Marketing Blog

This term has come to an end, and it has been really fun looking at creative advertisements and commercials for my blogs. Soo…I would like to end my blog with a countdown of top 10 funny commericals.

To my surprise, Bud Light beer commercials have had many creative and funny advertisements, my favorite ones are the revolving fridge and the one with the guy digging a hole in the fridge with the woman and the man screaming. Instead of promoting itself with sex appeals like other alchoholic beverage commercials, Bud Light has focused more of its advertising efforts on the masculenity of its consumers. As can be seen by the commercials, Bud Light clearly targets consumers as men 18 – 40 years of age. This way, Bud Light has expanded its market by identifyings its beer as more than a drink to have at parties but also as a drink that you would have with buddies or relaxing at home.

On a more random note, I also liked the old granny pulling a prank on the driver in the car beside her. All in all, I really enjoyed this class this semster and I loved reading other people’s blogs and their thoughts on Marketing. Hope everyone’s final exams goes well!

When waiting for the bus this week, I was captured by a ad of Mcdonald’s ad that was promoting free coffee any size, everyday. Therefore, when I ran across Shengchao, Wang’ s blog post about Mcdonald’s other creative ads, it instantly grabbed my attention.

Since the 1940s, Mcdonald’s has been notably the largest fast food hamberger chain in the world. There must be a reason for the success of Mcdonald’s for nearly 70 years, and the largest may be contributed to its extensive advertising campaign. Mcdonald’s has always promoted its products through free products to encourage sales of its other products, such as offering free coffee or free pop in the summer for $1. The only problem left was communicating its promotions to consumers, and Mcdonalds has solved this problem well by utilizing creative ads, as demonstrated in Shengchao’s blog, such as posting an hourglass at the bus stop to indicate the days left of the promotion. Afterall, no one can turn down a free cup of coffee!

link to Shengchao’s post:

Mcdonald serves you everywhere

With all the stress thats been upon me to finish the countless assigments and projects, my friend decided to shown me this funny thailand ad. This is an very optimistic and creative promotional ad for the “cheers” beer, which did in fact cheer me up a little. In the video, there are three mini ads for the beer. The first consists of guys working in cubicles finding out that it was friday, which brings them to jump for happiness and hug each other just for that. The second is finding a spot in a parking lot and going crazy over the spot. Last but not least, the last one is a thaliand guy sharing a crab with his girlfriend only to find out there was one more at the bottom and going estatic over the extra crab leg.

The reason that this ad is so funny is because of the expressions and the exageration of the happiness that all the guys in the ads had over the little things in life. This ad not only promotes the “cheer” beer as cheerful and optimistic, it also reminds consumers the little things that we should be happy about which we usually take for granted. This ad reminds us to smile at even the smallest things such as appreciating that it was friday rather than focusing on the stress of work in a cubicle or being thankful that theres an extra crab to eat. As a consumer, I find this ad extremly convincing and cheerful, and I would definitely purchase the product. Now I’m just going to wrap up this week’s blog and just say: Cheers!

As I was browsing through some of my classmates blogs, I ran across Julia’s post from awhile ago regarding Pepsi. Since I explored Pepsi’s ads last week, I thought I would touch on this one as well.

This ad by Pepsi is composed of a little boy buying two cans of coke to stand on just to press the button for Pepsi and buy the Pepsi product. I was also surprised as to how far Pepsi went to depreciate its biggest competitor, Coke, as Julia was. Not only is it unethical, this “creative” ad also imposes a bad image for Pepsi as well. Consumers don’t appreciate degrading competitors products to enhance ones own as some companies might think. I, for instance, after seeing this ad, I would not see Pepsi being better than coke just because a little kid stood on two cans of Coke. Instead, I would think that it was unethical for Pepsi to create its ad this way. Personally, as a fan of Coke, I felt angered after seeing this ad. Like Julia has commented, a good advertisement is not one that degrades another product, but should be either looking to improve its own product or thinking of creative ways to promote it, moving from a lose-lose situation to a win-win.

Link to Julia’s post,

Pepsi vs Coke- depreciating competitor

This week I participated in the Trek Calgary program and had the opportunity to pay visits to many companies, one of which was Fritolay, a branch under Pepsi Co. Professionals at Pepsi Co. gave us a tour of their warehouse and it was extremely interesting as we gained perspective on the flow of their operations from promotion to sales to delivery. Therefore, I decided to look at some of the interesting advertisements that a big firm like Pepsi has created.

Pepsi’s Pool advertisement

Pepsi’s Truck Advertisement

Finally, with the Christmas season coming, this is the Christmas Advertisement that Pepsi created.

