Month: October 2013

Just got back from Class 12 of COMM101 today (10/15/13). Such an amazing experience with lots of things to draw from!

The design of today’s class has given me an absolutely exciting insight into how companies make big decisions. From the Consultants to Investors and CEO, everyone will need to gather to help define, identify benefits and risks among a bunch of options and recommendations to arrive at a final conclusion.

Further from realizing the basic necessity of a meeting, I’ve also learned from today what makes a great meeting great. By being put into small groups and try to competitively take a stance, the model meeting we had today, I believe, went as smoothly as it could. The atmosphere was friendly yet competitive, pushing every one’s minds at work and contribute their ideas to protect their opinions, which is really important for investors and CEO to fully vision each option’s pros and cons, yet always bear in mind the larger goal of a united ‘company’.

Aside from that, my group (Netflix buying content) won! How awesome. And, today I’ve come to realize I go to school with a bunch of great people.

Nam,

So, I figured I would write another blog on what I feel about another legendary release: FIFA 14!

Creating the exact same phenomenal effect on public as GTA, EA’s marketing strategies on FIFA 14 would also worth considering.

In the first place, the most obvious and invaluable strength FIFA 14 has for itself is the brand name. Take a look at another logo of the game to see for yourself:

Yep. “FIFA Official Licnesed Product”. Eat that, Konami!

First and foremost, EA has managed to demonstrate the FIFA brand as a ‘legit’ one. Aside from being first in the soccer video game industry, FIFA gains so much from earning official license to use brands and names of many leagues, clubs and players in the world, which acts as a perfect point of parity as well as difference, to compete with Konami’s PES (Pro Evolution Soccer). The key partnership with FIFA gives the game a significant amount of competitive advantages, such as recognition and professionalism, as opposed to PES, which has always had to alternate league and team names, even important ones, owing to lack of licensing. Another advantage would be name power. Its ability to take the largest, most popular association in the real-world soccer industry, FIFA, as its product’s name presents a major advantage in impressing the public, in lieu of the abbreviation PES, which has, to some extent, fallen into the ‘No-Name trap’, according to Al Ries and Jack Trout’s arguments.

Furthermore, EA has barely ceased to increase FIFA’s gaming experience. One of the major categories to establish good PODs, brand performance has always been zeroed in on. The game is providing better service, operating efficiency, and, especially, much more impressive graphics and design, which all play a really important role in the field of sports’ video games, where appearance of players, voices of commentators and so on strongly affect the experience of players.

From quick consideration of the two successful video games released in 2013, marketing strategies, especially that of brand positioning, display how important they are to sales.

Nam,

As the epic action-adventure video game has come out for a while, I’ve decided I’d like to share some of my thoughts, and excitement, as my college housemates have already started playing, for the product. Apparently there has been many amazing enhancements and new features in the game, surrounding the whole plot itself (playing under 3 characters instead of 1 in the past), new ‘missions’, and better graphics. Certainly there have been words of mouth all over the world looking forward to the game’s release and booming sales that follow (within 24 hours of release, Grand Theft Auto V generated more than $800 million in revenue … Three days after the release, the game had surpassed $1 billion in sales, making it the fastest selling entertainment product in history), which is an inarguable validation of Rockstar’s, GTA’s producer, marketing strategies. Interestingly, the game was first acknowledged in 2011, 2 years before the official release, and has been able to keep public’s attention ever since. How? Apparently, GTA is one of the strongest brands in its current market: Enough P.O.Ps to go about and lots, I mean lots, of quality P.O.Ds (I have yet to find such a comprehensive game, where you can drive, shoot, rob and play tennis at the same time), few competitors (only 2 or 3 video games as I know of are still pursuing the action-adventure type, but yet to come close to GTA’s comprehensiveness).

GTA is probably the first to introduce a super comprehensive video game, which has helped create a perfect frame of reference. It has also managed to avoid the ‘No-name Trap’ for the abbreviation ‘GTA’ (Grand Theft Auto), probably by focusing on the quality and customers’ experience of the game and, since GTA I, kept on frequently developing sequential products with awesome enhancements and certain uniqueness, and come up with other supplementary apps as an usually recommended strategy for market leaders.

In general, GTA has succeeded in getting into customers’ mind and stayed on top ever since (according to GameRankings, the game received an average review score of 97.15% and 96.09% for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, respectively)

Nam,

Recently there’s been an article about the potential move of Microsoft to ask its wealthy co-founder and current Chairman, Bill(ionaire) Gates, to step down, following the soon-to-be-former CEO of the Company, Steve Ballmer. It provides that the top 20 investors in Microsoft is lobbying the board to “press for Bill Gates to step down as chairman of the software company he co-founded 38 years ago”. The main cause for this, as we can all guess, would be money, or ‘capital allocation’, as used in the article.

Apparently, Microsoft, and its Office products specifically, are in a declining market, yet still brings in a great amount of profits each year. The argument as to whether or not Gates would keep on doing wonders for the company arises from the strategy Microsoft has been using with its money. As a goliath in a shrinking market, all Microsoft needs to do is to remain effective a monopoly. Nevertheless, the Gates or Ballmer strategy is to invest all the profits into new businesses, most of which have never before related to the Company value proposition, such as its recent purchases of Nokia, Skype, aQuantive or Bing. Shareholders believe that doing the opposite, maximizing profits and allocating them to shareholders to do whatever they want, would be the better choice (well for you obviously). Surely this sounds like a plan to phase Microsoft out of the market, maybe in 10-15 years, which is also the reason why people want Gates to step down, as who would go ahead with a strategy to abandon his own ‘son’?

