The Music Industry: Still Kicking?

Posted on November 29, 2011 by meganbernard

Most people don’t buy their music, they download it illegally through sites like uTorrentand Frostwire. This is bad news for the music industry and has caused labels and artists to get creative.

Laura MacDonald recently wrote a blog entry entitled Mylo Xyloto meets You-Tube whereshe outlined how Coldplay was releasing 30 second audio clip previews of their new songs on YouTube. Using YouTube, Coldplay was able to reach a wider audience and, like Laura said, allows customers to identify themselves with the Coldplay brand and what they stand for: pushing them to purchase the album to identify themselves.

Another creative tactic was used by Radiohead to promote its In Rainbows album.Radiohead cut out the middle man by dumping its long-time major label (EMI) and posted its album online on a temporary website (www.inrainbows.com). The website offered fans the chance to set their own price for the album. Most took it for free, but the average price paid by devoted fans was about $5. Considering it only costs 50 cents to cover bandwidth and transaction processing costs, the band made a greater profit than it would have if it used a label to produce its album for stores (where they would have earned a merely $1 for every album sold) (Marketing: An Introduction, pg. 375). Not only did Radiohead increase its profits, it also recieved tons of free advertising from news outlets. Google recorded that there was about 10,900 articles about Radiohead and its campaign. After awhile, Radiohead took down the site and sold the album through stores (132,000 copies were sold during the first week alone). This campaign not only increased revenue for Radiohead, the band also scored its second number 1 album on the US pop charts in January 2008.

The success of both Coldplay and Radiohead show that going directly to consumers benefits.

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Huggies Jean Diapers: Fashion for Every Age

Posted on November 9, 2011 by meganbernard

My favorite ad, hands down is the ad for Huggies Jean Diapers.

YouTube Preview Image

Normal ads for diapers contain the same story: blue liquid being poured onto a diaper to show how absorbent said diaper is. This commercial and others done by Huggies are effective because they “get at the truth in parenting, which is that sometimes it can be messy and wild and chaotic, but it can also be fun and funny”, said Richie Glickman (JWT creative director). The Huggies Jean Diaper ad contains catchy phrases like “my diaper is full… full of fashion” and “I poo in blue”. While most media outlets approve of this catchy add, some networks (ABC, ABC Family, and Sprout) “objected to [the] screen text at the end of the spot that included the word ‘pooping,’ according to Huggies. …For those networks, the text was changed to, ‘When you gotta go, go in style’ “. Despite the controversy, the ad that is only run for a few months out of the year, is talked about and has received rave reviews.

However, the commercial itself is not the only reason Huggies Jean Diapers are so popular. The company strategically only offers its jean diapers in the hottest summer months (June-July) playing on the fact that it is too hot to equip a child with a diaper and shorts. The jean diapers make it “significantly easier to have your kid run around in just a diaper …. [without feeling] like you’re neglecting the kid” claimed Jen Drexler, co-founder of Just Ask a Woman. This “fashionable”, one of a kind diaper not only allows trend setting moms to have babies with stylish diapers, it also allows Huggies to charge a higher price than competitors.  This extra revenue allows Huggies to spend more on R&D and experiment with new products so they can stay #1.

Posted in Business Giants, Marketing, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Google+: The Rise and Fall

Posted on October 18, 2011 by meganbernard

In response to Elaine Cheung’s blog post on: Business Profiles on Google+

Elaine recently wrote that it has become difficult for brands to stand out on Facebook and
Twitter, and that they should use Google+ to target their viewers. I think this is the wrong approach. Google+’s 1269% gain in market share has be entirely erased as of Oct. 10th and competitors have been able to easily copy its features.

What went wrong? Google+ reached 40 million users in its first 3 months alone (which outpaced Facebook and Twitters start up numbers). However, “”it forms only 4% of Google users, the early adopters and the curious minority,” Collins Stewart analyst Mayuresh Masurekar wrote in a note. Google Plus needs to have 100 million active users to compete with Facebook, however,  Google+ does not have the sort of time sinks Facebook does. Software developer, Steve Yegge, claimed: “Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product. But that’s not why they are successful. Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work. So Facebook is different for everyone. Some people spend all their time on Mafia Wars. Some spend all their time on Farmville. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of different high-quality time sinks available, so there’s something there for everyone”.

