marketing

After reading my friend Jared Lo’s post about Donald Trump’s post, where is says marketing our self is what makes us stand out. i believe this strongly, where a lot of the strong brands in the world all consist of the creator being marketed heavily to the general public. Donald Trump is a great example, where he basically marketed him self as the brand, pulling all kinds of genious idea such as the successful show The Apprentice,” where he played him self as a top and tough boss that he is, and not only make a lot of profits through the show, but it became one of the best marketing strategy in the history, as Trump industry is exposed to millions of people around the world. a lot of the fashion brands also use the creator’s name and image as the foundation of their marketing, such as Dolce and Gabbana, Raugh Lauren… etc, and they all consist of successful image of the creator that transcend them selves into their product to the the customers, and marks as a success symbol of the brand.

I recently cams across Alexis Vinh’s post about the new coke product launch being a disaster. although a lot of critics think it was one of the Biggest mistake Coke had ever made, i beg the differ. because the fact that Coke’s market share has shrunk due to the emergence of Pepsi, Coke is still the top brand in the industry. moreover, despite its bad review, it did gain people’s attention to this matter, and recognized and even go back to the old coke. furthermore, i believe in innovative attempt, where despite the negative reactions, they still tried it, which i believe is the step to the new coke zero product. Somesay a bad marketing is a good marketing, because it does attract outsider’s attention, and in this specific case it does serve as a stepping stone to the next stage of the new invention.

Is it good to reveal all the good scenes, jokes, lines and other aspects about a film in the trailer? does including them attract more potential movie goers?or is it better to keep the good bits in the movie? that’s a question worth debating, because the results seems to be varying from case to case. such as the recent movie i have seen-Morning Glory. It was a wonderful movie experience, with great performances and great laughs, and most importantly, it’s kept most of its funny parts out of the trailer, but it only reach number 5 in its opening weekends comparing to other films. and we have crap like The Last Airbender, which shows all of its “cool” bits in the trailer, and turns out to be one of the worse movie ever made in our cinema history, and yet, it’s very financially successful.

in the end, i believe a product sells it self, and i hope good films like Morning Glory would earn more recognition through word of mouth by all of us fans, and i do truly believe that in the end, when people look back, as marketer and creator, we want the people to think back and remember our product, and watch it because of its good quality, not just good phony marketing by putting everything good in the trailers.

The famous game franchise Guitar Hero has been around for years, and it make use of the same content with different actors for their trailers, and it’s been very useful. they make use of the famous scene from the film Risky Business, where Tom Cruise danced with his underwear to a Bob Seger song “Old time rock and roll.” they make use of the rock song and placing stars like ranging from sports stars like Kobe Bryant, to famous teenage icon like Taylor Swift. The trailer is only based on a simple concept, but it’s been played beautifully, and i gotta admit it did drive me to purchase the game not to long ago. Let’s admit, watching kobe, A-rod dancing around with their undies rocking it’s pretty funny!

Today is a rather sad day for me, my mentor- mr sun dai wei passed away earlier today. in Taiwan, he’s a household name, where everybody know him as the godfather of advertisement. he has made several unbelievably creative campaign and promotions, in his 58 years of living, he didnt waste one bit of it, which he often say” i live everyday as if it’s my last day, and i treat my work as leisure, because that’s just fun and fulfilling. one of the most memorable campaign he did is his creation of the poster for MTV in taiwan. there’s a phrase in taiwan where we use the slang word of a hard on to describe something being extradinary strong and powerful, and well, he used this concept beautifully and crafted it into this masterpiece of a promotion. go check out this link if you are interested. Mr. Sun, we only met once, and it’s an honor, you will be eternally missed, but you will never be forgotten.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://static.findbook.tw/image/book/9789576218859/large&imgrefurl=http://findbook.tw/search%3Fkeyword_type%3Dauthor%26q%3D%25E5%25AD%25AB%25E5%25A4%25A7%25E5%2581%2589&usg=__3Mj48c0WZcfd7wMkmUfssDdjNo0=&h=200&w=150&sz=9&hl=en&start=0&sig2=a_Q2nOveKT-LCr7wv0wnrA&zoom=1&tbnid=K8uxGEso3n4OhM:&tbnh=150&tbnw=113&ei=sHvWTPbYKZC8sQPGuZ2NCw&prev=/images%3Fq%3DMTV%25E7%259A%2584%25E3%2580%258C%25E5%25A5%25BD%25E5%25B1%258C%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Den%26biw%3D1440%26bih%3D717%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=145&vpy=103&dur=1031&hovh=160&hovw=120&tx=83&ty=113&oei=QXnWTKKXGI-csQPb_9GkCQ&esq=8&page=1&ndsp=29&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0

the success of facebook cannot be stretched more, but recently, they launched another great advertisement with a movie relating to the creators- the social network. the advertisement works both way, with the success financially of the film, it has now raised even more attention to it, whether they are positive or negative comments regarding the creators, it’s media attention has most definitely helped the facebook’s popularity to a wider audience. on the other hand, the facebook connection to the movie had also helped the movie’s success significantly. afterall, most “oscar” movies wouldnt gain this much attention from the general public this much normally, it’s the word facebook, which has become a common verb now to the world that helps to generate the publicity of the film. well, at least  i admit i was one of them.

The great success of paranormal activity last year was no joke, with a movie budget of 15000 dollars, and it made a world wide revenue of roughly 195 million dollars. why is that? well, the marketing for the film was simple, which is make it seems realistic, very much like how the classic blair witch project was marketed. with horror fans support of the realistic movie atmosphere, and make us viewers feel that it could very well happen to us in real life, it’s a simple but successful marketing, unlike some projected blockbuster last year with large promotional budget ( such as The Last Airbender) which turns out to be a financial failure, the studio for paranormal activity made a mediocre film into a world wide phenomena! and its precedure paranormal activity 2 coming out, and already making 40 million dollars over the weekend, we will see how much success its sequel would square against the first movie. 

i am very interested in the movie industry, therefore my blogs would be related to movies quite a lot. first of all, i want to address to the marketing strategy for the most successful movie to date – Avatar. the movie it self didnt impress me that much, although it seems to be adored by most of the fans, but fundamentally, the story it’s just not quite complex and deep enough. if you just look at the premise, it’s simply a movie about blue aliens and human invasion to their planet, and the trailer it self didnt seems that impressive if it wasnt for the name- James Cameron. Fox make use of his name, and key words such as creator of classics such as The Terminator series, Aliens, and of course, Titanic. Furthermore, they also emphasize on the words ” 20 years of the making” on their promotional campaign and interviews. although they did spent a fortune on advertising the film, i personally think those words are the key that prompted their almost 3 billion revenue sales around the world. and all the promotional budget were spent on getting those few key words out to the public.