296 Marketing Blog

Overall I didn’t find the marketing plan assignments enjoyable (but I’m pretty sure very few find assignments enjoyable) BUT I did find them to be very useful. With the marketing plan assignments its worth lay in the fact that you would have to apply the actual concepts learnt in class into real companies. And to do that, you have to first understand the concept. This really helped me in my preparation for my exams as I had a much clearer understanding of the concepts.

One skill I picked up was some video production and editing skills. Although I was not in charge of editing our group’s video, I did toy around a bit using iMovie and now I have a basic understanding of video editing which could prove useful in the future. I would still prefer to do an actual presentation rather than a video, as a presentation is much more simple and takes much less time. This, combined with the fact that no one within our group had any experience with making videos beforehand really made assignment 3 in particular difficult. The actual filming and editing process required at least 8 hours’ worth of work.

I think another useful aspect of the marketing plan assignment was giving Sauder students more opportunities to work in teams. Being able to work with a team isn’t something that can simply be taught, it’s best learnt through experience. One of my biggest weaknesses is the tendency to micromanage and not trust my team. But I think in this group I did fairly well in overcoming that weakness and sticking to my role in the team, mainly editing assignments 1 and 2 (although I did not catch the grammar mistakes both times and lost our team marks). Having the chance to work in a team, along with better understanding the concepts through application was the best takeaways from this project.

Imagine taking a stroll in the park and then seeing astronauts.  Now I don’t know about you, but it’d certainly catch my attention.

As Drew McLellan talks about in his blog, this is exactly what Axe did (in addition to a TV ad) to promote its new product, Apollo. Axe brought marketing to life. McLellan gives three pieces of advice for anyone to bring their marketing campaign to life. And its interesting because in essence its just AIDA.

Axe Astronauts in Madison Square Park (NY)

He recommends that one has to first “go where your customers go – and stand out”, standing out is most important here, because this is essentially the awareness in AIDA, this is what makes people stop and stare; as you and I would if we saw an astronaut anywhere.

Then “extend the campaign into your prospect’s lives” is the interest and desire aspect. Essentially this is going and to actually “come alive” so take that spacesuit and walk around in Times Square. This then really sparks interest in what Apollo is.

Lastly, “knowing your audience”, this is actually the action aspect. Because Axe’s target audience is young males they gave out a chance to win a trip to space through their astronauts. Something they would all be interested in. Consumers could sign up online to enter the contest. So this was the action that Axe wanted consumers to have, go to their website and know more about their product and ultimately buy it.

What was interesting to me in this blog was that despite the methods of marketing, the principles such as AIDA are still clearly seen shared. Now ultimately I don’t know how effective this type of marketing would be, but I think what I would deem most important to market “off the page”, would be to capture awareness and intrigue, and this usually means doing something extremely eye-catching or out of place.

Nadia Gunderson, in her post, said that she did not stop to view the ad because of the celebrity on the page of a magazine but because of the “brand name, visuals and the product itself”. She says that although a celebrity does help an advertisement, it’s the other features that really make the ad effective.

However, I believe that at times celebrity endorsement is already enough to make an ad successful, especially in the field of athletics. Take for example, Nike Basketball. It has arguably the most popular basketball stars as its celebrity/athlete endorsements; an impressive list consisting of LeBron James, Kobe Bryant and Kevin Durant just to name a few. Although Nike ads often feature very impressive visuals, I think the star power of these athletes are more than sufficient to influence consumers to buy their product.

All the above athletes listed have signature lines within Nike Basketball, ranging from shoes and apparel that are specially designed for them. In the market for athletic goods, these endorsements serve not only as a publicity tool but also as a “stamp of approval” or a review from the highest critics, the best players in the NBA.

Nike Basketball knows its target market, basketball players, tend to watch the NBA. They know that by simply having a star player in its ad is enough to get their attention. This is because as a basketball player I am drawn to the players I watch. Heck, Nike could print a spread with the word KOBE and a Nike logo and I’d still be interested in what they have to offer.

The ad above  hardly shows the product, which is the shoe. Instead Kobe takes the majority of the spread. But it is enough for me to want to know more about this product because as a basketball player (Nike Basketball’s target market), having Kobe on the page is enough for me to be interested.

Nadia seems to state that the celebrity endorsement is more of a cherry on top of the ice cream, but to me, celebrity endorsement is often the ice cream itself.

In class we discussed how Alberta Beef ran a campaign in order to change the attitudes people had towards beef because of the mad cow disease outbreak. While their campaign had a dominant positive reaction in change of attitude, this is not always the case.

