Sirapat Champrasit's Marketing Blog

The following is a promotional video made by the Tourism Authority of Thailand:

First of all I would like to say that they have done a fantastic job in show casing Thailand in 8 minutes!  Now I will analyse the marketing strategy of the Tourism Authority of Thailand.

Thailand is the product that they are trying to sell!  But how can they sell something so massive, so complex, and intangible?  Since it would be impossible to make a promotional video which puts together everything that Thailand has to offer, therefore they have to create a theme and concentrate on it.  Looking at the video, I think they are trying to concentrate on the cultural aspect of Thailand and her natural beauty.  Most part of the video consists of beautiful sceneries: mountains, beaches and historical monuments.

Looking at the actors and actresses in the video it is very likely that the target market would be North American and European tourists aged 20 and above.  Choosing to exclude the portrayal of city life, they position Thailand as the perfect place for vacation and retreat from the stressful world – luxurious massage and spa, numerous outdoor activities, and delicious cuisine.  This position is enhanced by a few scenes of temples and Buddha statues which suggest tranquility and peace.

The only setback I can comment about this video and the overall marketing campaign is its exposure to the rest of the world, particularly to the intended target market.  Living in North America for the past couple of years I expect to see some sort of promotional video for Thailand at least once.  All I’ve seen are promotional videos for Malaysia, Hong Kong and South Korea.  This is something that the Tourism Authority of Thailand have to look into since these are their main competitors that are getting exposure to the target market when they are not.

Football or soccer is the world’s most popular sport and the market segment of football enthusiasts is one of the world’s most lucrative segment.  Therefore it is not surprising that this particular segment is fiercely fought for by large corporations.  The four contenders that will be mentioned in this blog include: Coca Cola Vs. Pepsi, and Nike Vs. Adidas.

Coca Cola and Pepsi have been fighting for the loyalty of football enthusiasts for over a decade.  Pepsi seems to have the advantage by creating their own hypothetical football team, known as Team Pepsi.  This team comprised of the world’s most talented footballers: Beckham, Ronaldinho and Messi.  They have won their place in the heart of football enthusiasts with fun TV commercials like these:

Coca Cola has a slightly different approach which in my opinion is not as effective.  They do not associate themselves with super star players like Pepsi but they are the official sponsor of the FIFA World Cup which take place every four years.  Therefore they will have a massive vibe for Coca Cola every four years but not so much in between.

Nike and Adidas battle is a much fiercer one than that of Coca Cola and Pepsi because their main product is sports apparel.  Growing up, I witnessed how football jerseys of clubs and countries slowly changing into either Nike or Adidas – it is quite amazing that in the last FIFA World Cup most of the teams are sponsored by one of the two.  These two firms are going head to head in their marketing tactics.  Messi is the face of Adidas, Ronaldo is the face of Nike.  Adidas is the sponsor of Chelsea, Nike is the sponsor of Manchester United.  When Adidas introduced new football boots, Nike introduced new football boots.  These are examples of TV commercials from both companies:

First of all I would like to begin by saying that my hopes and prayers are with the victims of the recent devastating earthquake.  The destructive force of the earthquake damaged Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant to the extent that radiations have been leaking out of the reactors.  The news about the radiation worries millions of people worldwide and it certainly has an effect on people’s consumption of Japanese food.  It is true that only 10 – 15% of all the meat in Japanese restaurants are imported from Japan and that all of them have been checked thoroughly for radiation.  However, this doesn’t stop people from being paranoia and thus a decrease in demand for Japanese food is very likely – especially for sushi and sashimi.

The task for marketers of Japanese food is to restore consumers’ confidence as soon as possible before there is any permanent damage.  One way they can do this is by combining the think and feel factor.  Tackle the think factor by providing facts and figures that is logical and easy to understand; make sure that the general public understand about the safety procedure that importers have.  By providing accurate and easy to understand information, consumers would feel more secure in going into Japanese restaurants and purchasing imported Japanese ingredients.  In addition, it would also eliminate any rumours that would have an adverse effect.

Next is the feel factor.  Marketers could use charity to help boost demand and sales; using campaigns such as every 5% of sales would go towards helping the victims in Japan.  If people feel safe about their food, they would be more incline to support imported Japanese ingredients as they see it as being charitable.  However, one thing that marketers have to keep in mind is ethics; they have to make sure that they are not taking advantage of other people’s misery.

