extremely strong.  As a result of this, Apple’s iphone was not only able to capture the attention and hearts of early adopters and software developers, they were able to maintain their presence and recognition as the primary smartphone for the years to come. Even until today, everyone associate a touch-screen smart phone as the iconic iphone. And that strong iphone icon/brand isn’t going anywhere in the near future.

On November 9th, Microsoft released the “highly anticipated” Windows Phone 7 to the market. Unfortunately, when it finally did hit the stores, sales have been disappointing at 40,000 units sold on launch date. This figure was announced by a market research source who tracks phone sales (TheStreet.com).

In comparison, In comparison, Apple’s iPhone 4 sold 600,000 units in pre-orders alone while Google’s Android devices were able to activate over 200,000 phones per day.

So why, the disappointing sales figures? Well it depends who you talk to, Microsoft seem to think this as a “ringing success”. But the truth of the matter is, Microsoft is having a hard time targeting to the right consumers and differentiating their product from Apple and Google’s offerings. Apart from that, Windows Phone 7 entered into the smart phone market too late while all the big players such as Apple and Google have already had a strong establishment and foundation. In fact, the situation that Microsoft is facing with their Windows Phone 7 is similar to Google’s first Android Phone G1 for T-Mobile which entered the smartphone market dominated by Blackberries and Iphones. However, over time, through the right marketing mix and through effective STP (Segmenting, Targeting, and Promotion), Google’s Android has established itself as a main player in the smart phone market through it’s flexible and customizable user interface.

It’ll be interesting to see how Microsoft plans to market their Windows Phone 7 in the future in order to establish a similar success that Google have accomplished.

On a similar note, I have read over and commented on my classmate, Sean Fleming’s, blog relating to Windows Phone 7’s advertisement simplicity. Check it out here: https://blogs.ubc.ca/scipio63/2010/10/25/windows-phone/comment-page-1/#comment-5

Conan’s return to late night television will air this coming week on TBS. Due to the advancement of internet and online marketing, we have been seeing a surge in viral videos and online campaigns through social media such as youtube, twitter, and facebook. Team Coco ads and clips have been showing up all over these channels and they have been surprisingly successful. I am constantly amazed by the creativity from people in the marketing industry to come up with ideas to get the word across to the audience, whether it is through the use of technology such as these viral videos or just a plain old blimp that floats above the sky at a baseball game. Below are some of Conan’s viral marketing campaigns floating around over the summer leading up to his show this Monday. Team Coco had a variety of viral campaigns ranging from weekly vlogs (Coco TV), Q&A sessions (behind the scenes), comic advertisements (coco blimp), office webcams (live coco cam), and movie trailers/promos.

A week ago, I was working on a project for my Accounting Information Systems course (COMM 335) which involves building a customer sign-up system for Netflix.ca. Netflix is a company that offers an online platform for streaming on-demand video over the internet through a monthly subscription at a flat rate.  As I was working through the project, I recognized that throughout the database that I was creating, there was a table for each form that stores all the user inputs such as movie data, ratings, reviews, user preferences, and time and date watched. As I worked through my database, I can’t help but recognize the applications and connections that a database system such as Netflix member data base has with marketing information systems.

Marketing information system is a set of procedures and methods that apply to the regular, planned collection, analysis, and presentation of information that then may be used in marketing decisions. In the case with my project, my back-end table stores these user information in Netflix’s data warehouses. Having these data warehouses allow the Netflix management and marketing team to utilize data mining, which is the use of a variety of statistical analysis tools to uncover previous unknown patterns in the user data stored in these databases or relationships among variables by examining the most efficient and effective way to market relevant products and movies to different consumer targets. Not only will data mining aid in improving their brand name, it will bring in more customer satisfaction and profits and providing relevant program recommendations that fit the consumer’s needs.

Today I attended a Careers in Marketing workshop with panels of industry professionals in the fields of marketing research, product management, and advertising and promotions. The event was held by the Business Career Centre from the Sauder School of Business. They provided valuable insight in the paths that can lead from a career in marketing and they certainly opened my eyes today as to what is possible in the field of marketing. I was inspired by the fact that most of these industry leaders started out in different backgrounds such as political science, English literature, and psychology. From such a wide range of backgrounds, these professionals managed to find their passion and wiggled into the field of marketing. Whether it is moving from countries and continents to pursue new opportunities or getting a CA designation before moving into advertising, I was fascinated by how our careers can change so radically without anticipation.

Below is a picture I took from the workshop. Here, one of the panelist is discussing how marketing is utilized in his everyday planning in program management and how the 4P’s can relate to his company and position.

I apologize for the late posting for my weekly blog as I have been completely swamped with midterms and projects.

That being said, as I have stated from my last blog post, I will talk discuss the marketing genius of Steve Jobs and the things he has done to revolutionize the industry with his unique style of promoting Apple products. I read an interesting blog from Phil Gerbyshak regarding the 7 unique lessons we can learn from the marketing genius. From delivering legendary keynote presentations, raising product launches to an art form, and communicating the benefits of Apple products to millions of customers, I feel that anyone interested in marketing and sales should look up his biography and articles.

7) Plan in Analog – draw everything out on paper first and do a big picture diagram for presentations to set out all ideas.

6) Create Twitter-friendly headlines  – get to the point, have a catchy title/phrase that will stick with people so they don’t have to read too much and remember it effortlessly.

5) Introduce the antagonist – Steve Jobs will always introduce his competitors as the bad guy and that Apple will be the hero to save the day, although it is common and cliché, it is extremely effective.

4) Stick to the rule of 3 – human brain can only absorb 3 -4 chunks of information at one time. Jobs will always try to group everything he needs to talk about in 3-4 sections/points so people can go away his presentation having categorized what they’ve just learned.

3) Strive for simplicity – avoid clutter, and keep things simple. It keeps the audience’s mind focused as well.

2) Reveal a “Holy Smokes” moment – “people will forget what you said, what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel”. Create a lasting image.

1) Sell dreams, not products – “Great leaders cultivate a sense of mission among their employees and customers.”  It’s important to have great products; but passion, enthusiasm, and emotion is what sets you apart.