I didn’t even know that Justin Bieber got a haircut more than a month ago before I read this post on Canadian Marketing Blog. And the blog talked about an interesting fact that this might be the first step, the test stone of Justin Bieber trying to rebrand.
Brand is built up by small actions. For Justin Bieber, his hair is not only a small part of his brand. You see teenage boys on the street with his haircut. Stars cannot stay the same style forever with everlasting fan base. Especially for Bieber, whoes fame largely comes from his appearance. And rebrand is not an easy thing to do, like mentioned in the article, after rebranding, Miley Cyrus’s popularity decreased. For a superstar like Justin Bieber (at least for now), every step has to been taken cautiously. And cutting his hair, going the opposite direction with his old image can definitely give a pretty good test of how his fans will accept the planned rebranding of him.
Bieber is going for a “kind of a mature look”. Are you in favor of that?
Having lived in China for all my first 18 years and not quite a follower of fashion, American Apparel is quite an unfamiliar name for me when I first came to Vancouver. In fact, I first heard of it while in a small meeting with my roommates back in first year (wow, can’t believe second year is over) in Totem Park, we were talking about getting house shirt, and when it came to from which company we wanted to order from, all the girls (while, obviously, except me) shouted, AMERICAN APPAREL. Now when I think back, I am so surprised by the brand loyalty that American Apparel has built up: their customers not only buy their already-made products, but even requires to order from them!
After I read Beverley Cheng‘s Blog AA strategies… The retailer, that is., it became more clearer to me why that happened. American Apparel is like an emotional person, just like you and me. It, or should I call it him or her, has opinions, strong opinions. It does not like sweatshops, though they can significantly reduce their cost. It does not like gay haters, though that means they may lose them as customers. American Apparel draws and fascinates young girls and boys with its distinctive character (treasonous in their vontroversial advertisements). It looks cool in their eyes.
One strategy for each company targeting each segment. For American Apparel, it is definitely doing the best on this.
I’m sure everyone has heard about Rebecca Black in some way and her infamous song “Friday”. Honestly, the first time I heard the song (which was before I knew so many people ridiculed her and said the song was the worst ever), I found it quite amusing. And undeniably, it is catchy and I couldn’t stop thinking about it after hearing it.
I feel sympathetic for her receiving so many critics and she said during an interview with “Good Morning America” that she felt “cyperbullied” and she did an “unplugged” version of the song (without auto tunes) to prove that she can sing. For a 13 year old, I don’t think she sings that bad. Maybe she just loves music and wants to sing. People don’t have to be so mean and say all those hurtful words to her. After all, she is only 13! Don’t be so hard on her.
The song got viral on YouTube with over 19 million views and sure made Rebecca Black famous, even in a bad way. I don’t think this is a intentional strategy of the video-making company but the marketing success sure made many other online marketers salivate.
In response to Ashkan’s blog post How to Get Consumers to Promote Your Business?, here I want to collaborate on the reasons why Ikea’s promotion through Facebook has created so much buzz and been so successful.
(A better look of how the promotion works can be found here IKEA Malmo’s Facebook Showroom: A Viral Social Media Success)
First of all, the promotion can reach a lot of people, especially their targeted cost-conscious but also chic-design-looking consumers. Traditional ways as TV commercials and magazine or newspaper ads are having decreasing number of viewers, and they are more costly compared to this Facebook promotion, which cost nothing except for the work to create a profile and upload a dozen photos.
Secondly, contrary to TV commercials and magazine or newspaper ads, this promotion is interactive. Customers are not only passively looking at a video or picture, they are actively being part of the promotion by tagging themselves and leaving comments. It becomes a fun thing for a lot of people to be engaged in and being able to participate in it creates a stronger memory for its potential customers.
Thirdly, as one of the main features of Facebook, subject to individual settings, what someone does can be broadcasted to his or her friends via News Feed. In this way, either consciously or unconsciously, the user who tagged him or herself or left comments on the Ikea Facebook page spreads the word of the promotion to all his or her friends on Facebook.
Besides being a great advertisement for the new Ikea Malmo store, this promotion also adds value to customers, not only to those first-tagged Facebook users who got free furnitures, but also their general customers by reducing the cost of promotion.
Today, Microsoft search engine Bing launched deals on its desktop and mobile version in response to one of the hottest themes on the internet. Bing claims to collect leading offers from the top daily deal websites like Groupon, LivingSocial and Restaurant.com and gives you access to more than 200,000 offers in over 14,000 cities and towns across the US. Other than that, Bing also teamed up with The Dealmap, making it effortless for its users to find and share the best local deals.
By finding what the users need and offering ways to better cater them, Bing establishes a competitive advantage against its main competitor Google and many other competitors, which do not provide this service. Supposedly, it will gain a bigger market share out of the existing market and demonstrates its sales orientation. Of course, I speculate that sometime soon in the future, other search engines will introduce this feature as well, but just as innovators can introduce new products and charge a premium, users who find this feature attractive will already have changed to Bing at that time.
But as for now, the service is only limited to the US, and users from other countries have to wait for it to expand to their regions.
One thing ironic and a lot of readers pointed out is that, in the Microsoft official blog that posted the news, it uses iPhone as an example of mobile devices that this newly-added feature can be utilized on not their own Windows Phone, and this deal feature isn’t even supported on Windows Phone 7!
