Yining Crystal Qiao's Blog

As we are now all aware of the successful Facebook business, we have never realized its power in generating extra revenue for other business has also grown fast. According to the news from the NYTimes, Facebook is promoting social e-commerce as they state generating more purchase from a person’s friends is much more effective than any marketing strategy.

According to Mr. Rose, the vice president of partnerships and platform marketing at Facebook, 18 of the top 25 e-commerce sites are using Facebook features such as the Facebook connect or the “Like” button. Businesses like American Eagle saw users referred by Facebook spend 57% more than average, Facebook said.

Ticketmaster is also joining the stream. “If Ticketmaster does well on Facebook, they will spend money on Facebook,” Mr. Rose said.

As I was lining up for my double-double and my timbits at the cafe outside DLam this afternoon, I came across an article from Globe and Mail which states Tim Hortons is raising its price on April. 11, 2011. As soon as I read the article title I got pissed. Not because of I simply don’t like price increase as a consumer, but also because of the fact that I have been loving Tim Hortons for there is not too much mismatch between their price and the quality of their products.

Since Tim Hortons launched a war with their “rim up” event to compete with Macdonald’s premium coffee, they are doing a pretty good job till now. However, it seems the winery is only short termed. Even though the price increase is declared to be very little, Macdonald’s premium coffee is already getting in Tim Hortons’ way with their cheaper price and better quality coffee. Below is the comments by people on Globe and Mail:

It’s not surprising to me that people’s reaction to this is negative. Tim Hortons cannot offer good quality coffee, it seems to me that they attract consumers with their lower price. However, they decide on giving up their competitive advantage. This would really drive consumers away to their competitors like MacDonalds. Timmy’s should probably reconsider this pricing strategy.

Suddenly realized I won’t be lining up like a fool outside the door of Tim Hortons’ by next week if their price is going to be increased. “Half of my life at school is at Sauder and half lining up for Tim Hortons,” as a friend of mine puts it, “I won’t line up for a steeped tea that’s more expensive than $2.00”

Positioning statement can be both effective and captivating. It simply depends on how you develop such statement. As we all know, a good positioning statement should state:

• how the firm defines its business or how a brand distinguishes itself
• how customers will benefit from its features

However, whether or not a positioning statement is effective depends on how benefits or aspects of the products are communicated to the intended audience. Nevertheless, a positioning statement cannot be totally effective if it’s boring. It has to be captivating to its target market. Here, I found two ads for Scotiabank where the bank has adapted creative ideas for the later ad. The positioning statement at the end of the two videos are quite different. One being “We can be making tomorrow” while the other one is “You are richer than you think”.

“You are richer than you think!!” I think almost everyone would stop for a second to just digest the message from that simple sentence. It’s from this process of digestion of information that consumers will be impressed by. Thus, creative ideas are essential for simply capturing the attention and retaining the hearts.

As I came across Seth’s blog, I found this image…

For quite a while I stayed shocked after viewing such image. As I was becoming more and more worried about the radio reactants’ effect cased by the nuclear station explosion in Japan and the possibility of Vancouver’s potential earthquake these days, this image burned my eyes.

Coal mining, a business that is especially prosperous in my hometown, has its devastating nature long been forgotten by people today. Even though I have never experienced anything like a war caused by this rich resource, numerous serious coal mine explosions can never be erased from my memory . As these explosions happen almost every half a year on average,  uncountable workers died in these accidents. Yet, this hasn’t been paid much attention.

Therefore, Seth impressed me when he mentioned how people blame marketing whenever their expectations don’t match the reality. How true is that when you first stared at the image? As Seth puts it, “how much marketing colors the way we see the world – our reaction (either way) to this chart is proof of it.”

The above is an interesting commercial from Cass Beer. A famous korean beer brand that invests huge amounts of money in featuring famous actors/actresses in their commercials. As people in Asia tend to dislike the boring and uncreative commercials that interrupt the TV programs they watch, viewing commercials has become a torturous event for a majority of Asian people.

