Michael's Blog

Nike has taken a very interesting approach to their recently released commercials.  One is involving Lebron James, and the other is essentially ripping on the Lebron commercial involving Michael Jordan.  This presents the questions, why would Nike create a commercial that basically insults their own commercial?  How could this be beneficial to Nike?

First is the Lebron James commercial:

Second is the Michael Jordon play on Lebron’s commercial: (This may look like the same commercial at first glance, but believe me, it’s different if you watch it)

Personally I think that these commercials are a brilliant concept.  The brilliance lies in the whole controversy with Lebron James and his choice to change teams when he signed on with the Miami Heat as opposed to resigning with his previous team of 11 years, the Cleavland Cavaliers this past year.

Due to Lebron’s decision to leave Cleavland, there is a very large number of people who highly dislike him.  Which is an understatement at best.  Knowing this, Nike made the decision to produce this response to the original commercial with Michael Jordan.  This commercial was designed to target that population of people with a high dislike for Lebron.  Nike even went as far as trying there best to play the commercials in the respective areas. (i.e. The Lebron commercial in areas where he is more respected and the Michael Jordan commercial in areas where he is far less respected)

By doing this Nike has successfully created a situation where they don’t lose any business due to peoples personal opinions about Lebron James and therefore Nike continues to succeed.  Brilliant.

This shows how in tune and up to date Nike is with their marketing strategies.  It’s amazing to even think that one company has the capabilities to pull off such a complex advertising campaign.  A lot of research is needed in order to do an ad campaign such as this one in order to find out which areas of North America respect Lebron, and which areas don’t.  Furthermore, they accomplished all this in such a short period of time.

Only due to the size of the Nike Corporation, are they able to implement such a campaign in such little time.  But, regardless of Nike’s size, this campaign is very well thought out, and very well executed.  It is for reasons like these that Nike continues to be so successful in all areas of business in which it chooses to pursue.

Note:

Nike actually did an ad campaign involving Tiger Woods, with the same sort of concept, directly after his large scandal.  Nike was the only one of his sponsors that decided to stick with him through the entire scandal.

The Vancouver Canucks “Green Men” are awesome!

The two gentlemen in these full body green suits are students at BCIT.  They have a phenomenal story about how their situation arose and I am writing to share it with you.  They originally bought these green suits in order to attend a Seattle Seahawks game, thinking it would be funny, but the unfortunate event of the suits not arriving on time caused an inability to do so.  Ironically the next week the two gentlemen acquired Canucks tickets and so their fortune began.  They were an immediate hit with the fans and the opposition team didn’t exactly enjoy their presence. After that game they were approached by Mike Gillis, the GM for the Vancouver Canucks, and he offered them free tickets right beside the penalty box for every home game.

To read more about the story of how these awesome fellows became regulars at the Vancouver Canucks games check out these links.

Story Behind the Green Men

and

Green Men add to the fun at GM Place -at least for Canuck fans

Personally I think that these Green Men are a great source of entertainment and I know there are a lot of people who agree.  Do you think these Green Men were a part of a marketing strategy?

The best part about them, is that they had no idea and no intentions of becoming what they are now.  They were just two normal guys going to a Canucks game wearing green suits and now they are well known by the entire city of Vancouver.  Not to mention they get free tickets to all of the Canucks home games.

After the first game when they were approached by Mike Gillis, it was at that point that they became a part of a strategy.  An opportunity on which the Canucks management capitalized.

Needless to say it worked, everyone loves them and they successfully get into players’ heads, creating an advantage for the Canucks.

Unreal.

I am unbelievably excited for whistlers new and upcoming season.  I have purchased my student seasons pass for an unbelievable price, waxed and tuned my board, and am ready to hit the slopes.  In the above video it mentions that opening day is on November 25th.  The truth is that whistler has decided to open the mountain a week earlier than initially intended on November 19th.  That is this Friday!! Which needless to say I may or may not be missing classes for…  This blog post isn’t necessarily focused on talking about whistlers remarkable and intriguing marketing strategies, but rather to share my extreme excitement about this years upcoming ski season with everyone.  Samantha Tennant shares the same excitement as I do as shown in here blog post where she counts down the days until opening day.

Here I leave you with another video to get you all as excited as I am.  I chose this video because I really like how it incorporates all of the segments that whistler attracts.  Whether it be advanced skiers in the back country, beginner skiers on the groomed runs, the park junkies, or children just learning how to ski, this clip has it all.  This means that everyone reading this can get as excited as me, because regardless which of these segments you fall under, whistler can accommodate you.

The Bugatti Veyron is the worlds fastest production vehicle that is both street legal and available for purchase.  Bugatti just released a new version of its already record holdingVeyron called the Super Sport.  Some of its key features include a top speed of 430 km/hr, going from 0 – 160 km/hr in 2.5 seconds!! Or 0 – 400 km/hr in 50 seconds!  The BugattiVeyron Super Sport has a mind blowing 1,200 horse power, and costs a base price of 1,912,500 Euros which translates to $2,685,915 US dollars.  This vehicle is the definition of a luxury and in my mind is absolutely absurd.  Although it is definitely awesome!

Looking at Bugatti’s company objectives when choosing a pricing strategy, it is evident that they are focused on a customer orientation and most definitely does not have a sales orientation.  The Bugatti Veyron is not produced in mass quantities, but rather in the exact opposite.  In the year 2005 only 5 cars were sold, in 2006 only 44 were sold, in 2007 only 83 were sold and in 2008 there were 172 sold for a total of 304 vehicles.  Every year the production has increased exponentially but is still considered to have very few sales. In this sense it could be considered a prestige product in that anyone who is buying a Veyron is spending roughly $2. 5 million USD, which can only really be classified as an effort to obtain greater status with increased exclusivity.

