My two cents on Marketing

In Seth Godin’s recent post, he mentioned about how being different can help to attract attention to your new idea and project. It applies to marketer to wants to launch a product that already exists in the market. The key idea is down to how you stand out among your competitors, not fitting in to be similar to the existing product.

I agree with his view that ‘you can’t stand out if you fit in all the way.’ When you launch a new product, how you differentiate and position yourself as being someone who offers a better value from the consumer’s point of view is important in determining the success of a product. ‘Deciding which part isn’t going to match’ which is finding a way to make your product looks more attractive by contrasting it’s unique qualities with other competing products can create a competitive advantage for the marketer.

Product differentiation can be achieved in many ways. It may be as simple as packaging the goods in a creative way, or incorporating new functional features, even sometimes, just creating a new advertising campaign. Here are some products that I find interesting and innovative.

Traditionally, private labeling has been strongest in commodities which have low involvement such as butter, eggs , flour and sugar. Now, more and more consumers are trading down to private label brands, while more private brands are getting sophisticated and investing in brand strategies.

As the private label market matures, it takes on more diverse products and services. For instance, Tesco in the UK offers petrol, President’s Choice from Canadian retailer Loblaw offers anything from cereals to financial services and Costco’s Kirkland Signature offers tires, fresh food and alcoholic beverages.

Private labels products are less expensive, thus, they are often perceived as lower quality alternative. A  large part of growing in the private label market now involves improving the product’s quality. This raises the threat to branded product. How should the branded competitors react to threat?

In John‘s blog, he mention about the value of advertising for the tobacco industry when the ad is dominated by negative effects of the product. It is true that tobacco advertising is very highly regulated. Some or all forms of tobacco advertising are banned in many countries. These ads then serve to drive brand awareness and brand preference among smokers.

Instead of advertising using conventional way which has a lot of restrictions, tobacco companies use other forms of campaigns to drive sales and increase brand and customer loyalty.  Some examples of these campaigns include sponsoring in auto racing teams, and other sports such as snooker, crickets…

Will a product still be the same without its packaging? Packaging design represents what the brand stands for and also speaks for the quality of the product often times. It does not only have the function of protecting the product, explaining its attributes and benefits, but also has a role in appealing to consumers.  To successfully appeal to consumer, a package needs to differentiate a product from its competitor and ultimately become a part of the product experience.

I was doing my grocery shopping in TNT the last weekend and I observed some difference in how products from Asia are packaged as compared to the west.  The color, label and typeface, images, patterns and shapes even materials are influence by the culture. These are important to consider when it comes to designing a package. Below are a few of my observation and thoughts:

• First, the color difference. There are more bright and flashy colors in the chips aisle. They look more appealing because colors such as red and yellow symbolized happiness and good luck in Chinese culture.
• The labeling are mostly in languages such as Chinese, Korean and Japanese although some of the product sold are available here in English.
• Some of the products have smaller sizes compared to the same product available in other western supermarket.

Packaging has an incredible power over that people buy. Thus it is challenging to build consistency for people to interpret the global brand identity. For global brands, some sort of standardization and certain level of customization are needed to attract attention from customers in order to be successful.

Jess Tang’s post about Google caught my interest and I want to expand more on what Google contributed to online marketing or the marketing world as a whole.

Google has permeated into our everyday life; it does not only serve as a search engine as we once knew. It has countless online products available from search engines to maps, YouTube, Gmail and the list goes on and on. With such high usage of Google product and high search share, Google has the ability to reach very large number of people and thus become a very powerful marketing machine by providing information and act as a medium to communicate value.

Google has forged itself as the ‘middleman’ as more and more of the world’s business is performed on the internet. Also, with its advertising program such as Adsense and Adword, it benefits marketer and consumers both as a channel of communication, providing  the right information to the right people at the right time.

Packaging represents brand and quality. Creative and appealing packaging also serves a purpose to encourage the consumers to purchase and use the product. We have more tendencies to purchase products that are more cleverly packaged and presented. This post showcases innovative and creative packaging design ideas for everyday product from all over the world.

A milk carton concept

Mr. Clean Dumbbell packaging -A multi-purpose container for cleaning detergent products, water, and can be used as a dumbbell.

Salt and pepper shakers shaped like D-Cell batteries. A vertical transparent strip along the side indicate the amount of spices left in the shakers.

An interesting body soap packaging

Evian mineral water in an expressive limited edition package.

banana juice – it even imitates the texture of a real banana skin.

“Anything” & “Whatever” are soft drinks product by Out of the Box beverage company in Singapore. These drinks offer a very unique experience. Every can looks the same on the outside but can contain one of six different flavors. So each time you buy a can you literally don’t know what flavor you’re going to get.

“The concept was developed through the experience a group of friends and I kept having whenever we were at the coffee shop or at home,” Johnson Tan, Managing Director, Out of The Box Pte Ltd said. “People kept telling us they just wanted ‘anything’ or ‘whatever’ whenever we asked them what they wanted to drink.”

Before the launch of the product, there was extensive nation-wide teaser campaign on both mainstream media channels as well as outdoor media. Most of the ads had clever copy playing on the words “Whatever” or “Anything” that arouse curiosity in people’s mind.

Beverages have such a huge market and by targeting at curiosity of mankind, the company has developed a competitive advantage over other canned beverages with a product packaging that will thrill those adventurous and undecided.

“’Anything’ and ‘Whatever’ drinks were immensely well-received when first launched in Singapore and now have also entered the export markets.

Facebook marketing is one of the most effective ways a business can use social networking. With millions of users logging in everyday in this social networking site, getting exposure for business is literally attainable through finger tips.

Facebook rely on those complex algorithms to know if you are single, married, your hobbies, ethnicity, and a lot about your profile. It also knows a lot about what you do. Facebook Groups for example are great indicators of your interests and where you are socially active. Facebook’s statuses can also tell a lot about you, your personality, your interests, and a whole lot about you. With Facebook places it even knows where you are, interesting tips you share, and your habits.

The information available on Facebook is far more powerful then anyone has. This forms the genesis for Facebook ads. Using information available in Facebook, ads can be tailored to suit individuals. Advertisers can target their ads to specific gender, ethnicity, hobbies, nationality, location, behavior, and a whole lot of parameters.

Facebook’s ability to take off the advertising world is so powerful that even Google’s CEO publicly admitted the realities of competition Google faces from Facebook.

Just a funny and interesting video on marketing concepts! Enjoy!

To kick start my first post in this blog, I would like to share an interesting video about how marketing has changed overtime.

Marketing is a relatively young discipline. Some, however, would argue that it has been around since Roman times. But we’ve seen media explode and overload with the down of the industrial age. The way marketers communicate messages depends heavily on the technology that are available. With that said, the past two centuries of technologies have rapidly changed the way marketers push their messages.

We are now at the dawn of social media. Social media is of course the current “trending topic” in the field, but like any other medium, it would just be another day-to-day communication tool one day. How long would the social media hype last and what would be the next technology to revolutionize how marketers work?