During the exhibitiion of the annual Irrigation Association Show in San Diego on November 6-8, I was constantly reminded of  Federico Fasano’s blog post about how Cariboo’s new marketing tactic was to be more green and attract contentious customers, https://blogs.ubc.ca/federicofasano/. I remember my first reaction when it was showcased in class and it was something along the lines of, had the green movement gone too far? Could Cariboo possibly sell more beers because of this? I doubted their efforts because I personally would not change beers just because it is more “green.”

How this ties into my story is during the exhibition one of the dominant themes that I noticed was “water conservation, recycled plastic,” or in other words the “green” movement. It was new to me, even though I have been working as a sales associate in an international Irrigation Company, Irriline, for the past year I had not come across such strong green marketing strategies being used by various companies. At first I thought it was a possibly a useless tactic, just like Cariboo’s “Support Reforestation.” However as the exhibition began and visitors started entering, it became visible that those companies were getting higher volumes of attraction than companies without those types of advertising. Our entire staff team was confused, as to why all of a sudden green movement had grown during this event.

It soon became apparent that this years event farmers were invited as well as the usual distributers which I had been familiar with. This change the playing field, and the companies that knew it would, had the ability to change their market target efficiently by attracting the farmers, who were big on environmental contentious as opposed to distributers who only resold items for profits.

All in all this made me reconsider Cariboo’s effectiveness, I was looking at it subjectively and did not think of the other types of market segments that it could potentially bring it. Just like how the green Irrigation advertising did not necessarily attract new distributers, it brought in a different segment all together, the farmers. Lastly I noticed that this years website had even changed! the background had turned green, different pictures, all focusing on the environmentally friendly theme.

Irrigation Association Website:

http://www.irrigation.org/irrigationshow/

Something that caught my attention in the various blog posts that I read over the thanksgiving holiday was Alex Taylor’s blog, he mentioned the impact of Internet particularly Youtube in the world of advertising. It caught my attention because as I was reading it, I was also trying to listen to a new song posted on youtube which ironically enough had a 16 second unstoppable commercial. I can not remember the time Youtube started allowing commercials before streaming videos, but I can recall the emotion which consisted of anger and frustration, however overtime I guess it had become a “norm” and common enough that I barely noticed them.

So i reloaded the youtube page to actually catch the commercial and listen to what it had to say , It was a common coca cola commercial where teenagers were on yachts drinking coca cola and having a time of their life. I ended up watching over 10 Coca Cola Commercials which finally led me to a Pepsi commercial that I think was brilliant in capturing their message.

What this commercial shows is a young boy that first of all buys 2 Coca Cola cans, uses them as a foot stool so that he can reach his favourite drink, Pepsi. What I interpreted from that  was  Pepsi was communicating that even though Coke might be selling more(2 cans), people really want Pepsi, in addition it was showing that Pepsi customers are loyal and will do anything to get their hands on Pepsi even if it means buying two Cokes. As i dug more into their advertising techniques I noticed this was a common theme in Pepsi commercials, to show the loyalty of their costumers as opposed to Coke’s commercials which usually involved people drinking coke and having a great time. Personally I believe since Coke does actually have more consumers, Pepsi does need to prove to the general public that is it better than Coke, and therefore include it in their commercials, while Coke does not need to follow the same marketing strategies.

More pepsi commercials with the same tactics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMo6o0BtFG8

Hi, my name is Pouya Siadat and this is my first marketing blog for Comm 296. I will be discussing and sharing things that I find interesting in the expanding marketing world.

Last friday, while ordering food at Triple O’s something intriguing caught my attention, the server asked if we needed any “Kleenex.” I soon realized that she had replaced a noun, for a brand name that sells a specific object, in this case facial tissues. I proceeded by asking if the tissues were actually Kleenex and after a few seconds of confusion she confessed she did not know. This seemed like a great marketing technique because it made people associate an object with a brand name and it had become so popular that people accidentally participate in marketing Kleenex to others.

Kleenex was first to market facial tissue products in 1924, and has basically had market share dominance since then, with its main direct competitors being Puffs and Scotts. Kleenex does not necessarily have more advertising than Puffs, it does not necessarily have better facial tissues, but one thing it has for sure is genericized trademarking which will forever remain.

This got me thinking about the various other brands that had basically have taken over the generic names due to either market control or first to market. Me and my friend, Arde came up with a few more including: Walkman, Tide and Vaseline. After a quick google session,  we found a lot more interesting ones such as Chapstick, Stotch Tape which had taken over their respective market.

There is a longer list here: http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0768920.html

EDIT:  After looking over my writing I noticed I used another genericized term ” google” inadvertently, instead of saying search engine.

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