Category: COMM 296

I was looking back at my blog and A LOT of other blogs out there and I realized something…..Blogs are much “stronger” when they have a true focus to them (especially if that focus is a sincere personal interest). This was actually mentioned in one class, but by looking through all the class blogs it is obvious that there are actually only a few people who ended up having blogs with a true focus. If you google search “top blogs” you will soon realize that pretty much all of the blogs that show up as your search results have this true focus.

Actually, one of the blogs that shows up is Engadget.  I love reading things on Engadget because everything is exciting technology news with a personality attached to it–as compared to typical bland news, but Engadget is also a useful and insightful website (through a long story it actually helped me in my decision to return my Nokia N8 and wait for the LG Star or something similar instead) Engadget is a blog filled with focus, passion, and insight, but when looking through the 290 blogs, it seems like most of them don’t share that same focus, passion, and insight.

I do, however, want to mention one of my peer’s blogs that managed to have an overall focus while still talking about marketing-related things: Tian Cai’s blog. Tian talked about cars the entire semester but still managed to apply some marketing concepts; from analyzing the target markets of certain cars to briefly analyzing the segmentation/positioning of the Volvo s60. I think Tian was on the right track and his passion definitely came through in his blogs and it helped make his blogs interesting and insightful–the way blogs should be.

Even though I put a lot of effort into these Comm 290 blogs and took the time to read many other blogs, I feel like I still didn’t come out with a great blog, BUT I did learn a lot about blogging. And, I’m in university to LEARN not to get marks; I can definitely say that I have truly learned a lot about blogging and the significance of blogs throughout this semester. I know I will cherish these things that I have learned later on in my career as blogging is so relevant not only marketing, but also to our society as a whole. Blogging is social media…and we all know how important social media is…

And on that note…I’m out for now! Thanks for reading this year!

Ok, not really “getting their drank on”, but definitely getting a bit wild/risky in terms of their typical brand image. I was going through some of the blogs of my peers and I found this on Chris Neels’ Blog. I actually really liked what Chris had to say, specifically: “If it becomes an alcohol selling establishment, the store could attract a new segment (good), but could lose another segment (bad), due to the change in image.” I can definitely see the segment they are trying to get at: those wanting to just go out for a drink to a near-by relaxing place after a long day. But I am also quite worried about the effect this has on their current image and segments. Seriously, I think it would just feel weird to be asked for my ID at starbucks…

Also starbucks will have to deal with all the “abusers” of alcohol–which creates a completely different environment in itself. The “comfort” and “safety” feel that starbucks currently has may be tarnished by those occasional “abusers”. Granted, I think its safe to say that the “abusers” won’t choose starbucks as their “venue” most of the time, but the occasional times that the “abusers” do choose starbucks can be enough to create a bit of a shift in the perception of store environments in general.

My guess is that the “testing” that is going on with the Starbucks stores in Seattle will prove that the idea is unfit for the company, but I will update this post if I hear otherwise.

(as you can see, I am not good at editing photos…but you can see what I’m getting at with the picture)

wowwww…so I realized today that for the past 6 weeks I have been pressing “save draft” instead of “publish”…so therefore I was basically just blogging for myself!!…so sorry about that! I went through all the blogs and pressed “publish” so everything should be ok now!

Anyways….I want to write about smartphones today. I just recently got myself a new phone, and it was SUCH a huge decision, so I want to quickly go through my consumer decision process in order to help myself understand the process to a deeper level and relate the process to something real in my life. Click Here to view my consumer decision process.

Yupp…you’re reading it correctly! Free coffee at McDonalds! A lot of people think that McDonalds does this so that people will come in and end up buying a food item or two with the coffee, but I’m kinda thinking something different.

I think a key thing that McDonalds would like to achieve with this initiative is improved customer loyalty. The importance of customer loytalty is emphasized throughout our textbook (Marketing by Grewal/Levy), and coffee is a good that can be easily centered around customer loyalty. Imagine if thousands of customers do their daily coffee stop at McDonalds instead of Tim Hortons from November 15-28^th. I think after the 28^th it is plausible to say that a good chunk of those customers will continue to do their daily coffee stop at McDonalds—thus loyalty is created.

It’s also important to note that another key thing to this free coffee initiative is increasing the company presence in the coffee market because its currently quite weak.

Anyways, if you didn’t know about the free coffee, now you do…so enjoy!

