Firstly, I decided to take this course is because that I realized e-Marketing is a huge trend in marketing industry. And what I knew about e-Marketing before learning this course is just check Facebook or Twitter and mobile app. During the process of learning, I started to realize that social media is so important for marketers to doing their business nowadays. In terms of Google Analytics, Adwords, and Wisdom, I am really impressed that how powerful social media tools can be to analyze and understand their customers’ profile in an easy and comprehensive way by using these tools.

Next, is how important to discover what is UNDER the iceberg. Monitoring online conversation as much as possible to have better understanding what customers are talking about is crucial to marketers to think really seriously before they start any marketing campaign or advertisements. How to listen to customers, and what tone should marketers chose to talk to them is also significant in marketing world.

In terms of social media, nowadays our daily life is based on those social media tools. We chat, watch videos, share posts, comment on post, blog, take pictures, like, dislike, etc… you name it. It is all about social media. So if marketers could use these tools in a very efficient way, you basically could know everything about your customers. They sometimes could know yourself better than you did. It is amazing and creepy at same time. WOW. Use it wisely, and you will know how powerful it is. J Great class! Now I like marketing more.

The future payment had arrived— Square Wallet has launched its mobile payments app at Starbucks in the U.S. two weeks ago. It seems like that Starbucks will start a new adventure on breaking the mobile payments barrier all around the world. Since one of the world biggest companies showed its courage, it is a clear sign for others that they should seize this opportunity ASAP too.

Last year, Starbucks had launched its mobile payment App on Smartphones and achieve more than a million mobile payments a week. A bar code on customer’s smartphone is needed for that App. But now, they even simplified customers’ payments by just giving their names to the merchant. How? Here is a video for you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtwyHyIjRAk

Since Starbucks use Square’s GPS technology, the customer’s phone will notify the store automatically and showed the customer’s name and photo on cashier’s screen when they has entered, and then after match their photo and name, the payment will be completed.

Mobile marketing trend is one of the mainstream e-Marketing tools for marketers and valued by customers in these days. However, mobile payment is still on their early stage in markets, what should marketers do is probably to go online and monitor customers’ conversation on social media tools and see how they react to this new payment system and make it widely spread to attract more customers to experience it for their very first time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWljqAQZR-I

McDonald’s CMO, Joel Yashinsky, came to our 464 class for a special lecture for their new campaign across Canada— Our Food Your Questions. After listening to his speech, I was very impressed and inspirited by him. Not only because their eye-catching campaign make me feel like that I like more about McDonald’s than ever, but also make me start to think more about the huge benefits e-Marketing and social media could bring in the near future.

My takeaway from our special speaker is below:

–       the importance to be BOLD!

–       Undertake brand action first, and then do brand advertising.

–       E-Marketing can really make things happened.

–       Make sure to bring customers’ initial interest

–       Mobile marketing is a huge trend

–       Always make sure to find right tone for online conversation and stay in part of customer conversation.

–       Make customers think that they are important!

As one of their loyal customer in the past, I remembered how much I loveMcDonald’s when I was a child back in China. But after all these years’ scandals about their food and stuff I lost my passion about McDonald’s. After learning about their whole campaign and listening to Joel’s in-depth explanations of their campaign, I really think “Hey, look, McDonald’s does care about us after all”! And I really like the way they face their rumors and questions for their food quality and they push themselves in front of their customers to accept any challenges. How brave are they! Now I trust more about their food than before and be willing to eat some BigMac sometimes~ Thanks COMM 464 , McDonald’s and Joel for this amazing experience. 🙂

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_DLJK4o2YM

On November 8, there is a video from Youtube caught people’s attentions and shared by the popular social sharing site which showed that four guys in their 20s in the back of Pikeville’s Wal-Mart in the U.S. throwing iPad around and taped this video. And you can clearly tell that they were destroying those products purposely. After monitoring lots of comments for this video from different forums and Facebook and basically the main concerns from people are wondering whether they got fired, what action will Wal-Mart managers will respond and they declared that they do not want to shop at Wal-Mart anymore.

