Xiaowei Lin's blog

Comment on Influential Marketing Blog: “Audubon Society Promotes Happy Bird Watching, Not Angry Bird Tossing”

The Audubon Society has created a game called “Birding the Net”, where people can see and capture birds on their computer screen when they are browsing through websites such as the Discovery Channel. “Clicking on the birds will direct the viewer to the Audubon Facebook page where everyone can trade and collect bird cards.” It’s targeting people who enjoy seeing the nature and birds as a kind of lifestyle. It gives them opportunity to enjoy the bird watching experience on the computer screen, for many people do not have the time to go out to the nature.  The Audubon Society uses social networking sites such as Facebook and twitter, where people can easily share their links or their cards with their friend.  Also, as in the Influential Marketing Blog, the game is linked with a Hollywood movie “the Big Year” is coming up. It draws attention from the audience of the movie to participate in this online social game, and then find out about the Audubon Society.

More Sources: http://inhabitat.com/audubons-birding-the-net-social-media-game-brings-competitive-birdwatching-to-our-fingertips/

Comment on a classmate, Kobe Zhou’s blog post: https://blogs.ubc.ca/kobezhou/2011/09/26/blog-2-renren/

As social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are banned in China, companies in China have set up their own social networking sites in Chinese. Renren, which is the Chinese version of Facebook, and Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, have gained a large popularity in this few years. Statistics has shown that Renren has around 130 millions users and weibo has around 200 millions users. As the popularity of smart phone increases, people can easily access networking sites wherever they are. They can take photos and videos everywhere, and share them instantly online with their friends. The trend of technology has greatly promotes the use of online social networks, and Renren and Weibo have caught the opportunity, and successfully position themselves, as Chinese Facebook and Twitter,  in the market. They keep introducing new functions to attract more users and create more value for users. For example, an article from China Internet Watch talks about the new enterprise version of Weibo, where as companies can shares their information on Weibo and communicates with their customers. Just like Twitter, Weibo has a lot of celebrities’ verified accounts. This is a very effective marketing strategy to attract users.

Just a few days ago, we’ve lost a great entreprenuer and innovator, Steve Jobs. He is the co-founder of Apple. In 1996, he brought Apple back to life by introducing the innovative products including iMac and iPods. From that time, Apple has became well-known for its innovation and special design. In 2010, when the iphone hit the market it became such a great success that everyone had to go through lineup and long waiting time to purchase an iphone. Just half a year later, the iPad was another great success of Apple, making millions of sales. Apple has successfully and accurately assessed customers’ wants and needs. For example, developing small portable ipod with large storage capacity and long battery life.  Their marketing strategies have been successful in capturing and applying customer insighs. They have also build up strong customer loyalty by creating values for them. A Mac users will hardly switch to a PC since they are sastified with the Mac system and become used to it. However, the recent released iphone 4S has raised negative feedback from many people. Other than an upgraded iphone 4, many people are expecting a different and more innovative iphone 5 after one and half years of waiting.

Here’s a video that introduces the new iphone 4S:

Talking about Apple, it has always been a exciting and inspirainal story. But the future of Apple depends on whether it can continuously be innovative and accuratly assessing the market.

After taking COMM101 last year, I have a brief idea about Marketing. Now I finally get the chance to learn more in depth by taking COMM296. From the very beginning of this course, I’ve leanred that marketing is not solely about advertising, it’s about creating values for customers and building relationship with them. The better companies know about their customers, more values can be created for them; thus, the more companies can get in return.

Corporations have to go through a lot of plannings and strategies to achieve their goals. Before they can advertise a product, they have to know what the market is. There are many different way of segmenting the market, for example, by age, gender, occupation, geographic regions, etc. By knowing who their customers are, companies can came up with a plan about how to position themselves in the market. In nowadays, Internet has become a very important source of information for a very large group of people. Many times our information are gathered online by companies so that they can know what kind of advertisement to put on your websites. For example, the following picture is an advertisement I saw on my facebook page, which clearly shows that they are aware of that I am a student.

There are many interesting concepts in marketing. I am really looking forward to learn more in this class and I think it will be really helpful knowledge for my future.