A-M-A-N-D-A

Nestle is one of my all time favorite brands. It is a reminder of my childhood and a brand i wake up to every morning. From the tiny bites of kit-kats to the munching of nestle cereal that gives the milk that goes with it a touch of sweetness; Nestle has achieved what all marketers’ long-term goal is – Turning me into a loyal consumer of Nestle products.

Nestle’s product mix is vast and delicious. Out of all of Nestle assortment of goods a few of my favorites are:

MILO. SMARTIES. NESTEA. MAGGI. KIT KAT. HAAGEN DAZS. AFTER EIGHT.

I can still picture myself as a young child, sipping my milo in the morning, slurping a bowl of maggi insant noodles for lunch, and taking a long awaited bite of a kit kat in the afternoon after coming home from schoool.

I just discovered recently that Nestle, although many of its goods are avaiable worldwide; there are still a number of products that are specific to a certain country. There are different product lines of Nestle in North America and Asia. The Comm 296 Marketing Course has taught me that this sort of expansion and product variance is very common in relatively large and growing companies like Nestle where increasing profits, sales and brand image is concerned. However,  as stupid as it sounds, i had no idea about any of this before my marketing course. Living my whole life in south east asia; in countries like Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia; where all of Nestle products were the same; i gave no thought to the possibility that; when i moved to Canada a year ago to attend UBC; Nestle’s products offered there would differ to what i was normally used to in Asia.

A major product line that Nestle differed in was the Cereal line. It surprised me that in Canada, Nestle did not have a lot of variety when it came to cereal. They focused more on the chocolate and beverage line. In Asia however, particularly in the countries i lived in; Nestle had a large market share on the cereal line; where they were responsible for cereals like:

COCO CRUNCH. HONEY STARS. MILO CEREAL.

Marketing is all about creating, capturing, delivering and communicating value to customers. Sellrs are constantly trying to build products that are distinct from their competitors. Products that will capture the consumer’s attention. Their goal is to build customer loyalty, and retain those customers who do become loyal to their product(s).

I have lived in Vietnam for over 8 years. Being an avid shopper, i have noticed a lot of marketing strategies through experience, communication with salespersons, family, friends and searching the web. Some techniques are sneaky; and i have learnt to become aware of it over time. Not everyone plays fair. After all, the bottom line is for the seller to make a sale, gain profit and growth.

Here are a couple of Marketing strategies that you may not have noticed when you go shopping in a mall, a small convenience store, or a marketplace.

1) ESCALATORS

Ever wondered why the two escalators beside each other both either go UP or DOWN? and that you have to walk one whole round to use the escalator on the other side? This is a Marketing Strategy to force us customers to walk around the mall, so that they will look at the products they walk past more. Customer are more likely to consider and buy a product that they are forced to see more and more.

2) PRICE DISCOUNTS

Stores are constantly having discounts. There’s summer sales, winter sales, end of season sales, promotions, anniversary sales. The list goes on. What you may not know is that SOMETIMES, not always; stores would BUMP UP their prices before they give discounts.  For example, a shirt that originally cost $50, is given a 50% discount, technically lowering the price fo $25. In some department stores, they would first scale up the original price of $50 to say, $60. Only then will they give the 50%, lowering the price to $30 instead of the $25 it was supposed to be in the first place.

3) DISPLAY OF PRODUCTS

This is very common in the marketplace, where stores are privately owned and bargaining is allowed. In order to draw customers in, sellers would display only a few of the same items outside. This makes some customers think that the products are in scarce supply, implying that the products are very popular. Crowding of the same products is not a good marketing strategy. People are more likely to pass by a store with a large abundance of products than they would a store with limited and selected products.

There are a lot of other strategies that marketers use to draw customers, in these three i found were the most intriguing, and unexpected.

So next time to you are near an escalator, remember; they aren’t just functional; they also have a marketing purpose!!!

Thanks for reading A-M-A-N-D-A

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The current months and recent years we have been under a great recession. I call it a pain in the ass. Prices have gone up; and my monthly allowance has gone down. The fact that I do not work make it all the more difficult to spend money that I receive from my parents. I am under a lot of pressure to get high grades, graduate with honors and find a well-paying job. all this talk about the recession kind of makes me feel like no matter how hard I try in University; there is a chance that finding a decent job will not be as easy as people say it is when we have a business degree.

Therefore I went online in search of jobs that i may want to consider in the future. Instead i found something more interseting; Jobs that people DO NOT want to consider doing. With the advancement in technology and constant changes in the marketplace; a lot of jobs have become obselete. The link below mentions the top 10 obselete jobs that you do not want to be caught doing in this time and day.
<http://msn.careerbuilder.com/Article/MSN-2408-Job-Info-and-Trends-10-Obsolete-Jobs-We-Love/?SiteId=cbmsnjm42408&sc_extcmp=JS_2408_jobmod”>

Written by Rachel Farrell, as a special to CareerBuilder; titled “10 OBSELETE JOBS WE LOVE”

IT IS ANOTHER WAY OF SAYING…

HAVING JOBS LIKE THESE IS A SIGN THAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO BE LAID OFF.
RECESSION = DEPRESSION.

