Monthly Archives: October 2016

My COMM101 class has been granted the opportunity to create blogs that give a student’s insight on the world’s current events. This post is an opportunity to review and comment on two of my peers’ blog posts, seeing how views can differ from person to person.

Blog #1: Calvin Chang’s “Can Nintendo Level Up to the Mobile Gaming Market?”

A flock of avid Pokemon Go players, attributing to the game’s success

I agree with the article in that Nintendo’s strengths entering the mobile market definitely lay in the characters and brands that they own. I like the idea that Calvin puts forward that these brands incite a form of nostalgia in the heart of people who have played these games previously, and how this was exemplified through the release of the extraordinarily popular mobile game, Pokemon Go. Personally, I think that this is a great strategy to employ as Nintendo is able to have a scope outside of just one age group, but to open up their customer segments and reach out to not only kids, teens, or adults, but a great combination of the three. I feel like Calvin has written an excellent post, describing the strongest aspects of the video game company’s entry into the mobile market.

My biggest concern reflects Shigeru Miayamoto’s, will these freemium games being put out by third party developers hurt the established brands of Nintendo? I put this forward because a video game series I loved, Roller Coaster Tycoon had a freemium version of their game released on the mobile market that most people, including me, thought was extremely lackluster and did not reflect the original games themselves. If this were to happen to the titles slated to release next year on mobile like Fire Emblem or Animal Crossing, would future sales of the flagship console games decrease? However, I expect Nintendo to hold high of themselves and prevent any disastrous releases to happen.

Blog #2: Kamil Kulewski’s “Nordstrom’s Pill Themed Fashion Line Deemed Offensive”

               Moschino’s Pill-Themed Clutch

Kamil expresses con
cern that further market research should have been done in order to prevent backlash against Nordstrom after the release of Moschino’s pill-themed fashion line. However, I believe that this backlash against these brands has very little effect on their well-being. I understand that social issues should often be complied by brands in order to receive the maximum benefit, however I believe that some, especially high fashion brands like Moschino generate more growth out of controversy.

It is no surprise that high fashion runways are filled with models that flaunt unrealistic beauty standards, wearing controversal clothing. While most would find these practices and designs disgusting, some people find intriguing and fashionable. I feel as if controversy helps some high fashion brands grow, despite the view that many others may take.

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The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 with the “S Pen”

Amidst more reports of even more Samsung Note 7 catching on fire after the first recall, Samsung made a definite call to cease production of the phone on Octomber 10, 2016. Samsung also urged Note 7 users to immediately shut off their phone out of concern for their customers’ safety, even creating incentives of up to $100 for returning theirphone. Samsung is clearly attempting to perform damage control on the situation, but many people are speculating on whether the situation is salvageable or not. What implications do these events have on the Samsung brand and on its competitors?

Firstly, the immediate consequence of the Korean tech giant heading into the holiday season without a new flagship phone will deal great damage to its sales. Their other flagship phone, the Galaxy S8, is not slated to release until the spring of 2017. Michael Robinson, chief technology strategist at Moneymorning.com states that “they cant really rush [introducing new Note 7 handsets into the market]”, so Samsung will most likely have to face the most opportunistic time period of the year with a the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, phones which were released back in March. This is during a time when Apple’s iPhone 7 and the Google Pixel would be barely a few months old, which were slated to be the competitors for the Note 7. Samsung will miss when a customer
segment, the gift buyer, grows by a hundredfold in addition to current Samsung customers facing less of a switching cost moving to a new brand due to their ability to offer more recent hardware.

A Samsung Note 7 afflicted by the “exploding battery” defect

The effects of this disastrous release will remain within the company’s reputation for quite a long time as well. Edward Snyder, manager of Charter Equity Research states that “this has probably killed the [Note’s] brand name”. It is evident that not many people would not like to purchase a phone in which its predecessor has been reported to catch on fire and in some cases, explode. The Note line carries a lot of selling power with its name, being associated with the most current high end specs and the extremely intuitive S Pen. Consequently, this could mean a sharp decrease in sales for Samsung. In addition to this, the lasting effects of the brand being associated with unsafe products will likely stay for years to come. This release will definitely be in effect during the active consideration stage of many consumers looking to purchase a Samsung product.

Clearly, there is a heavy impact on Samsung’s brand as a whole as a result of the Note 7’s failure. However, Samsung is a giant and experienced company, and many (including I) expect them to comeback from this tragic release.

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The recently purchased Apex League of Legends Team after winning the North American Challenger Series

With the Philadelphia 76ers recently announcing their purchase of established Esports brands Dignitas and Apex on September 26, the amount of involvement from professional athletes and teams in esports is heavily growing. Just last year, Rick Fox (formerly of the LA Lakers) announced his purchase of the League of Legends team Gravity to field his own roster under the moniker Echo Fox in addition to the announcing of Shaquille O’Neal’s and the co-owner of the Sacramento Kings’ investment into the Esports brand NRG. So why are big names in conventional sports investing into this new realm of competition?

The 2015 League of Legends World Championship Finals hosted at the Mercedez-Benz Arena in Berlin

Esports, by definition are the competitive tournaments of video games, especially among professional gamers. As trivial as this sounds, events like the 2015 League of Legends World Championships amassed over 334 million unique impressions online and through television. In addition, this event had a peak concurrent viewership of 14 million during the finals, rivalling the same statistic for the MLB finals of that year. This is why more and more sports franchises are investing into esports; they are growing at astronomical rates that even surpass some conventional sports. I believe that this is due to the great increase of youth looking towards the internet for entertainment instead of the television.

The 2014 DOTA International Event

Companies are also realizing that esports are a way to reach out to the notoriously difficult to reach market of 18 to 35 year olds that spend much of their time online. Major sports leagues such as the NBA and NFL are not streamed online, so many look towards esports as an alternative. Like conventional sports, people are excited about these competitions. Millions of dollars are being put into both the prize pools and production of esports. They are able to root for their favourite team and associate themselves with a community that they feel they are able to be involved with. However, much of this demographic is unable to identify with conventional sports, either not having experience in playing them or having disinterest in the sport itself. However, competitive video games are increasingly easy to access with games such as DOTA2 and the aforementioned League of Legends being free to access. Therefore, they are able to align themselves with a professional organization with players that share a common interest as them- the video game they play. Therefore, these big name figures and organizations are investing into esports due to the ability to reach out to an exponentially growing new customer segment that may not necessarily overlap with the market of conventional sports. Esports are definitely on the rise to overtake conventional sports in viewership, especially due to the financial support behind the scene that is finally starting to take shape.

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