Category: Marketing!

Winter is rolling in, snow is falling, fireplaces are being lit up, and the day that everyone has been waiting for all year is upon us. Christmas.. of course not, I’m talking about the release of the highly anticipated part 1 of the last movie in the Harry Potter series. Now I’m not a die hard Harry Potter fan like many people are, but I’ve read the books, and I’ve seen a few of the movies, and I actually just went to the 7th one last Tuesday. While sitting in the theatre and watching all the trailers for new movies that are going to be coming out, I couldn’t help but realize that not once had I seen a trailer for the Harry Potter movie… in fact I don’t think I know anyone who has!

This is unreal to me, because Harry Potter is so popular, and most of the Potter fans are so hardcore, that even without any advertising, the movie still managed to earn $125,017,372 opening weekend, which was more than every other movie playing in theatres combined earned.

This is a super smart move on the part of the advertising department for the Harry Potter movies, in that they realize Harry Potter fans act almost like a cult, and they probably knew the exact date that the movie was going to be released months in advance, and no advertising was needed at all! So instead of spending tons of money on super expensive TV advertisements, or any other type of advertisements at all really, they just let word of mouth spread about the new movie, and still earned a TON of money. They knew their product well, knew the type of audience and market that would be interested in their product, and knew what tactics they needed to use, and which were unnecessary.

Anyways, just a short one for today… it’s snowing and I’m gonna go play in it : ) Bye guys!

On Sunday night I was watching Desperate Housewives (great show..watch it) and a commercial came on. Now usually I absolutely hate commercials, and I just fast-forward through them, but the one caught my eye… anyways to save you the time of me explaining the entire commercial, I found it on youtube for ya, so enjoy..

.

I don’t know why… but I find this commercial absolutely hilarious, so i wanted to show it to some of my friends, and when I searched for it on youtube, I found ANOTHER video that made things a little more interesting….

If you look at the original “keyboard cat”, the video was posted  in 2007, and it has a whopping 10, 632,948 hits, making it an incredibly popular video. Now check out the pistachio commercial keyboard cat, this commercial was created on November 1, 2010, and it already has almost 100,000 hits. Now you might be wondering… so what? Besides being an advertisement what does keyboard cat have to do with marketing?

WELL, the thing that I find incredible, is the Wonderful Pistachio marketing team must have stumbled onto the hilarious clip of the original keyboard cat, along with 10.6  million other people, and noticed that for some reason, this appeals to the public, and a LOT of people are interested in this character. With this, they were able to create a commercial, over 3 years later, using an internet personality to sell their product. In fact, before this commercial I had never in my life heard of the company Wonderful Pistachio, and most people weren’t that intrigued by them as a company. If you look up any other Wonderful Pistachio commercial on youtube, they have under 60,000 hits, and have been up for at least a year. Now I’ll remind you that THIS particular Wonderful Pistachio commercial has racked up 100,000 hits in 2 weeks.

I think this commercial is going to be huge for the Wonderful Pistachio company, as it has already gotten so many people’s attention, and is bound to keep going while on the air, and while word of mouth spreads. By simply taking a cat that for some strange reason people love, they are going to have the potential of becoming a more well known company… I’m thinking the marketing department at Wonderful Pistachio is going to deserve a raise after this one!

Okidokes, thats about it… hope ya liked the commercial : )

So I was going through some blogs of my classmates, and I came across one that was pretty interesting by Anna, which would be found here. In it she was talking about how Photoshop is used in a ton of advertisements now, and it’s basically deceiving consumers into purchasing products that they think will make them appear the way the ad (which has clearly been photo-shopped) appears.

So for example, I searched up this ad with Jessica Alba in it. Now, I’m just using common sense here but I bet that most people would rather attend the party on the right, than the party on the right… disagreements? Probably not. The party on the right features a fun loving perfect looking Jessica Alba being surprised by the ‘accidental’ splash of water, some sort of fun looking drum in the foreground suggesting some live music is going on, and a top-notch dressed waiter carrying a tray of probably free alcoholic beverages all occurring on what looks like the sunniest day of the universe. Trust me… the line for this party would be around the block; as for the party on the left… line up… not so much. On the left, there is no cool music… just a mans arm, no accidental fun loving splash of water, we can’t even tell the man behind Alba is a waiter let alone with free alcoholic beverages, and, while still beautiful, Alba looks a little disheveled and her eyes are closed.  This, ladies and gentlemen, represents the wonders of photoshop and marketing. Marketers can use editing techniques to instantaneously improve a potential customers idea of a product, without offering anything new. The way I see it, there’s good and bad things associated with this.

Starting with the bad. Consumers never really know what they’re getting. Does the concealer they’re buying really cover undereye circles? Who knows. It very well might, but it could easily have been photoshopped to appear as such. In this such case, consumers are being tricked into buying products that they believe work one way, when really they do not.

