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What am I seeing in the bay recently? RED MITTENS! Yes they are back…. well not really. The company came out with new red mittens that have a maple leaf rather than the Olympic rings. Will you buy them? I actually think i would love a pair. Hudson Bay is actually taking advantage from the Olympic event. Their marketing strategy is quite smart, especially after the Olympics they learned how successful the red mittens were selling. By introducing the new red mittens, people would buy them and think about the Olympics again. Although its not the same, it still gives an opportunity to people that didn’t buy the mittens in the Olympic and regret it.  Especially the red mittens are actually becoming a “symbol” of being a Canadian. It also reminds people of how successful Canada did in the Olympics. If your a proud of Canadian and love your nation….. GO BUY ONE NOW!

I’ve noticed that a lot of company’s have been doing a lot of advertising on facebook. For example, what I’ve been noticing is that the company’s would make “groups” or a sort of brand name on facebook and people will start to “like” the specific store. This way it pops up into the homepage of their friends facebook and helps promote the company to other people. Also, have you noticed the side advertisements, they put “_______(your name) and then the advertisement in order to make it more specialized to each users. Actually, this doesn’t just occur in facebook, but in Google or other websites too. I find that this is quite a smart way of making it personal to each person. Its kind of like those emails we all receive in UBC where it goes “Dear ______”. This does make it more specialized to the customers, however is it effective? In my point of view, it makes no difference since now everyone knows its just a technology playing around with your name in order to grab your attention. Now that i know that most of these advertisements are done by that way, it doesn’t attract me more to look at them.

I was looking through the discussion forum on vista from my MIS course and i saw this interesting link that my fellow classmate shared.  Cineplex Mobile This article talks about how cineplex is having an app in android, blackberry and iphones. The app makes it easier for consumers to purchase their tickets. I think this can help reduce prices in tickets since there can be less staff working at the box office. This can prevent customers for coming to the theatre to find that the movie is sold out. However it might decrease the amount of customers who once were in the movie theatre to find out the movie they want to watch is sold out, but is willing to try another movie. I had experience that a few times but since i made the trip to the theatre, i decide to watch another movie. By finding out in advance that the movie is sold out, i might as well just save the trip from going. Also, i think making an App is a smart marketing strategy. Cineplex is using advance technology to reach out to younger users. They saw the trend of creating apps to make it convenient for customers to purchase products. However as a consumer, i would feel that i lack the “feel” of actually buying a product. It would be hard to print out my ticket from my cellphone unless i access a computer. Without that “feel” of holding an actual product, i feel uncomfortable to buying the ticket. Otherwise, i think this is a great idea by Cineplex!

After reading my friend Raymond Tsan’s Blog I totally agree with what he thought about Roger’s failed in their marketing campaign. However as i remember from the past that Telus had sue Rogers for putting in their advertisement that their the “most reliable network” Look at the picture below for reference. Telus was unhappy that in Roger’s campaign that their misleading customers that their network is better than Telus’s. This shows the ethic part of marketing. A good company should care about their ethics. After this situation, it might make old or new customers see Roger’s differently as a company. See Rogers as a company that lies to them or tries to mislead information to the customers. What do you think about this situation? Do you think Rogers “accidentally” put this into their ad and never tried to mislead their customers? Or do you think they did it on purpose in order to get more attention from other people?

After reading from the  marketing blog, i saw them blogging about people promoting Christmas themes in the beginning of November. Although a lot of people find it quite odd how their promoting so early, however i think its great that their doing this. First of all who doesn’t like to be reminded that the Christmas holidays are coming soon. That means no school for children and family gatherings with big feasts. An example of a company that is successful from promoting the Christmas holiday is Starbucks. I’ve seen many status updates on facebook talking about how happy they are when they see the red Christmas Starbucks cups. For university students its really a treat to buy a cup of Starbucks coffee and it has a special meaning when it has the Christmas look on the cups. It means that our Christmas break is coming soon! Also, its a great marketing strategy. When everyone’s holding a red Starbucks cup, peer pressure kicks in and therefore other people might buy the product. Here’s a picture of the Starbucks Christmas cup.

