Monthly Archives: November 2013

Mark J Miller of BrandChannel wrote an article called “Sony May Reap the Benefits of Microsoft’s Broad Xbox One Intentions,” which highlighted the rivalry within the console video game market between Sony and Microsoft that has been established over the last decade. While Nintendo and its Wii has taken a different value proposition and target consumer segment, the Xbox and PlayStation has still gone head to head with their newest products announced in the 2013 E3 Conference.

Miller points out a valid point about how the PS4 has seemingly been established as the market leader in an intensive market. As XBOX has recently been marketed as a home-entertainment console encompassing the entire living room experience, the PS4 has stuck to its heavy focus on gaming.

I believe that PS4 has already made itself the front runner because of this; buyers want the product for its games, there are more efficient products on the market such as Smart TVs for entertainment nowadays. Sony has priced the PS4 strategically cheaper than the Xbox One, which was not the case a few years back when the Xbox 360 had established higher value and popularity than the substantially higher-priced PS3. In addition, they were able to successfully run logistics and distribution one week ahead of the Xbox’s release date and henceforth took the news with their first mover advantage coming out of the first 24 hours with over 1 million consoles sold. Furthermore, Sony’s prime product has been able to maintain its limelight moments due to their better analysis of their consumers’ desires from their product and its intangible features. The Xbox removed backwards compatibility from its system and also initiated a new method of prevent game sharing or using a single game on multiple consoles, which was taken extremely poorly by the general audience when the PS4 had upgraded its PSNetwork features and overall smoothness of its interface and gameplay.

Alyssa Leung’s blog post “Now Accept Cash, Credit, and… Squats?” comments on an article from AdFreak that showed guerrilla marketing that the Moscow Olympic Committee launched that would allow people to do a certain number of squats in exchange for a subway ticket, promoting healthy lifestyle and proactivity to increase publicity for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. Alyssa points out how it was very clever that they had integrated multiple aspects of social media, which two thirds of the world currently in some way or form take part in using, to make convenient ways of marketing the olympics. It appears that the Russians have taken a book out of their Western rivals in North America by creative such a campaign that is quite rare and untraditional.

Although this is such beneficial idea to society and helped established a more positive branding of Russia to prospective foreigners, many of which still possess very stereotypical war-like assumptions, I question to what extent this is actually legitimate. It is one thing to admire a great idea and a creative campaign, but how effective was this project? The concentration of people who use the subway in Moscow is quite high in density, it would be a very costly project in a time when they are hoping to bring in higher profit margins by marketing the hometown advantage of the olympics. The fact that they went with this initiative means that they must have a positive result when analyzing the cost-benefit and ultimately realizing that most people will likely continue with their busy days rather than spending the time to stop and do 30 squats to receive 30 rubles worth of value. Realistically I am assuming this is one of those things people will stop and stare, smile, and continue with their lives rather than actually taking the time to stop and take part.