Things I learned about teams, yourself and marketing:

• Working on the assignments in teams really helped build my knowledge of marketing because each team member not only conducted research differently but analyzed the results using diverse knowledge and personal connections to Tata Motors (the company to which we selected to focus on). I learned that shorter meetings are often the most effective and having an agenda prior to meetings really helped the progress moving forward.
• After all the tasks have been delegated, learning to set my own personal deadline was essential because not only will  it have me working at a more efficient rate but also allow for so time at the end (before the actual due date) to look back and make any changes if necessary.
• Beyond what the textbook has taught me, I believe this course has generally made me more aware of the marketing around me that I had not noticed before. I feel that I can appreciate marketing as trying to meet my needs much more now. One thing I greatly value is actually learning what marketing is about. My first impression of marketing had been related to sales but as a result of this course I have learned marketing to be adding value and so much more.

Skills I developed:

• The ability to complete a very simple market analysis 

Things I would do differently next time:

• As a general comment, just being more careful with the formatting of assignments so that unnecessary marks won’t be lost.
• Give more concise answers help the thinking process much more and digging deep provides a much more realistic and specific answers to most marketing questions.

Top takeaways:

•  Always have an agenda before meetings (and try not to make them last over 1 hour for efficiency!)
• Marketing is all around me so I should be keeping up with current events more
• I may want to pursue marketing in the non-profit sector 🙂

PetFlow started up during the year of 2010 selling pet products online.

It beat Wal-mart in Facebook engagement. Not bad for a start-up.

So what was their strategy in attracting all this attention? Cats photos. The internet has an overwhelming number of these.

Essentially PetFlow saw an opportunity to attract traffic to their Facebook page through a similar model http://www.lolcats.com uses. Users of the site bring with them endless adorable and hilarious photos of their pets with various captions to share. Seeing that so many pet lovers felt drawn to such images, PetFlow put out Facebook advertisements consisting of animal photos along with captions like: “Do you like cats? Share your photo here!” As someone that loves cats, I would be browsing their Facebook page despite not owning one I can see why pet owners will find browsing PetFlow’s page difficult to pass!

PetFlow’s Facebook page encourages their customers to keep coming back whether or not they need more products for their pets. Not only does their Facebook page consist of pet owners sharing photos of their pets but also sales and limited offers that can only be found on the page. The idea is simple but it keeps their customers loyal. So why not surf through some cute pet photos while checking out the latest PetFlow deals?

Where did PetFlow venture after having such great customer engagement on Facebook? None other than another popular social media platform: Twitter. Although the strong start had them focused on responding to customers individually on their Facebook page, they now see the value in other media platforms -not their original plan of posting lots on Facebook.

Source 1: https://www.facebook.com/petflow

Source 2: http://www.forbes.com/sites/caroltice/2012/07/02/how-one-startup-beat-walmart-n-facebook/

The Blackberry Z10, labelled as RIM’s “big gamble” by the media is set to hit stores in March. In fact, they have already appointed Alicia Keys as their new Creative Director, receiving a reasonable amount of attention.

For quite an extended period of time after the launch of many touch screen smartphones from various companies, RIM continued to produce smartphones with keyboards. In the eyes of a regular consumer like myself, at first glance, the keyboard was the main product differentiation prior to further considerations. As the following old advertisement will go to show, Blackberry smartphones had be positioned to meet the needs of those consumers that spent time on their smartphones writing e-mails. As said in the commercial for the Blackberry Bold: “…try writing a thousand e-mails on a touch screen”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=g2TyHvxXLAA#at=16

Despite not finding touch screens difficult to operate personally, I can see that some consumers will enjoy the keyboard aspect of Blackberry products. But how is RIM planning on re-positioning Blackberry when their latest Blackberry product completely backs away from the keyboard differentiator and conforms to the popular touch screen style of smartphones?

The firm says the Z10 has been “reinvented” but complaints on social media platforms have come rolling in claiming that the product is ‘copying’ Apple’s iPhone design and being a ‘ripoff’.

With this transition to launching a new touch screen smartphone, I feel the most interesting aspect RIM has done to help re-position itself on the market is to launch the Blackberry Q10 which consists of a physical keyboard. This may be able to help Blackberry grow its market share while still retaining consumers that still loves Blackberry for its BBM and keyboard. It is most unfortunate however, that in the launch of these two Blackberry 10 smartphones that the Blackberry Z10 has completely overshadowed that of the Blackberry Q10 with the physical keyboard due to negative press.

The Blackberry 10 will  offer users over 70,000 applications. Sounds like a lot? Well, it is only a tenth of what iPhone and Andriod has to offer its users. Will today’s consumers be able to make do without Instagram?

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2270703/BlackBerry-launches-Z10-keyboard-looks-just-like-Apples-iPhone.html

With a rapidly increasing number of prominent social media platforms in our daily lives –Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr just to name several –also means growing opportunities for various organizations and individuals to directly reach their potential target markets through such mediums. Not only are there multiple advertisements along the sidebars of our social media accounts and blogs but in creating our personal accounts on these platforms we are also giving out personal contact information –most commonly our e-mail addresses.

How often is it that we feel frustrated or bothered by frequent e-mails we receive from these social media platforms or organizations to which our personal information has been distributed?

Think about the times you could not find the unsubscribe button to a newsletter/updates that you no longer want to receive. While repetition is a good strategy to send specific messages to a target audience, high volumes of spam mail to which the consumer has no desire follow. Not only does the unethical social media marketing practice of spamming lose the audience but also frames the organization doing so in a negative light.

While most of the advertisements we view everyday may not be targeted towards ourselves, it is still important for marketers to consider ethical strategies for sending various messages out to a public audience. We often recommend products or services we recognize and believe our loved ones will enjoy to them or purchased them as gifts. Thus, in my opinion, positive impressions left by organizations will travel a great deal farther and reach target consumers.

To a degree, reducing spam to enhance the image of a product/service not only keeps us happy as consumers, but also saves the unnecessary efforts of spamming and may in turn allow the organization or individual to redistribute their investments to better meet consumer needs in market research.