It’s been a long journey getting to the end of the Marketing Plan assignment but it’s finally done! Looking back on the assignment, there were definitely bumps along the way but it was undoubtedly a rewarding experience.

Starting with Assignment One… 
It was a tough decision regarding which company we wanted to research. We did a process of elimination, first deciding the companies that we didn’t want to research and cutting down our list to a few companies that interested the whole team. We finally agreed on RIM, now known as Blackberry, to focus on for the rest of the semester. It was definitely a challenging experience researching Blackberry as it’s a company that is well known, but in the process of rebuilding and rebranding itself. Defining the Macro and Micro environment was the more self-explanatory section of the assignment as we knew how to go about researching and finding information. When it came to CDSTEP, there was more preparation required as this was a new topic that we were introduced to. We had to understand what the sections were asking for before we could actually begin our research. Our team worked through it together and all the team members were very willing to explain and help each other out. Assignment One definitely brought us closer as a team and we became more comfortable voicing our opinions to one another. When the marks for the assignment were released, our team was shocked at the low grade that we had received. The only comfort we found was that it was the class average, so that meant that at least we weren’t the only ones confused about what to do. We aimed to do better in the next section,

…which leads me to Assignment 2.
Wow, we did not understand this part of the marketing plan at all. When we were working on the demographics and target segments we thought we understood the concepts for sure. We identified demographics, geographics and psychographics – thinking that those were the segmentations. We then went on to identify what we thought to be segment variables such as age, gender, occupation, etc. What we failed to understand was that we actually had to create a specific target segment. Due to this mistake, we lost a lot of marks for our assignment two and had to revise most of our work to make sure that we had correct target segments for assignment three. This part of the assignment was definitely a learning experience for the whole group, going into this assignment thinking we knew was target segments were and coming out realizing that we had no idea and learning what target segments actually are. We did do the positioning part of the assignment right though, so that was a plus!

Last but not least, Assignment Three.
This part of the marketing plan was the most interesting and time consuming by far. It is definitely not like any other presentation I’ve done before and I’m glad that we got to experience video editing. Making the script and cutting down the information was not the difficult part of this assignment, it was more about deciding on how to send our message and what message we wanted to send. This, I believe, is an integral part of Marketing, so it was interesting to be able to experience the whole process. By reiterating the entire marketing plan assignment in this last section, we were able to review all the prior concepts learned in the semester – which was really helpful and was basically forcing us to review for the final (which is always good). All in all, the marketing video was a good experience – although the learning process and actual editing of the video took more than triple the amount of time it took to prepare and film the video.

The fact that I was going to be reviewed by my peers…
did not really have any effect on the effort I put into the project. I believe that you should always give your best effort into whatever you’re doing, no matter who is watching or judging you. With that being said, the amount of effort and the quality of work I produced during this assignment would have been the same regardless of whether or not I was being reviewed by my peers – doing your best all the time is what I believe in.

The Team.
I could not have asked for a better team to work with. They were encouraging, supportive and so easy to get along with. When we met as a group, it wasn’t only about getting the project done – it was friends getting together to talk and have fun. The best kind of groups are the ones that can be productive but at the same time have fun and actually get to know each other. My team was all of the above and they made sure that I was not alone when I was editing the video project (it’s hard to have more than one person on the computer). They were always there for moral support and made sure that everyone felt included and got assistance when they needed it. I can’t stop raving about how great my team was so I’ll just end it here. Very glad to have gotten to work on the Marketing Assignment with this team and the opportunity to get to know these people!

Well, it’s the time of year again. Lights are being put up, Christmas trees are being bought and people are lining up 5 days before a sale to go shopping. Wait, what? Yes, it is indeed almost time for one of the most anticipated sales of the year, Black Friday. There are sales, big sales, huge sales -and then there’s Black Friday. I don’t think there is any other shopping related event during the year that causes quite as much frenzy, excitement and hysteria as Black Friday does. What about the event makes it so appealing? Might it be the marketing surrounding the event or the obnoxiously low prices that are advertised? 

In an attempt to understand the “Promotion” section of our class better, I thought it would be interesting to try and relate Black Friday to the concept. We could argue that Black Friday is not so much an event as a product in itself – it’s a “service”, an intangible good.

