I was just reading Ms. Sammarco’s blog on McDonalds Coffee.

Cassy isn’t a regular at McDonalds, as she states. I get from her post that she believes McDonalds’ promotion for their free premium coffee should pay off and attract more traffic from the premium coffee crowd.

Let me provide some insight from the other end of the spectrum.

I love McDonalds. In a life full of disappointing romances, I have been able to confide in this one true love thus far.

“We pledge our hearts to thee”

But let me make both a personal observation, and a sweeping generalization (you can call me the Rhymenocerous).

Us McDonalds goers are not concerned with our image upon visiting any given franchise. We’re a honest breed, from a simpler time.

To exemplify this, it is common practice for me and my worthy associates to “dress-to-the-ones” upon each visit to the golden arches.

“I’ll have 8 McDoubles. And a bloody Scotch!”

The premium coffee crowd that McDonalds is trying to capture in this promotion shares as many similar character traits exemplified above as Paris Hilton shares with Pope Benedict XVI.

“Ex…excuse me miss, could I kindly get some extra McChicken sauce?”

My female friends that frequent Starbucks (Rhymenocerous, remember?) have me half convinced that they’re under corporate mind control. To them, Starbucks is the be all end all. They wouldn’t be caught dead in a McDonalds. Even if it sold higher quality coffee for 1/3 the price. I’m pretty sure they enjoy paying more.

A typical offering to the all powerful Starbucks Deity

My point in all this: McDonalds, it’s a valiant effort, but it was a lost cause from the get go. Stay true to your roots. You’re not capturing this market. Everything you’ve built yourself to be works against you in this campaign. So put down that premium roast, and put another patty on that burger.

You’ve got some competition.

I was browsing one of my favorite article/blog websites, Cracked.com, when I came across an article that made me realize some of the funnier implications of product globalization. I’ll show you what I mean…

As a college student I drink my fair share of beer. However, there’s times for drinking beer,

and there’s times for drinking beer.

With the latter, taste is not much of a consideration. Hell, waking up indoors is not much of a consideration. In times like these, the beer spends minimal time in proximity to your tongue, therefore taste and quality is a non-issue. Any rational person, then, will buy the cheapest beer they can find.

That same rational person will have no trouble doing so.

The market is flooded with cheap, low quality beer, (accompanied by equally low quality commercials): Kokanee, Budweiser, Lucky, Coors, Molson, etc. These don’t pretend otherwise, either; they know their place in the market.

Then there’s Pabst Blue Ribbon. It fits right in that category.

Looking similarly unremarkable, it’s roughly $.50 a can in the good ‘ol US of A, it’s birthplace.

Now, that we’ve looked at the bottom on the fish tank, I’d like to contrast with one of the finest beers hops can brew.

This beer is renowned for it’s smooth, crisp taste that dances upon your lips. Euphoria awaits those who purchase each $44 dollar bottle.

No. Never mind. It’s just Pabst Blue Ribbon again. Look in the top right corner of the picture. But it’s still the equivalent of  44 USD for one of these bottles. And no it’s not special edition; 1844 was the year the Pabst brewery was founded, it says so on each can as well.

No, this is how Pabst markets it’s product in the newly emerging economic powerhouse that is China. The results? Well I personally find it as ridiculous as it is awe inspiring that they can sell the same beer for 88 times it’s regular price point overseas.

This goes to show the power of a consumer’s perceived value in a product, and how packaging goes a long way. Either that or the many of the buyers are the first generation in their bloodline to experience wealth, and have no clue to spend money properly.

War sucks. War sucks in ways I can’t fully imagine.

Let’s be honest, most of what I base my image of war on comes from a few select people.

Good ‘ol Kilgore

Hanks

DiCaprio

To name a few.

These might be bad examples, but in a lot of films, war is glorified. I find this to be true in most documentaries as well.

In the past there was “the draft”. Time’s have changed. In the western world at least, we no longer force our citizens into military service. Then again, there hasn’t been a need like in the past…though that’s a different debate.

Here in Canada, soldier is just another occupation. You apply, get trained, rise ranks. I mean no disrespect when I compare it to getting a job at McDonalds.

With that said, the canadian forces is competing for the attention of the canadian workforce; competing to sell you their product: a career, an experience. They have a brand, a target market, a recruiting (marketing) campaign, not un-similar to Crest toothpaste.

