Stephanie Yeung's Blog

Recently, the French toilet paper brand Le Trefle has launched an interesting commercial stating that an iPad could replace almost everything a household uses every day. It catches the audience’s attention through introducing the idea of using an iPad for daily routines such as a drawing board, a note board, and so on. Let’ take a look at the commercial first.

Source: YouTube – Le Trefle Toilet Paper Commercial.

Even though the commercial is not made to be a long one, but it sure would grab everyone’s attention. I guess a lot of the audience would think that as an ad for the Apple’s iPad when seeing the frequent appearance of the iPad in the first few scenes of the commercial. The funny idea of using the “iShit” app to replace toilet paper is to illustrate that nothing could substitute toilet paper. Everyone needs toilet paper in the washroom, and so do people who have an iPad on their hand for their everyday life. Apparently, people would have a memory of the commercial. When they do their next purchase on toilet paper, they would recall the brand Le Trefle.

It is always a crucial thing for a brand to be in the consumers’ retrieval set. That means the brand can easily be recalled by consumers when they are purchasing toilet paper at a supermarket. In this case, Le Trefle does a great job on reminding the market of its existence and strengthening its position in the toilet paper industry. It states at the end of the commercial that the toilet paper has “extra paper”. The company tries to put emphasis on the quality of the product and shows that it cares about the value it delivers to its consumers.

Bubble tea with pearls.

It has been  a long time since Taiwanese bubble tea has been introduced into Canada. To add more flavours to the drink, most people would choose to put pearls or jelly in their bubble teas. While we call the black, tiny chewy balls as “pearls” in Canada, the Americans used to have a more interesting way to call them — “boba”.

Drinking bubble tea has become a latest trend, no matter it is among young adults or even older aged people. A group of young people living in the States have explored their initiatives to open up a bubble tea place selling what they called “boba”. At the same time, they are introducing this trend to more people as there are customers coming in and out their store every day just to have a taste of the new trendy drinks. Let’s take a look at the amazing video!

Source: YouTube – Bobalife Music Video. ft. Kevin Lien, Priscilla Liang, and Aileen Xu.

In their promotion video, they have used elements like pop music, street dance, and also some hot girls to attract the audience. The Taiwanese pop song has also become the so-called “boba song” named by some people on the net. The image of a bunch of people gathering and having bubble tea symbolizes a kind of relaxing lifestyle that a lot of young adults in America are desirous of nowadays. This, obviously, would stay on the minds of the audience for a while, and for sure trigger them to go get a bubble tea at Bobalife. Not only would the customers be able to have a drink while gathering with friends, but they can also have a sense of feeling that they are keeping up with the latest trend.

One of scenes in the video where a bunch of young people gathering, having bubble tea. Source: http://blog.angryasianman.com/2013/02/the-fung-brothers-are-livin-that.html

Almost every Asian knows about bubble tea, but it is Bobalife who has brought up the culture of having this ordinary but at the same time unique Taiwanese drink in the States. Thumbs up for this group of people from Bobalife. I believe a lot of people, especially Taiwanese who miss their home town, would be beneficial from this culture as they can have authentic boba drinks even though they are an ocean apart from Taiwan.

Water is a precious natural resource. Even with water transmission projects, there is always the problem of shortage. At times, we are always told to treasure and make good use of the water resource that we have. Ironically in 2008, the press has reported that the very famous coffee shop Starbucks has wasted 23 million litres of water every single day.

Running Water Tap at Starbucks.

Soon after, Starbucks has implemented new policies to re-build its brand in order to retain its customers. “Go Green Campaign” is its major strategy to alleviate the problem. Not only did the company change all its filtration system in all its stores, but it also aims at reducing water waste by 25% by 2015. Recently, Starbucks has released a new environmentally friendly product – Reusable Mugs. On one hand, it helps reduce the use of paper cups; and on the other hand, customers would be attracted to purchase those mugs so as to pay an effort in conserving the global environment.

Reusable Mug.

Ultimately, it is not only Starbucks’ responsibility to go green, we are also held responsible of making our world a better place to live in. Enjoy your coffee and go green starting from today!