HELLO READER,
PLEASE FIND THE TWO ASSIGNED POSTS UNDER <ASSIGNED POSTS> CATAGORY
ALL OTHER MARKETING POSTS (INCLUDING ASSIGNED) CAN BE FOUND UNDER <MARKETING 206> CATAGORY WITH <<M#>> AS PREFIX
THERE ARE ALSO <REFERENCE TO CLASSMATE> AND <REFERENCE TO CLASSMATE> CATAGORIES FOR YOUR NAVIGATION CONVENIENCE
HAPPY READING, -RYAN
AC Air Plane
Our video on Air Canada was put together by combining all of our research findings and proposals in past assignments. Particularly, of chosen target market was determined after cost/benefit analysis of countless choices. After watching 4 other peer videos, there is no doubt their ways of presenting the information were truly creative. Our video may not have been the most critically engineered, but compared with the others, we do have a unique stance in presentation. We seemed to have used a structured way (interview like) to present a rather well-crafted story full of information. The humour lines, which I most liked and created, were drawn from The Godfather, Sabrina, and An Affair to Remember. Those value added made our presentation, though very bluntly structured, smoother and enjoyable to watch (I hope!). Overall I find out way of presentation effective and unique.
Our Business Plan and overall strategy are all based on logical assumptions from research of others research (including Air Canada themselves). The general feeling I get from reading everything now is that everything fits together in perfect logical, however if the argument premise are not sound, our whole idea (proposal) will full apart. To contextualize, more practical example or actually tangible facts added for support and/or analysis would have made our overall project seem more comprehensive. Currently it’s too much research based!
I hope my fellow group members agree so too. And last but not least, I would like to leave here some gratitude for Madison for taking up the whole task of engineering of video and other group members for all trying so hard to no shirk their group duties.
After reading fellow classmate, Christine Liang’s blog on Odwalla’s Promotion Strategy I have realized an interesting thing. Companies like Kraft and Coca Cola extends their brand in a way that they use or still steak with a new name. Such as the Odwalla drink mentioned in Christine’s, or Dare by Kraft.
Many companies extend their brand to increase brand awareness. Such companies try to create more images of their brand to increase their brand value and loyalty. But for Coca Cola, it doesn’t stamp its logo nice and big on Odwalla’s drinks. Why? I wondered and thought, perhaps, Coca Cola’s strategy target is not to give the “Coca Cola” brand more publicity, but to capture a new target market with a new brand image. The market of healthy drinks emerged and Coca Cola captured it by buying off Odwalla. Coke doesn’t advertise its logo but use the “Odwalla” logo. This way it decreases risk of the emerging market’s failure affecting the position of Coke itself, while still achieving extending its brand to capture more value in the market. The different ways and flexibility of implementing brand extension strategies in actual practice is an advantageous way of generating more money and value. It reminds us of thinking out of the box.
There have been big unethical marketing cases. Without looking those big ones, it seems unethical marketing is always among and beside us. At Best Buy today, i noticed their Ad on “no pressure buying+salespeople has no commission”. First thing i thought about in the ethical marketing concept is whether if pressurized sale counts as unethical marketing, because the salesperson can easily talk a uninformed customer into a product by marketing it on untruth basis and providing biased product information. High pressurized selling techniques can easily cause unethical marketing, and commission pay in behind why most salespeople employee pressurized selling. The second thing is Best Buy being a commission free store values the store’s amount of extended warranty sold, which means the sales person will more likely pressure customers into buying warranties, possibly through unethical marketing techniques. On the other hand, Best Buy claiming that it offers a pressure free shopping environment itself is not all truthful, to wit, pushing warranties to people is still a kind of pressure that the salespeopl
e initiates. All in all, unethical marketing seems to be all around us, from small to big things everyone has some kind of exaggeration.
“…ISN’T IT WONDERFUL? SEE WHAT I MEAN, HOW NOTHING BAD COULD 
HAPPEN TO YOU IN A PLACE LIKE THIS?” —from BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S.
Tiffany & Company is an international jewelry store and designer, based in America. The advertisement the use in North America and Asia compare significantly different. The top differences I have are: i. Asian Ads tend to indicate the company’s established year in attractive bold letterings. ii. Asian Ads tend to Always indicate the company name ‘Tiffany’s & Co.’ in big bolded letters. iii. Asian Ads are very crowded.
The simplicity and spacious blue Tiffany Ads with minimal words in North America compares drastically with Asian ones which are crowded with words. The company used different kinds Ads in different parts of the world probably because of the marketing frame, to wit, studies behind ‘Assessing Global Markets’, more of a Sociocultural difference. In North American, everybody knows Tiffany’s; it’s even been symbolized in a lot of things, such as the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Tiffany’s is almost blended in the social culture, not to mention its iconic blue and ribbon box. However, in Asia, not all people are aware of the value, status, and quality a Tiffany’s hallmark represents, because it’s new, foreign and 
not yet a cultural norm. It thus has become important for the name ‘Tiffany’s’ to appear on their marketing Ads as a way to build consumers’ association between Tiffany’s & Co. with their blue backgrounds and with its value. Emphasizing on their established year is another way the company is trying to associate prestige to their product.
