Image from Google.

It was a great pleasure for me to work with my four teammates, Alli, Kevin, Ryan and John. We were assigned to be Team 5, which was a great opportunity to make new friends and work together in order to learn from each other. I am the type of person who are always a little shy to express my ideas at the very beginning. It takes times for me to get familiar with everyone and finally, becomes the real me– an extroverted girl who actually talks a little too much. Because of those four excellent four teammates, we always had lots of innovative ideas to say in terms of the two writing assignments and a video project. We split our own parts at the first meeting, which was often happened very early and then came back a week after to take another step. This way that is split work to do individually seemed pretty efficient throughout the term except the last video project. We spent a few days, seriously, heading to Downtown to shoot the scenes and editing it over and over again. It was a long process but it was fun to work as a team as well. I got a brief ideas on how to edit videos on iMovie and how to work efficiently as a team. We barely had any argument throughout the process but we surely did have different opinions where all of us would listen carefully and then did some adjustment based on what we had there already. As a International student, language is my barrier when talk in English. However, I felt my communication and interpersonal skills have been improved throughout the term. Thanks, marketing projects! Cheers(Gan bei), Team 5!

Image from Google.

On April Fool’s day, several brands released series of videos to introduce their new goods and services with brand-new features to fool people around in a serious way. By saying “serious”, those videos seem to be really persuasive and engaging. I believe most people have already seen some of them but I did not realize these were jokes until I found out the articles on the Brandchannel website.

Image from Google.

Google, as a leading browser in the world, has evolved with various fields of services to fulfill people’s needs. It unveiled its Google Chrome multi-mouse web-browsing by showing each step that how it looks like and how it functions in the real life. There
is also a link provided to allow you check it out right away. On the other hand, Google Fiber introduced its ever-new edible brand extension to make a healthy life for Google “users”, which apparently, sounded a little unrealistic.

Image from Google.

In the mean time, ironically, Lululemon addressed its new idea of Lululeather to respond to their recent incident that there won’t be any transparency issues any more. These videos aimed to celebrate April Fool’s day because these all turned out “Happy April Fool’s Day!”. However, it is also an effective way to showcase their brands by simply uploading their “invention” to draw people’s attention as well as creating potential customers. I actually hope that all or at least some of them will come true in the near future, which would bring lots more convenience to people’s daily life.

I totally agree Nan Chen’s idea in her blog “ladychacha’s Blog”. As we all know, Asians are used to drink tea everyday and Western people have been considering coffee as their part of life for a long time. However, with the rapid growth of economy in China and other Asian countries, Starbucks has become a favorite affordable luxury lifestyle brand from Chinese perspectives. In fact, the actual price of Starbucks in China is pretty much the same to the price in North America. The reason why people call it “luxury” is the price of Starbucks coffee is comparably high with the Chinese people’s average daily consumption, which basically means a cup of Starbucks coffee equals a fairly good meal (or at least at fast food chains) for a middle-class Chinese on average. You would not be surprised if you know that a bottle of water is 2 yuan in China, which is almost 6 times less than that in Canada.

Source from Google

According to the journal, Starbucks China utilizes good sources, including Weibo, Wechat and Renren (Chinese Twitter and Facebook) to help promote their products. In North America, similarly, the brand posts their advertisements on the public media, give away free trial with coupon provided and send away paper ads to attract customers to go in their store to appreciate their “masterpiece” (according to the ads I got today). In addition, it is a great idea to do co-branding with Duetto to make a special credit card so that people can get more points on that card when using it. That would create a large amount of loyal customers as well.

I read an article “Lego’s Asian Building Block” saying that Lego is going to open a factory in Shanghai, China, where they plans to fulfill three quarters of all production for sales in Asia. Like the author said, I was very surprised that there was no Lego factory located in China. The reason is when I was little I played lots of Lego with my friends, or maybe they were not titled with Lego, which were some else brands with similar building block-like toys.

Image from Google.

Although Lego launched its first flagship store in Beijing couple of years ago and its sales increased a lot in the past few years, it is still hard for it to actually dominate the toy market in China. There are some challenges and opportunities listed below that Lego may have in the near future. 1. Price. There were many choices of toys when I was young. And normally, they were cheaper than the imported toys like Lego. However, I am sure the price will go down when Lego has its own factory in China because there will be lower manufacturing costs and distribution spends, which may increase the sales for Lego. 2. Competition. It can be a threat that there are even a lot more choices for young people to be entertained than before, such as Apple products and Disney Dolls. Personally, if I have children I prefer them to play Lego instead of computer games because Lego is physical and approachable blocks that will help them develop their brain and foster their handcraft ability. 3. Awareness. Lego has already built its brand extensions, such as online games, cartoons and etc., which allows customers especially parents to learn their brands and then purchase their products for their children. The new released Snake set is on air in order to celebrate Chinese New Year. It is a good idea to draw people’s attention and some people like me would like to collect the whole set of 12 animals as long as they will produce them. It would be great if Lego has chances to place their products in the Chinese Dramas and movies, which will help audience recognize their products and brands. 4. Environment. Hopefully, there will be some recycling places for those who are conscious about the environment and willing to recycle the broken or worn out Lego blocks due to the damage of plastics. Overall, Lego has a great opportunity to expand in China and Chinese people would appreciate the creativity of the block building toys.

Image from Brandchannel.

There was a campaign called ‘Let Toys Be Toys’ taken place in UK last year, which showed that some toy stores such as Toys R Us, Tesco and etc. were selling toys by gender marketing to either boys or girls. And I saw lots of people complaining about this on the Let Toys Be Toys ‘s Twitter as well. Some parents were saying that their little boy did not even look at the girl section in toy stores when they took him there. Or, the store assistant would recommend toys specifically to boys or girls.

                              Sources from Google.

This seems to be a really small issue in marketing ethics. But it can make a big difference in children’s live. Girls who like playing cars and trucks may be more innovative than those who like play kitchens. Boys who prefer playing with dolls or something fairy may become really careful and thoughtful in the future. You never know! Toys are not like clothes that have to be recognized or identified from the appearances. Toys are more like books that can be classified by age or content. If toy stores are no longer categorized by gender, boys and girls would have more choices that may be more suitable for them due to different personalities. I used to play with Lego when I was young and I found it exciting to build different stuff each time. Basically, children can develop their mental capabilities by playing any toys that make them happy. There is no need but want for those little kids. Therefore, there should be unlimited choices for children to pick whatever they want in the toy stores rather than tell them which one is good for them.

Welcome to UBC Blogs. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!