I agree with Melody Han’s a blog post describing how controversial marketing strategies can poison the beauty standards in our society. As Melody mentioned in her blog posting, Victoria Secret, one of largest lingerie companies in the world, has promoted its product by creating “an illusion for females all around the world that if they wear Victoria Secret’s lingerie, they will be one step closer to those perfect women on the fashion show runway.” I totally support her idea because I believe that Victoria Secret’s marketing strategy distorted an image of beauty. Also, its advertisement is likely to mislead customers to pursue an image of Barbie doll, so called perfect women (Not necessarily true). This type of marketing which does not consider realistic image of women will encourage females to lose weight and lower their self-esteem. As Melody stated, Victoria Secret’s models do not necessarily define the beauty in our society.

Then how to address this problem? Melody argued that Victoria Secret should be encouraged to use models who have realistic body shapes. For example, instead of models with size two bodies, Victoria Secret should promote their product by using models with size three or four bodies in order not to distort an image of beauty in real. Needless to say that I agree with her suggestion, I suggest that Victoria Secret be more socially responsible by considering an impact of their advertisements on the society as a whole, rather than focusing on pursuing their sales.

Google Inc., starting from just a smart algorithm, has developed a totally new business model, has become in a few years the world leading search engine, has developed winning applications as Google Earth, Google Video, Google Maps, Gmail, and is enjoying a huge success. Google, starting from scratch, has won the challenge against a giant like Microsoft and against the previous search engine market leaders Yahoo, Lycos, Excite, and so on.

The key question is:
why the Business Model is a winning Business Model?

The answer is a complex one, and involves more factors. It’s a mix of smart decisions, excellent marketing strategy, great advisors, highly innovative and risky business model, and great products. 
But one big key reason why the Google Business Model won:

Google had – and still has – a simple, clean, clear, minimalistic user interface, no frills, just the logo and the search box – easy and fast to load. Unlike Google, the other search engines were more like generalistic portals, full of confusion, full of useless features and useless links, full of annoying banner ads, heavy and slow to load. Google had a clear understanding on psychology of perception, and how the interaction eye/brain works, while the bigger competitors didn’t.

Bottom line is: If the user visits a search engine, what he wants to get is simply that: just a search engine.

Sources:http://www.vertygoteam.com/google_marketing_strategy.php

Nationalistic marketing adds significant value to branding. By inflaming our sense of national pride, marketers can better promote their products or services. A great example of nationalistic marketing is by  Molson, the world’s seventh-largest brewing company in Canada. Recently, Molson’s beer commercial associated its brand with Canada in hopes of triggering consumers’ national pride. As a result, it experienced an increase in sales in the Canadian market. Molson had a great success thorough using its new slogan – “I am Canadian”.

Nevertheless, Molson’s success will not be sustainable unless the product carries additional value. This means that the other components of the marketing mix such as price should reflect the value of the product. Companies’ marketing tactics exciting the sense of nationalism, as a means to maximize profits, do not necessarily become a serious social problem unless it is viewed as nationalistic propaganda. On the flip side, marketing tactics appealing to patriotism would end in failure if companies do not understand customers’ dissatisfaction regarding their products or services. Therefore, no matter how well a company’s nationalistic marketing strategies are, sales would still plummet if the product itself were a disaster.

In conclusion, marketers should comprehend customers’ wants and needs in order to add value to their brand, rather than simply depending on the appeals of customers.

Sources:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/marketing/i-am-canadian-and-so-are-they-molsons-new-nationalist-pitch/article8280376/