I just had my finance midterm this afternoon as i’m in the last section of this course, 207, which had a midterm one day later than all the other sections. I never bought a book for this course, mostly because it’s so pricey, and also I got throught HR last term without a textbook. But still, seeing that the midterm may contain materials that are on the textbook but not covered in lectures on the midterm instruction sheet, I decided to borrow one from my friend for one day. I did borrow a book from a friend but as it turned out, I still didn’t read it. Luckily, the exam went well, at least I think.
So all of the above is for the introduction of the comparison between UBC Bookstore and Discount Bookstore in the village.
UBC Bookstore carries the name of UBC, so of course with tourists, it is definitely a place to visit and buy souvenirs (with the UBC logo). Being associated with the UBC brand, the bookstore sells not only textbooks but also mostly high quality stationaries, backpacks, clothing. Despite that, UBC Bookstore also partners with Apple, carrying a selection of their products, which greatly leverages their status. With the association with brand names like UBC and Apple, UBC Bookstore definitely established a first position with campus study-related stores.
With the Discount Bookstore, the way of promotion is mostly through word-of-mouth. Not much students have the financial ability to spend $700 per term on new books, but sometimes, in cases like when old books are not available or there is a new version coming out this term, they have to buy new books. Discount Bookstore offers a cheaper place to buy both new and old textbooks. It has a strong positioning as a book selling store, as it knows that it cannot compete at almost all other related categories with both Staples and UBC Bookstore around. It clearly shows to all customers that they are there to save you money: the place is small; no appealing decorations; located on a second floor in village.
I must say, one of the biggest reasons why both UBC Bookstore and Discount Bookstore are operating well is that they have clear and strong positioning and they provide their unique value to customers.
I saw a show on TV a few days ago. It was about how housewives can make the best use of coupons. There was one woman who bought which was originally $200 something value of goods and ended up paying $6 with numerous $1 or $2 coupons, and she got another more than $6 value of coupons because of this purchase. I admit, the value of the time spent on acquiring these coupons may not the worth the money actually saved, but come on, with coupons, that woman paid almost nothing for the $200 something stuff! That was amazing.
After that, while I was cleaning my room one day, I found a coupon hidden at the bottom of a box: save $1 on the next purchase of Nestle instant coffee. I cannot even remember when I put it in and I checked, it expired on Dec 31, 2010. I’ve kept it after a few times of cleaning and now it’s finally the time to throw it away. I always thought I would use it someday.
If you have a coupon, it is very likely that next time you need to buy something in that category, you buy from their brand, and it increases the chances you buy from them (you have to use it before the expiry date!). Just like what I did last Sunday.
I got a coupon from a friend: 2 for 1 cheesecake in Jan, 2011 at True Confections. True Confections is my favorite place to have dessert and there is one store very close to campus. It is pretty pricy there. A normal cheesecake is $8.75 plus tax and tips. 2 for 1, that’s half the price, attempting. It was the end of January already and I was not craving for cheesecakes although some would be nice. And that weekend, I was pretty busy preparing for marketing midterm and other stuff. But I still couldn’t resist the temptation and I went with a roommate who also had a lot of work to do. We were just thinking, it would be such a waste if we don’t use it, even is under this situation, we totally shouldn’t go. See, coupon works!
Graph credit: http://www.fastcompany.com/1721763/livingsocial-traffic-surges-80-groupons-declines-20?partner=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+fastcompany/headlines+(Fast+Company+Headlines)
An article came out today on Fastcompany.com saying that in the past week, the sales of LivingSocial, a leading group coupon website, has surged 80% last week, while at the same time, the #1 group coupon website Groupon.com experienced a 20% drop in sales. What accounts for the changes?
All of this happened with of LivingSocial’s partnership with Amazon, who offers to provide a 50% off of a $20 oucher at Amazon.com. An amazing 1 million vouchers were sold on this deal.
It draws us attention to corporate partnerships. Few firms operate in isolation. With numerous companies being around on the market, the right connections with the right companies play an important role in company development. The question of choosing what company to cooperate with and when needs every firm’s consideration when seeking for partnerships.
In the case of LivingSocial and Amazon, it is clear that the decision of both companies has been nothing more than perfect. For LivingSocial, it has always been overshadowed by the definite dominant website in the market and there is no obvious sign that it will catch up. After last December’s big buzz of Google’s potential $6 billion acquisition and Groupon’s rejecting it, a record-breaking amount of venture capital was raised and created a bigger gap between LivingSocial and Groupon. Amazon and LivingSocial have a lot of shared customers, who are very active on the Internet and are keen on online shopping. Being able to get a coupon of Amazon.com is very intriguing for LivingSocial’s existing and potential customers, which resulted in its skyrocketing increase in their numbers. At the same time, for Amazon, being not only a partner but also an investor with LivingSocial, the partnership of this deal will surely increase the value of LivingSocial and thus increasing the value of return on its investment.
In November last year, I started to notice that a lot of people wore a little red flower on their left lapels. At first, I thought those people all went to an event that used this red flower as a logo. Then I saw more and more people wear it, which finally lead me to ask one of my friends what that was. Having only been in Canada for 2 years, I didn’t know that this was resulted from a huge annual campaign led by the Royal Canadian Legion.
Every year, millions of people wear the poppy distributed by the Royal Canadian Legion in the weeks running up to Remembrance Day. The significant value that the poppy brings to the legion does not only come from being an appreciation to the donor, but spreading the word of commemorating the fallen soldiers and making a donation to the organization. The same strategy is used by many websites: By having visitors click the “like” button on their webpages, the message that the webpages are valuable to the visitor is send to all his or her friends on Facebook. Many people refuse to consciously advertise for a product, so letting customers, or in this case donors, advertising for their products or services without them even knowing it is another level of marketing.
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