This’s got me thinking about the ethics that we business students are often taught about. After all, even in one of the wealthiest corporations, money still comes across as the biggest concern, always being a motive for people to ‘kick others out’, including the richest man on Earth. Even in this case of Microsoft, when there’s no ‘correct answer’ in terms of the future yet, everyone seems to prefer a happy ending with a pocketful of money to go home and play with the kids.

Nam,

On a different note, aside from the Gates & Melinda foundation, I wonder how the ‘super fanatic workaholic’ Bill Gates would do when he … runs out of work?

*I’m splitting my original entry to 3 small ones by each main point, as I realized it went way over the 200-word limit.

Recently I read an interesting article on BusinessInsider which talked about the flaws in our brains that subconsciously affect how we behave on a daily basis. One of them, though not as surprising as the others, seemed fascinating to me: The confirmation bias. It states that the majority of us want and try to surround ourselves with people  and things that present the same believes. For example, you would rather get along with people who share the same opinions as you do, read the articles that share your topic of interest, and of course, ignore ones that do not (which I hope is not happening now). The article considered this phenomenon a flaw, and advised readers to challenge their beliefs on a regular basis. Basically, it claimed that we’re reluctant to change, and (ironically) had better change it. This kept me thinking. About Change.

Throughout the course of history we human have witnessed so many stories about great leaders and visionaries who seem to be born a genius and just keep on being themselves and defying other trivial beliefs to eventually arrive at greatness. In fact, many of them have become popular inspirational anecdotes, such as one about The Beatles when they were told that their music sucked, did not care, and went on to become worldwide famous. But is never agreeing to change really the case, or is it the opposite as suggested by the aforementioned article?

[..continued below]

Well, like many other answers to questions aroused from business and life, we cannot be sure. But one thing I strongly believe, we do change, for the better.

In business we care a lot about brands, and consider a big brand a business success, but brands (that represent success) also exist in many other aspects in life. It may seem pretty random a thought, but take Roger Federer for example. In modern tennis, Federer seems like a living monument. He owns almost every possible record in the field. And the most important thing: everyone reveres him, from fellow players to the sport’s fans, and even its legends. As a ‘brand’, he represents perfection, class, elegance and true sportsmanship. Another reason why Roger can be considered a brand is that there are actually some true successful business brands that partner with him, to share the same viral image. The Nike clothing that he always wears, most of them have now been customized for himself only, the Rolex that he wears every time he lifts a major trophy, the Mercedes that he drives. How does Roger relate to change nevertheless? Well, take a moment to get out of the fancy story, and step back to reality to figure this out: Roger is also a human. As a young athlete, in general, Roger was a hothead. He is described to always be smashing his rackets and even offending his partners. But yes, the changing point of the story, Roger partnered with a wise Australian coach who helped put sense into him and eventually turned the bad-tempered kid to the classy legend. Apparently Federer changed for the better. But that’s just an one-sided story. There have been many cases when Roger had to choose whether or not, and eventually refuse, to change. For example, at the age of 11 he was (already) faced with a career choice, between soccer and tennis. Though how Roger’d be doing as a soccer player now remains a mystery, tennis turned about to be enough good a choice. Despite the importance of the decision for a 11-year-old, Federer somehow managed to stick to what he was doing well, given that many of his family members were soccer pros and encouraging him to choose soccer in those early days. Who would imagine Roger now had he agreed to change in that situation?

In a more business-related case, Mark Zuckerberg makes the very epitome. During the summer of 2004, while a student at Harvard, Mark created a website called Facemash, which basically allowed students to choose between two random fellow female students on campus, in terms of “who’s hotter”.  The website was a hit, spreading throughout the campus unceasingly and became so popular that it got … shut down by the school. Mark even faced with academic probation. Did he decide to change? Yes. Months later, based on the very idea of Facemash, Mark with his college peers came up with a new website, called TheFacebook (rings a bell?). A big ‘change’ in the idea created a hugely ‘better’ result. Soon after that, Mark came into another opportunity for a change. The website that he and his peers created in their sophomore dorm room, started from a $12.000 investment from its co-founder, Eduardo Saverin, received an offer from Yahoo, worth a billion! Every one was aware of Facebook’s potential, and willing to put money into it. “No!”, said Mark. Refusing to compromise his vision, Mark turned down every request to buy his company, or to even put advertisement on Facebook yet, as to his belief in growth over profits. Pig-headed? I don’t think so. Facebook, despite all the privacy rumors and other issues surrounding it, still does very well ’till today, with its CEO and founder, Mark Zuckerberg, being the youngest billionaire in the world! And Yahoo? Not so much. 

Over the two cases above, it is reasonable to conclude that in business, to change for a better is feasible, and that to consider a few other options could never kill . However, there are cases when we really need to consider sticking to our own beliefs and go ahead with the plan, no matter how inviting the choices we leave behind are. Thus, it’d be wise for companies to be prepared for adaptations, to have a fundamental yet flexible business plan, in order to change, or not, to succeed.

After all, it’s business. It’d be foolish to think we can actually have an applicable recipe that never goes wrong. We’ll just never know.

Nam,