However, this commercial by Cass Beer creatively introduced their brand to their target market, the younger generation, by a captivating story. Since this kind of “young love” often happens, most people would feel connected to the brand and to the beautiful actors/actresses the commercials feature. In addition, they made the story continuous by introducing the after-story part in a second video. Cass Beer got super famous in a very short time after the company introduced these two commercials in series.

In this way, Cass Beer is able to advertise their products to consumers effectively and they turned people’s hatred for commercials into love. That’s one successful strategy!

As I came across Elaine, our beloved professor’s marketing blog; I was captivated by one of her most recent post. In that post, she listed the results for the world’s top 50 most innovative companies. I was quite amazed by the fact that Twitter and Facebook came the second and the third place among all others. This totally proved me the power social media can cast on branding.

To be honest, branding used to be a negative word to me as it used to remind me of over-priced products and unreasonable prices. However, after going to Style and the City, a conference where I was first time officially introduced to corporate branding and personal branding by George’s inspiring speech, I figured I was mistaken.

“Marketing is all about selling stuff,” said George. How?

The power of branding through social media is that you don’t have to have money to get your customers’ attention. As George puts it, “It’s not about how much money you spend on advertising your products, it’s about how well you promote them to your consumers! One doesn’t need money to brand…just use social media.”
Many companies nowadays start to realize the power of the social media and many already started to adopt this powerful tool. A good example is Blenz Coffee’s president, George Moen, who happens to tweet with people on Twitter, becomes friends with people on Facebook and creates personal account on Linkedin to link with the general public and business professionals. He is now into .Tel, the first online digital contact list.

Isn’t it just amazing how social media pulls people together? A second year student can communicate with president of a successful company and totally alters her perspective about branding.

Getting close to the president of Blenz Coffee, in another way, is corporate branding. =) It’s the feeling of closeness and pride that one gains through personalized interactions with the company’s leading figure. It emotionally attaches you.

I now start to like Blenz Coffee more than Starbucks! Yes, effective branding Goerge!

How do companies maintain their position in the market when their product has already come to the maturity stage of the product life cycle? This is the question lingered in my head for many days before I wrote this blog.

This question really is a main debate topic of a Chinese TV show called “brainstorm” that I watched on a Saturday afternoon. “Brainstorm” is a great show where the participants are all CEOs or people of senior positions of famous enterprises gather together to brainstorm ideas regarding a certain question. I was first attracted to the show when the CEO of a famous candy manufacturing company appeared on my screen. This candy has a name called “Big White Rabbit” (straight translate from its Chinese name).

It has been my all time favourite candy for the past twenty years and it has also been my parents’ all time favourite. My family has this tradition of always keeping some of this candy at home since I was very little.

The CEO of this company was one of the participants for the brainstorming session and he rose up the question of how to stay competitive in the 21st century candy market while almost no one even remembers his product nowadays. Yes, it is very sad that the candy doesn’t have sophisticated packaging nor does it have a wonderful unforgettable taste. The price of this candy is very inexpensive, and to be honest, it jams in your mouth kind of too much when you try it. Compare to other candies in nowadays market; this candy should have been forced out of the market long time ago. It has a even longer history than Coke Cola. How can it stay in the market for so long just like a miracle? Because of its brand– a traditional candy brand that targets Chinese people who are hugely influenced by tradition. The CEO talked about the fact that since February is the month of the Chinese New Year, the CEO found out that their sales has increased dramatically over this month. Why? Because it’s the month where mothers and grandmothers go out shopping for preparation of the New Year’s party and obviously the company’s consumers are people aged over 40.

However, I think differently. Even though mothers and grandmothers might be the main consuemrs to this candy, other people who don’t fall under this category might go buy this candy just for the sake of the “emotion attachment”. I personally love this candy and will keep one or two in my bag at all times. It’s the power of people’s emotion that counts when it comes to marketing. It outrages all the other factors, no matter if it’s innovation or STP. Love big white rabbit! YAY!

