Michelle Wan's Blog

Imagine if the eyedropper tool became reality. Oh wait, it has!

After reading Kathy Yu’s blogpost, “Photoshop in Reality: Colour Clicker Pen,” I have become thoroughly amazed at the extent of modern technology. Here is a pen that can scan the colour of an object and transform the colour into ink immediately.

Although the blog doesn’t specify whether this is an Adobe product, the company could surely use the concept as part of a new market development strategy.

As a company, Adobe already leads the creative arts industry in terms of graphic design, but with this new piece of technology, it might just transform the future of visual and graphical arts. This, in a sense, could be an incredible case of diversification. Adobe, which is a company primarily known for its graphic design programs, attracts a specifically tech-savvy audience, dividing the market for arts and design into two major segments: visual arts and graphic arts. Essentially, with the Colour Clicker Pen, Adobe can present a new product that will no doubt attract a multitude of new and different markets. Personally, as an individual interested in graphic and visual arts, I definitely can’t wait until this product gets into my hands. Hopefully, it doesn’t run out of ink too quickly though.

This year, my regular intake of Starbucks coffee has decreased tremendously. In first year, at least a couple times a week, you could find me lining up at the Starbucks at the SUB, eager to order my usual Grande morning coffee. However, this year my habits have changed.

It’s mainly because my main route to school and class doesn’t include any nearby Starbucks, so I simply visit less frequently. In fact, it’s actually been a while since I’ve had my last professionally brewed cup of coffee. Nevertheless, this year, I’ve started to develop a new interest, and that’s Blenz.

Throughout this year, I have had so many marketing encounters with Blenz Coffee. Even before our Skyped Comm 296 class with George Moen, President of Blenz, I had met and heard Mr. Moen speak at previous events at which he described the unique differences between the Blenz brand and other high end coffeehouse brands. Besides discussing several other unique differences, the part that stood out to me the most was George’s description of the company’s Hot Chocolate, made from Belgian Chocolate Chips! It sounded so delicious to me that I knew I had to make time to head out to the UBC Village and try one for myself!

To add to my interest in visiting Blenz, a good friend of mine offered to share her Buy 1 Get 1 Free coupon, specific to the UBC Village’s Blenz Coffee. Perfect! So at a discount price and at a convenient location, I tried my first Blenz drink. Evaluation? Definitely didn’t disappoint. What’s more, after using my coupon, the barista told me to keep it! A consumer loyalty program started on my first visit!? I might just take advantage of this. Next visit, scheduled for Tuesday, 9:15am before class. I think I’ll make a habit of this.

With the creation of such social media sites as Facebook and Twitter, as well as advancements in the capabilities of major sites and search engines such as Youtube and Google, it is astounding to see just how much the concept of social media has built up over the last few years (so much so that we naturally take it for granted!). The fact is, we live in a world so consumed by speed and technology that it changes the way we, as a global society, face standard, typical, extraordinary, and outstanding situations altogether.

The reason, of course, that I bring up this topic is because of the outstanding and extremely devastating circumstances occurring in the North Eastern Region of Japan. Following the earthquake, it’s amazing how many citizens are able to stay in touch with their loved ones through Facebook and especially Twitter! Hearing from the news reports, people on the streets of Tokyo, unable to contact their families through phone are fortunately more successful over their other social media channels.

Moreover, within seconds of the earthquake, news of the event (via channels excluding news reports) already reached the opposite end of the world. Youtube videos were posted within the hour, 1 million tweets were coming out of Japan every hour – essentially, it seems to me as if the world has never been more informed about a natural disaster (or disaster of any kind) than at this moment.

Beyond that note, also within an hour of the disaster, Facebook events and pages organizing relief efforts all over the world were immediately set into action, collecting hundreds of supporters or “likes”/”attendees” within minutes.

People often blame technologically advanced devices such as iPhones, Blackberries, or Smart Phones for their incessant tendencies to distract their users, and they may not be wrong to do so; however, in times of need, they can certainly make an incredible and almost unprecedented difference.

With the release of the iPad 2, I’ve been doing a lot of research on Apple software, and I’ve noticed something very fascinating about Apple’s marketing strategy: secrecy.

