Month: March 2011

As you all may have heard by now the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton is coming soon! With the royal wedding approaching in less than a month, I’ve noticed a lot of random and interesting wedding paraphernalia to commemorate the wedding. These range from Pez dispensers, Kate dolls, stamps, Iphone cases, and even nail decals. There is a lot of PR going into this wedding since it’s the next big wedding after the late Princess Diana’s. Although I must say some of these items might not be very popular amongst the public, just publicizing all these pictures of Prince William and Kate Middleton has given their wedding a lot of publicity. Even companies such as GE are capitalizing on the royal wedding craze by producing a commemorative fridge with the happy couple plastered onto the doors. On the other hand, the soon to be princess has also contributed to sales of many items since whatever she wears soon becomes popular and nothing is better than free advertising from the future princess of England. People are even asking for her hair cut now! All these memorabilia items are a response to customers’ needs of feeling included in such a special occasion. I think that after the wedding many of these items will become cheaper due to sales much like all the Olympic paraphernalia here in Vancouver so then a few more people may be inclined to purchase them. However, I find a lot of these things just a bit too crazy and most people I know would not purchase them.

While I was browsing through some external blogs I came across Drew’s Marketing Minute and what he calls “The Most Brilliant Outdoor Campaign Ever”. I was intrigued by this because this week we discussed outdoor advertising. Drew talks about an old advertising campaign that told a story through the use of billboards put up every week instead of advertising through other mediums. As Drew said they didn’t promote a specific product or provide any information, it was simply a story to draw in consumers to associate the love story with the pub. It may also help the pub reposition them as not just any old pub, but an ideal location for singles to meet. Even if consumers don’t have a chance to view all 9 billboards they’ll still be intrigued about the billboards and wonder what’s happening at Garcia’s and after repeat exposures to these billboards they may think of Garcia’s as the first place to go for a beer or friendly gathering thereby raising awareness for the pub and possibly putting the pub in the consumer’s retrieval set of brands. However, this would probably not work if most people had never heard of Garcia’s before so it may serve better as a type of reminder advertising. I’ve never really seen a lot of eye-catching billboard advertising though. Maybe there just aren’t very many billboards where I go. I always love coming across non-informative and creative ads though.

Lately I’ve noticed that more and more things are getting a make over. Or getting more bling added to it. For instance, I came across a Lego brick necklace with a genuine Swarovski crystal attached to it for the price of $14.99.
Not too bad and quite creative I’d say but I’m not sure who would buy that. Actually it seems more like Swarovski is really into accessorizing common everyday items with crystals. These items include headphones and memory sticks as well, more practical than a Lego brick at least. This cute piggy bejeweled memory stick retails for as much as $100 while I can probably find one for a good deal for $10.

However, there appears to be a market for bejeweled accessories, primarily female, high income and in their 20’s-30’s I’d assume. Although I would say it’s unnecessary to own one of these, nonetheless it would be nice to have one (if I had the money)! By extending their products to include crystallized items that are not just for decoration, Swarovski is effectively increasing their brand awareness and product lines. When people see these other items that are decorated with Swarovski crystals they will be reminded of all the other Swarovski products that they typically sell such as jewelry, household decorations and are gifts. There are also no other competitors who would make similar types of luxury items as well. Swarovski uses prestige pricing so that customers will feel that their products are more valuable and not everyone can buy them. As for me, I will just admire them from afar for now.

I love marketing.

Starbucks is celebrating its 40^th anniversary this spring and has launched a promotion for these petites where if you buy any handcrafted drink between 2-5 on March 10-12, you get a free petite. Seems pretty tempting right? According to the Starbucks website, petites are “…new, perfectly sized treats. There are eight different ones, and each is less than 200 calories – making for a well-deserved afternoon reward.” These treats include red velvet whoopee pies and cake pops! I’m not even sure what a cake pop is and I want one anyway! Again, this is yet another marketing ploy to get customers to taste test their new products and if they like it, they’ll surely come back again to try these delicious mini treats. I think the purpose to these treats is to target more health conscious consumers because these treats are smaller in size and have less than 200 calories where as most of the other pastries are at least 300 calories. The problem is, maybe you can’t eat just one and the calories will add up anyway (for me at least). There seems to be a rush for fast food companies and such to roll out new and healthy options to their current line of food items. As Lauren mentioned in her blog, https://blogs.ubc.ca/laurennipp/2011/03/03/tim-hortons-introduces-smoothies/ Tim Horton’s has recently launched smoothies that boast a whole serving of fruits in each cup. This is also to compete with Starbucks and McDonald’s because both companies are already offering smoothies as well. I think that this is a good move for Tim Horton’s because as Lauren said, they can secure a higher market share if they can attract people who are non-coffee drinkers to their stores to buy a smoothie and then maybe they’ll pick up a tim bit as well. I must say that the Tim Horton’s smoothies do sound tempting because of their lower prices ($1.99/10 ounces) compared to Starbucks where smoothies are 16 ounces and offered for $4.45. However, Starbucks is not competing on price since they have established themselves as a premium coffee brand so loyal health conscious Starbucks fans are bound to buy it anyway.
More pictures and nutrition information to be found at http://www.starbucks.com/menu/catalog/product?food=petites#view_control=product

As I was browsing through some other marketing blog posts, I came across this one. https://blogs.ubc.ca/colettecheung/2011/02/02/so-whats-so-good-about-aritzia/ The title immediately made me think the same thing. What IS so good about Aritzia? I realized that once I got a part time job I had to get SOMETHING from Artizia. I just had to own something with their TNA logo or something like the bat wing cardigan because I assumed that if it wasn’t stylish, why would so many people be shopping there? Of course I didn’t want to miss out on anything. Because of their higher prices, I associated the products with higher value and convinced myself that a hoodie that cost $50 (on sale!) would last for a long time. If not, I would make it last since it cost so much! As Colette had mentioned in her blog, the desire to shop there was a result of social influences such as seeing many people at school or on the streets with the TNA hoodies, jackets or bags. Since there were so many people that were walking advertisements for Aritizia they probably don’t need to spend a lot of money on advertising since they have some well established brands such as TNA or Wilfred within their store already. One more thing that I want to mention is that the target market for Aritzia is well segmented by age and of course gender. In my opinion, it does seem slightly weird to see women in their 40’s and maybe even 50’s shopping at Aritzia and this signifies that they have clearly communicated and connected their store’s image to the younger generation of teenagers to people in their late twenties. To date, I own a few items from Aritzia, but I’m no longer obsessed with shopping there. Also my wallet would not be too happy if I did.