So what did Wal-Mart do and how long it took for them to respond to this online “crisis”?  A spokesperson told NBC News in response to this, said “It made us wince” and “we are also embarrassed”, she also added that the “associates involved no longer work for Wal-Mart”. Other than these, I checked there is nothing officially speaking or news press or online video response for that. However, from the online conversation about this video, Wal-Mart’s customers should be very careful and think twice when they buy any merchandise from Wal-Mart. From a marketer point of view, I think that preparing a very comprehensive plan using social media “triage” framework for better monitoring online conversation and faster responses for future crisis solution.

New York City Marathon is an annual popular event for runners globally which attracted tons of participants every year. However, this year because of Superstorm Sandy in the U.S., NYC Marathon got officially cancelled. Suddenly, fans that are flying in from all over the world became so upset about it and still want to find a way to run marathon for this year anyway. Therefore, a new race organizer took over the event — social media!

A Facebook page promoting a DIY RunAnyway event sprang up, as well as #RunAnyway hashtag on Twitter. Then, the race was on again! Steve Mattina, who is a Running Room manager and came a long way from Vancouver for his forth NYC Marathon, organized this social-media sponsored marathon for the every first time.

“Runners followed the original route of the first NYC marathon, run in 1970: four loops around Central Park, with a little added on at the end.” [Vancouver Sun]

The important take-away for this is that social media is now truly becoming everything in our daily lives. We do anything with social media. And it is a magic to get impossible things done in a easy way. The success of this event is because FB and Twitter spread the words so fast that attracting participants who had became one of the spontaneous volunteer or organizer for the event.

Well, in the near future, we might not be able to live without social media. And as a marketer, I think we need to work harder to figure out a way that promoting everything through social media and this way will bring the most benefits to us for sure.

Rovio Entertainment has released the first trailer for “Angry Birds Star Wars” and tie in game with Lucas Film”. Here is the video:

The Angry Birds is aiming to design more games with new features to attract more users now since the very first one launch in 2009. The video above tried to take on an icon of pop culture again to gain more value for their brand. According to the vice president of franchise development at Rovio, “This one of the few times Lucasfilm has allowed for such use of the original material, and we feel the end result is creative, powerful, and most importantly a lot of fun for fans of both ‘Angry Birds’ and ‘Star Wars’”. Also, in order to coincide with the game’s launch, toy company Hasbro will deliver a whole variety of products related to “Angry Birds Star Wars”.  Other than this, Angry Birds brand had launched another video which gone viral with over 8 million viewers in March—“Angry Birds Space”:

Furthermore, they launched “Bad Piggies” to extent their game line further.

All these video went viral with millions of fans viewing and became the No.1 paid iPhone app on the first day it was available. Rovio not only created a popular game for Smartphone users, but also a new brand and culture for all fans of Angry Birds. We could expect more Angry Birds games or products in the future.  Angry Birds will never stop ANGRY!

From trendwatching.com, I saw a new idea about being servile. “SERVILE means turning your brand into a lifestyle servant focused on catering to the needs, desires and whims of your customers, wherever and 

whenever they are.” One of the theories is “Letting customers try out first”. Well, as a female customer, I like manicure and nail painting. But the thing is when you shop for nail color you just have no idea about whether it will suit yourself by only looking at the bottle. Now there is a great virtual manicure service online available. From Marks & Spencer’s Virtual Manicure is a free online and in-store service which enables customers to test the UK retailer’s nail polish range on their own fingers. Shoppers can simply upload an image of their hands and click on a nail color to see what it would look like before they buy it.