Now on the other hand… I think photoshop can be good. Say someone thinks they’re ugly, crying every night, and they now have really puffy eyes as a consequence. Feeling pretty down on themselves and their now unfortunate eyes, they read a magazine and in it they see an advertisement for an under eye roller that eliminates eye puffiness, as portrayed in the (photoshopped) image. They rush to the store, buy the eye roller and apply it, and while it doesn’t really do anything… they believe it has because hey, the ad showed it did, and they suddenly feel better about themselves and don’t think they’re ugly anymore. While I know this example is kind of out there, it gets my point across. Photoshopped ads let us believe what we want to believe, and can psychologically make us think a product is working wonders and is super beneficial to us when it really isn’t. Some people might think this is deceiving and wrong, but really is it? People buy the under eye roller wanting to fix their problem so they can feel more confident and better about the way they look, so if they get the same result in the end, without actually maybe fixing the problem in its entirety as promised, is it really that bad? I don’t think so.

Anyways team, gotta go so let me know what you think about photoshop too!

goooooodday.

Hooolaaaa friends!

I’m pretty sure most, if not all, of you have heard of the world famous jeans company The Gap. They are well known for their jeans, their children’s clothing, and most of all their world famous white-lettering-on-navy-blue-background logo. The simple yet effective logo has been a trademark of The Gap for as long as many can remember, and it is hands down associated to the brand; so why would the marketing team at the The Gap have any incentive to change it? Recently, The Gap announced that they would be changing their logo to a new “more contemporary, modern expression.”, and they released images of it over the internet for consumers to see. After just a few days of the logo being viral, it wasn’t received very well to say the least. Gap consumers immediately flooded the internet with their displeasure, calling the new logo horrid, disgusting, and boring, and only 1 week after introducing the new logo, The Gap announced they would revert back to the original.

What intrigued me was not only the fact that they pulled the logo after only one measly week… but the fact that The Gap never once defended their new logo, or tried to get the public on their side with it. They simply introduced the logo, and withdrew it… Seems a little fishy to me. It doesn’t seem to make sense that The Gap would go through all that work and spend all that money designing a new logo, just to simply pull it after receiving some poor feedback. Apparently quite a few people agree with me and believe that it was all a marketing ploy. The Gap, being not the most new and upcoming company, hasn’t really been talked about in media or in the public in general for a while now, and after this apparent “logo flop” they were all anyone was talking about for a week, had articles published about them in the paper, and were being tweeted about everywhere; people started talking about The Gap again. To top it off, The Gap even wrote letters to the public basically saying that they respect the public opinion tremendously, and they changed the logo back to please the public. This was another intelligent marketing strategy for The Gap to use, because now they have risen in the eyes of the consumer. They are now more known as a brand that listens to consumers and does whatever they ask for… a very good thing for any brand.

So yeah, maybe they were actually planning on using the new logo, and maybe The Gap is just a brand that listens to their customers 100%, but honestly… I think there’s a little more to it than that.

Okay so it’s midterm season… most people are super stressed, and while I am also one of them, I’ve managed to kind of calm my self using an odd method. For honestly the past week, I’ve had a jingle stuck in my head and it just won’t go away. It’s a pretty happy jingle, and I honestly believe it has managed to calm me about midterms, because with this song stuck in my head life just seems happier for some reason. You’ve really got to give it up to the company that uses this jingle in their advertisements, because ever since I heard it I just can’t get it out of my head, therefore I can’t get that commercial out of my head… it’s pretty good marketing if you ask me. Anyways, I’ve posted the song for you to hear… but if you don’t want to have a song stuck in your head forever… you might not want to.

Enjoy! (maybe…)

So after cruising through some blogs, I stumbled upon this-a one, by my friend Josh in my marketing class. He talked about freebie marketing… and while I had never really thought about it, he’s totally right… and its pretty astounding how often this happens. For example, I got a new cell phone in the summer. It was brand new for “FREE, no strings attached, no hidden fees, no NOTHING” (as according to the sales person), needless to say I was pretty stoked on life. Then I find out that, oh no big deal, since I got this beautiful gift of a free phone from Telus, I was committed in a three year contract paying a ton of money for little minutes, paying $7.25 in taxes per month for “air fees” (who even knows what those are anyways?!), and not to mention I had to pay extra for any additional benefits such as caller ID and voicemail. BUT HEY… the phone was FREE! After hearing my outrage, you’d probably assume that I declined the free phone, and moved to a service provider a bit more to my liking, but actually I haven’t. I’ve been a Telus user since I was in grade 7, getting free phones all the while, and honestly I don’t think I’ll switch providers any time soon.

Freebies that companies offer seem so enticing and appealing at the time, that people don’t really realize what they’re getting sucked into. As mentioned by Josh in his blog, an excellent example is razors. Yeah, you buy the handle one time for a mere $5… but then you’re committed for life buying refills once a month in packs of 3 for an astounding $20.00. I think customers, once having gotten the initial bargain or freebie, the razor handle in this case, they feel as though they are committed to the product. How can they pass up the FREE handle! It would be a missed opportunity for them not to dish out $20.00 monthly to keep the free razor handle alive, and that would just be irresponsible of them right? Hrrmmm… not so sure.

Technically, I’m not one to talk, as I’ve taken my freebie phones with a smile on my face, then died every month when I get my phone bill…but hey, maybe when my contract runs out this time things will change…

although unlikely… I just love free phones.

