Month: February 2011

Spreadables is a new app, that essentially tries to control or enhance the word of mouth promotion of a product or brand. Up until now word of mouth has been recognized as a highly powerful promotional tool, but one that is very difficult, or impossible to control. What spreadables does is provides a widget feature, much like those that link to facebook or twitter, that allows customers to make quick and easy referrals to their contacts with regards to a product, by merely clicking a button. After clicking the button, customers will be able to send messages to their contacts through an array of different sources. The app is said to be highly customizable in order to meet every companies requirements as well as it is integrated with social media software such as facebook and twitter. Another cool feature of this app, is its analytical abilities. The app measures word of mouth referrals, as well as provides infomation such as where the majority of their referrals derive from. I think this app is in general a pretty cool and innovative idea. What I see it as doing, is essentially providing incentive for customers to promote a product. However, facebook and twitter do already provide the means to do essentially the exact same thing. This being, I am not convinced that this app will catch on. Maybe if they generate some positive word of mouth they’ll change my mind.

Spreadables Link

Bold, cutting edge, inspiring and creative, are all words one could use to describe recording artist Lupe Fiasco. They are also words one would use to describe his recent marketing campaign for his up and coming album entitled “Lasers”. Lupe, who is an avid blogger and tweeter, and one can assume tech savy indiviual overall, has launched an add campaign which embraces the abilities of modern technology, more precisely smart-phones, even more precisely the barcode scanners on these phones. What the marketing campaign for Lasers has done is develop a scannable barcode that (red laser technology (kinda suiting)), when scanned, allows you to pre-order Lupe’s new album via smartphone. I have been a fan of Lupe Fiasco for a while now, and have always seen him as a lyrical genius, this new add campaign has just proven to me that he may just be an overall genius. I would not be surprised if this became a trend among artists. Giving people a reason to use their expesive new smartphones as a means for something besides texting and calling, and making that reason to pre-order an album is truly marketing genius. It certainly worked on me. In addition, last friday night, in New York’s Union Square, an enlarged image of the barcode (QR code), along with related video, was cast upon surrounding buildings using multiple prism series lasers. When it comes to marketing, much like in the music world, Lupe Fiasco is again one step ahead of the competition. The link to Lupe’s blog is below

Lupe Fiasco

One of my favourite things to do when I should be studying is to watch YouTube and my favourite thing to watch on YouTube is extreme sports. Being a fan of action sports, words cannot describe how thankfull I am for Red Bull. It seems like literally every extreme sport, whether it be FMX, snowboarding, rally car racing, sky diving or even helicopter acrobatics is sponsored by Red Bull. Red Bull sponsors hundreds of extreme sports athletes and provides them with a seemingly endless supply of equipment to fit their every need. Whether it be Shaun White`s private halfpipe only accessibly by helicopter or Travis Pastrana’s fleet of rally cars, monster trucks and dirt bikes, they provide it all. It has gotten to the point where if you type in Red Bull on google, you don’t get articles relating to the RedBull energy drink that the company actualy manufactures, but rather the latest stunt one of their athletes has performed or a recent event held by the company. In seeing, all of the money that RedBull puts into its atheletes and its events my first question was why? Because of the word limit I’m going to cut to the point. The executives at Red Bull are geniuses. They have clearly identified that a huge segment of the market for energy drinks are people with a thirst for adventure and thrill. By inondating the extreme sports market with its name, Red Bull is making a strong connection between its brand and the thrillseeking lifestyle of an extreme sports athlete. RedBull energy drink is an undifferentiated product, that sells at a higher price than much of its competition. None the less, RedBull posses around 50% of the energy drink market. Below are some of my favourite RedBull athletes.

Robbie Madison

Travis Pastrana

Shaun White