Getting the right message, to the right audience, through the right media. Black Friday pitches definitely have this one down – they’re advertising cheaper than dirt prices, for quality products that you might otherwise be paying double the price for, the right message. Black Friday is set just less than a month away from Christmas, they know that everyone will be in the Christmas mode – frantic to buy the perfect present and willing the pay the price, the right audience. Everywhere you go, you see advertisements for Black Friday ; you hear advertisements for Black Friday on the radio; you see a tweet about Black Friday; you see a Facebook post about Black Friday. Black Friday is literally everywhere. Given that our current society is addicted to social media and Black Friday hits all the channels of media, how can they go wrong? The right media.

Whoever was behind the genius idea of Black Friday, I salute you. Not only are they getting all the right messages across, their message is being properly encoded by the consumers, they’re responding by buying heaping amounts of products during the sale and thus gives the sellers feedback. The perfect communication process. Since the ads are reaching the consumers directly, and the consumers go to the malls/stores/outlets to make their purchases, Black Friday would be using direct marketing to reel their unsuspecting consumers in.

With all that being said, I will probably be one of the shoppers amidst the angry hoard of people aimlessly grabbing at products. Minus the anger and aimless grabbing – I’ll go for the fun of it and hopefully be able to identify some Promotional aspects.

While reading through James’ blog post titled “Dunkin’ Donuts Went Black and Now They’re Going Back“, I was very intrigued by the topic of discussion, namely racism and marketing combined as a single issue.

I agree with what James has said in his post regarding the fact that it is ridiculous that the charcoal donut campaign by Dunkin’ Donuts has been faced by claims of racism. To me, it seems as though in Western cultures, most notably America, racism is such a sensitive issue that it is brought up in situations where it is completely irrelevant. We try so hard to contain the racism that it is seen in many situations in which it does not even exist. Mix racism with marketing and every little possible stab at a certain race is magnified. With anti-racism playing such a large role in our current society, it is difficult for marketers to create a wholesome ad that does not offend. Not only for race issues, but cultural, societal and political issues as well. This is why ad campaigns are usually targeted to their specific demographic and geographical location.

In this particular situation, we can see that this ad was originally targeted at the Thai demographic. The fact that the complaints did not come from Thailand but rather America, and that the American branch of Dunkin’ Donuts had to apologize on part of their Thai branch is somewhat ridiculous. To me, it seems as though the viewers of this ad are skewing their perception of what it actually is and making it seem like a racist advertisement when it reality, it is only portraying a colour. It is not making any connection to people with darker skin tones and it is not sending a degrading or demeaning message. The fact that people have jumped to the conclusion after seeing an advertisement with the colour black on it, with someone who is painted black to advertise their product – just boggles my mind.

Referring to Newsfeed’s article about the Dunkin’ Donuts advertisement, it says that the CEO of Dunkin’ Donuts Thailand insists that the outrage for the ad stems from “paranoid American thinking” which I can’t completely disagree with. Stepping back from the whole race situation, in a marketing point of view, it was the proper step for the American branch to take in apologizing. There would have been no benefit to the company to justify their position and would have only damaged their company reputation further – to reiterate James’ statement in his post. All in all, the issue of racism is subjective and is perceived differently by everyone. Such was this blog post – made up entirely of subjective thoughts and opinions on this particular “racial” issue.

UN Women, a branch from the UN that concentrates on women’s issues has recently released an ad campaign showing searches made about women through Google’s search engine. What’s shocking to me is that this isn’t just one of a few searches that come up within Google, that people have pasted together in order to create an unsettling campaign. These are actually the top recommendations that pop when one types in: “women shouldn’t” or “women need to” into the search bar.

I feel that this ad campaigns shows a lot of what’s overlooked in society. Many people seem to be apathetic towards gender equality now that women have gained some sort of equality in terms of voting rights or rights within the workplace – leaving the greater issues to be dealt with by the ones who are actually affected by it. In a world that’s supposed to be fighting for equal rights for men and women, it’s astonishing that a globally used search engine can turn up such abhorrent search results. It’s deeply disturbing to me that somewhere in the world, someone is actually typing in those words – whether to find clarification or justification.