Secrecy is clearly the most important aspect of Apple’s marketing schemes. No one really knows how or what Apple products look like before they’re released. For instance, according to Steve Job’s official website, less than a dozen people working at Apple knew what the iPhone looked like before it was unveiled at Macworld 2007 (not even the software engineers!). The same thing happens with all of the company’s newly released products: “Everything is on a need-to-know basis.” It really got me wondering about how their products are made in the first place, if the workers themselves are not even able to see what they’re doing. Nevertheless, its an extraordinary marketing technique thats so conceptually simple that its effect is almost unnoticeable. Tying in to what we’ve been learning in class, secrecy and the effect of the Apple brand automatically creates hype and rumours about the product, increasing consumer interest in the company (Apple stocks also typically rise around this time), while providing instant advertising, at no cost, for a product that doesn’t even exist yet.

Moreover, when the product is officially released they’re always announced the same way: through promotional videos, flashy images of the product’s many sides, and a presentation from Jobs himself. Not a lot of material for consumers to look at. Apple, in a sense, ‘fans the flames’ by giving its consumers just a few advertising materials to observe and admire, maintaining the hype and excitement, keeping it consistent, before the product is officially made available in stores.

In effect, secrecy is one of the most powerful ways to market a product, and it definitely shows how, in this case, doing nothing can make out to be the perfect strategy.

One of the things I love to eat for breakfast is cereal. It’s the easiest breakfast to prepare, and if you serve yourself just the right amount, it’ll fill you up well enough until lunch. However, just as important in this daily routine is the fun of reading the box it comes in! That’s my opinion at least. This morning when I came downstairs for my normal breakfast, I realized that someone in the family had removed the box and instead placed my Cornpops in a tupperware container. Better for storage space I suppose, but what’s my morning without reading my cereal box?!

Despite having read the box several times before, I find that I can never get bored when reading it. Perhaps it’s because my memory always fails too early in the morning and I never remember what I read the morning before, but I seem to learn something new everyday with those friendly looking boxes. Now that I’m learning about marketing, moreover, it’s also like putting what I’ve learned in class or in my readings to the test. Promotion tactics are all over these boxes, and I think that’s what keeps them exciting.

For instance, my Cornpops box is a puzzle that leads to a message that can only be found online. MyKellogg’s Frosted Flakes box has so many games all over it that some even require the box to be folded inside out (naturally convincing the happy player to recycle when finished) – a tactic that keeps Kellogg’s branded as an environmentally friendly company. From a marketing perspective, these boxes contain so many hidden message to interpret that it actually becomes intriguing.

So this morning, I missed my cereal box and lacked my daily dose of morning marketing reading.

This blogpost was inspired by a post by Erin Ryan, a blogger for the social media blog, Soshable. Although, not a heavy twitter user myself, I’ve finally started to understand the social media vibe that is Twitter. Before I couldn’t understand what its purpose was; why “tweet” your thoughts and feelings at a particular moment to the public. What’s the need?

What I’ve learned, in the short amount of time I’ve been using it, is that Twitter is instant, and in some senses more personal. It’s like sending those thoughts that would have otherwise remained tucked up and hidden in the left side of your brain into the world. Twitter provides those thoughts a voice as well as an accepting audience (because everyone uses it the same way). So is Twitter bringing us closer to a faster future? Maybe. Like Erin Ryan says about Grey’s Anatomy, it has the potential to save lives in a critical moment. With its speed and ease of use, news, messages, instructions, recommendations, and other comments can be sent within seconds, and not just to one person, but up to thousands.

Imagine a future where one person’s amazing thought or idea transported around the world and came back in seconds through tweets and retweets and appeared on giant billboards, LCD Screens or newspapers the following hour or even the following minute. Sound impossible? I’m wondering if Twitter’s been able to do that all ready.

Back to the question of “what’s the need?” – Twitter is just another way to communicate, and besides calling up a person directly, it’s probably just about the fastest and most convenient way to speak when you’ve got a little voice.

After looking at classmate, Julie Buiza‘s blog, I’ve decided to offer my own comments on eye-catching ads, such as the one mentioned in her post, Hook, Line, and Sinker. Simple marketing, even if its as simple as a small poster, can affect how we choose to eat, drink, sleep and even work. For this post, I’ll be talking about McDonalds.

To begin with, I don’t usually visit McDonalds. To be more specific, you would never find me going more than 2 or maybe 3 times a month, and in fact, the last time I had gone, it had been at least 2 months since my last visit. Essentially, the only two occasions that would ever make me go are both related to marketing.

1) A new promotion special (the ads for their Angus Beef Burger really called out to my taste buds)

or 2) Coupons

Like Julie, my classmate, I react immediately to food displayed in an ad (of course, as long as it looks appealing). Over the last couple of minutes of searching for the perfect image of their Angus Beef burger, a craving for it has already developed in my stomach. Additionally, along with the availability of coupons, something that also drags me to visit McDonalds is the presentation of the coupon itself. For instance, most people are used to McDonalds’ standard looking list of white and red (with the golden arches) detachable coupons; however, recently, I received a fancy looking coupon that was designed with the look of a door, opening up to a list of unique looking brown and caramel coloured coupons. The whole presentation actually makes me excited to use them!