So, the reason why Tiffany’s & Co. along with many other multinational company advertise different has a lot to do with assessing the foreign country’s consumers and culture, which is part of the Country Market Assessment (pg. 135).
Unethical Food Marketing to Children is one of those small things but has big effects. As this article writes (http://expertscolumn.com/content/unethical-food-marketing-children) Big fast food companies such as McDonalds and brand name soft drink 
companies such as Pepsi all uses unethical marketing, especially geared to children since they don’t have well developed and critical judgement on matters. McDonalds’ food and Pepsi Co’s soft drinks are proven to be unhealthy for people (as seen on “Super-size Me”) Soft drinks also makes people sick (like mentioned in this blog). The growth hormones in McDonald’s meat effect children’s development. But those companies in question never mention it in their commercials. It is unethical to have scientific facts about side-effects of too much fast food and soft drinks but not to mention it in their Ads. Their Ads not only doesn’t address the health concerns in fast-food and soft drinks, but tries to make their products seem more positive and healthy with celebrity branding and ‘cool’ slogans’ (Pepsi Solgan: “The Best Drink Created Worldwide”). As Children are especially vulnerable since they are too young to critically think of possible side effects. Together, it makes the matter worse. They try to portray themselves as very positive, healthy, and lively (fun to eat/drink), easily luring uneducated kids. The primary reason for the issue is the 
vulnerable minds of kids, their demand for soft drinks, and lack of legal framework. Cigarette commercials address its health hazards, alcohol and gambling commercials always address reasonability. But why are fast-food and soft drink company not addressing any concerns? I would suggest the companies to voluntarily be more responsible and practice ethical marketing by including unhealthy side-effects in their commercials.
This blog post (Infographic: Email Opens on Mobile Devices Steadily Growing: http://www.the-cma.org/about/blog/infographic-email-opens-on-mobile-devices-steadily-growing) External Blog has reinforced, in my mind, the power of IT. From communication to transaction, technology is becoming ever so dominant. Consumers and Businesses use internet based tools to talk to each other (ie. Inventory control systems, cloud systems. E-mails, and online stores). HOWEVER at this age, a 60 year old renowned photography company successfully marketing and selling its prestigious photography products worth $5,000 each, but without a company website! How do they advertise, and market? How is that possible? Those were the dazzling questions I asked myself when I first did a Google search of this company, Arca Swiss.
Arca Swiss product: BH website (2013 JAN) http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=arca+swiss&N=0&InitialSearch=yes&sts=ma&Top+Nav-Search=
I was very surprised that a company still making good sells, and quite well known in the professional photography industry has no website and online advertisement to market its products. After reading our Marketing text-book on ‘marketing plan and marketing strategy’ (pg.31) I found the answer to my questions. The company probably has a marketing plan that has different targets and goals not requiring a website: in the Identifying opportunities section of the implementation phase, they would have seen the segmentation in the nature, science, architecture, and art photography field (probably considering SINAR, Hasselblad, etc.), and decided to target only the very top notch photography fields of the professional fields. They don’t need to advertise to the public; they don’t want to make their camera “the camera for everyone and the General Camera Company”. Those professionals or firms using demanding photography equipment for precision science, space, etc., purposes don’t rely on TV or online advertisements, in their circle, from exhibitions, and professional sources they know which camera is good and what to use. Arca Swiss probably positioned itself in the area to fill the needs of the most demanding photography works by manufacturing a limited amount of highly professional and good quality large-format cameras. It doesn’t need online websites for marketing to the general public, or for marketing at all-its goal is to make high quality specialized cameras.
After reading Michael Bean’s blog post, Where have TV Viewers Gone, on the large number of substitutes available for consumer to pick for accessing their favourite “TV” shows other than TV I have posted a comment; not only finding common ground on the matter but also reminding me of an earlier article that I have read, which emphasizes, furthermore, the issue of the digital shift on who we do things every day.
You may also access my comments manually via the link below:
https://blogs.ubc.ca/mikebean/2011/10/24/where-have-tv-viewers-gone/#respond
After reading David Tran’s blog post, Longest Running Fraud Exposed, on Mr. Bernard Lawrence Madoff’s Ponzi scheme I not only agree with David’s critique on the importance of ethical behaviours in the business world but also left my comments on the importance of preventing it from happening at the baby stage, such as better ethical educations in business schools.
May also be accessed manually via the following link: https://blogs.ubc.ca/dltran/2011/09/15/business-ethics/
The “12 killers of good leadership” are not only useful for leads to be self-cautious, but also very important to company performance, image, culture, and reward system. As identified in the blog post “Leadership: 12 ways to fail”, in which 12 personal characters are identified as dangerous to leadership abilities. As one knows, between the CEO and workers are managers in leadership positions. The managers implicitly represent the goal of the company. If managers fail to lead workers to the company’s best interest, eventually the company will fail-not profit. Good management creates more dedication for employees to work harder and synchronize company goals to personal goals; it’s a company culture issue too. Not only does it affect performance and culture but also the reward system of a company. This ties into the reward system as sometimes in order to get the best reward managers will have to be small minded, dishonest, revengeful, etc., which were some of the 12 killers of good leadership mentioned in Harvey Schachter’s Globe and Mail blog.