This ad campaign also shows that gender equality is not something that we are even close to achieving. Once again, as mentioned in my previous post, the success of this ad campaign comes down to taking something simple and piecing it together in a way that actually speaks to it’s observers. How many of us would go into the search bar with these prompts in mind? It would have been another issue that slipped our minds simply because it would have never crossed our everyday lives. The UN Women have achieved the impact they knew they would from releasing this ad campaign because it hits a chord within everyone – people who are affected by gender inequality; people who didn’t know the extent of gender inequality in present society; people who are apathetic to gender equality.
It would be a cliché to say that this campaign brings about awareness, but that’s exactly what it does – in the best and most direct way possible. It’s visible, relatable and to the point. The fact that these searches are conducted on Google, which almost everyone has access to and can experience firsthand the inequalities conveyed by these searches amplifies the affects of this campaign.

Once in a while, we see advertisements like this and realize that there are so many issues that go unaddressed and generally ignored by society because it’s not clearly observable. Once in a while, we see advertisements like this and realize that we’re much further from accomplishing the goals that we’ve set as a society than we really thought.

Sources

• http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/10/18/new-ad-campaign-uses-popular-search-terms-to-show-how-the-world-really-feels-about-women/
• http://www.cbc.ca/newsblogs/yourcommunity/2013/10/un-campaign-uses-google-autocomplete-to-highlight-gender-inequality.html

I recently stumbled upon a post on Facebook about creative advertisements that caught my attention. That in itself is already marketing at work but take a look (or two) at these 40 Impossibly Creative Advertisements  and you’ll see why it’s so captivating.

 I’ve always been so fascinated by those ads out of the hundreds that are able to capture your attention. The above image of a Mr. Clean advertisement is so simple, but it gets the point across clearly – which I believe is the highest level of marketing skills one can attain. With so many advertisements, media, marketing campaigns thrown at us everyday, it’s really hard for marketers to capture a consumer’s attention.

What I believe made these advertisements so successful is the fact that they’ve identified the strengths of their product or company and they’ve come up with a simple solution to get that point across to the consumers that they want to reach. Having worked in retail before, I’ve experienced firsthand how hard it is to get someone to buy your product – let alone listen to you talk about that product.

What they’ve done in these advertisements shows creativity and understanding of the product, placement and target market that they are trying to reach – precisely what we’re learning in class. Seeing the marketing mix put into action is interesting and helps me understand the material being taught in class. Marketing contains so many elements and levels that it’s a subject that can’t really be understood just by learning definitions. Being aware of all the marketing that’s going on around you in your daily life is just the beginning of many steps to becoming a marketing wizard.

There has always been talk surrounding the nature of marketing in regards to ethics – what values are we willing to sacrifice in order to make another dollar? An ad campaign that recently caught my eye was one for the ever controversial product: cigarettes. 

I feel like this cigarette campaign along with the article- Graphic warnings on the back of cigarette packets will not deter teenage smokers, study warns , is different than the usual anti-cigarette ads. The negative effects of cigarettes are actually advertised on the actual product and not within another poster campaign. This marketing campaign brings a little faith back into the marketing industry, in which it’s said that in order to make money, values and morals are thrown out the window. It shows that the tobacco companies haven’t completely forgotten their values and are showing the negative effects of their product to the consumers. The decision, in the end, is made by the consumer who is now informed of the detrimental effects of cigarettes. Socially, it pushes toward the end of an era where cigarettes are seen as glamorous – because try as we may to deter it, the glamorous presence of cigarettes is still present. There are many other points I could write about but to conclude, I felt like this campaign was important because it shows a drastic shift in the tobacco industry- from being known as one of the most unethical businesses to actually showcasing the negatives and the downside of their product entirely. It’s definitely a huge step in regards to ethics in marketing within the tobacco industry.

According to an article in The Globe and Mail, “nearly half of Canadians feel they are over-qualified for their job,”. So the question raised is how does a company keep these employees from moving to new jobs, what is their incentive to stay? What can the company do to avoid high employee turnovers?