Instead of investing in Google+ business profiles, companies need to do more market research to better utilize Facebook and Twitter. Companies need to pinpoint who their target market is on Facebook/Twitter by analyzing and how much time is spent and what each demographic does on the site. The company can then create targeted campaigns at the most active demographics. Then companies will be able to stand out.

Posted in Business Giants, Marketing, Social Networking | 1 Comment

Maybe Some Pudding Will Cheer You Up

Posted on October 6, 2011 by meganbernard

Recently, Adweek.com (a marketing news website) posted an interesting article about Jeffrey Dachis who has created “a database which analyzes, rates, and ranks the social media activities of 20,000 companies and 26,000 brands”. The idea is that this index can become useful to brands by providing in-depth analytics tailored to a client company on how to most effectively spend its social media dollars. This article made me think about an advertising campaign that was recently brought to my attention by Adfreak.com, an affiliated blog of Adweek that brings innovative marketing ads to attention. The campaign was JELL-O’s Pudding Face.

JELL-O’s Pudding Face ad campaign involves associating its brand with the emoticon: 🙂 . To do this, JELL-O monitors twitter feeds on their website. There are two sides to the site, statuses containing 🙂 and statuses contain 🙁 with the ratio of happy to sad faces changing the interactive face in the middle.  JELL-O purposes that it is “measure[ing] the mood of the nation and reflect[ing] it in the big JELL-O Pudding Face. So now…you can tell if America’s in need of a little pudding or sporting a great big Pudding Face”. Anytime the pudding face starts to dip the company “quickly deploy[s] free pudding to the frowners via Twitter to bring our collective mood right back up again”. The pudding face was also on display on a New York billboard. JELL-O ran television ads, as well, but the results were frightened viewers.

On the social business index, Kraft Foods Inc. (the corporation JELL-O is a part of) has a ranking of 13 overall making it one of the top performers with a score of 994, due to campaigns like JELL-O’s. If Kraft utilizes the social business index to create new campaigns their social media percentage will rise and more people, like Adfreak.com, will blog about their innovative social media marketing strategy.

Posted in Brand Strength, Business Giants | Leave a comment

People for Good: A Small Message, A Big Response

Posted on September 26, 2011 by meganbernard

Many of you might have noticed some blunt TV ads by People for Good, a not for profit organization (“rest assured, we’re not asking for money, we just want you to donate a little generosity”), created by Mark Sherman and Zak Mroueh, that’s goal is to “make the world a better place, one good deed at a time”. Their most popular ad features a man offering his seat to a pregnant woman on the subway, along with other ads that mock aggressive stall parking. The experiment has thus far been tweeted 988 times and recommended on Facebook 6000 times.

Many have praised the campaign in news articles. However, others say that its not doing enough. Either way, it has captured the attention of the market and drawn thousands to its sight with the simple goal: “to make the world a better place”. By using the marketing process, Sherman and Mroueh were able to capture customer value. Using a mix of social media and television/print ads, the duo were able to reach out to everyone since their “product” is universally applicable to all age groups, genders, and races.  They differentiated themselves by not putting blame or pushing consumers to donate like other charities/not for profits, merely to just give someone a hug. The company then used its followers to implement consumer-generated marketing by proposing a 7 day good deed challenge where participants posted their experiences across YouTube. People for Good was able to build such an integrated design by reaching out to other companies who donated their time and effort to produce quality products. Because the ads aren’t intrusive and simply aim to spread the message of good deeds customers are captured and post/blog results religiously, bringing a project that was suppose to last from June 29-August 21 to continue on. Long live good deeds.

Posted in Not for Profit Marketing | 1 Comment

What I Have Learned About Myself in Comm 299

Posted on April 1, 2011 by meganbernard

After taking Comm 299, I’ve learned how to speak in front of crowds; network; target my resume/cover letter and cold call possible employers. But what have I learned about myself?

In my first semester at Sauder, and in Comm 299, I was thrust in front of a crowd of 20 and forced to speak about random topics. I learned that I am capable of speaking in front of crowds and that it wasn’t frightening as I had made it out to be.

