Annie Pei's Blog

Watch a video here: WestJet introduces child-free cabins

In knowing about the WestJet’s April Fool Pranks, I found Ginny Lo‘s blog on “April Fool Pranks” and she discussed her view on the prank itself and on other bloggers’ reactions. I have to agree with Ginny that I thought it was a “cute joke” too when WestJet seemingly launched a new program for kids to travel separately from their parents. Also, Ginny points out a really important point: this advertisement serves to strengthen and reinforce the company’s positioning strategy in providing a personal customer service and that”owners care”.

Aside from being simply a joke, or a simple advertisement, WestJet’s April Fool advertisment is a marketing campaign in reminding and reinforcing its core values to the consumers. In our marketing class, our professor Jenny passionately addresses the importance of maintaining and reinforcing core values; for core values of a company is the centre-point, and everything the company does need to relate back to and reinforce their positioning. WestJet’s marketing campaign has done a great job in reinforcing their company brand image.

The advertisement introduces a “KargoKids” program, where parents can relax and enjoy the flight while the WestJetters take care of their children for them. This advertisement appeals to the emotions of parents, who would not desire more hassle on their already-troublesome-family-trip. Even though this marketing scheme appears to be a joke, by using its pull strategy, WestJet reinforces its personal, friendly, and caring customer service provided directly to the customers, leaving the audience feeling that WestJet does care about their air travel enjoyment and personal space. WestJet is in the reminder stage of market development, and through its advertisement, WestJet seems to reach out to their customers and yell: “This is just a friendly reminder, we still care!” As a result, the existing customers would trust WestJet more in faithfully committing and delivering its value-added services; and at the same time being reminded that WestJet is an awesome choice for vacation and holiday travels. For non-existing or prospect customers, WestJet reinforces its brand image in a way that is familiar and widely-known to the general public, in an effort to attract customers who need personal customer service.

Being able to maintain and build on the company’s existing core value is as important as a person’s identity; it is a mark for identification, and it is especially important for consumers to be able to easily identify a product/ service.

Marketing, according to our textbook definition is “the process by which companies create value for customers and build strong customer relationships in order to capture value from customers in return”. Marketing can be done with advertisements, coupons, magazines, books, word of mouth… The marketing tactic I am talking about is through the Internet. Its power cannot be underestimated, big time!

As I was reading Michael Chan‘s blog, I saw pictures of guns, and they reminded me of war. As I read along, he made a strong argument that segmentation leads to discrimination when people “feel missing out”, it reminded me of a brand new segmentation of an united population that even “outsiders” want to join in. Altogether, his blog reminds of KONY 2012.

It is a well-made documentary on Joseph Kony’s atrocious actions towards children in Africa. He abducts them, sexually abuses them, and takes them away from their home and make them soldiers–to kill their friends and their parents. The documentary is told by Jason Russell, and he talks about what he has heard and seen throughout 5 years in Africa while spending time with one of the child that Kony has kidnapped. Jason wants the world to know Kony, so that the United States government may stop Kony to help these poor kids in Africa.

Under the Youtube video description, it says “KONY 2012 is a film and campaign by Invisible Children that aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice.” This film positioned Kony  as the root cause for public fear and the proposal of stopping him is done so well that as of March 11, 2012, they got on Facebook, 2,906,823 likes · 404,007 talking about this · 12,340 were here, and over 11 million subscribers, and over 71 million viewers on Youtube. Thousands, even hundreds of thousands volunteers joined the Invisible Children organization to rise awareness of Kony, and on the day of April 20th, the world will be awaken by Joseph Kony’s billboards everywhere! This is not simply marketing an idea and hoping people can adapt it, it plays on the effect of actually changing peoples’ lives and views of a specific person entirely!

Successful marketing is less so done by professionals or big companies who have the money and the influence, now instead, mass marketing is done by the people, the general public, through the new generation of possibility of the Internet. Internet mass marketing has completely turned a traditional marketing structure upside down and gives power to the public. And this, is the power of marketing through web.

Watch the documentary here: (30 minutes in length) KONY 2012

Showcase Pianos| FAZIOLI is in the piano industry for almost 4 years now, even though it is relatively new, but everyone in the industry tries to copy some aspects of Showcase.

Many people have heard the piano brand, Yamaha, but this brand cannot compare to what Showcase Pianos has to offer: FAZIOLI. Fazioli pianos are handmade in Italy, all designed and made by Mr. Paolo Fazioli himself. Fazioli pianos only make grand pianos, for they do not just make pianos, they want to make the best sounding pianos– grand pianos sound more spacious and gives more power than upright pianos.

You might not understand what I mean when I said Yamaha can never compare to Fazioli. Let me take one comparison as an example,  each Fazioli piano take at least a year to make, therefore there is only around 100 Faziolis available each year; Yamaha, on the other hand, is made by machines, can can generate over 3000 pianos each year.

I advertise for Fazioli because it is an outstanding example of keeping its core value and is successful in delivering its core value through its advertisement on the platform of social network channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Weibo for chinese people and others. It carries all European brands, the highest quality possible. It opened up a new store in Richmond and it is so luxurious!

I got the idea to write about Fazioli because of an article ” Don’t Add Frill until your core is Rock Solid“, and it stresses the importance in positioning value proposition in a way that defines who you are, and I think Showcase Pianos is an excellent example of a really defined business which has a distinctive, and differentiated business positioning strategy.

Have you seen this somewhere? This is from “9Gag”. 9Gag is for users to post random funny things. Then they will be rated by the number of votes they get, and with high votes these posts can move to “Trending”. This site started in 2008, but the growth has been dramatic! According to Wiki,  9GAG is among the 500 most visited websites in the world. It’s currently number 371 globally.

9gag affliates with Googles, Facebook, and Twitter to create an online community for teenagers who are bored and wish to have friends around all the time like me! 9gag creates value for the customers by providing a platform to express oneself and be accepted by others in the world. I have learned the 7 steps that a successful company would go through in marketing class, and I will use 9gag as an example. In step 1, 9gag has implemented a mission statement where it declares “just to have fun” as its main focus which attracts the teenage generations. Step 2,  I would assume 9gag has researched the market, for it affiliates with big companies such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter targeting the teenagers. Step 3, 9 gag has developed marketing strategy in figuring out their target market delivers its value proposition in its promotions. Step 4, 9 gag has fulfilled 4 P’s in marketing terms. Step 5, it creates and builds on customer value and relationships. Step 6, 9gag is successful in capturing these values from customers. Last step is to monitor and control, and 9 gag accomplishes this by constantly updating the formatting and content of its website.

I am quite interested in what type of business would emerge to replicate what Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, and 9gag have accomplished.

There are more pictures from 9gag, when you are bored from reading textbooks, you can check it out!

I am an undergraduate student in Sauder School of Business. I like singing, dancing, playing instruments, TV watching, cooking and eating！ If you share similar interest, please keep reading my blogs! I wish I can gain more friends through this blog! ~~