As the social media expands and takes on the role of being one of the most important tool for everyday life, it starts appearing everywhere over the past few years. Many of us are more and more sensitive to today’s exponential growth and development of social media these days.

Gary Hayes Social Media Count, a Flash app showing the activeness and dynamics of the social web, is intriguing in that it takes only a few seconds for us to realize the enormous growth rate of social media with real data. This “live” social media counter measures social network activity in real time.

click on the tabs to view different measures

However, as our wonders for how many people are blogging, uploading videos, tweeting, or facebooking right at this very minute fade, the next question of what exactly are they doing comes up. Are they wasting time at work? Discussing the News? Sharing thoughts about someone’s party?

More interestingly, this counter has been retweeted 850 times, embedded in blogs 115 times, gets 1750 views per day on Gary Hayes’ Website after only one month from its birth in September 2009.

The Honda Civic, a line of subcompact cars made and manufactured by Honda, is the second longest continuously running make in North America. It was first introduced in 1972 as a two-door coupe, followed by a three-door hatchback in September the same year. With the transverse engine mounting of its 1169 cc engine and front-wheel drive, the Honda Civic provided good interior space despite overall small dimensions.

While the Civic is sold worldwide, differences in the name of the models exist among its world markets. In the North American market, Honda unveiled a sketch of the new ninth generation Civic which is marketed as “energetic, sleek and aerodynamic”. Both coupe and sedan concepts were introduced to the 2011 North American International Auto Show on January 10, 2011. The production of the new version of the ninth generation Civic is going to be on sale in spring 2011. In addition, gasoline, hybrid and natural gas variants will be offered to the new Civic. Moreover, Honda also uses the Eco Assist technology with these new models in order to market better. Civic will become the first gasoline-only powered car to employ such technology in North America. This new technology will help the driver to adopt a more fuel-efficient driving style and is proven to improve fuel economy by about 10% for Honda’s hybrid vehicle in Japan.

As a student consumer who looks for the kind of car that is powerful, stylish and fuel efficient, I consider the new Honda Civic to be the best choice. Also, the new Eco Assist technology of Honda attracts me the most as it motivates my psychological factors of decision making.

For years, little attention has been paid on packaged-goods for the world of men’s beauty products. The challenge in the men’s beauty segment is to figure out ways to wrap a quintessentially feminine product in masculine hues. By transferring eyeliners to “guyliners”, anti-wrinkle cream to moisturizers and bronzer to “power bronze”, some entrepreneurs have established close ties with the new market for men’s beauty industry.

Brian Lau, the founder of Bread & Butter Skincare, has already stepped into the relatively unfamiliar male beauty territory. With powerful competitors such as Procter & Gamble (Head & Shoulders, Gillette) and Unilever (Dove, Vaseline), Mr. Lau’s small business takes on a big advantage by bypassing the traditional store and selling his product online. This marketing strategy can be very effective as men are more comfortable in cyberspace rather than actual shopping. Also, Mr. Lau focuses on keeping it simple for his consumers by bundling his moisturizers and cleansers into summer and winter kits for various price ranges. Moreover, masculine images and terms such as a shaving – pump container instead of a jar, a dark blue packaging instead of pale blue, and an absolutely simple outline of ultimate benefits of the products all help to improve men’s willingness to purchase beauty products.

Since men tend to be lazy consumers who are not easily pumped to try new products, once hooked, they are more loyal than female consumers and don’t bother to switch products around. Thus, Mr. Lau’s effort yields attractive rewards as the men’s beauty industry enjoys a boom even in the recession times.

According to beauty titan L’Oreal’s estimates, in the high-end domestic beauty sector alone in 2009, men’s skin care sales surged three times the rate of the overall market.