Also, they offered makeover counter for lips, eyes, and entire face makeup. Now you could choose which makeup style or product is suit you the best, and then decides which one to buy. This makes our lives easier and save customers’ money by buying the right one! 🙂

A video named “The Next Big Thing is Already Here” is trying to go right after Apple in a really aggressive way for online marketing. From Visible Measures website, I saw the Samsung Galaxy S3 posted a video with quite good sharable quality and for sure it goes viral with over 8 million of visitors across the world. Here is the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf5-Prx19ZM

Well, this video indicated lots of information and directly pointed them to Apple’s iPhone 5 without mentioned a word about it. Since it is always a big thing for Apple fans to get their new version of iPhone, now Samsung Galaxy S3 aimed to beat iPhone 5 by providing more features. For this campaign they launched, this ad went viral without any doubt.  How they do this? I think it has something to do with great strategies of “talking” to audience and influent them by this. After posted the viral video, people will definitely talk about and start to wonder Samsung is might be an alternative for iPhone 5. This is the result of doing a good “talking” to customers. What they did is trying to let customers themselves to related their experience and feelings to the viral video and changing their minds without their noticing. This is absolutely what a good marketing should do to customers. Stuck in their heads! What Samsung did is more than this. Let’s dig more.

Here are some the offline campaigns they did to Apple. Samsung target Apple with guerilla flash mob campaign and aggressive iconic marketing. In Australia, a flash mob protested outside an Apple store and holding placards saying “Wake Up”. The message spread wildly and people can find the “wake up” branding and link back to Samsung website which is a counting down for the new Samsung phone launching. By doing these above, Apple should get hurt so badly and will have a hard time for selling their iPhone 5. As a customer and loyal user for Apple, even me started to think about which one should I buy, stick to iPhone or give a try to Samsung? How about you?:)

I spent my summer back in China this year. And I found something really interesting in the subway.  An online mass merchant retail company named Yihaodian had a campaign in the subway station with an idea that can make your life easier— virtual supermarket.

In case that you haven’t heard of virtual supermarket, let me ask you some questions. Are you tired of going to grocery shopping once a week during your busy schedule? If your answer is positive, well, let me introduce you a brilliant idea of using virtual supermarket.

Tesco wanted to adjust their marketing plan in order to appeal customers in South Korea market. They changed their name into Homeplus. And Homeplus designed a new campaign by launching their virtual subway store in South Korea. Their idea was “Let the store come to the people” and created virtual stores that wanting to permeate customers’ daily lives. Their first trial is subway stations by putting the posters which showing the display as same as the real stores. And you use your Smartphone to shop. Just simply scan the QR Code from the pictures and it will go to your online cart automatically. The most awesome thing is after you finished your purchasing; your goods will be delivered to your door after you get home. In terms of the feedbacks, people love the experience of this new way of ecommerce and commented that it is exactly like shopping in the actual store. In the meantime, Tesco’s idea might change people’s waiting time for subway into shopping time. For the result, online sales increased dramatically as 130% for Homeplus, as well as the new registered members rose by 76%. In order to be more competitive in the industry, through this campaign Homeplus had became the No.1 in online market and was a very close 2^nd offline after the No.1 company E-mart in Korea. Recently, Walmart finally has received conditional approval for a controlling share in the ecommerce site from Chinese government and hoping to match the increasing needs of Chinese online users.

I believe this is a wonderful e-marketing strategy for organizations nowadays because of the increasing number of Smartphone users across the world.

Here is a video from Youtube to explain what is Virtual Supermarket:

“Good music makes good times.”—Songza
Stop stressing out about the perfect playlist by using Songza, an awesome and unique app for music!

As we all known that California-based Pandora did a really good job for leading Internet streaming service industry. However, there are always some ways to continuing make our living life even simpler.

Now, thinking of a lazier way for choosing what music you want to listen to, instead of relying on algorithms like Pandora, its main rival competitor—Songza relies more on people. In this case, you do not even have to choose a song or artist, what you need to do is just choose a mood. Either via the concierge, the day and time (like on Friday night you get choices like a sweaty dance party or pre-gaming with friends, or Sunday night looking at pictures of your ex,lol) and then the playlists will be that way.

“We provide the right music at the right time so someone doesn’t have to do that work” —Songza.
New York City startup Songza Media Inc. started offering its free music streaming service online and through mobile apps in Canada on Aug.7. “In two weeks following its expansion in Canada, the Songza for iPhone and iPad was downloaded 320,000 times” (Songza Startup Singing a Canadian Tune). The Songza company makes money primarily through display ads, and it has only eight full-time employees and additionally about 25 independent music consultants who design the playlists.

So enjoy your laziness and the perfect music all the time!