I wanted to do a post about the little ads in facebook because they seem to be a powerful tool for company marketing, and I found a brief article on how they work. I think the most interesting thing about how they work is the variables that you can target your prospects with:

• Age group
• Gender
• Relationship status
• Country
• Educational level
• Languages
• Keywords

Being able to fully target with these variables means that companies won’t have much “wasted marketing”. By “wasted marketing” I mean things like the tv ads for action figures that come up while a person our age is watching cartoons. Companies obviously intend for those types of ads to be viewed by kids and/or parents, but when people our age see those ads its often what I call “wasted marketing”. However, with Facebook marketing, it seems like companies would have less “wasted marketing” because ads for action figures would simply not be displayed when we sign into Facebook.

Another interesting thing about Facebook marketing is how the ads are priced. Apparently there are two options:

1. Paying for each time that someone clicks your ad. (pay per click)
2. Paying for every 1,000 times the ad is actually displayed. (pay per impression)

I find the first option very unique and attractive–its basically like you are paying for measurable results…It’s amazing how much technology and social media is changing marketing, isn’t it?

It’s Halloween tonight, so naturally I think a “Halloween” post is needed. I was thinking about finding something to post about related to candy—since its halloween, but i ended up finding some REALLY creative halloween beer ads first! So I think I’m just going to keep this post simple and share some of the awesome ads I found. I arranged them in order from my least favorite to my most favorite.

Pick #5: Miller Lite–visually appealing but not that creative (comparatively)

Pick #4: Guinness — Very clever catch-phrase!

Pick #3: Guinness — It took me a while to get this, but once I did…I thought it was quite good…just stare at it for a bit and hopefully you’ll get it faster than I did.

Pick #2: This one was actually part of a series of similar ads…click here to see the rest.

Pick #1: Of course, Heineken gets my personal #1 spot. They are just so clever–from the walk in fridge to this:

So a few weeks ago I had a post about Heineken’s Walk in Fridge ad that served as an example of demographic segmentation. But I was doing some more “youtube research” today and I found out that there’s much more to the Heineken ad than I originally thought. It turns out that the ad wasn’t just a one-time ad aired in north america, but it was actually an ad campaign that ran in both North America and the Netherlands. This actually unveils one of the true strengths of the ad campaign: bridging a cultural gap–thus appealing to the same target market across countries. These ads were followed by other “walk in fridge” ads, and the whole thing quickly turned into a full fledged campaign (complete with guerrilla  marketing as noted by Vansken’s marketing blog). In fact, the campaign was so successful that Mini ended up copying some ideas from it!

Before I start blabbing away, you should watch this:

Now the question is: was that an ad for Iron Man 2 or the Audi R8? It’s hard to say isn’t it..? It’s actually more like an ad for both at the same time. I think that this ad is so unique because it is for two very different things (a movie and a car) yet it manages to effectively “combine products” and appeal to a single target market (kinda). This is quite impressive when you really think about it. It’s kinda like Audi and Marvel Studios integrated their STP plan. Interesting, huh?

I was messing around on youtube the other day and I found an ad that just perfectly depicted a concept in our chapter 8 reading: demographic segmentation. This ad uses gender as a key segmentation variable, and the segmentation is so obvious in the ad that I actually feel ridiculous talking about it more than that…so just watch and you’ll see what I mean:

So, the gender segmentation is quite self-explanatory in this case. But on a side note…the weird thing about this ad is how it effected me…the ad didn’t change my desire for beer (I still don’t want it!), but now I have a slight desire for a walk in fridge!…seriously..how awesome would it be to have a walk in fridge!!!! ….I’ll just have to put it on my list of things to get if I’m ever a millionaire…

At Sauder, we learn all about marketing, but what about anti-marketing?!?!

Before I continue, you have to watch this:

Ok now that you are grossed out, lets think about how brilliant that is (in terms of business/marketing, not in terms of health/life!)  Heart attack grill provides a unique alternative to the norm. Yes, I admit that becoming a regular customer at heart attack grill would be ridiculous, but think of how many people would consider it as a once-in-a-while kinda thing. The fact of the matter is that it’s definitely a niche and that by going against the trends and norms of society, it may actually be somewhat successful.

Imagine if heart attack grill came to Vancouver, home of so many people who go for the trendy healthy lifestyle. Once in a while those people are bound to want “REAL FOOD” instead of leafs!