Category Archives: #UGC

Coca cola let you design your very own ugly Xmas sweater this year! Coke Zero is hoping that you won’t just keep your hideous creations to yourself but will also share them over social media, trotting out your ugly sweater to get some votes. For the next two weeks, consumers have the opportunity to create the ultimate in tacky winter wear on the site. They have an array of colours, patterns and graphics to choose from — everything from musical notes to reindeer to abominable snowmen.

Participants are strongly encouraged to get the word out because the 100 sweaters with the most votes, come Dec. 1, will be handcrafted and sent to their creators in time for the holiday. You will have to connect with your email account or Facebook/Twitter account to be ale to submit a design or vote on a design.

Coca cola is by all means the leading company when it comes to marketing and I think this time this new campaign follows on from Coke’s previous brand marketing efforts. Coca cola always trying very hard to connect the brand with consumer and communicate the core value of the brand through marketing projects. It remind me of another marketing project they had earlier this year call the Wearable Movie.

Both times consumer gets the joy of customizing the garment themselves, sitting well with the brand’s ideas of fun, enjoyment and participation – all of which have been a keen focus of all  marketing campaigns such as “share a can”.  These exciting projects really get the customers engaged with the brand and spread the words by actively participating the activities by linking their social media accounts. Meanwhile, people are really enjoy the process therefore their feedbacks are mostly positive and helping Coca Cola building a positive brand image.

Sources:

https://www.sweatergenerator.com/#/main/landing

https://www.sweatergenerator.com/#/about

https://www.sweatergenerator.com/#/gallery

Apple is now in Cook’s Era and the latest announcement campaign presented to be kind of unexpected. However, to iPhone 5c, most people’s first reaction was rather shocked than happily surprised.

iPhone 5c can be consider as a iPhone 5 just with a different shell. Actually, aside from the battery and minor changes, functionalwise, there is really no much difference between these two products. However, in terms of marketing strategy, iPhone 5c replaced iPhone 5 completely given the fact that the latter has suspend production for good.

Therefore, iPhone 5c is not as the previous rumour saying as Iphone 5 Cheap, rather it’s a iPhone 5 with crying profit. Personally, I think the colorful cases of iPhone 5c would be the most attractive to normal female consumers. These potential buyers don’t care much about Apple as the value behind the brand, they just blindly follow whatever is in trend. In other wards, Apple now is consuming its brand value rather than accumulating. People who follows the newest trend  includes both female and male. There people are not the core consumers for digital, high tech products as in the past days; in fact, they are a lot less sensitive to functionality and capacity of a product compared to the real “understanding” apple users. However, we must admit that these people as a lot more consumer power since they are a such big group.

Thus, Apple finally step in front of both major consumer group and core consumer groups by announcing two similar product at the same time.

Nevertheless, I don’t think this is a perfect solution. Although 5C satisfied many of the needs from major consumers and get more revenue out of their pocket, it did suffer the loss of many invisible capital that were once highly valued by core consumers such as being high-end, stylish etc. And this loss is counting.

Since using Instagram, I followed many friends and celebrities and what’s shocking was the amount of hastags people are using under just one picture. However, I have to admit that more hastags does makes you more popular for being more searchable and more meaning content wise.

If you’re on Instagram, you have probably noticed that there are several Hashtag strategies out there.  Some people don’t use any, others use too many ( e.g. #Take #a #look #at #the #pink #dress #I #bought #today) and others again highlight a few ( e.g. Take a look at the #pink #dress I bought today).

In my opinion, the last strategy is most valuable. Although I’m not a fan of the strategy of using a # in front of every word, I can see a big boost in the number of likes / hearts when I add a couple of tags to my pictures.

My top ways of using hashtags on Instagram:
* Hashtags are a great way of spreading your pictures, as they make your pictures more visible and findable for people with the same interest.
* Capture / communicate the feeling you had when taking the picture.
* Enter a competition – Lots of brands /companies have their own IG account, host competitions and encourage people to add their tag(s) when uploading a suitable picture.
* As part of an event

How do you like to use hashtags?

Group buying, also known as collective buying, offers products and services at significantly reduced prices on the condition that a minimum number of buyers would make the purchase.

Group Buying Website Business Model:

Take Groupon as example:

• Groupon negotiate with suppliers to offer deals
• Groupon promote deals and gather consumers through its marketing channels
• Groupon sells coupons to consumers and charge commissions from suppliers Features:
• Consumer pays before purchasing: ensure the deals get done；accelerate the cash flow.
• Large discount for collective buying in limited time and items：create a phenomenon Panic Buying，encourage customer wowing the deals by word of mouth or social media
• Product and service type not limited by industry.
• Achieve a Three-Win situation for all parties involved

Market Potential in Canada

About 42 per cent of the Canadians familiar with group buy sites said they signed up to receive daily offers via email, compared to 34 per cent of U.S. respondents. Nine per cent of those Canadians also said they buy a discount voucher every few weeks, two per cent said they buy weekly, and one per cent said they buy something every day.

How to Achieve Sustainable development?

Using social media marketing!!!

Consumer based is the most critical element for group buying websites. Social media marketing (Twitter, Facebook, Instalgram Campagin) helps to:

• Identify consumer need. Whom they want to buy from. Get the first mover advantage.
• Gather as many users as possible to generate most reliable marketing promotional materials. (User generated content)

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