Chick-fil-A is an American fast food restaurant with a corporate culture that is influenced by Christian beliefs., for example it does not open on Sundays. It was found to have sponsored anti-gay marriage conferences, and its owner Dan Cathy was quoted as strongly supporting “the traditional family”.

This caused a change in attitudes among many people. For many LGBT supporters this is what happened, in context of “think, feel and do”

LGBT supporters

• Think: Chick-fil-A is against the LGBT community
• Feel: Hatred and disdain towards it
• Do: Boycott (53% of all people surveyed said they would boycott)

Anti-LGBT

• Think: Chick-fil-A stands for Christian values
• Feel: Pride in the company
• Do: Appreciation Day, show up and buy more to show appreciation (projected to have increased that day’s sales by 29.9%)

I just found it interesting how one issue could shift attitudes so much, not just in one direction but in both ways; positively and negatively at the same time. Consumer behavior can be changed really easily in the wrong direction if not careful.

While fear and health can drive people to think much less rationally, sensitive political issues can do the same; after all Chick-fil-A was not wrong to express its freedom of speech, but because it did it angered many but also endeared many.  Although this was not an explicit campaign, I believe it teaches us that it is very important to make sure when designing a campaign you ensure that only one desired message gets across.

Yesterday I was watching the biggest football game of the season, the Super Bowl. And of course, being Canada it did not air many of Super Bowl’s famed advertisements. Instead I was stuck watching CTV’s advertisement for its new drama “motive” many times over. It turns out that Canadian TV stations purchase the right to broadcast the Super Bowl in Canada, so they have the right to sell separate advertising.

After today’s class on market segmentation, it is pretty clear that this is a form of geographic segmentation, with the product being segmented for different countries. But one question I had burning in my mind was why companies wouldn’t pay CTV for advertising time. In the US it is rumored to cost $3.7 million dollars for a 30-second ad during the Super Bowl. In Canada, it costs around $400,000. Although the amount of people that watch the Super Bowl in Canada are significantly less than in the US (7.3 million compared to 111.3 million) wouldn’t the mere name of it being a Super Bowl ad bring it more attention? And especially when all the advertisements surrounding it are the same repetitive commercials, wouldn’t it make a “real” Super Bowl ad stand out even more? After all, despite the advertisements being segmented geographically, the target audience can’t be that different. For example, it’s not as if Canadians would like Doritos any less than an American would.

GEICO ad, featuring retired NBA player Dikembe Mutumbo, which aired in Canada.

However, there are some companies willing to pay for the Canadian Super Bowl ad time, for example, GEICO in this commercial, which stood out amongst all the other boring commercials. Strangely though, GEICO does not insure Canadian residents, which really made me wonder why it would bother spending $400k on an ad reaching a Canadian audience. One reason could be that it was building its brand name or to reach the Americans in Canada who would be able to buy their insurance.
All in all, the Super Bowl advertisements were very disappointing and I wish I could say I remembered a really good advertisement, but instead I was only left with this.

About a year back, Windows started a campaign “Smoked by Windows Phone” where they asked non-windows phone users to compete in performing basic tasks on their phone against a Windows phone. Should the Windows phone lose, Microsoft would give a free laptop to the challenger. 

However, a challenger did manage to beat a Windows phone with his own phone when asked to pull up the weather in two cities, the Microsoft Store employees refused to acknowledge his win.

This form of promotion, although showing Microsoft’s confidence in its own products means nothing if it does nothing to uphold its end of the deal and refuses to reward people after a fair win. Although I think that it is a brilliant marketing campaign as it uses competition, which everyone loves as evidenced by the numerous amount of TV shows focused on competitions. Now, having the confidence to directly “compete” against other phones, Microsoft should have been ready to acknowledge that it could not win every single battle. Instead, they chose to disregard a legitimate loss.

Through this bad decision, Microsoft may have just caused more bad publicity than good in this marketing campaign. It was in essence, false advertising. This sort of unethical behavior will keep many people away from its products. After all, a company’s ethics says a lot about the company. If it does not uphold its promises, how can consumers be sure that the company even upholds the promises in its products?

To be fair, Microsoft ended up apologizing on Twitter the damage was already done. However, that initial refusal to award a laptop to an actual winner simply speaks a lot about the company and will most likely linger in many people’s memories. Although I’ve known about this incident close to when it first came out, I completely forgot about Microsoft apologizing. One unethical move left me with a very bad impression, as I am sure it has done for others as well.

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