Here are the ‘would be’ and ‘only do this if you are looking for unemployment’ jobs:

1. Elevator Operators
2. File Clerk
3. Iceman
4. Inspectors, Testers, Samplers, Sorters and Weighters
5. New Vendors, Street Vendors, Store to Store Salesman
6. Machine Feeders and Offbearers
7. Milkman
8. Paper goods machine setters, operators and tenders
9. Switchboard operators
10. Typist

And there you have it.

One of the most important and ongoing piece of advice on how to be successful in the future is that you have to MARKET YOURSELF. In other words; sell yourself to corporations in a way that make them value you more than other applicants. This is achieved through building up an impressive resume, a professional appearance, a concise cover letter, a sociable nature and confident character.

Likewise, hollywood stars sell themselves by constantly getting publicized in various types of media, and often what they get publiczed for is not neccessarily good. Stars like Linsay Lohan and Paris Hilton have been splattered over the tabloids with what can only be described as appalling and shocking to ‘what? again? and ‘that’s so lindsay’. After a while all the scandals that happened between these oh so glamourous starts become not so scandalous anymore. One might say that if a star manages to stay away from scandals, he/she will never become famous. Break-ups. Divorces. Affairs. Drunken nights. All of these make for very effective marketing.

Using the four P’s; the stars are able to sell their
PRODUCT (i.e. their love life, their body) at the right
PRICE (magazines are usually affordable to the majority of society and there are TV almost everywhere).
They are usually in the correct
POSITION (they are at the right location at the right time) which allows for a lot of
PROMOTION (their face gets displayed all over the media within minutes).

Now remember that this only applies to hollywood stars. You dont get famous without receiving any benefits along the way. Most people expect scandals from Stars. They WANT scandals. The public would like nothing more than a little naugthy to spice up their otherwise mudane and normal lives.

However, normal people like us would never get away with something like that when we are looking for respectable jobs. The goal of selling yourself is not to sell yourself TOO much; meaning do not put inappropriate pictures on your Facebook because believe me; employers nowadays aren’t like your everyday joe; they know technology and one of the first places they will go when considering your application is your FACEBOOK PAGE. Market yourself in a way that says; Im normal, but Im different from the others.

Do not try and get away like those people in Hollywood. Your best bet is to be yourself. be real. Get real.

People today have multiple leisure activities available to them. There’s bowling, drinking, partying, hanging out in nice and chic coffe shops, or spending the day at the mall. Another favorite is going to the movies.

Movies today have gone a long way. From black and white to color, from 2-D to 3-D and maybe even to 4-D in the future. The large variety of movies allows the public to nick and pick out what they want to watch. Chick-flicks for girls, Action for guys, Cartoons for kids, and romance for couples.

All movies go through a long process of screenings and marketing schemes that will hopefully increase their ratings and showings in movie theatres. A common maketing scheme is to show a ‘preview’ of the movie before it airs in theatres or comes out on dvd. A good preview of a movie is usually what determines the movie’s success. People generally like to stick to the genre of movies that they are familiar with, and they do not tend to watch movies that are completely different to the genres they they usually watch. Previews give the audience an insight into what the genre of the movie is, who is acting in it, who the director is and bascically a summary of the movie’s plot. It targets both people who may or may not like the genre of the movie. For those who do like the genre of the movie, it gets them excited and pumped up for the movie’s opening.  For those who aren’t a fan of the particular genre; the way the preview is made and the specific scenes of the movie it contains aims to make those people think; “this isn’t the type of movie I usually watch, but somehow it seems interesting! i might give it a try!”

Therefore previews are never more than 2-3 minutes or less than 30 seconds. Good marketing tactics make previews that are 1-2 minutes long. These previews puts the movie in a little nice box where it, in the given time, manages to reveal parts of the movie that will amuse their audience, but not too much that their audience are able to obtain a clear view and opinion of how the movie is going to be; and therefore may decide instantly whether or not they are going to watch it.

I am the type of person who judges movies very quickly. I place a lot of importance on previews and usually use them, instead of ratings or movie critics remarks; to decide whether i would watch the movie or not. I like being held in suspense after watching a well-made preview that tells you just enough to make you want to know more.

In the year 2007, I watched my first preview of a thai movie. It was during one of my trips to thailand, in the city of bangkok where, while waiting for my parents in a shopping mall, i started watching a preview of a local thai movie on one of the big television screens displayed in the sitting area.

The thing about thai previews that I had never known before, is that they actually tell the complete plot of the movie. Their previews are a little longer than most hollywood previes, ranging from 3-5 minutes. In that 3-5 minutes, I saw what I imagine was the whole movie, but of course with a whole chunk of an hour cut off.

the first thing that came to my mind was; ‘whaaaaaaaaaaaat?’ I was astounded and a little amused at how explicit and detailed the preview was. The next day I met up with a friend who had lived in bangkok for several years. I mentioned the preview i had watched yesterday and heard a response of laughter, a lot of nodding of the head and eventually her saying; ‘Yes, I wasn’t used to it at first, but all thai previews are like that.’

Apparently, thai previews are meant to show the whole movie, but in a very short amount of time. To this day i am still not so sure why; and though I am sure that thai movies are very interesting and fun to watch; I do not completely understand how showing the whole movie in the preview is going to make the audience want to watch it more. In any case it could put off the audience if the movie doesn’t look good.

One thing’s for sure, thai previews are one of the most honest maketing schemes i know.