Word of Mouth

Advertising’s three objectives:

to INFORM:

“Smoking causes blindness”. There is nothing more convincing than watching yourself putting a burning cigarette into the pupil of an eye. The ad informs the smoker the medical fact and makes sure that he or she fully understood the information!

to PERSUADE:

What makes the Smart car stands out is its size, which also causes many drivers to doubt its capacity and its engine power. This poster convinces consumer in one glance that this little car has everything it takes to be the car of adventure.

to REMIND:

Everyone knows Lipton’s tea. But not everyone necessarily think about drinking tea. By displaying their label in a fresh garden, the company kindly reminds the consumers “On a hot summer afternoon, have a cup of tea for refreshment!”

And

In a digital world, you wrist would still look great with a sophisticated watch!

Push or Pull?

A fundamental questions asked by most marketers when designing a marketing strategy. The best ones are known to have both push and pull. In other words, creating a demand for a certain product or service by advertising directly to end consumers, but at the same time, create some kind of incentive to push the same product at the retail level.

Seth Godin introduces another approach where one would flip from Push to Pull or vice versa depending on the demand from individual consumers. He gives the example of blogger and followers subscribing to their blogs. He explains that when viewers visit the blogs, it s a pull structure where they go and seek the information at the specific URLs, but once they subscribe to their favourite blogger’s RSS, the information is delivered to them on a regular basis, thus becoming a push strategy.

I think this is a most valuable observation. If there were a way for companies to measure the degree of interest in their consumers and alter their strategy accordingly, it would be a lot more cost-effective.

What is a viral video?

here is a quick compilation of the most famous ones

What do these have in common?

Most of them are shoot by amateur video makers, or sometimes just the average mom and dad with the family camera, or teenagers with their iPhone. They are usually not very long. But most importantly, they all show something so uniquely odd or funny or amazing that people want to share it with as many people as they can.

That is what captured marketers’ eyes. Publicity that is not only free, but also more effective than the pay-per-second commercials. Because the key about this method of sharing information is that it circulates between friends and family. it s from trusted sources and usually contain a topic that is universal enough that it has to power to travel around the world and generate the same authentic laughter from a mass audience.

some company had recognized the potential influence of viral videos. For instance, Nike especially published an ad online featuring the soccer star Ronaldinho done purposely to resemble the one of an amateur video.

but it has not caught the attention of viewers nearly as much as some of the dancing baby videos. What makes a video viral instead of being just a web video is still somewhat a mystery.

Environmental issues are important.

Social issues are important.

But for the past few years, non-profits have been faced with the problems of “over sensitizing” people, to a point that they no longer wish to know or hear about what makes them feel uncomfortable.

Various organizations have greatly invested on their marketing department and have come up with much more creative ads that can “compete” with the other for profit ads.

as oppose to their generally more dramatic ads to appeal to people’s sentiments like the following.

I think that it might be a trend now in these organizations to use lighter humour to inspire people to act.

I see it as a new strategy of using a clever concept that gets people to think rather than guilt as call for action.

Chanel.

When you heard the word, you might think of the prestigious brand in cosmetics. One of the classics. Perhaps Coco Chanel herself, revolutionary designer in women clothing and a great contributor in the feminist movement. Or maybe the knock-off double C earrings that could be found on almost every teenage girl’ s ears a few years back.

Whichever your vision is, “cute” is hardly the image you would think of. But it seems like the one that the Brand is displaying in their new ad, as showcased on the blog Brand DNA.

Chanel is indeed a premium brand, using prestige pricing. While the rest of the cosmetic industry is trying to distinguish themselves in terms of quality and “creativity”. Trying to always differentiate themselves with new “technology” that will improve people appearances. They would always introduce the new products at a slightly higher price than their competitions to make-believe the image of a high-demand, more expensive thus better quality. Then, very quickly, within a few weeks, price would drop to its normal level (equal with competitors) to make way for some other “new” product entering the market.

Chanel stands out from that crowd. They do not need to advertise their quality, in fact, doing so may even harm them. a cute little commercial that girls like may just be more effective.

All you need is make people “smile”