I’ve seen their adds on TV, and they’re definitely inspiring from my perspective. They focus on developing virtues of discipline, duty, strength, and providing opportunity. They mention how the skills are universally applicable. Joining doesn’t have to be a life decision, it can act a stepping stone to your other career goals.

The nature of the product definitely has the largest impact of the marketing mix; so much so that the promotion, price (in this case wage) and place, have comparably small impact on a person’s decision to sign up. This works both for and against recruitment.

Whether your for or against guns, it’s hard to deny that making holes in things and blowing stuff up from far away tops the “best pastimes” list.

The logical progression goes Nerf Gun->Super Soaker->Laser Tag->RPG

At the same time, and on a more serious note, it takes a certain kind of person to be comfortably with the possibility you may have to kill another human being, regardless of the scenario. This and the risk of personal death and injury is one of the biggest discouragements consideration for the majority of people.

Pole-vaulting is an amazing sport to watch. It is one of my favourite track and field events. Becoming accomplished at the sport takes a great deal of commitment, fitness, and training.

Allison Stokke is a young and talented American pole-vaulter.

Coincidentally, she’s hot enough to comfortably vacation on the surface of the Sun.

Cancun-Shmancun.

Allison received widespread internet fame and recognition, not due to her athleticism, but because of her sex appeal.

After a period of time, the hype surrounding Allison started to die down; even her Wikipedia page was removed and relocated under “List of Internet Phenomena“. Perhaps people realized the shallowness of their recognition.

Nope.

They realized that REAL Americans do bikini photo shoots dressed as Wonder Woman.

Meet Melanie Adams:

Another American pole-vaulter.

This trend of Athlete-turned-model is nothing new.

Danica Patrick competes in Nascar.

Neither Danica nor Motorola seem to mind the extra attention.

Maria Sharapova is a tennis player.

Nike is on board.

Allison Stokke is the only woman listed here that has not done numerous bikini photo shoots. A fact I consider with equal amounts respect and remorse.

I do not intend to demean any of the aforementioned women’s proficiency and accomplishment in their respective sport; though it can be agreed with certainty that their fame would be more modest (and non-existant in certain cases) without each athletes complementary cornea-melting abilities.

To a certain extent, Ms Patrick and Ms Sharapova have become household names. Normally, in the male-dominated world of sports, it takes the best of the best in a well televised event for a male name to become ubiquitous.

Wayne Gretzky, Michael Jordan, and Tiger Woods are all prime examples of this concept. (My spell checker even corrected Gretsky to Gretzky).

As famed athletes continue to be trendsetters as well as a popular medium for promotional marketing, we notice that while male endorsement is more often based on accomplishment, female endorsement is unofficially mandated to be based on sex appeal. Through these observations we can question the ethics and adverse effects of such a reality.

I was reading Sean Fleming’s Blog and stumbled upon a post that rang with me.

Sean coins the term “Red Bull Life” referring to the marketing and promotional campaign in use by Red Bull energy drink.

Let me start off by giving a bit of background:

I have never, and will never purchase a Red Bull energy drink. I rarely consume caffeine, and only resort to it’s use in times of turmoil (AKA cramming) in which case I take caffeine pills; the cheapest, most effective way to keep myself awake.

When I do purchase energy drinks, for drink mixing purposes, I use the masses of Red Bull’s cheaper substitutes.

It’s strange then that I am in love with the Red Bull brand. I would gladly wear any Red Bull merchandise, could it be purchased at a retail store (It is only available through sponsorship or other means).

Red Bull’s marketing campaign has become an entity of it’s own. Red Bull has everything from an F1 Team to a European Hockey Team to it’s hundreds extreme sport sponsorships and special events. It has come to embody a “live fast die young” philosophy, without the “die young” part. Red Bull’s brand is so strong, it has eclipsed it’s own product.

It’s official. The BMW scooter:

I don’t care how fast it goes, it’s still a scooter.

Off the record: these guys ride scooters.

Seriously, what’s next? An Aston Martin Smart Car?

…Oh.

Both companies have spent years building their brands to represent prestige and power and exclusivity. Nothing against  smart cars and scooters. They are both efficient, forward thinking methods of transportation. But neither fits into the BMW or Aston Martin brand. Last time I checked, the Bond Car measured it’s fuel efficiency in gpm’s (gallons per mile) not mpg’s.

Which makes for some short chase scenes.