SEEEEEEEya later gator!

Hola team,

So I came home from school the other day, and a bunch of my friends were crowded around a laptop, all of them looking pretty excited. I figured I’d check out what all the fuss was about so I pushed my way to the front and saw that they were on the BC Lottery online gambling website. Now, I never gamble period, let alone online cause I see it as a way of pretty much asking to lose money, but my friends explained that this was an opportunity I couldn’t really pass up. Basically, the website playnow.com had a promotion on that just recently ended on October 5th; They promised that if you created an account on their website, logged in and played their games betting at least $100 of your own money, they would give you a token worth $100 that you could use to bet with on their site. Sparing the tricky directions (which can be found here), there was a way that people could safely bet their own $100, ensuring they earned back every cent, and then do the same with the $100 token that the website gave them, and automatically win $100 all in 5 minutes. I thought this must be too good to be true, but sure enough, 2 days after me and my friends tried this promotion on playnow.com, we were rewarded with a $100 direct deposit into our bank accounts.

So now I’m wondering, the website must have figured this ploy out… no way they didn’t realize that if people play the right game the right way they were practically giving away literally hundreds of dollars. I think that play it now did this promotion on purpose, trying to win back customer appeal. Actually…a few years ago play it now was involved in a big scandal where the banking information of some of their users got released online, so I think they’re trying to save face almost, and regain the popularity amongst online gambling. Secondly, I bet they are expecting people to be so excited after winning $100 right on the spot, that they will keep using the website, and potentially lose the money, or end up getting addicted and bet more of their own money. I think it’s a really smart move on their part, because people are using their site again! Even if they lose a ton of money over this promotion, if they can capture a new audience of customers, they will make all the money back and more in the future.

Advertising over the years has changed drastically. In the past, ads were designed with only the product in mind, and were very informative and promoting of the product, yet slightly boring. While ads of previous years have been sufficient enough during their time, they just don’t cut it in our generation where ads can be displayed practically everywhere, from displayed in a magazine to being the side boards at a professional hockey game. Advertisements now-a-days need to be eye catching, bold, and intriguing to get the consumers attention and persuade them to buy the product being advertised. However are some tactics that companies are using going too far?

Companies have started to advertise in a much bolder sense than ever seen before, and it is starting to become unethical and wrong. Many advertisements now include risque photos and concepts that, although they are very noticeable, may be excessive. An ad I discovered on another blog that demonstrates my point entirely, is one put out by the company Sisley Fashion. In one of their many ads from the “Fashion Junkie” campaign, there are two extremely disheveled girls sprawled out on a table pretending to snort the thin white straps of a dress as though they were lines of cocaine, as seen here http://www.adpunch.org/entry/sisley-fashion-junkie/.  I completely agree with this blog in the fact that had Sisley found it entirely necessary to use addiction as a source of persuasion, they could have probably done in a manor that was a bit more respectable and less blunt. On top of that, I think it’s disgusting that Sisley is using a major societal issue as a way to sell their product. So basically, I think that yes, companies are needing to be new and unique in their advertisements, however they need to know where to draw the line between eye-catching and intriguing, and unethical and wrong.

gooooodbyebye.

So you’re walking down the boardwalk on the sunniest afternoon in July and you suddenly get a craving for ice cream. You casually walk down the street and notice two seemingly similar ice cream shops located side by side. One of the ice cream shops has a massive line, while the other merely has a few people standing out front. By the huge crowd gathered out front of the first ice cream store, it seems pretty obvious that there must be something phenominal about their ice cream; the price must be way lower, the quality of the ice cream must be way better, or the service in the shop must be outstanding right?

That’s what most people would think, that’s what they most likely want you to think in fact, but the real reason why the first ice cream shop has such a higher demand all comes from the advertising being done outside the store. From the street, while both ice cream shops have huge posters with pictures of ice cream cones, and massive signs with their 60 flavours, the first store has another sign, and it’s this sign that makes the difference. That last sign that they have that pushes their product up and over the other ice cream shops product is simple, and it reads,“Buy one, get one free”.Without even thinking consumers line up at this shop, because they automatically feel as though they are getting a better deal and more value for their money. Hey, all they have to do is buy one ice cream cone and they get another one entirely free, no questions asked! The consumers at the first ice cream shop, who have been waiting in line now for 35 minutes are waiting to buy one $4 ice cream cone… buy hey, then they get one free. What they don’t realize is that if they were to walk right next door, to the store with absolutely no line, they could buy one ice cream cone for $2. So here’s where I’m going to let you do the math. It probably didn’t take you long to realize that 1 ice cream cone for $4, plus the one for free works out to be $2 per cone, while at the second store they’re simply priced at $2 a cone… the prices are the exact same. However people line up for ages at the “buy one get one free” ice cream shop, because based off of a strategically priced product and advertising campaign, they have practically tricked consumers into thinking they are getting a better deal.

Personally, I think it’s incredible that consumers can’t figure this out, and it’s working incredibly in the favour of the first ice cream shop. They have discovered a method to make it look like they are giving the same product to their customers for a greater benefit than their competitors, however they are actually giving them the exact same value, but forcing them to wait twice as long to get it.