Month: October 2010

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.

While sitting in my classes last week, I can’t help but notice several computer screens in front of me were all defaulted to Apple’s new Ipod website. Apple recently released their latest revision of Ipod Touch, and like every Apple product, it’s received nothing but praise and hype. This trend has been happening for several years now. In fact, Apple has always had a way to market their products in a way that consumers are able to identify them in a different category, even though most products they sell are direct competitions to many identical and cheaper alternatives that consumers don’t typically think about.

Then I started to think to myself, how can a company who overcharges their product and overhypes their technology be so successful? How can their simple and plain ads be so effective at capturing a consumer’s attention and needs? As I thought more about it, I started doing more secondary research.

As part of my research, I found an interesting blog that talks about a similar topic, “Marketing Apple: Secrets of the World’s Best Marketing Machine“. Through this blog, I found out that Apple is now the world’s second largest company (in terms of valuation) behind Exxon. How were they able to achieve this? The author of this blog states:

A lot of that has to do with mindshare. And Apple has earned mindshare to spare.

And I couldn’t agree more!

To me, I think that is what Apple succeeds in areas that companies like Microsoft do not is that although they have not earned the majority of product  market share, they have earned the majority of product mind share. And in the business world, mind share is what causes stock prices to go up due to all the interest and buzz about the company. The value of mind share is therefore more valuable than the value of market share. To me, market share is set in the present, but mind share is focused towards the future direction of the product/company.

Companies such as Apple, Coca Cola, and Nike are perfect examples to why I feel marketing to be so interesting and important. Even if a company owns the most amazing product/idea, without effective marketing and promotion, they can never reach their true potential. I realized that the answer to every question I had were pointing in the same direction: Apple’s marketing team, and the guru leading the pack, Steve Jobs. I will talk more about Steve Job’s marketing genius in next week’s blog.

After reading Scott’s post earlier in the term, I started following Old Spice’s viral campaign on youtube, and I must say, this is one effective viral campaign!!! I’ve been talking to several friends about what they thought of Old Spice’s influence on social media and social networks and everyone has been giving me positive feedback about the commercial. I feel that this ad is starting to grow onto people, and viewers of this ad unconsciously associate anything “manly” with the Old Spice brand. Not only did Old Spice expand their viral campaign into facebook, twitter, and youtube by responding to viewer’s questions and posts, I found out recently that, they even started an Old Spice Voicemail campaign!

Essentially, this website generates your own free customized Old Spice voice mail with none other than Old Spice guy’s masculin voice. The creators made both a male and female version of this voice mail so it is exposed to a broader audience. Not only is this campaign hilarious and fun to play with, I feel that this is an extremely effective way of tapping into the general public by mass-advertising and creating a new culture for the brand. The idea here is that even people who do not know of this viral campaign will now ask questions about it and start to follow it as a result of hearing their friend’s voice mail, thus expanding the network further… Absolutely brilliant!!! And this is why I love marketing 🙂

This blog is now diamonds.

On a similar note, I read and commented on my classmate, Matt Venner’s,  and TA, Scott’s, blog on the same topic of Old Spice. Check it out here and here respectively!