Niki Chiriac's Blog

David Huynh in his blog BLOG 3 | The Jeremy Lin Story: From a Marketing Perspective spoke about the importance of tapping into the feelings of the consumer. I definitely agree with this statement, emotion is one of the strongest internal stimuli within an individual. However, in my opinion I am not truly sure if Jeremy Lin is being used directly as a marketer of the sport. It may be true that people who did not watch basketball before now tune in to watch the sport solely due to the fact that Jeremy Lin plays, but I don’t think the NBA industry used him as a marketing tactic. In my opinion, the NBA doesn’t really need any more marketing and I don’t see how they would be using Jeremy Lin to market the sport more. He has become a legend only because he is one of the first Asian-American basketball players in the NBA.

It is kind of cool to think that an industry this grand gets an increase in sales of tickets and merchandise because a new player has come along that the consumer society relates too. This can be seen in all sports fields though. Famous soccer stars such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, and David Beckham, to name only a few definitely help promote the soccer industry.  These athletes all indirectly promote brands and the soccer industry by only playing a sport. Jeremy Lin is the same.

I got the idea about this blog from my fellow college Alana Brodie. In her blog she mentioned that one of the most important aspects for products to “make it” is how visible they are to consumers. Alana went on to give an elaborate example of how Manolo Blahnik became a highly sought after, high end luxury shoe company as a result of the Sex and the City characters, Carrie Bradshaw. I definitely agree with her interpretation, seeing as in New York there are now tour guides dedicated to taking you to all the important places the girls of Sex and the City visited on a regular basis. These tour guides have increased business in all of these restaurants and stores a great deal.

After reading Alana’s blog I remembered one other product which launched itself by being featured on film. Mini Copper found fame in the 1969 movie, “The Italian Job” featuring Michael Caine. However, over the years it slowly lost its spot light especially in the United States where due to safety requirements did not originally sell. In 2003, the film’s remake was released and the film utilized BMW’s newly updated version of the Mini Cooper and regenerated the excitement of the name. I remember after watching the movie in 2003 thinking that this was one of the coolest cars I have ever seen. The fast car race was so intense that I began to compare Mini Coppers to other sports car like Aston Martin or Lamborghini.

Here is a video with the Mini Cooper segments of the 2003 Italian Job moive:

It is not a surprise that Mini Cooper made a great success through being featured in the Italian Job. Aston Martin did the same with the James Bond Series and GM had great publicity of their cars through Transformers.

The super bowl is one of the biggest, if not the biggest night in advertising. Companies pay big money and put in large amount of time and effort trying to develop the best commercial of the night. They all hope that the next day consumers all across the country will be talking about their commercial. There are those who succeed in making interesting and fun commercials and others who are known for controversial issues which they might bring up. According to AgencySpy the company which took home most controversial commercial of the year was Dannon. 

At first glance the ad seems quite innocent and you may be wondering what is wrong with it, but dig in deeper and there are clear problems. After the super bowl social media sites were buzzing with news that the background music sounded a lot like the song “Zebra” by John Butler Trio’s. Sure I didn’t notice at first either but take a look at this.

It’s enough to listen to the song for the first 5 seconds to see the distinct resemblance. Personally, I believe if Dannon where to actually have used this bands song as their background music they should have asked permission to do it. Although, to the average consumer this may not seem like a big deal, the next problem with the ad is definitely more serious.

This 7-Up commercial from Canada was created in 2001. It seems as though Dannon just reused the basis from a campaign that already existed. I am unclear about regulations regarding this act, but to me it is not only ethically wrong for the company to behave in this way, but also somewhat demeaning to their stature as a strong international company. Dannon should be able to come up with an original commercial and not resort to ideas that have already been used. The message this sends to consumers is that Dannon cannot compete creatively, which in turn may make some consumers see them as weak. Large companies should be capable of producing commercials which are both original and ethically correct. Personally, I do not see any excuse as to why Dannon put up this commercial.

SOPA or Stop Online Piracy Act was introduced in the United States House of Representative on October 26, 2011.  Since then it has been causing numerous controversy over whether or not the government has the right to monitor websites based on the basis of copyright infringement. Many opponents claim that it violates the First Amendment and that internet censorship will cripple the internet and will threaten other methods of free speech. I will not go into the details of the act anymore because it is quite complicated and does not really have to do anything with marketing. In any case if you want to read more about it and not have to skim numerous newspaper articles you can find an extensive article on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is one of the many companies who is protesting the SOPA act. Today they blacked out their entire site and one could not access any documents as a way to show what would happen if SOPA was passed.