When people think about high performance sporting brand they will usually think of Nike or Addidas.  These two brands are associated with high profile atheletes from a broad range of sports: football, basketball, tennis and golf.  On the other hand, Puma is considered by most people to be an “inferior” brand.  Even though the quality of the products that these three companies produce are probably within the same range, customers perceived Nike and Addidas as being more valuable.  This is a cause of concern for Puma; assuming that the costs of making similar products are pretty much the same for all three companies, Puma’s sales margin would be lower than their competitors because they cannot set the prices as high as Nike or Addidas.

Walking into Foot Locker the other day, I have observed a strategy that Puma is using in order to improve the credential of the Puma brand.  Puma is currently offering a number of products that has both the Puma logo and the Ferrari logo:

http://www.shop.puma.com/collections/features/ferrari/62600,en_US,sc.html

This co-branding doesn’t really make any sense to me at first, but after giving it some thought I think it is very logical for Puma to do so.  They are using Ferrari’s image of being prestige, luxurious and sporty to add value to their products.  This way Puma is able to charge a little higher for their products without having to redesign or invent new merchandise.

The only thing that still puzzles me is why Ferrari would agree with this co-operation.  They are taking a risk of damaging their prestige and luxurious image by associating themselves with a commonly-perceived “inferior” brand like Puma…

Pierre Schifflers explores in his blog how marketers may use classical conditoning through music and making consumers more likely to buy their products.

This is the link to the blog:

https://blogs.ubc.ca/pierreschifflers/2011/01/26/marketing-blog-post-2-music-and-its-effect-on-consumers/

I agree with Pierre and his analysis, however I want to build-on the role that classical conditioning plays in consumers’ decision making.  Classical conditioning is a theory of how we learn new things.  In the marketing context this can be applied to how we learn and remember the products or brands, and how which of these products or brands go into the consumers’ evoked set.

Imagine a consumer buys a tooth brush of a brand he has never used before.  When he uses the tooth brush and find the experience satisfying he would relate that satisfying experience to that particular brand.  The next time that this customer see that particular brand, through classical conditional, he would have a positive feeling and hence will be likely to make the purchase from that brand.  This means that he would be more likely to buy different products from that particular brand than any other brand, in other words, the brand is in his evoked set.

Ofcourse, classical conditioning also works the other way if the product gave the consumer an adverse feeling.  Therefore companies must keep this in mind when designing the product;  they want consumers to associate the positive feelings with their brand and not vice versa.  This is basically why a brand like Nike want to associate themselves with superstar like Roger Federer.  When people think of Roger Federer, they think of professionalism, superior skills, and victory.  This is what Nike want people to think when they see the famous ‘swoosh’ logo.

We learn that the marketing process does not end when the product is in the consumer’s hands or when the service is delivered to the customer.  The postpurchase stage is just as important as the prepurchase stage.  It is this after-sale process that would help increase returning customers and eventually loyal customers.  This is particularly vital in the highly competitive gaming industry.

After-sale service is what will make the difference between the gaming companies in the age of the internet, when computer games are being downloaded instead of being bought at a retail store.  Gaming companies have to spend more resources satisfying gamers who have bought their products: bug fixes, updating patches and keep the gamers informed about new games.

FIFA Manager is a football simulation game developed by EA Sports.  The seire has been in the market for more than a decade and EA Sports are planning to continue the annual release of this serie.  Therefore it is the utmost importance for EA Sports to retain and expand their loyal customers so that the serie could become more profitable for them.  One of the tactics that they employ is through an official blog by the game’s head designer:

http://www.fifa-manager.com/home/blog/blog-article/n/News/show/blog-4.html

This particular blog acts as a way for the designing team to communicate with the users.  It keeps the users happy because it keeps them updated about the current version of the game and also provides them with first-hand news about the development of the next version of the game.  In addition, it gives the users the opportunity to give their suggestions about the game and what the designers could do to improve the game further.  By letting the users have their say in the making of the game, it makes them feel like they took part in the creation of this game and hence they will be more supportive and willing to buy it when the next version finally releases.

I was on YouTube the other day and saw this Old Spice commercial:

For some strange reasons the first thing that I think about was how Old Spice do their Segmenting, Targeting and Positioning for their products.

From watching their commercial I can infer that Old Spice is segmenting the market by using the following bases: geographic (urban/rural), demographic (age, gender), and psychographic (self-values, self-concept, lifestyle, perceptions).

