Anyone on our team will admit we did not have the best of starts. Our first project was where we had to iron out the kinks and get to know one another as individuals and our unique strengths and weaknesses. By the end of the first project, the strong headed individuals (I being one of them) learned to work together as a cohesive unit. The skill that I worked on improving was letting go of control. Traditionally, even in group projects, I have at times took it upon myself to do the entire project and ensure I got the grade I wanted. Due to a heavy course load that option was not reasonable and I worked alongside my teammates to get the assignments completed. As an aggregate, we did well and I got to know four great people in the process. Not taking on more than my share of the responsibility was something these assignments forced me to do and I believe has benefited me as I work on improving on that. 

What I would do differently next time is get to know each of the group members better before starting the project through some sort of icebreaker. I think that could have dampened or even eliminated some of our early struggles caused by conflicting personalities.  In terms of within the classroom, I would have vocalized my opinions more often. I always seemed to have a viewpoint on questions/ topics, but because I just don’t speak a lot as a general they were not vocalized enough.

My top take away from COMM 296 is that there is far more that goes into marketing than I thought. I was well aware that marketing wasn’t simply advertising, but COMM 296 allowed me to get a small glimpse into some of the many areas of marketing and realize how diverse and complex a topic it is. I want to thank Tamar, Angel, Ells, Yvette, and Vincent for making my COMM 296 experience an enjoyable one.

– Sean Bell

Danica Patrick is more well-known for her off-the-track commercials than her on the track performance, but she made history at the Daytona 500 becoming the first women to ever win a Sprint Cup pole and lead a lap in the Daytona 500. She finished a very respectable eight place. It was also a unique time as grand marshall James Franco started the race by saying “Drivers and Danica start your engines”. Singling out Danica Patrick was something that had never been done before and was received well by fans. A recent Sales Force Marketing Cloud blog by Andrew Gotheif highlighted that as Patrick was making history on-the-track it was a prime opportunity for her sponsors to ride her momentum and time in the spotlight. Some of her major sponsors, including GoDaddy.com, capitalized on this opportunity in the Twittersphere by tweeting numerous times throughout the race about Patrick. Danica Patrick’s breakout weekend turned out to be a blessing  in disguise as rapper 50 cent sent out a tweet from the Daytona 500 saying “Damn, I don’t see no black people lol”. This comment was literally the last thing NASCAR wanted to have said to almost eight million of 50 cent’s twitter followers as they have tried over the years to appeal to a more diverse range of people other than the stereotypical white southern folk. I think Danica Patrick’s success on the track will continue benefit not only her sponsors, but allow her to gain more respect among other drivers in a male dominated sport. As for NASCAR, I cannot see the demographic/ racial makeup of their fans changing as such a deep history and culture has been formed that does not currently allow for new fan segments. 

    Top Number of Tweets About Daytona 500 Drivers During The Race   

As noted in Derek Dodd’s blog post on McKayla Maroney’s sponsorship by the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, an Olympic medal does not only bring personal pride to win for one’s country, but also a pay day. The United States Olympic Committee offers $25,000 for a gold, $15,000 for a silver, and $10,000 for a bronze (however these number pale in comparison to other nations such as Italy who pay a staggering $182,400 to a gold medal winner). The United States women’s gymnastics’ team, dubbed the ‘Fierce Five’, was quite successful at the 2012 London Games and was led by Gabby Douglas who won two gold medals. In the weeks following the 2012 London Olympic Games, Gabby Douglas appeared on virtually every late night talk show, Good Morning America, and began obtaining lucrative sponsorship deals. Douglas’ first deals were with Kellogg’s Cereal and Proctor and Gamble (one of the major sponsor of the Olympics) and she has the potential to earn up to $100 million over her lifetime. To me that number seemed rather inflated, but when digging deeper, $90 million of that comes from a contract with Kellogg’s and she currently has over thirty other contracts worth approximately $2.4 million. That still may leave $7.6 million to be made in the coming years which will easily be attained if she can make it to the 2016 Olympic Summer Games in Brazil. I find it remarkable how over the span of sixteen days someone’s life can be transformed forever – not only financially, but Gabby Douglas will go down in history as the first African- American women to ever capture the Olympic All- Around gymnastics’ title. Quite an accomplishment by someone who is just sixteen years old.

