Wai Lung (Andy) Mao's Blog

Im sure many of us are aware that of the Avengers movie either from a social media site, Youtube or through friends. However, I believe that their effort in promoting the movie to the public through various promotional tactic is quite clever. First of, they released multiple movie trailers online. They started with an initial clip which summarized the movie followed by short clips on specific scenes to promote and market each individual characters. For example, the link below shows a clip that markets  Scarlett Johansson as the “Black Widow” in the movie. Unlike characters such as the Hulk, Ironman or Captain America, the company utilized these short clips to inform to the public that these new characters will be in the movie. Lastly they offered 1920 x 1280 wallpapers picture of each individual character which are available on the computer and on Apple and Android mobile devices. This allows us to pick and choose our favourite character and maybe make that as our desktop background so we’ll get all excited while waiting for the movie to come out. Overall, I believe this is a form of informative advertising and they are trying to create a pull strategy to create demand for us to watch the Avengers movie. Personally I can’t wait to gather all my friends to watch it on the first day it comes out.

Source: http://www.seanpaune.com/2012/04/05/first-clip-from-the-avengers-and-some-awesome-wallpapers/

After reading Ginny Lo’s blog on Nike’s spelling errors on their Boxing Day poster, I began to think about the power of their brand. She mentioned that grammar is a symbol of professionalism and that poor grammar can lead to doubts in the brand. The question is, why do consumers continue to trust in Nike after not one but two spelling mistakes on their poster? The answer is the power of their brand. To many consumer, Nike has been a reliable brand for several years.  Many famous and successful Athletes wear their Nike brand and some have their own Nike sportswear.  Big companies often utilize famous celebrities such as Colby Bryan, Lebron James to market and better position their brand. For example, just recently, Nike decided to market a unique pair of basketball shoes for Jeremy Lin, NBA Taiwanese-American basketball player.

Nike has been improving their products and continue to produce better advanced ones. They understand their market and consistently market sports wear with good quality at a reasonable price. The values that Nike offers make Nike a good and strong brand. Power of a good brand will continue to attract new and loyal customers despite a few spelling mistakes on their posters.

Original post by Ginny Lo https://blogs.ubc.ca/ginnylo/

After reading Kevin (Kun Hao) Wang’s blog on Abercrombie and Fitch’s expansion in Japan, I realized that the contents we learned in class are actually applicable in the real world. For instance, in class we learned firms need to segment the market into different bases and variables to fully understand the needs and wants of the consumers. In this example, Abercrombie and Fitch hired staff who spoke English and built their retail stores with the same amount of sexual contents as the ones in North America. It was obvious that Abercrombie and Fitch disregarded the fact that Japan has its own culture and language. Japanese consumers had no intention to walk in an American-based retail store and speak in a foreign language. Instead the company should have spent more time hiring and training Japanese staff to learn about their company policy and to serve in their local language. Also it should have made necessary changes in their product line and their retail store to fit into the Japanese culture.

This example taught me that, if a company wants to succeed in expanding at a foreign country, it should spend the time to analyse the market and adjust their promotion to the different culture, language of the country.

Original post by Kevin (Kun Hao) Wang https://blogs.ubc.ca/kunhaowang/

This image was used by my COMM 290 Prof, Brian Graham, when he shouted out “ladies and gentlemen, this is marketing!” I thought it was pretty funny because I never assumed a company such as this cereal company would actually use such a ridiculous marketing tactic to boost up sales. At the same time, my friends and I were discussing how Apple used a similar marketing concept to design their iPad, an enlargement of their previous product, the iPhone. I remember when Apple first launched their product, I was not convinced and I never predicted it to be successful. However, their success truly inspired me by the fact how their simple iPad design could become so popular. I now believe that marketing has no boundaries, and sometimes a simple design can have tremendous results. I also believe this picture fully illustrates the fact success can come in any shape or form when one applies it in a correct way.

I believe that in today’s business world, learning about the theories of commerce is not merely enough for individual students to succeed. What differentiate COMM 299 from other courses in UBC is that it teaches the practical side of business such as resume building and interview preparation. Most graduate students go out to find a job without knowing how to write a strong resume. In this course, TAs sat down to teach us each and every step to market ourselves to our highest potential. I learned that each and every paragraph in a resume and cover letter should include CAR statements. By understanding this crucial outline, it will allow us to create powerful and persuasive resume and cover letters that will earn us a higher chance to get the job. Aside from resume and cover letter building we were also given the privilege to have an one-on-one interview with an TA or Prof. This experience was valuable as it created an realistic environment that was very similar to an actual job interview. By having immediate feed-backs followed by the interview, it allowed us to review what we did and gave us the opportunities and points to improve on our future interviews. Moreover, I believe this course was different from the others as the work load and expectations are more reasonable than other courses. This course made students want to learn, to engage and to challenge themselves. Unlike other courses that is merely composed of exams, this class encouraged participations and discussions. Hence I believe this course is very beneficial as it has three big selling points. It gave us the opportunity to write our own resume and cover letter. It allow us to improve on our interview skills. Finally it encouraged participations.

