The moment we submitted our final video project, I had a sense of fulfillment. Our marketing team did a great job on assignment 3. Most of us really into digital media and this kind of project that everyone can participate in rather than writing standard papers. It is a perfect chance for everyone to express creativity.

After doing research of companies on the list, we chose ZARA because of the potential increase in the market. While each project needs a timeline, deadlines, and clear goals, a project leader does more than keep track of the organizational aspects of the project. Due to the challenge to accommodate everyone’s schedule, we struggled to address every single problem in the regular meetings. The way I see it now, a successful project coordinator is able to facilitate the coordination of the team in a way that maximizes the team’s potential.

Throughout the whole project, I started to think like a real marketer. I consider more from a consumer’s perspective and take effort in adding value to the product. Only until apply the concept from the text book on the real project, did I understand how the real business works.

All in all, I really enjoy the learning experience throughout the term. I was thinking marketing is just about advertising and retaining customers, but now I start thinking more in-depth consumer and value-based aspect of it all.

Reading through my fellow classmate Ying Jiang’s blog: To unscramble Chinese mentality of purchasing luxuries. I came up with a new question. Recent data strongly suggests that China’s luxury market is still in slowdown mode, but while some companies are seeing a strong slump, a clear set of winners is making it through 2013 with solid sales The first blows came last year, with an economic slowdown and jitters about the political transition. Now, a crackdown on corrupt gift-giving and a populist backlash against ostentation have added to the woes.

The outlook for luxury-goods firms appears to have dimmed. Internet users have posted incriminating pictures, for example of poorly paid bureaucrats wearing suspiciously pricey watches, which have caused heads to roll. Mobs have also disrupted banquets deemed to be too lavish, on occasions forcing officials to their knees to beg for forgiveness.

The bottom line for the luxury sector is that the numbers show that even if China’s slowdown is long-term, brands with the right marketing strategies and an understanding of Chinese luxury consumers can still experience solid growth. According to the recent survey, the Chinese growth rate was the third-highest factor in cause for optimism about the global luxury market.

In addition, companies worried about China growth should take a look at the global picture: Chinese customers may not be buying as much luxury at home, but they’re certainly spending it abroad as the world’s largest-spending bloc of tourists. As a result, brands must focus on the Chinese consumer on an international level in order to truly cash in on the market’s high long-term growth potential.

China Luxury Market

According to the blog “Should Prescription Drug Ads Be Reined In?”, some people argue that drug advertising is a way to educate consumers, while others say it just increase the sales and can be misleading to customers.

In the same week were published that the company Janssen, division of Johnson & Johnson will be fined a $1.7 billion, for misbranding a schizophrenia drug and that the FDA – Food & Drug Administration – American regulatory Agency launched a platform named: “BadAd” dedicated to “truthful prescription drug Advertising & Promotion”.

The FDA, monitors the information that pharmaceutical companies give to health care professionals (HCPs) about prescription drugs. It is surely no coincidence that, at the same time as this landmark decision, the FDA launched a platform for an e-learning course for medical professional to be fully aware of the approved uses of pharmaceutical products and the limitations of use. In this way, in the case of over claiming made by a pharmaceutical company can be challenged and minimized by FDA monitoring http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm211791.htm

Created in conjunction with MedScape, the e-learning course is designed to alert healthcare providers and students to potentially untruthful drug ads and promotional materials.

The course offers continuing medical education credit for doctors and continuing education credit for other healthcare providers. While it was developed with healthcare providers in mind, anyone can take the course. The FDA is hoping that reaching students now with ‘Bad Ad’ information will have a career-long effect on how they view prescription drug promotion..

In the same press release the American regulatory Agency is complaining that many consumer advertisements for prescriptions drugs–on TV, in magazines or online represent a budget that is less than the Advertising & Promotional investments for healthcare providers. Pharmaceutical companies, in the USA, actually spend more money advertising to health care professionals than they spend advertising to consumers.

Direct-to-consumer advertising remains an important method of marketing drugs. The industry spent $2.4 billion on television ads, in 2011, according to Nielsen. However this is a 23% drop from the $3.1 billion spent in 2007.

The FDA attitude seems peculiar in Europe where the Direct to Consumer (DTC) promotion is forbidden for prescription drugs in order to better contain healthcare costs.

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/should-prescription-drug-ads-be-reined-in/?_r=0