From the public’s point of view, spending $4,000,000 on a thirty second Super Bowl Ad makes little to no sense, however, this is not always the case from a marketing stand point. The aspect that sets major sports finals such as the Super Bowl a part from other advertising alternatives is that it has continued to see growth and expansion over the past decade almost regardless of what teams are playing. To me that seemed quite odd that no matter the match up, the Super Bowl has always taken positive steps forward in growth. As stated in a recent Wired.com blog posting, this is very appealing to those who advertise during the Super Bowl because the audience they reach gets bigger and bigger each year and therefore you can spread the cost over more and more people (firms that advertised during the 2012 Super Bowl paid between $0.03 to $0.04 per viewer). Undoubtedly the greatest victor from their decision to advertise during the Super Bowl is GoDaddy.com. In 2005, GoDaddy’s market share was 16% and only one week after the game, their market share was 25% and in 2011 they had $1.1 billion in sales and over 50% market share. A key aspect of their commercials is that they are always memorable for one thing or another (usually their racy/ borderline inappropriate content). On the other hand, there have also been firms who have spent the money to have Super Bowl Ad’s and no longer exist today such as pets.com and lifeminders.com. For some companies this is an all or nothing strategy and, for most, the current financial risk is outweighed by the potential future benefit. I genuinely enjoy the Super Bowl commercials and I think it will become increasingly important for firms to become more and more original such that they stand out among the other 60 plus advertisements shown during the game and maximize their return on investment.

Initial reaction to Research in Motion changing their name from the current to Blackberry was not well received by traders as their stock dropped 12.01% to $13.78 a share. This dramatic decrease has mainly been attributed to the fact that by changing their name to “Blackberry” it appears as if RIM is putting all its eggs in the Blackberry 10 operating system basket making it a potentially volatile move if the system fails. It is important to remember that although RIM is mainly known for the Blackberry phone, it is not the single function of their business which also adds to investors’ concern from the name change. From a marketing standpoint, this rebranding of the company may be a smart long run move. Not only have they started with renaming the company, but Blackberry has the opportunity to take away valuable market share from Apple and other competitors by strategically implementing the marketing mix ―specifically price, product, and place.  As highlighted in a Yahoo Finance interview with former Apple CEO John Sculley, the BB 10z phone will retail in the US for $199 with a contract making it a major competitor for firms like Apple whose iPhone product can cost up to $800 with a contract. This gives Blackberry a real shot at taking back some of the precious market share they have lost over the past few years.  Additionally, an issue that has just recently been resolved in Canada is that Blackberry had still not set in stone service providers for their BB 10q phone which is scheduled to be released in March. Clearly if you can’t find distributors for the product there is no way to deliever it and this is something that Blackberry had to address. I do believe that Blackberry has the potential to rebound with the proper marketing mix, but the rebound is also very contingent on the BB10 operating system being a success.

– Sean Bell

As technology continues to develop, marketers will be faced with more and more ethical dilemmas. These dilemmas can range from having lengthy disclaimers at the bottom of their ads to paying off bloggers and reviewers to give their good or service a positive review. As highlighted in the short video “Marketing Ethics Disclaimers”, while disclaimers (the small writing sometimes seen at the bottom of the page, screen ect..) may be legal they are essentially marketers way of ‘crossing their fingers’ to whatever is said and adding additional pieces of information to an advertisement in a discrete way. It is an ethical decision on the part of both the marketers and the companies to plainly disclose all relevant information that could affect a consumer’s decision and not keep it in a small, blurry paragraph. While disclaimers can be visually seen (usually with the assistance of a magnified glass) paid reviews are not always as easily identified. A recent BizReport article, citing estimates from Gartner Research, states that ‘by 2014 10-15% of all reviews will have been paid for’. That number may be staggering, but bodies like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) work to ensure that all reviews that are paid for state so in some way or form ― an example being #paid on Twitter would suffice. However, this leaves a great area for under the table payments to be made from marketers to reviewers to positively promote their good or service and have them not disclose that they had received payment. This could result in not only an ethical dilemma on the parts of both the reviewers and the marketers, but not disclosing payment would be put under the category of ‘deceptive advertising’ by the FTC.

 – Sean Bell