The greatest lesson I learned was from Jordan Huang. He taught me the fundamental skills of social networking. As the first year representative of CUS, he demonstrated the ability to connect and to communicate with others in faculty. He dynamic personality motivated me to challenge myself and to push myself to the next limit. As a result I followed his footsteps and used those skills in my COMM 299 interview. I believe the greatest experience I learned in COMM 299 is the ability to sell myself in an interview. COMM 299 is a course that is unique and only available in Sauder School of Business. This is what makes us unique. By taking this course, those in Sauder will be one step ahead of other students that are in other schools and faculty. Most employees do not look at marks, or school one graduated but they evaluate the performance of the interview. Surprisingly one can get a job from a 15 minute performance. I learned that writing resumes and doing interviews must be done with structures. From this course I learned about the CAR statement structure. Each sentence has a purpose, and by combining different pieces, one can form a powerful statement. This is similar to life. One must gather different pieces in their life and form something meaningful. Thus I believe learning the fundamental skills of writing a powerful resume and doing an interview is the greatest experience in COMM 299.  This allowed me to develop a well rounded personality and I learned the ability to sell myself.  This is what makes Sauder graduates different from other faculties and institutions. COMM 299 is a course that I will promote to everyone and motivate the future first years to work hard on. Finally I believe that is why I believe the resume and interview portion is the greatest experience I learned in COMM 299

After my COMM 101 class today, I became more interested to learn about marketing and sponsorships.

During class we came up with many reasons to justify Bell’s $200 million bid for the Olympics sponsorship. An interesting comment was that Bell invested in a national sponsorship and not an international one. Also many people actually do not recognize Bell as the official sponsor.

However, I believe that it was a good investment for Bell as it gained huge marketing power that it didn’t posses before. Bell carried all 10 Consortium networks which enabled the company to provide access to the Olympics games live on both High definition TV and handheld mobile devices. This key feature attracted as many as 81,212 account activations generally on a 3-year contract.

Furthermore, Bell was the exclusive carrier for the smartphone Samsung OMNIA II. The phones primary feature enables the user to watch the game live with the wireless Olympics works (WOW) system1.

I believe it was a good investment as it attracted me to get a Samsung OMNIA II during the Olympics Games.

After a class discussion about social enterprise with COMM 101, I got interested to help the society. In class we also made it clear that there is a difference between profit and non-profit sectors. I did not know that companies such as Starbucks were actually not social enterprises even though they donate money to Africa.

After that class I grew more interest to learn more about social enterprises, especially World Vision. I have heard and partipcated in some of their events such as their 30 hour famine. As a participant I went on a 30 hour famine with my friends and stayed at school that night to help raise funds for the children in Africa.

Alternative ways such as being a children’s sponsor can also help improve the lives of the children in Africa. With the cost of only $35 a month it will help improve their education, skills training, health care and safe water. You can choose a child by going on their online gallery to browse for their pictures. Also you can search for a child’s gender, country age or even their birthday. It is really afforable for us to give out $35 a month to support a child, but to them the $35 means a whole new future to them.

During our business plan two presentations in my COMM 101 class, I witnessed many different styles of presentations. Some groups used a formal delivery style while others used a skit performance.  However, one similiar characterestic between all the presentations was the usage of visual presentation.

Visual presentation is imperative to deliver a clear and concise message. Not only does it give the audience time to absorb the information but it allows moving motions to attract the audiences attention. It is very similar in advertisement. Video media is now replacing the old fashion newspaper advertisement. With the growing technology such as the new Apple iPad Tablet, there are now 4 sets of screens (computer, mobile, TV and tablet) to attract a consumer’s attention. To show the impact of the internet, as much as 88% of  online newspaper viewers will purchase the good or product. As a result, even newspaper company are moving towards online features to attract the online users.

With that being said, it is no surprise how every group in COMM 101 are working very hard to design their own unique and attractive powerpoints. To further enhance its display, Prezi will probably make a presentation more dynamic.  Think that it is too much work? If so, simply adding a video clip in the beginning might just do the trick to set the theme in your presentation.

One of the major causes for the 2008 financial crisis is from poor managements in banks. From our last class, we discussed about the roles of a bank, and I decided to further analysis it to help connect these concepts with our modern society.

In general there are two types of banks, Investments banks that sell security or Depository banks that typically handle mortgages.

The problem started when the United States eliminated the “Financial Services Moderation Act.” By trying to help the general population afford money they decided to lower the mortgage rate to allow more people to start their mortgages.

These types of mortgages are typically “Prime Mortgages.”However, most people stopped paying their mortgage because they could not financially afford it and started to back out.  Since banks normally put most of their cash in investments, it was hard to give cash back to the investors on the Depository side. Eventually, as the bank runs out of money, people will tend to do a “bank-run” which caused many banks to bankrupt during the great financial crisis.

This crisis affected everyone world-wide including investors, banks, currencies, businesses. The reason behind this crisis is because people bended the rules of the game but they didn’t get the job done properly.

Glossary

Financial Services Moderation Act – 1999 when the government allowed banks to hold “Investments” and “Depository” activities

Prime Mortgages – the property value is much higher than the loan value

Eg: house mortgage

Bank-Run– when everyone tries to take money out of the bank at once