Essentially the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport is the most outrageous car in history.  The scary thing about it is that we have gotten to a point where one car can have the most outrageous technology within it. Whats going to happen within the next decade? The thought is practically unfathomable.

The worlds fastest production vehicle before the Bugatti Veyron was released was theMclaren F1.  In this video the Bugatti Veyron is put up against the Mclaren F1 for the first time.  The results are unbelievable.  For any car lover, this video below is a must watch.

I am Canadian! And proud of it!

The Vancouver 2010 Olympics were a time  to remember.  They were inspiring, they were motivating, they were AMAZING!  Molson Canadian really grasped this when launching this advertisement.  The above commercial was by far one of my favorite commercials playing during the 2010 Olympics.  It is beyond exciting.  Anyone and everyone who is Canadian would in my mind not be a true canadian if this commercial didn’t excite them, if it didn’t instill a sense of patriotism within them.   Molson has a long history of intense, patriotic commercials, and in my opinion this one tops them all off.  A fellow commerce 296 student and friend Samantha Tennant feels the same way as seen in her blog post.

The best part about these commercials is that they are so true! We do have the best backyard out of anyone.  We do play hockey on frozen lakes and ponds.  We do love out beer.  And most of all we’re proud of it.

Old spice, the male hygiene line, recently released hundreds of personal responses to their unorthodox advertisements.  Old Spices’ original advertisements that featured Isaiah Mustafa in minimal clothing, talking about random spontaneous topics, promoting their tag line “anything is possible,” were a huge success.  Personally I absolutely loved the commercials as they were enticing, humorous and always new.

Once the advertisements were posted on YouTube, they sparked huge chain of comments and conversations along with it.  Very recently Old Spice released hundreds of personal responses with Isaiah Mustafa to everyone who commented on the commercials.  When I first was shown these responses I thought they were amazing.  Here are a few examples of the hundreds of responses:

These are hardly a fraction of the responses that Old Spice has created.  The best part about them is that they personalized both to the names of each commenter as well as the content of each comment.  With these advertisements, Old Spice has entered a whole new dimension of marketing.

This could potentially be an example of a micro-marketing or one-to-one segmentation strategy.  I know that if I were to receive a personalized response directly from Old Spice, that was as humorous and spontaneous as these I would be immediately sold.  Even though I already am…

The Sony Bravia LCD television advertisments are phenomenal.  They are creative, fun, and something that you don’t see everyday.  As soon as I saw these commercials I was immediately sold. 

In my opinion this advertisment is one of the coolest I have seen.  I think its really cool how this was all real.  They had to set up these paint canons and have the whole system timed perfectly with the music.  I looked into the production for this advertisment and found that these buildings were located in Glasgow, Scotland.  They were actually set to be torn down so Sony jumped on the opportunity and filmed this ad before that could happen.  In total they used 70,000 litres of environmentally friendly paint, 622 bottle bombs, 330 metres of steel pipe, 455 mortars, 57 kilometres of copper wire, and 1700 detonators.  On top of all of that, the truely amazing thing is that they only had one shot at the entire thing.  It was all or nothing.  If one thing had gone wrong or not detonated at the proper time then that advertisment would not exist.  As I mentioned before, phenomenal.

Furthermore, they have many of these new and creative advertisements such as:

Bouncy Balls

Pyramids

These advertisements are unique in that fact that they have never been done before.  I mean think about it, throwing hundreds of thousands of bouncy balls down the streets of San Fransico, and thousands of threads off a pyramid, all to show colours. 

All in all, these are some of my favorite advertisements for the various reasons discussed.  I just love how abstract and moving they actually are.

Needless to say, I happen to own a Sony Bravia LCD TV.  Enough said.

Don Cherry has been the face of Hockey Night in Canada for as long as I can remember.  For all that time he has been known for the crazy suits that he wears during the show.  My question for you is, was this a planned marketing strategy? Or does Mr. Cherry just enjoy being the center of attention?

Personally I feel that the suits that Mr. Cherry wears are and have been a marketing strategy from the start.  I know people who watch his pre-game shows every Saturday just to see how outrageous he’s going to look.  For the most part it’s humorous, but essentially it’s original goal is being satisfied every time someone watches his show.  Lets be honest here, no one watches his show for his advice about hockey, because quite frankly he’s far from being a good analyst.

On top of this being a marketing strategy for Hockey Night in Canada, I think that Mr.Cherry has taken what was originally just a way to market the show, and used it to be the center of attention in the hockey world.

All in all, I think that Don Cherry’s suits are absolutely ridiculous, and I’m sure many people feel the same way.  But in that way it’s actually quite funny and that is why I believe that this is a great way for Hockey Night in Canada to have presented themselves.

The clothing brand Diesel’s “Be Stupid” ad campaign is stupid.  They are marketing themselves and their clothing by putting quotes like “stupid is spreading” and “think less. Stupid more.” In bold letters.  It simply doesn’t make sense. These advertisements are in my opinion putting a damper on both their company and therefore their sales.  If I were to relate this to class and talk about this campaign and the 4 P’s, one of those P’s is promotion.  From seeing these ads around, diesel is promoting themselves as stupid? Is that really in their best interest?  I’m not even sure who their target market is with this campaign.  Are they implying that our generation is stupid? 

In my opinion, I think this marketing campaign is beyond being a smart ad campaign.  I have seen these advertisements much too often and every time I look at them it makes me turn against buying their product.