NikitAkimov

The group project at the first glance surely did seem like a daunting task. However, at the beginning of the term I couldn’t start to begin how interesting it was going to be. Having to be a team player throughout the semester helped me to keep my agenda organized and surely did provide me with interesting tasks that I had to approach responsibly knowing that I am a part of the team. Also I found out that group assignments that we did in this course helped me to improve my communication skills, and now I feel more comfortable when I work in a group than before.

Because of this project I clearly understand how it is important to arrange task between the group members and finish everything on time. I was glad to work with my team members since all of them were open minded, friendly, responsibly, and funny.

In future group works, I will definitely use this experience in other teamwork in order to complete task successfully.

The reason why I chose marketing is because I was always interested in business and marketing is a very important part of business. During this course I get a clear understanding how marketing strategies work, and that it is not all about the money.

Overallб this course is really helpful for people that are interested in business. I found out a lot of strategies that can make your business more successful. Also I met a lot of interesting people in our class and I am going to keep in touch with them. This course helped me a lot and I will recommend other students to attend this class.

In response to Troy Holmes’ blog post.

I really liked your posting about that advertisement failure. Unfortunately in pursuit for “originality” many companies end up over-doing it, such as in this case. Although I agree with you on the fact that this ad should have never been printed, I still think that all this rustle about it being “adultery-encouraging” is a mountain made out of a molehill. In my opinion, the ad (quite clumsy, indeed) refers to unacceptability of skipping a workout by interlinking it with something highly immoral. Other possible reason for making such a “scandalous” ad was to create a strong impression that would draw a loo of public’s attention. Such ads are not uncommon practice, for instance there is an ad of BMW/Audi during the so-called “car advertising war”.

In response to Seth Godin post.

When I first the read the title of the post “Is the new Kindle Zero the sign of things to come?” by Seth Godin, I instantly assumed it was going to be one of those blogs about hi tech blogs describing all the benefits that technologies may now offer. Little did I expect to see some insight into how the adds work, but first a little summary of the blog. In his post Seth Godin writes about the announcement of Kindle Zero the first free kindle. Beyond that, a reader can even get some money by reading certain books. At this part I was all like “Nope, another internet fable, there’s gotta be something” and this is about time when Seth gives some insight as to the incentive of such “inefficient” pricing for the product. The thing is, as the “free” part captures vast amount of customers Kindle may incorporate huge amount of adds into their devices and e-books. Since the customers didn’t really pay anything in the first place they are likely to put up with various “pop-ups” that they wouldn’t tolerate in the product they paid for. Therefore, Kindle not only gets a huge audience for possible adds, but also has a pretty good chance of keeping the audience reading (money incentive) and thus looking at the adds. We all know too well that while adds may not make an individual go and brainlessly desolate the shelves, they surely do have an impact on the sales of advertised products. Seth Godin’s blog not only reminded me that there are no “good Samaritans” in the business world, but also was quite entertaining and engaging. Overall, I think that he did a great job doing his blog and I hope that he can keep it up.

I remember being a 9 years old kid and living in a Post-Soviet country. Back then sudden exposure to western ideologies was quite a sensation. Everything felt anew. Although I wasn’t quite the kid of Soviet Union, I witnessed the remnants of communist ways. For instance, the first school I went to had those old soviet books with colorful pictures of “pioners” (sort of Soviet Boy scouts) that vigorously proclaimed the Soviet’s truths. The schools themselves were named after Soviet authors, revolutionaries and public figures.

Needless to say that even some of the older propaganda posters still could be found on the streets. However, as the time went these very posters were outnumbered by the new western adds. The difference between those was striking.

First we have a moderately dressed woman that encourages her youngsters to study, and right across the street a huge banner with a Kelvin Klein add that depicts…. Well we all know what’s on those Kelvin Klein adds, don’t we? I mean yeah… The difference was amazing.

As I look back at this time, I can only try to imagine how did the people, good old Soviet people felt about it. Those “heinous, capitalist West” adds weren’t just adds, those were the heralds of the change in the old lifestyle.

Huge companies are starting to come up with very creative marketing strategies nowadays. The one that surprised me the most is the automobiles’ “billboard war”.

BMW/Audi, two giant companies with enormous budgets and sick creativity were the ones that started a billboard “war”. According to Audi everything started in LA, CA with “innocent” ad from Audi with A4 model where it says “ Your Move, BMW”. Not surprisingly BMW answered with a huge billboard just across the street with M3 model that says “ Checkmate”.  That immediately involved attention of all kind of media and was a topic of conversation. This move from BMW was very surprising for Audi, so they started to think deeply about this “war” and responded with their amazing king R8 with provocative claim, “ Time to check your luxury badge. It may have expired”.

Now the billboard war in LA is finished. However, this led to the ad war between these two titans all over the world, and continued for a long time. The last response that put an end to the battle was a BMW ad in Hong Kong that was erected alongside Audi’s dealership with the caption “[BMW 5-series] Who Knew Efficiency Could be so Beautiful ”. Now, this may seem as an end of the “war”; however, it was just the beginning because other car companies such as Subaru, Jaguar, Mercedes stepped into the game and continued it. Until Bentley made the last move in this “war”.

The billboard war is a great example of a creative approach to advertisement. It illustrates how even the giant companies and corporations are open to new and creative ideas of expanding their market share through un-orthodoxal advertising.

Marketing is a basic management process with the main purpose of selling goods and services to customers. The quintessential aspect of this process is understanding customers’ needs and wants. With that in mind, advertisers take a great variety of approaches (quite often unethical) trying to get people to buy the advertised services and goods. Freedom of speech and press gives the people in marketing department a right of advertising their products in almost every which way they prefer, sometimes even in somewhat abusive, or to certain extent offensive manner. An example of this would be the advertisement by a fishing company where a hidden image of “Fishy Catering” is added to a religious icon.

For some people such a “fishy” move may be nothing, but a funny image. On the other hand, for people with Christian religious affiliation that ad might be the source of perplexity, or even anger.These issues often take place when marketers try to catch the minds of majority in a specific cultural region, while forgetting about the minorities. In this very case, however it is doubtful that the add was designed for a predominantly non-Christian society, considering the English name of the company. The possible purpose of using religious image in the advertisement of the product is to create a strong impression that would later on make the audience differentiate the product from the other goods in the market.