Month: April 2011

Last month, Patrick posted about a new technology, Word of Mouth Marketing: Going back to the traditional way, that is being promoted called Spreadable.

The video is very informative and promotes a new concept of promoting a business and targeting their market. However there are several flaws to this marketing tool. When I first read about this new technology, the first thought that came to mind is to question its effectiveness in the industry or if it will even have any potential in the marketing industry. Most of the strategies they mentioned are already existent in the industry, just like Facebook and twitter services. Also their strategy just lacks persuasiveness and does not provide a company any advantage at all.  Yes, I agree that word of mouth promotion is the strongest type of marketing but word of mouth is only effective if a company fully satisfies a customer with its high quality products or excellent customer services. Spreadables service, which is spreading word of mouth through emails is not effective at all! Especially if its an electronic mail that is not even written by the owner of that account. By the end of the day people will just get tired and saturated with all these emails, just like unwanted emails. Whenever I receive emails like these, referrals from friends through email, I don’t even read them at all and just drag them straight to the spam or trash folder.. Gaining new customers through referrals is not that simple. This concept lacks credibility and will be a very ineffective marketing strategy. If the company’s way to convince customers to refer them is by rewarding them, this strategy will just be temporary and will only be effective in the short run. I really didn’t think this would last in the market, and just as I predicted Spreadables is now taking a break.

Kristel recently discussed in her blog, Fear Appeals -scaring you to action, about the power of fear appeals to advertising. As I read through her blog, I would say that I strongly agree to the influences of fear appeals to advertising. Every day on my way to school, I run into countless fear appeal advertising in the bus, the train, the train station. Most of which are about cigarette smoking, gambling, sex, and drugs. One particular advertisement that came to mind is a Zazoo condom commerical I saw on Youtube.

This commercial, even though inappropriate, delivers the message well and make viewers think and reflect about the future consequences of not implementing safe sex practices. Its a funny and convincing commercial at the same time. It allows viewers to picture themselves on the character’s shoes and how they would react to such situation. I would therefore agree to Kristel’s point that fear appeals are a great tool to let the audience be aware of certain issues. Despite all the debates about the effectiveness of fear appeal advertising, To design a successful and convincing fear appeal ad, it will all depend on the creativity and the effective use of exaggeration of marketers that will attract and capture the viewers’ attention.

I bumped into some recent news today about twitter launching a new marketing tool: Geo relevant ads. This new tool is said to enable marketers to effectively target their ads geographically, and provide advertisers more detailed user analytics that will allow them to adjust their tweets in response to their followers and find out who exactly is paying attention to their tweets. Also, even if a user listed San Francisco as his location but sends most of his tweets from Los Angeles, a Los Angeles-based company would be able to identify this user and target him on Twitter. This new tool enables advertising to perform at its maximum efficiency and target all its potential clients. This may be  a ground breaking technology for marketers but as a customer, I don’t like the idea that advertisers are developing new ways to bother me.

I believe this technology will really change how people use twitter. It would surely attract a lot of advertisers but may not appeal to some users. Advertising has been evolving too fast and soon enough, people may lose their sense of privacy. The idea of targeted ads and advertisers gaining information about a customer’s profile, likes, dislikes, and even location is threatening in some ways. Majority of the public try to avoid advertising as much as possible, like when making up excuses to prevent telemarketers from wasting our time or when viewers rant about Youtube ads popping up before you can watch a video. I have nothing against advertising but its just something we need to keep in mind since Advertising is evolving and consumers are starting lose their privacy. In one of my recent posts, I discussed about Facebook’s new advertising strategy, in which they are developing a way in which they can target users in a real time basis based on keywords from their wall posts. The competition between these two social networking sites are the causes for the success and evolution of online advertising. This idea may be revolutionary for the advertising industry but they will need to understand that privacy is still vital to consumers.

Do you ever get bothered by those advertisements that just pop up before you can watch a video on YouTube? If so, I’m sure you have encountered the Orabrush Ad. Youtube Ads, as annoying as it is, sometimes entertains. So one day I decided to actually pay some attention to this ad; and as a marketing student, at first, i thought to myself.. “I know what this company is trying to do.. trying to trick me into buying their product! no way..” but then the ad was just too convincing! the next day i found out they are now available in Canada and can be bought at London Drugs. Then I just felt like I had to get one or I will have bad breath forever! If there is one Ad that really got into me. It would be this Orabrush Ad.

This advertisement is really convincing, it is very informative and also delivers an affective component to consumers.  Their approach to exposing the problems of bad breath to the public really captures your attention.  The ads approach into speaking to the viewers directly seems to be a very effective strategy to sell their product.They try to make you feel you have bad breath and make you feel bad about it. It gives this feeling of disgust as you watch it (when he sniffs the spoon) and makes you feel the need  to own an Orabrush.

Whenever you go grocery shopping, do you ever get the feeling to just ride your grocery cart and glide through the halls? and grab your groceries on the fly? I would literally do this every time I visit the grocery store; I didn’t care if I looked immature, all I cared about was that it was fun and it made me feel pretty cool.  So when I saw this video of Volkswagen, it really caught my interest. Volkswagen has revolutionized grocery shopping! Their idea is very interesting and innovative in which they attached a skateboard on the back of a grocery cart. This allowed consumers to gain a whole new shopping experience and speed life a little bit.  The “Fast Lane” project was able to distribute their brand effectively as it captures consumer’s awareness. It seems that Volkswagen’s purpose was to point out to consumers that their company is highly innovative into improving the world and focusing on the idea of “fast paced living”. The idea of revolutionizing  fast paced living “The Fast Lane” also captures their target segment effectively since  they want consumers to associate “on the go” grocery shopping with their products as fast, efficient and practical.