In the second half of Comm 299, and after completing the resume/cover letter assignment (even though I received a 0), I have learned that I have skills that I hadn’t realized before. I have also learned that I am able to get any job I want, as long as I put myself out there and send out my resume/emails or make phone calls.

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The Greatest Lesson I Have Learned from Someone Else

Posted on March 24, 2011 by meganbernard

The greatest lesson I have ever learned comes from my mother.

And that great lesson is: never be afraid to stand up to someone. If you allow people to walk all over you (especially in the business world) then you won’t get far with your goals or career.  If you don’t stand up to some people then they will continue to think that they are superior to you and will take whatever they want.

There is a certain time and place when you should not be so aggressive and give a little leeway (if that person is a top executive or your boss) but that leeway should never make you feel humiliated or insignificant.

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Outsourcing: Cost Efficient or Culture Damaging?

Posted on November 20, 2010 by meganbernard

In the world of business, cutting costs in order to increase profits is all that matters. In order to decerease costs, many companies are shipping their jobs overseas to take advantage of cheap labour (due to countries like China and Vietnam outlawing unions and having little to no labour laws) and to get access to foreign markets. This outsourcing comes at a cost to company morale though.

A perfect example is Boeing. Edward S. Greenberg, Leon Grunberg, Sarah Moore and Patricia B. Sikora wrote: “The very innovations and changes Boeing introduced to remain a leading producer of airplanes — altered management strategies, pervasive technological changes, extensive outsourcing, broad global partnerships, massive layoffs, and drastically altered ways of working — produced stress and turbulence in the lives of workers and managers alike.”

Boeing 777

The culture of Boeing has changed from being a “family, where employees’ contributions were respected as a source of competitive advantage, [to] Boeing as a teamwhere people and positions were expendable or interchangeable with other workers around the world”. This culture change makes employees value their jobs less and, therefore, decrease their productivity or leave the company. In the end, outsourcing could actually hurt the company more than it could cut costs.

Posted in Business Giants, Ethics | Leave a comment

Can You Trust the Banks Anymore?

Posted on November 20, 2010 by meganbernard

After the recent financial crisis, which was caused by banks handing out mortgages to anyone (due to misplaced employee incentives) even if they could not pay it back, can you trust the banks anymore?

How does the bank work? Banks act as financial intermediaries by providing liquidity (by processing payments like checks) and lending (mortgages). They do this by estimating the odds of customers coming and pulling out their money (say its 1/10). The banks can then lend the rest of the money (9/10) in the form of prime mortgages and, indirectly, sub-prime mortgages.

Still uneasy Ireland is still facing civil unrest as their financial crisis deepens. The govenment is forming strategies to bailout the

banks, but their “first priority is to restore confidence and halt an outflow of cash customers have withdrawn €13bn of deposits this year [alone]”. When consumers pull their money out of the bank, banks are not able to finance mortgages and thus go bankrupt. The solution is to inject more capital into the bank or provide deposit insurance.

In the end no ones money is safe, but if want your money to be secure, if you want to buy a house, or if you want to earn interest, you have to trust the banks in the end.

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Supply Chain: Fashion Experts Forever 21

Posted on November 20, 2010 by meganbernard

It seems that Zara is not the only one with a fast turnover rate in the world of fashion. New competitor Forever 21 has mastered the art of the supply chain. Forever 21 has a high turnover rate, which they can accomplish because they “carry a healthy mix of private label goods as well as those from other suppliers” according to bnet.com.

Forever 21 Store

Most “fashion seasons follow the annual cycle of summer, autumn, winter and spring”, but, “in fast fashion, cycles are compressed into shorter periods of 4-6 weeks [or less]”. Good operation of supply chains, along with communication with marketing,  allows retail stores to offer high turnover. This is done by:

1. Supplier preference:

  • Suppliers close to the market are used for products produced in the middle of a season, meaning trendy items. Marketers are in constant communication, providing ideas straight from fashion shows.
  • From the runway to the store at Forever 21
  • Long-distance suppliers are utilized for cheap, “core” items that are used in collections every season and have a stable forecast.

2. New technologies in production, such as the continuous ink jet process which reduces screen printing time.

These tactics allow consumers to take advantage of current clothing styles at a lower price, and thus keep the customer coming back for more.

Posted in Supply Chain | 2 Comments