Month: November 2010

As most of you know the new Harry Potter movie has been out for a week or so, but I still haven’t taken the time to watch it yet =.= Anyway I’ve come across a couple of music videos related to Harry Potter and thought I would share it here (and ultimately dedicate my post to HP).


I’m sure there are a lot more, but the Harry Potter brand definitely has a lot of advocates who are willing to spend their spare time making videos just like the above ones.
By summer next year though, the 8th movie will be out and the original series will be over. It’ll be really interesting to see what happens after… will the studios find ways to milk the brand for more money? How long will it be before they redo the whole series?
I hope after finals, I’ll find the time to watch it (I’m not actually a super big fan) and perhaps maybe re-watch 5 and 6 before watching 7 (it’s been too long since I’ve watched them so my memory’s a bit fuzzy).
To end my post, I have another vid, it’s actually quite old and most people will have already seen it, but it’s just another example of fan advocacy from one of the earlier Harry Potter movies

I really don’t like snow. I probably sound like a cynic but I don’t see how the joy of snow could exceed all the dangers snow brings. Most of you (my class mates at least) can probably drive and would know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, snow is usually a good signal for probably the most popular holiday all year, Christmas. Which is also probably the equivalent of tax season for accountants to marketers. Marketing divisions will probably review their 4P’s or may just have a set of 4P’s specifically for Christmas since it’s just that important.

Some things they would know is that for their Product, they definitely need to add in new features or at least market it that way. I remember from last year’s OB project with EA, they would rush products to completion (which means they were buggy/glitchy), just so they could make it in time for Christmas.

Price will probably be marked up, but then again right after Christmas, we have Boxing day, probably the most well-known “promotional-pricing” day that people know about. (I think there’s also a couple of other days that are known to be promotional-pricing days… Black Friday in the states at least?)

For Place/Distribution, it will probably be quite a nightmare for the logistics people. Things getting sold out is an issue, with the classic Movie example Jingle All The Way :P.

Lastly Promotion, we haven’t gone over this P in class yet (will next week though), but I would think consumer conversion rates are generally higher, so the effect of promotions would be amplified.

The day I can’t wait for is actually not Christmas, it’s December 15th, my first complete day after finishing our first semester :D, I think this day will feel just as great as Christmas itself.

So in my classmate Graeme’s blog, he mentioned the Underground Youtube Decrees in his post here. Me being an avid Youtube surfer (as you can see from a lot of my posts) just had to respond.

Of the 7 decrees in UYD, I’ve seen many of them in posts but I’m not too familiar with IV (Thou shalt not ask if he died) or VII (Thou shalt not ask if an inanimate object is ok). I personally find some of the decrees amusing occasionally but more often than not, they are un-thoughtfully presented, which I guess warrants a decree against them.

One  decree that should be imposed is “Thou shalt not refer the whole video as their favourite part”. This happens when the comment links a section 0:01 – 3:15 (for example) as the user’s favourite part when in fact, the whole video IS 3:15 long, this is something that really annoys me.

Some other decrees I would add would be about comments that spout “FAKE!!!” and also comments that result in a long heated back-and-forth argument where posters accuse each other of being trolls. If you’re unfamiliar with the term “troll”, it basically refers to a person who deliberately takes perhaps a controversial side, with an intent to tick people off on the internet. It is no surprise that Youtube attracts many trolls since it is such a big community.

On a related note, I found this comic from XKCD about this issue, and the potential “solution” (note: I took the image and censored a word to make it appropriate for class, by clicking on the link to XKCD, you will see the uncensored version, please be warned)

So a couple of days ago, there was a dispute between Nicaragua and Costa Rica over the border of its territory. This dispute however, was not driven by a greedy government, but rather by an error from Google Maps.

As you can see, the two maps show a different border, hence the confusion. From the article I got this story from (here), they joked that “Bing’s next marketing strategy: Bing, the search engine that doesn’t cause international disputes.” So this got me thinking about campaigns where firms take shots at competitors to knock them down a few pegs. Is it ethical or effective? or does it just show a sign of weakness?

In this example…

we have the Cleveland Cavaliers (a basketball team) respond to a former player, Lebron James (who has been marketed crazily, with his own brand). To me, the video just makes the Cavaliers seem really bitter. If you’re a basketball fan, you’ll know what happened with Lebron’s “the Decision” and most people would agree that was quite stupid and unnecessary, but making response videos like the one above is just as unnecessary. It’s kinda sad to see the Cavaliers (who were quite irrelevant before the arrival of Lebron) try to tarnish the Lebron brand (ie. Witness –> Quitness).