Beats By Dr Dre

I  was looking through blogs from our class and i passed by my friend Tiffany Tsui’s blog. She mentioned how the Beats By Dr Dre headphones attract her. For me at first i really thought that the headphones have this attractive look to it. However, i went through the process of looking through reviews online and asking other friends who actually own a pair. Although the look is attractive, it ended up that some of my friends who owned a pair gave it a bad review. At that point I trust my friends opinion is my thoughts of the product changed. I was scared to have buyers remorse because i find that the product is quite expensive, at least to me. I find that the brand is now known as a more luxurious type of product. It also shows how “word of mouth” of a company is quite important. If someone gives a bad review to others, and it keeps going from one person to another then the product’s reputation is ruined. This shows the power of the “word of mouth”.

Mc.Donalds Yum! It back! Monopoly in Mc.Donalds! I really love how McDonald combined their product and the famous board game Monopoly. Each time you purchase a drink or fries or a Big Mac, it would have a board game sticker where you try to collect all of them to win a prize. I absolutely LOVE this promotion. First its a great marketing strategy because it attracts customers to eat McDonalds more in order to collect those small board pieces. It may also attract customers to buy a drink and fries if they were at first just thinking of buying a burger. I know a lot of people around me who’s going to Mc.Donald just because they want to have a chance to win different prizes. This also creates the word of mouth where people can trade repetitive pieces with other people. How can you resist such afun and great idea! Go grab some McDonalds NOW!  Good luck with collecting all of the pieces =)

That Wonder Bread commercial is just way too cute. Each time when i watch it, it just puts a smile across my face. This commercial attracts customers to watch the full commercial until its done. Well at least it caught my attention to watch the whole commercial and rewatch it again and again. Since Wonder Bread is an official sponsor of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, the marketing crew has created such a wonderful commercial! Let me describe to you my thoughts about the pros and cons of the commercial.

Pros:

• it linked the Olympics with their brand, therefore differentiates from other bread brands
• the background music is grand, and easily recognized (each time i hear the music from watching TV i already know its Wonder Bread Commercial)
• Can really relate to the kids who want to go to the Olympics (can help target kids to beg their parents to buy them Wonder Bread)
• Can actually tell a good message to kids to have a dream and actually try to reach the dream
• used many CUTE kids to attract people to watch the commercial

Cons:

• didnt tell much information about the bread
• If people didnt know what the brand Wonder is selling, then no one knows what product this commercial is selling

Thats my thoughts about this commercial. What do you think?

So Hockey’s back and this is one of my all time favorite NHL commercials:

If you watch hockey, you would definitely find this commercial really funny. The person who created this commercial had used one of the most popular NHL stars into the ad. This attracts more people to notice these commercials and would talk amongst their friends. As I remember when this commercial came out, i kept seeing my friends sharing this link to others. Although this is an old commercial, i still consider one of the commercials i would keep watching again and again. I guess this commercial is fun to watch because you would never imagine any of those hockey stars to be like this. Its a fun opportunity to see the other side of the hockey players life. They can be some good actors! However, linking this back to marketing, i think the commercial targets of course to hockey fans. The problem with this commercial is that only people who watches NHL often and knows all the players would understand the commercial. I’m guessing the marketing startegy isnt to attract new people to watch hockey, but to just promote to the current hockey fans that its back.

Lets cheer for the Vancouver Canucks this saturday! GOOO CANUCKS!

Have you thought of getting advertisement for free? Well technically if you put a video up on youtube, people do look at it and its basically free to advertise whatever you want. Its so popular for teenagers to just browse through the site to find interesting things to look at. If you have an interesting skit of some kind to put online, many teenagers would click in to watch it. Like the Old Spice commercials are all over youtube and people enjoy watching one after the other. If a company wants to use this way to advertise and reach out to teenagers I think using youtube would be a good choice. When teenagers see something interesting on youtube, they usually tell their friends to watch it. Basically their using the word of mouth strategy. This is a really effective marketing method because one person to tell their friends, and then their friends tell their friends and so on. On television the teenagers might see an interesting advertisement that they want to show to their friends but they can’t come back to it to show them. The advantage of youtube is that you can access it anytime. Also, you can look at how many “viewing” you video to see if its successful.

Anyways thats just one of my thoughts of a good place to advertise things. Let me end things off by showing you a cute commercial by Evian (really cute babies in it!):