So where does marketing come in? Well, as you may already know google is also one of the companies protesting the SOPA act. A complete black out will probably not occur because the amount of revenue they get from showing adds everyday is too substantial for them to block their entire site however if this legislation continues to be discussed it may be possible. If google does decide to shut down its servers for one day sure business will lose in gaining possible customers, but the amount would not be substantial. If the law truly did get passed, big websites such as youtube may face a challenge. Many companies use youtube as their means of advertisement. Often when watching a video a commercial pops up beforehand. These businesses that advertise through youtube will need to come up with a new means of advertising their product. The problem arises when other means are two expensive and the company may not have enough money to run any other sort of advertising campaign that is not based on the internet. If this occurs these companies will slowly lose their user base.

Passing a law like this would not be any different than what the North Koreans do when they sensor their internet sites. Furthermore, not only would businesses suffer, but consumers as well, and the whole population that uses the internet would definitely not react in a nice way.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/18/sopa-blackout-protest-makes-history

Hello and welcome to the blog of Niki Chiriac. Like most of you in this course I am a second year Sauder student. I have not yet decided on my option for next year so besides the fact that this course is a requirement for all second years I am attending this class in order to learn more about Marketing and the possible careers it has to offer. My experience in marketing is quite limited. During high school I was part of the Junior Achievement club which was basically a student run business. In my grade 12 year the club decided to throw a senior dance which would beat the turnout of dances held by student council. Note: My high school was known for the worst school dances ever with a maximum turnout of 30 people. It was in my last year that I got elected as the VP of the Marketing division. Although this may have been out of pure chance my main role lead a team of 6 students in running a small marketing campaign throughout the school to get maximum turn out at the dance. My experience in my high school club taught me a lot, but it was high school, so I did not learn anything technical. I am looking forward to learning more about marketing in this course.

My all time favourite add would have to be the Coca Cola polar bear commercials. Something about the penguins and polar bears coming together over a can of coke makes me all warm and fuzzy inside every time I watch it. I enjoyed this year’s Christmas campaign even more due to the fact that Coca Cola changed their cans to white in order to show their support for the dying polar bears in the Arctic.

A personal fact about me would be that I am very clumsy. I cannot remember a time when I had no bruises seeing as I often hit myself in different objects be it tables or doors or pretty much anything you can think of. I also love skiing so when I am not studying or doing homework I am usually up at Whistler.

The most important skills I gained in Comm299 were how to write an excellent resume and cover letter. I believe this was very useful for me since I had not written a resume or cover letter before. Furthermore, I learned about how to write approach letters. This was the most useful skill that I have applied from Comm299 recently. Last week I wrote an appeal letter to ask for an internship at the Canadian Embassy to Romania. Learning about appeal letters allowed me to find out how to structure my appeal letter in such a way that I would be able to obtain the position I wanted. During tutorial I learned about Wetfeet which was a very useful for me to find out what the job requirements are for different careers I was looking into. I also learned about all the different ways to use cool and look for job postings. I find that Comm299 was a very useful course which taught me a lot about what different resources exist for me and how I can answer all my career questions by myself.

Pick a career that you like and that interest you rather than one that is guaranteed a high salary.

When speaking to my dad last year about what career I should pursue he told me about how he ended up being a project manager. My dad went to university and started his own surveying business in Romania after graduating. When we moved to Canada in 1994 he worked as an engineer for a construction company. He did not enjoy his career and started a job at the New Westminster city hall while going to school to become an IT manager. After many years he finally started his own company and is now working as a project manager for ICBC. This path took him almost 20 years to get to a job that he truly enjoyed. If he were to go to computer engineering school in Romania he could have become a project manager a while ago. The reason why he did not choose this path was because when he was going to school computer engineering was just starting out and he did not see this career as a way of making money. He told me that during his time his dilemma was not about choosing a career that he would enjoy, but one that would provide him with enough money to live a decent life in a communist system. For me, my career decision depends on what I enjoy doing, and once I figure that out money will come afterwards. If you pursue a job that you enjoy you will become great and by being great money will follow.

The Olympics and the Fifa World Cup are the largest sporting events in the world. Sponsoring either one guarantees numerous rewards at a very high cost.

Great great publicity is achieved through the enormous number of viewers watching and the advertising campaign the company uses. Additionally, through enforced regulations the sponsor receives a guarantee that competition of other companies which provide substitute goods will be weakened. Brand image also increases due to sponsorship and the company can possibly gain more respect among consumers since it has associated itself with such great sports. These huge sporting events also provide great opportunity for expansion in global or national markets depending on the corporation. Corporations which have invested in such events to expand on the global market include Addidas, McDonalds, Visa, and Coca-Cola. Other Corporations such as Telus which sponsored the 2010 Winter Olympics look to reach a national market expansion. Evidently it is clear that small businesses which operate on a local market should not spend such large sums of money on such a huge event, but for large corporations the investment could be rewarding. As with all businesses, decisions should be based on a return of investment model. If the returns >the costs then the corporation has nothing to lose and sponsorship is a great choice.