Sammi Wei's Blog

This is an advertisement I saw while browsing reddit this morning. I immediately thought of a term I learned back in high school, which at that moment was long lost in the back of my memories. So, as soon as I had a moment, I Googled the words “marketing without being annoying”, and found the term I was looking for: inbound marketing. But actually, I want to talk about something else today: take another look at the above ad, this is not an ad for Amazon or hamburgers, what is it selling?

Arguably, it’s not “selling” anything per say, but it is definitely a wise marketing move by the team over at reddit. reddit.com is widely know as one of the top two user-driven sources of news and media on the internet, the other being Digg. Both of these social discovery sites are user-driven, meaning that all content are submitted and voted on by the users. On reddit, you can vote a topic up or down, and on Digg you could digg it or bury it.

From a new user’s point of view, Digg is more appealing to the eye (redditors often mock its “pretty” UI), links to more serious news portals, and is older. What does reddit do to attract the new users who otherwise would most likely opt for Digg? Other than having an accepting community which initiated countless charitable acts and political movements, reddit’s ad space is frequently used to display heartwarming messages like the one above, and its mascot (the red alien) always helps with the cause. In general, reddit has a more homey feel compared to Digg, notice that Digg’s front man Matt Williams has the title of CEO, while redditors’ go-to guy is Erik Martin, a “community manager”.

Have you reddit?

For the past decade, Steve Jobs has been the synonym for Apple. He was the brand. When people bought MacBooks, they were buying Jobs. But recent events have people speculating that Apple is not just about Jobs anymore, has the Apple brand been redefined?

As Mr. Steve Jobs takes his third medical leave in his employment at Apple, the IT giant remains unshaken. Stock prices dropped by a mere ~4% but managed to make its way back within the next day. People are unconcerned by Jobs’ absence, as Apple releases its first quarterly report with indications of a 78% increase in profits, to a record-breaking $6 billion, or $6.43 per share. While five years ago, the Street would have seen to a drop of 20, 25%.

Given the speculations on the release dates of the iPhone 5 and iPad 2, Mr. Jobs may not be personally introducing these products to us this time around. People believe that Apple will run just fine without Jobs, at least in 2, 3 years. I suspect this strong faith in the company is the product of years of record breaking miracles performed by Apple. Just in the last year alone, Apple made tremendous breakthroughs in the market: the iPad, Gadget of the Year and fastest selling non-cellular phone gadget in world history; the iPhone 4, the fastest selling mobile handset in world history; and also the new MacBook air, the highest performing lightweight notebook.

The Apple brand is the record breaker.