Youtube video: United Breaks Guitars

This video was shown to me by a professor awhile ago and showed me how powerful a creative advertising can catch the public’s eye. In his “United breaks guitar” song, Dave Caroll expresses his dissatisfaction with United Airlines. The musician’s tailored guitar that was valued at $3500 was broken by the airline while he was flying from Nova Scotia to Nebraska. United Airlines refused to compensate him for the guitar. Thus, to express his anger, Dave Caroll and his band created this music video about the incident and posted it on Youtube. Within one day, there were 150,000 views of the video, and United immediately contacted Caroll proposing compensation. According to The Times newspaper, within four days of the music video post, United Airline’s stock price fell 10%, costing stockholders around $180 million in value. This event demonstrates just how powerful a creative ad can be and I found it realli inspiring.

One outside blog that I find useful and interesting is one by Michael Fleischner. Michael Fleischner has more than thirteen years of marketing experience and is the author of two books, SEO made simple and PPC made simple. He has also made appearances on ABC world news and Bloomberg radio. Fleischners has a number of blogs, but the ones that I find most fascinating are The Marketing Blog and Good Marketing Tips Blog.

As internet is becoming more and more integrated into people’s lives, marketing has been fast in exploring the opportunity. The Marketing Blog introduces the importance of online marketing concepts such as affiliate marketing, which is when a business rewards other businesses for each customer brought by the other business’s marketing efforts. According to Michael Fleischner, affiliate marketing plays an important role as it “concentrates resources and creates a competitive marketplace, driving down costs and forcing vendors to provide additional value.” This blog also outlines some of the new programs on the internet that assist with online marketing, such as search engines like Google Instant. On the other hand, the Good marketing Tips blog adds value to The Marketing Blog as it introduces internet marketing tips such as choosing keywords for business search engines. Overall, Michael Fleischner’s blogs are appealing and should be looked at by business’s considering online marketing strategies.

Link to The Marketing Blog:

http://marketing-expert.blogspot.com/

While looking for new advertisements for my blog, I ran into some cool bus ads that people came up with. The first one is an advertisement for watchmaker IWC by Jung von Matt. This advertisement can be found on bus straps on public transit in Germany, where it allows people that travel by bus to “try on” the watch before buying it. This idea intrigued me as how effective and efficient it is. Even if people were not interested in buying the watch in the first place, the bus travelers are “forced” to try on the watches. This might inspire some people in buying the product. So far in Canada, there hasn’t been any companies that put money into advertising on bus straps, only on the billboards on top of the seats. Companies, especially watch or bracelet companies in Canada, should adopt this idea in advertising for their products to attract more consumer traffic. Another creative idea for bus advertisement is one created by The Fitness Company in New York City. This campaign creates an illusion that the bus traveler is doing weights when holding on to the safety bar. What an interesting idea in marketing for a fitness company. This ad would definitely catch the traveler’s eye when boarding on the bus. Companies that advertise on Translink should definitely adopt these ideas to attract customers.

In the beginning of this week, my friend asked me to help him think of an innovative product for his entrepreneur class. I went online to look for some ideas and came across many creative and fun products that other people came up with. The penguin tea timer is a must have for tea lovers. It is not only cute in appearance, but it is also very efficient. If a tea bag is left in hot water for too long, it may cause the flavor to be too concentrated. However, with the penguin tea timer, you can basically choose your tea flavor to however strong you like it without having to monitor it the whole time. This product would be easy to market as it is very attractive to all the tea drinkers out there. Another product that I found interesting was the stick similar to a tripod that allows you to take pictures of yourself. When you go on vacations with your family or friends, you would no longer have to ask strangers to help take pictures. Therefore, this product is perfect for those that love to travel and those that love to take pictures. Personally, I would definitely buy these two products without anyone even marketing them to me.

There are more creative and fun products on this website: http://www.eatnineghost.com/26-really-creative-and-innovative-products/

As I was going through some ads in magazines and newspapers for one of my other classes, there was one ad that caught my eye instantly. It was an ad for kitty litter. The cat is personified to inmitate the priceless human expressions prior to a washroom break. Below the cute kitty is the slogan for this campaign, which is: ” Cats everywhere are having a hard time smelling their litter boxes.” This provides the explanation for the cat to be standing in this awkward pose. Because my roommate has a cat, I can fully understand where this ad is coming from. Not only is it in a cat’s nature to be clean, but also in a owner’s interest to have the house tidy without odours. Thus, the first thought that ran across my mind when I saw this ad was Fresh step’s clever and effective way of promoting their product. As a consumer, I am attracted to this product because of this cute ad.