Month: October 2010

Marketing through series / movies

Marketing occurs in many different mediums, one of which is the television. Television orientated marketing occurs in commercials but also in the more interesting marketing medium, series or movies. Products are everywhere,  so how do we decide which products to display on our shows? Certain products are prohibited from being shown without a payment made to the series, but other products, classified as necessities, have their brand hidden, so obviously the more interesting of  the two is the brands that pay to be shown on tv. I just find its ethical aspects interesting, such as which company pays the most to be seen daily by consumers, and is it right to market these products while the consumer is psychologically unaware! Also note that marketing is pretty much a cost driver for the shows! So it would be interesting to find out how much of the show’s/movie’s budget comes from business’ marketing.

As the title and the image suggests, my post is about what happens when large corporations such as RITZ diversify. The reason as to why i decided to post about this is because a factor that could affect Ritz chips’ sales for example, is the fact that they have crackers already; whenever a consumer, myself in particular, sees a company who’s being focusing on a product so long suddenly diversify, i generally feel a disinterest to the product. For example i use Axe shower gels but thats the only product i use of the brand for that particular need, i dont buy all products from the same brand because i feel too drawn into ONE brand and it makes me uncomfortable. Interestingly, when i buy my food, this whole thought process dissipates and i can easily buy food from the same company, such as Kraft packaged dinners. The fact is, i realized that consumers feel the need to consume from multiple companies, not because they care but because otherwise they feel like they belong to the company. Of course there are consumers to love to buy from only one company, but then again even large companies like Unilever keeps their subproducts under different names, many people for instance don’t know that Axe is under Unilever, they just see it as Axe, would this be because they are aware of the effect it could have on people? That would be interesting to find out!

The Starbucks Mug

I went to Starbucks the other day to meet up with someone when i caught a glance at someone holding one of the Starbucks mug; now i don’t usually pay attention but today i particularly realized how Starbucks uses these mugs to market their brand. When you think about it, without the mugs, Starbucks would be lacking in a vital marketing tool that does so many things. The mug with the brand name written on the side, lets everyone know where you get your coffee, it looks “cool”, it gives the consumer a sense of belonging, and the whole fact that as you order your coffee you use YOUR mug, it desensitizes the whole transaction process and makes it seem like more a NECESSITY than a want, which it is, because at 10 bucks a coffee every day, you’d be saving a lot of money not going to Starbucks! So yeah, i thought it was pretty ingenious that that mug had such a profound marketing effect on Starbucks consumers. Although of course i could proceed to actual surveys to figure out whether all this is true, but thats outside my time table X)

I didnt post last week, which is a funny story, I COULDNT FIGURE HOW TO, then i found the dashboard this week when i gave it a second try and voila! And so this is my second post this week to compensate

HERSHEY’S

Last week i bought a big packaged box of snacks composed of Reeses and Oh Henry! which are both Hershey brands, and the reason i’m writing about this box is what brought me to buy it. I was at Save on Foods and i had gotten a card which allows me to collect points and save some cash as well with the sales i make, every sale has a different amount of cash saved, and so i saw this HERSHEY’S box and at first glance i noticed the snack bars on it, all of which i thought were naively large due to the advertizing on the box, on top of this they advertized that it would give you 1500 points! just so you get a picture of how much that is, i spend 50 bucks there before and got 140 points from it all, so it seems like a very interesting deal! So i took the box based on those two things, and i was dissapointed on BOTH levels! As i got to the cashier she put the box through and there i stood shocked, i only gained 100 points again that day, i didnt argue about the sign i saw posted up because i was afraid i was wrong and secondly because i wanted the box anyways now that it was on the table. Then when i went home and open the box, the snack bars were MUCH smaller than i had anticipated! and they didnt even full to the top! it was only 3/4 full! so i was severely dissapointed that day and i found it to raise an interested marketing aspects, pshychological pricing, and packaging if i can call it like that. The images from the package always  seem so much more appealing that what you actually buy its much like we’re the fish and the packaging is the hook! the question is, do we bite?