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Growing economies with exploding populations are an extremely attractive concept to marketers.

Canadian Business wrote an article on ad creative Johan Vakidis’ move to China from Montreal. In China, Vakidis works at AKQA’s Shanghai office. One of the biggest projects he is undertaking now is a Nike campaign to encourage running in China.

Working in a foreign country can be an indispensable opportunity for a marketer to grow. Firstly, one needs to face the challenges associated with the cultural differences of the area: in China, running is not seen as a sport; Vakidis will need to find an appropriate way to change people’s perception on running. Secondly, in China, marketers have an opportunity to experiment: for example, in China, clients are more willing to try new things than their counterparts in North America. This allows the marketer to try out a wide range of projects and thus learn new skills. Also, marketers get to experience differences in advertising between their home country and the foreign country: in China, the mobile advertising platform is quite a difficult one; the devices and carriers aren’t very standardized and make for a tough sell.

In the end, although working in a foreign country presents one with many challenges, one is also given an opportunity to grow and gain valuable new skills.

Works Cited:

Beer, Jeff. “AKQA’s Johan Vakidis talks about digital advertising in Asia | CanadianBusiness.com.”CanadianBusiness.com. N.p., 17 Nov. 2011. Web. 18 Nov. 2011. <http://www.canadianbusiness.com/blog/sales_and_marketing/57649–a-canadian-ad-man-in-china>.

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“Ding dong, the witch is dead. And by witch, I mean Flash.” Peter Nowak, blogger for the Canadian Business website, wrote an article on the killing of Adobe Flash at the hands of Apple.

Adobe has announced that it is stopping development of Flash for mobile devices. In a time where more and more web surfing is happening on phones, there really isn’t much future for Flash.

I find this blog post extremely interesting as it clearly shows the movement of one era of consumer behaviour into another. There was an era where consumers gravitated towards PCs and mice, and it was in this time that Flash was successful. Then came the era of the smartphone and the banning of Flash on the iPhone. Now that consumers are shifting towards browsing on their smart phones, they want to be able to access the same websites on their computers: websites with flash in their design suddenly unattractive.

This blog post clearly demonstrates the impact of shifting trends on a company. Even if a company stays on its toes and strives to be innovative, if it is unable to ride the wave of shifting consumer behaviours, it will be swept away.

Works Cited:

Nowak, Peter. “Apple killed the Flash star | CanadianBusiness.com.”CanadianBusiness.com. N.p., 11 Nov. 2011. Web. 17 Nov. 2011. <http://www.canadianbusiness.com/blog/tech/56614–apple-killed-the-flash-star>.

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“Is the concept of outsourcing positive or negative?” Fellow classmate Karsten Hagge wrote an interesting blogpost answering this very question.

Karsten states that “Outsourcing to companies is only likely to be engaged if there is a reasonable expectation that doing so is advantageous to the company who is seeking to outsource.” I would like to add onto this statement and say that the advantages include:

• Reducing and controlling operating costs
• Improving company focus
• Accelerating reengineering benefits

G Adventures is a company which has discovered these advantages of outsourcing. Bruce Poon Tip, founder of the sustainable-travel company, believes that the rigid processes of his human-resources department are hurting his company’s innovation. Running a HR department is costly and complicated; thus, G Adventures outsourced most of its HR needs to IBM.

By replacing humans with technology, the company has reduced operating costs while creating a more efficient way to handle HR. Responsibilities such as payroll and company data can now easily be automated and handled online. It has also improved the company’s focus on innovation. Overall, the company has seen improvements in areas such as cost, quality, service, and speed.

Works Cited:

Nelson, Jacqueline. “Should you fire your HR department? | CanadianBusiness.com.”CanadianBusiness.com. N.p., 3 Nov. 2011. Web. 17 Nov. 2011. <http://www.canadianbusiness.com/article/54587–should-you-fire-your-hr-department>.

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Vancouverites are no strangers to Lululemon Atletica. All are familiar to the image of a woman’s bottom hugged by the company’s famous yoga sweatpants.

In my opinion, Lululemon is the definition of an entrepreneurial company. According to Schumpeter’s View of Entrepreneurship, an entrepreneurial company is able to, in an innovative manner, generate enough value to customers to exceed the customers’ costs. Lululemon has certainly been able to achieve this.

The company introduced their unique and trendy products in a way that had never been seen before. They based the company’s culture on community and learning, and with virtually zero advertising, managed to build an extremely devoted customer base. Their marketing technique has been successful: even consumers who aren’t the least bit interested in yoga come flocking into stores for a pricey pair of sweats. At a minimum of $98 a pop, the sweatpants aren’t cheap; however, the company has developed such a strong value proposition that consumers have quite a high willingness to pay.

In just over 10 years, Lululemon has grown from a single storefront to a public company with more than 100 outlets and $340 million in annual revenue. The amount of wealth creation, speed of wealth creation, the risks that the company has taken, and its level of innovation all prove that it is indeed an entrepreneurial company.

Works Cited:

Sacks, Danielle . “Lululemon’s Cult of Selling.” Fast Company. N.p., 1 Apr. 2009. Web. 16 Nov. 2011. <www.fastcompany.com/magazine/134/om-my.html>.

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“Instant Death of Instant Photography”. Nancy Huang’s blog post caught my attention instantly. Her post carried strong points and I agree that it is essential for brands to remain innovative.

A decade ago, Blockbuster was a behemoth in the movie rental industry. In 2010, it came word that Dish Network was buying Blockbuster’s assets out of bankruptcy.

The company’s failures can be largely attributed to its overconfidence and blindness to emerging trends. Blockbuster ignored the innovations occurring around them and locked themselves into the narrow view that they were a provider of movie rentals rather than a distributor of entertainment.

In class, we learned of the importance of market research: it is an indispensable aid in decision making. Clearly, Blockbuster should have been in class with us. The company failed to collect and analyze sufficient enough data and made extremely poor decisions. It wasn’t until six years after Netflix launched that Blockbuster realized that it needed to enter the online DVD rental-by-mail industry: the company’s slow reaction was the source of its downfall.

A company needs to continually compare their value propositions with those of competitors in order to respond to new trends and generate business strategies. Unfortunately, Blockbuster was a little too comfortable sitting its throne up high. Now, it’s underground, dead.

Works Cited:

Huang, Nancy. “Instant Death of Instant Photography | Nancy’s Blog .”UBC Blogs | Home. N.p., 7 Oct. 2011. Web. 16 Nov. 2011. <https://blogs.ubc.ca/nancyhuang/2011/10/07/instant-death-of-instant-photography/>.

Woloszynowicz, Michael. “Web 2.0 Development and Business Lessons: Business Lessons from Blockbuster’s Failure.” Web 2.0 Development and Business Lessons. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Nov. 2011. <http://www.w2lessons.com/2010/09/business-lessons-from-blockbusters.html>.

MG, Siegler. “Snoozing And Losing: A Blockbuster Failure | TechCrunch.”TechCrunch. N.p., 6 Apr. 2011. Web. 16 Nov. 2011. <http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/06/make-it-a-blockbuster-night/>.