This is a familiar concept in which we have discussed in Comm 101 class, and it seems very much relatable to the class in which we discussed the online shoe company, Zappos. Co-CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh, repeatedly emphasized the point of creating a workspace where the employees would want to come to work and where they would want to work even if they weren’t paid. I feel that the workspace that Hsieh wanted to create ties into the topic matter in which this article is talking about. If employees feel that they are over-qualified for their job, that obviously means that the job is not stimulating enough for them, and they feel that their skills could be put to better use. If their position is not a reason for them to stay, then what does the company have to offer that acts as an incentive to these “over-qualified” employees? According to Hsieh, it would be the company’s environment and how the employees interact with each other. The attitude that each employee brings to the company adds up to a positive environment that is an incentive in itself for employees to be loyal to their jobs. It’s also important to have company goals and objectives; if your employee really believes in these goals, then their position shouldn’t really matter as much as their contribution to the company as a whole.

SOURCES:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/management/are-you-overqualified-for-your-job-join-the-crew/article5285920/ 

http://www.linkedin.com/company/zappos.com 

Corporate Social Responsibility is: the way that an industry integrates economic, social and environmental imperatives into their activities.

Why is it important for us, business students, to learn about how social and environmental factors tie into the business world? There are many points that a company needs to consider, and sustainability is one of the key factors. By learning about how social and environmental issues relate to a business, it gives students an idea of how to successfully manage a business that integrates these factors into the business while working towards an economic profit. Firstly, it gives a business a competitive advantage if they are the first ones to innovate a product or service that benefits the environment. Since more and more people are becoming more concerned about the environment, they are now more inclined to ask questions regarding a company/business and how their company benefits or is concerned about social and environmental factors. Of course, the better your company is to the environment, and the more initiatives you take in helping the environment on part of the company, makes for a better and stronger image of the company. Products and services that help sustain the environment are much more popular to the public than those which are detrimental to the environment. One factor that contributes to the success of a company, is their ability to plan ahead and for the future. This not only means adapting to customers’ needs and demands, but also the social and environmental issues down the road. Being socially responsible as a business will give you a competitive edge over other rival companies. On top of going above and beyond other businesses, it also helps the company develop and change in a more positive way.

SOURCES:
http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/csr-rse.nsf/eng/home
http://www.research.utoronto.ca/behind_the_headlines/corporate-social-responsibility/ 

When you think entepreneur, typically few people come to mind and it seems like a daunting task that only a select group of people can achieve. So when I read in the Globe and Mail’s article “More Canadians abandoning traditional work,” I was a little stunned at the amount of Canadians who have started their own business ventures. The article states that 15% of the labor-force in Canada is self employed and that a research in June showed that half a million Canadians have reportedly started their own businesses in the past few years. I guess with the rate at which technology and social media is increasing, it only makes sense that the number of entrepreneurs would grow along with it. With such technology at hand, it makes starting a new business so much easier, as you have all the resources needed at the click of a button. How to start a business, where to start a business, and the marketing of it all can be done online as well. Other factors that influence the rate of growth of entrepreneurs would be the age of the work-force; the “over 50” crowd takes up 30% of the current workforce. This percentage is experienced in the field that they work in and therefore have a better chance of starting and sustaining a successful business venture. With this being said, since the rate of entrepreneurs is growing so rapidly.. what will this mean for the non self-employed percentage of the work force? As time goes on and more students/people are educated in the fields of business and entrepreneurship, will it change the way in which business as a whole operates in society? Of course, not all business ventures are successful and many of them fail, but if a substantial amount of the workforce leaves to start their own businesses.. will that create an excess amount of employment in the country? This is a question worth pondering……

SOURCES:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/jobs/more-canadians-abandoning-traditional-work/article4565994/

First of all.. what is social entrepreneurship? It can be defined as:  the recognition of a social problem and the uses of entrepreneurial principles to organise, create and manage a social venture to achieve a desired social change. I guess it is sometimes hard to differentiate between a regular entrepreneur and a social entrepreneurs because they do share many similar qualities. A very helpful way to distinguish between the two is how they measure their performance. A regular entrepreneur would measure his performance by profit and return, where as a social entrepreneur measure performance in the positives returns to society. This topic really interested me because before learning about it in class, I never would have thought that there was a title given to people who promote social change. Of course there are various people who have gained publicity for what they do in regards to social change, but it never occurred to me that there was an actual “status” that one could achieve by promoting social change. Another fascinating aspect is that the people who are categorized as “social entrepreneurs” have all the qualities required of an entrepreneur plus more. They have the drive, the vision and the skill to implement their goals.. while at the same time pushing for something that is greater than merely financial return.

SOURCES:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_entrepreneurship