The commercial was broadcasted on YouTube which means that they are targeting the website’s viewers.  These viewers tend to live in the urban area because there is a high accesibility to the internet, which is needed to access YouTube.  YouTube viewers are generally people from Generation Y, and although the man in the commercial addressed the ladies, I think Old Spice is targeting both male and female audience.  They are tageting those individuals who either want their partner to be able to do all those things they see in the commercial, or they want to be able to do those things themselves.  By watching this commercial people will automatically associate Old Spice with having good smell, being able to do extraordinary stuff, and being attractive to ladies.

In my opinion, Old Spice is positioning themselves really closely, if not exactly, to Axe.  They both sell the same products and both emphasize on how these products will make the user more attractive, rather than on the functional aspects of the products.

People are such complex and irrational beings that it is quite an impossible task to predict their behaviour.  However, professionals in the field of marketing have to do this impossible task on a daily basis, and naturally some succeeded and some failed.  What really fascinate me though, is whether there is a decisive factor in determining if a marketing strategy would be a success or a failure.  Is it the amount of budget you set on the actual marketing strategy?  Is it the amount of time you spend preparing; doing the marketing plans and research?  I do not know the answer to either questions but I do have a story to share…

Not long ago I heard a story about a little tea house.  This tea house is located up in the mountains, about 2 hours drive from the city of Taipei, Taiwan.  There is nothing special about this place at all apart from the fact that it has its own little story.  The story is about the origin of this tea house.  There are two women; one was an investment broker, and the other was an art director at some big company.  These two women had a dream of owning a tea house and so one day they decided to give up everything and put their money together to open this little tea house up in the mountains.  They did not have any money or time to do a proper marketing strategy for their business but that did not stop it from becoming a huge success.  When words start to spread about this little tea house and its origin, it became an instant hit.  People from Taipei would spend 4 hours driving up and down the mountain on weekends just to go to this tea house and drink tea!!  I guess the moral to this story is that sometimes… a simple story sells.

This post is a response to Tim Blonks’s post “Barbed Wire and Marketing” (https://blogs.ubc.ca/timblonk/).

I agree with Tim that “people have different tastes in what they like, what they want, and how they perceive the things around them”.  However, as an amatuer photographer with far less experience than Tim, I must respectfully oppose his views about the two giants of the camera industry and the effectiveness of their marketing.

My interpretation of Tim’s post is that he’s a big fan of Nikon and not so much a fan of Canon.  When he said that he would “never buy a canon camera” because of Nikon’s effective marketing I infer that he’s criticizing Canon’s marketing.  Personally I use neither brand but I think it is unfair to make a quick judgement about Canon.

To an amatuer photographer like me, who just take pictures for fun, Nikon and Canon depict two very distinct styles.  Nikon is more professional, more serious, and perhaps a little classier as well.  In contrast, Canon is more playful, more fun, and just simply cooler.  Having said that, I perfectly understand why a professional photographer like Tim would like Nikon more than Canon.

Nikon and Canon are just an example of two companies which compete in the same industry but position themselves differently from one another.  Their products are essentially the same but because of the way that they portray themselves they can target and capture two very different segments of the market.  Here are commercials from both Nikon and Canon which clearly shows their identity:

Traditionally, football (soccer) clubs make money from the ticket sales; their main product is the actual football match. As the sport evolves over time, a variety of merchandise becomes available for fans to purchase and lucrative TV deals becomes one of the club’s main revenue stream. Nowadays footballers are no longer just players for these clubs, they have become the celebrities of the sporting world. Some footballer like David Beckham have gone even further – more people around the world recognize him than the Queen of England! The Marketing power that Beckham posesses is extraordinary. When he was playing for Manchester United he helped the club became one of the most recognizable sporting brand in the world. He boosted Real Madrid’s fan base in Asia by more than 50% when he moved there. Finally, when he came to play for Los Angeles Galaxy he raised the interest in this sport immensely in North America and also the profile of the Major League Soccer to the rest of the world.

Due to the marketing power that superstar like David Beckham has, footballers nowadays have ridiculous transfer price.  Cristiano Ronaldo moved from Manchester United to Real Madrid for a world record price of 70 million pounds!! Some might think that this is way too much for one footballer, but is it? Think about all the marketing power that comes with him. As a matter of fact, Real Madrid sold more than 70 million pounds worth of merchandise that is associated with Cristiano Ronaldo within the first year he was there.