Aston Martin has the ability to project a clear picture in the minds of it’s consumers: a blaring V12 engine, encaged in an elegant chassis. If it expands it’s product line beyond it’s brand defining attributes, it is going to blur that image it worked so hard to attain.

Today I sat down to watch one of my favorite movies, The Dark Knight, on DVD. I haven’t watched a DVD in a while, I usually just stream from the internet.

I remember when DVD’s were first introduced. Besides the obvious improvements in image quality, the main benefit for me as a kid: now I didn’t have to spend 5 minutes rewinding every time I rented  a copy of Mary Kate & Ashley: Winning London before I could watch it.

Another benefit was you could just skip the movie previews. Instantly. Simply press the “menu” button.

• Which ceased to exist on any remote I was unaccustomed to.

Days spent interchangeably fastforwarding through the Platinum Special Edition Disney RE-RE-RE-release of Snow White, and then rewinding because I overshot the beginning of the movie, were a thing of the past.

• 1080p out of a cartoon made in 1937,  fairy tales do come true

However, This is not the experience I had today. When I thumbed for the good ol’ trust “menu” button, I expecting to be warped into the feature presentation. Do you know what happened? Absolutely nothing. And just in case I wasn’t aware nothing was happening, a little X appeared in the top corner of the screen. Thank you Samsung.

• “Please Play Again”

I was shocked, offended, and scared.

But luckily, I had a few more tricks up my sleeve.

• “These aren’t the previews I’m looking for”

Apparently advertisers realized a while ago that by purchasing DVD’s people had too much freedom in choosing whether or not to be subjected to their marketing. That’s the biggest breach of human rights since…

• Egg Management Fee

According to the BBC there is a Latvian man shortage to the likes of which we’ve never seen.

Apparently, since the adjourning of the USSR, women have been both outliving and outlearning their male counterparts. The result is an 8% greater population of women vs men. These shexy educated woman are having trouble finding eligible parters.

If I were in charge, the next headline would look like this: “Canada strengthens ties with Latvian nation, Gov’t subsidies allow Westjet and Air Canada to discount international flights between countries by 50%”

To those still not convinced, this is the result of searching “Latvia” on Google images:

…

But more importantly:

Yeah.

In all seriousness, both my awareness, and interest in Latvia have increased dramatically as a result of this article. I’d put money on the assumption that I’m among friends. I doubt any tourism campaign put on by the Latvian government could top the publicity and positive image (from the male perspective) this sort of article gives the nation.

Random forces, outside of a company’s promotions influence consumers. There is still a lot of uncharted territory in the field of marketing. In order to effectively influence people, we first must understand how they work. We’ve got a lot left to discover.

In the TED talk by Melinda French Gates, she touches on some amazing observations in third world countries. We are unable to penetrate communities in Africa with condoms, medicine and education, yet you can find Coca-Cola is ubiquitous from bubbling metropolis to remote village.

How is it that a simple beverage can gain access to all corners of the globe, yet medicine and equipment that will vastly improve peoples lives can’t come close?

Coca-Cola’s strict and ingeniously complex marketing has allowed them this kind of global awareness, and distribution. This is exemplified as Gates highlights how Coca-Cola utilizes “local entrepreneurial talent” to distribute Coca-Cola in small African villages. These distributers possess a knowledge of the area unmatched by any outsider.

Clearly aid efforts can learn a lot from the capitalist market about how to convince people they want, and need a product.

With the right marketing campaign it could be possible to distribute and administer polio shots, condoms and a myriad of other medical amenities with a success rate far higher than previously experienced.

By emulating successful business strategies, we can hope to increase the effectiveness of social causes.

There have been a few viral marketing campaigns that have taken off in the last few years. These showcase the power of the internet to reach a large audience on a small budget. The Blendtec “Will it blend?” campaign has, according to it’s CEO, impacted sales, and greatly increased brand awareness to millions. Using comedy to gain the trust and attention of the viewer, the viral videos showcase the Blendtec’s product quality.

The videos use current events, popular products, and shock value to attract people who would never be looking for a blender, and regardless of their buying intentions, they walk away with brand awareness.

Gillette has used a similar tactic to market it’s Old Spice products. What started as a TV ad, has spread to the internet, providing the same humor to attract viewers, and raise brand awareness. The Old Spice Guy answers random people on twitter, using internet memes, modern lingo, and celebrities to connect with a youth audience.

Old Spice is attempting to shed the “old man” image of it’s products.

These are just a few ways advertising can become both more enjoyable and effective with a little creative thinking.