Month: October 2011

In a world where the internet is considered a necessity and where a person is bombarded with over 3,000 advertisement of some sort, it is difficult for companies to successfully distinguish themselves. The term “viral marketing” has been on the rise as of late, where companies uses the internet as an advertising medium, ie. via Youtube or Facebook, to promote their products and services.

But since internet users generally don’t linger on the same website during their usage, companies need to allocate their marketing resources on popular websites to ensure that they are getting their message across. Only a handful of companies have successfully let their advertisement gone “viral”, one of which is Old Spice.

The Man Your Man Could Smell Like

Personally, I did not know the brand before these videos. And the only reason why I saw these videos were through a conversation with friends. This shows that Old Spice has achieved its goals of generating buzz and using the cheapest marketing tool there is, “the word of mouth”. In my opinion, companies should definitely consider shifting their marketing sector towards modern mediums as it is affordable and if done right, effective and of great impact.

Original Article here: Viral Marketing

Rumors surrounding the Air Canada strike will finally be validated this week as employees go on strike.

This will cause a decline in Air Canada’s business because of its lack of power in costs. Unlike its competitors, Air Canada does not have the ability to provide its services at low costs and many of these costs often affect its employees.Its main competitor, WestJet, may find this a great opportunity to edge out Air Canada and gain a portion of their customer base.

This will also harm the company’s brand as it has been perceived as one of the more reliable airlines in North America.

It will be interesting to see how Air Canada can solve this imminent problem and how this strike will affect the airline industry. In my opinion, Air Canada needs to come to an agreement with its employees as soon as possible to minimize their loss if its employees were to go on strike.

Original article can be found here.

Personally, I cannot remember the last time I used Yahoo! as a search engine, or even visited the website. The common use of Google has turned it into a verb, “You don’t know what it is? Google it.” No one ever says “Yahoo it.” This goes to show the importance of branding and positioning. Even a large company like Google has to constantly strive to position itself in our minds with other internet services (though most don’t come close to Google’s services.”

I think Yahoo! is making the right choice in exiting the Japanese market. Why stay longer if the company is certain that there will be further loss in market share and other assets? Yahoo! needs to quickly determine their profitable markets in Asia and invest their resources there.

Orginal article can be found here.

An article published last month by the New York Times recently caught my eye. It is generally one’s assumption that if the economy is not doing well, everyone cuts down on  their spendings.

But apprently not. According to the survey, luxury goods are being purchased more often than consumer goods (ie. necessities.) While retailers such as Walmart and Children’ s Place are struggling to keep their consumers with small price increments, Mercedi Benz and Tiffany’s bracelets are being sold out in a flash. Caroline Limpert, a New York entrepeneur stated that the only reason she would buy less is “not to be showy” about her buying powers.

The interesting fact is that while middle-class families are scraping together their gas money and grocery funds, the rich is actually helping the economy on its way to recovery. (What?!)

“This group is key because the top 5 percent of income earners accounts for about one-third of spending, and the top 20 percent accounts for close to 60 percent of spending,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “That was key to why we suffered such a bad recession — their spending fell very sharply.”

So I guess if the rich just keeps spending their money, we’ll all be okay?

Original NYTimes Article here.