So naturally, this week I will look forward to a delightful McDonalds meal (probably with an angus burger) for lunch. Marketing in its simplest form is truly powerful.

Over the last 5 years, social media has exploded all over the world. It’s allowed the everyday consumer to come in contact with everything from chic fashion trends to popular music all within a matter of seconds and from the comfort of one’s own home. However, though the advent of technology has given us many liberties and luxuries in recent years, on a different note, has it made marketing more and more difficult?

Inspired by my classmate, Jasna Kamenjas’ post on Celebrity Endorsements, it’s my opinion that the explosion of information on the web, on billboards, on city television screens, passing busses, cereal boxes, and even school agendas is frighteningly overwhelming. What’s more, in reference to my friend’s post, how does one single out Drew Barrymore on a Cover Girl commercial if immediately after there’s an ad for an iPad 2? and following that an Open Happiness Coke Commercial? Who was the celebrity I just saw? I don’t remember, but the iPad 2 is out, and I’m thirsty!

Like we learned in class, a lot of marketing is based on selective retention and honing in on certain ads that appeal to us based on interest, values, and even our current situation, but with so many mediums out there for social media, it gets consistently more difficult to hold on to one ad by a well admired celebrity. Celebrities get paid millions to appear for 30 seconds in a commercial, but how reliable is that commercial when millions of people in that company’s target market carry cellphones, travel with laptops, listen to iPods, and other objects all capable of distracting a consumer in a matter of seconds. Is it actually worth it to spend so much, when the result might only last for a few seconds? Would the effect be any lesser if a non-celebrity was hired?

As a movie buff and amateur filmmaker, I often enjoy watching films just to study their composition and auteurist style, and although a plethora of comments could be said about the change in cinematic style over the last century, a lot could also be said about the evolution of visual marketing for films as well. Specifically, production giants of the early 40s and 50s, such as RKO or MGM, consistently produced promotional material for their films that made ample use of what moviegoers today would call “spoilers.” For instance, one could watch a promotional short for Now Voyager (1942) and find out after half a minute several significant plot details.

Essentially, after studying the factors that influence the consumer decision process, I have determined that the design of the behavioural component in modern film commercials is not quite what it was in classic film promotions. With promotional shorts, such as Irving Rapper’s Now Voyager, it’s evident that producers relied more on content details, often in the form of text and speech, to lure a person to the theatre. Moving on to the 1960s, there’s a significant switch from text to colour to attract the viewers eye. For example, Stanley Donnen’s Charade (1963).

However, in modern film commercials subtlety is valued over instant spoilers, and an audience can guess the plot and make assumptions rather than hold formed opinions.

The design of similar dramatic trailers makes use of sound and complicated editing to capture attention. A dated but effective example is Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby (2004). From a marketing perspective, film transformed from a product of standardized promotion to a product promoted with limitless creativity, fuelled by a deeper focus on the cognitive attitude component demonstrated, in my opinion, through the widening consumer preference for subtlety.

So recently, I’ve been looking into buying a lens for my Nikon DSLR camera and with all the research in looking for the best prices, I find myself caught up once again in the argument between which camera is better, Canon or Nikon. I’ve already had my camera for a while, but this argument has always appealed to me because I was very indecisive when I was making my choice a year ago. At the time, I wanted a Canon, but settled on Nikon because of the price.

After I bought the Nikon, I tried to make myself feel better by turning all the reasons why I wanted a Canon into bad reasons. I’m pretty sure I came up with several (this was almost a year ago) but this one came back to me more recently because I happened to be watching a Canon DSLR TV Commercial.

I started thinking about how often I actually see Nikon TV Commercials and notice them. It really wasn’t until recently that Nikon hired a celebrity such as Ashton Kutcher to appear in its camera commercials, but Canon has been using celebrities, such as Avril Lavigne, Jackie Chan, tennis pros Maria Sharapova and Andre Agasi, for a several years now. Canon, essentially has spent a great deal more on its marketing than Nikon has in recent years, and, as a teenager of the social media era, it natural that I’d be influenced by my television; I’ve just been surrounded by Canon’s advertising more.

However, when I look back at the details, both cameras are great for their own reasons, and there really is no reason why I should prefer one over the other. I love my Nikon, and Canon just made me realize how powerful endorsements are and how great they are at promoting their products.