Month: November 2010

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.