Monthly Archives: October 2012

Blend in Your Product with What Everyone Is Talking About

Posted on by
Reply

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rofgMueCOqo&feature=plcp]

Last week in my e-Marketing class, Paul showed us a video made by Blendtec, a company that manufactures premium blenders that sell for hundreds of dollars. Tom Dickson, CEO of Blendtec, has been starring in his company videos for years, delivering humor and entertainment for countless viewers by answering one question: Will it blend?

The man has blended iPhones, iPads, superglues, and more things that would make you think, “Why would you even think to blend that? But I’m curious now cause nobody probably ever will again.” For a company that makes such premium products, those gadgets are probably very cheap alternatives for what they would have spend on a full-fledged marketing campaign of the same impact.

He posted a new video today blending both iPhone 5 & Samsung Galaxy S3 side by side. It occurred to me that Blendtec is not just blending whatever gadgets in their hands or just any high-priced items randomly. They have blended roses on Valentine’s Day, skeletons on Halloween, and now they are blending the phones of these two companies, who seem to make the headlines day after day for their rivalry, to tap into another question that has been drilled into consumers minds over these recent months: Which is the better phone?

Blendtec

They are reading into what is most relevant and current to the demographics and making it the topic of the video for maximum impact. I’ve watched many of his videos over the years but never made that simple connection. I guess I just mindlessly clicked on those videos. While not every single one of their videos is viral, many of them garnered respectable amount of viewer counts for its production value. It’s a good example that one can’t hope to create a viral marketing campaign without understanding the target audience.

Wix

Posted on by
Reply

Frontpage of Wix.com
Wix.com is a website creation service where a regular user without any education or experience in professional coding can create his own page by doing something as simple as dragging-and-dropping elements into a template. Their business model is that of a Freemium, allowing consumers to use their tool but offering higher values for paid services, such as hosting, storage, vouchers for online advertising, and so on.

This week, Wix.com has announced that it is bringing an app market where third party developers can use its SDK (Software Development Kit) to develop, publish, and sell their apps for people to integrate into their website. If it’s a paid app, the company splits the profit with the developer at the industry average rate of 30:70. I think the company serves as such a good example of Freemium business model and its spirit–opening its content and benefits to the general public so it can quickly penetrate the market and provide enormous incentives for trial by eliminating risk.

Also, in this day of age, in order to have any kind of business, you have to have a website–preferably a one that looks half-decent. More and more businesses are investing on their online presence, which means that average level of sophistication is increasing in terms of quality of websites. If you are an average entrepreneur who’s strapped for cash, as many of them are, creating a polished & presentable website can be a huge barrier for you to break through to establish yourself. I find this category of service contributes greatly towards levelling the playing field somewhat for them. However, whoever decides to use it should of course go beyond considering their webpage as a functional tool, but possibly a focal point of their marketing. Once they acquire their website, it is still up to them to continuously work on SEO, monitoring website analytics, and etc. It’s a tool, not a magic wand.

Can Slate Make a Splash?

Posted on by
Reply

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=des3dpKtfIM&feature=plcp]

While the media is buzzing again with iPad mini around the corner, Microsoft just announced the specifics of pricing and availability for the upcoming Windows 8 RT version of Slate. It’s a toned down version of Windows 8 that’s aimed at the tablet market. I love the idea of Windows 8 tablets, but the pricing makes me pause a little. An entry-level surface with 32GB capacity starts at $499 without the touch-sensitive keyboard cover featured in the video, while one with the cover costs $599. For $699, you can go up a capacity to 64GB with the cover included.

Now as a disclaimer, I’ve been very interested in Windows 8 tablets in general for a while. I also really like the commercial. It is not your regular “look at our product, look at it some more, and a little more,” but it has a heart-warming entertainment in it. But since the early announcement of the product, I subconsciously framed the RT Slate as a tablet since it can’t run x86 based programs, and would provide a full Windows 8 experience, and framed the pricier Windows 8 tablets as a fully functioning Windows computer in your hand. When they announced that they are going to have an RT version to have a competitive price point with the competitors, I imagined they were going to price the RT Slate lower than at $500, for the sheer purpose of market penetration.

Among countless contenders, I can only think of Kindle Fire and Nexus 7 as the ones who succeeded to take a bite out of that Apple’s market share. I am sure Windows 8 tablets are here to stay, but how fast they will make people put down the tablets they already own and pick theirs up instead will be interesting to watch.

Making a Green Product Greener

Posted on by
Reply

Cardboard Bicycle
$20 Bike. Did I get your attention? Light as hell. No? Cardboard. Yes? That should do it.
Izhar Gafni, 50, has been working for a year and a half to find a way to fold, treat, and mass produce cardboards to make this hard-to-believe product. Reuters introduces him as an “amateur cycling enthusiast.” Figures, right?

The cardboard is essentially made out of wood pulp that can lose its structural integrity when exposed to moisture, but Gafni tested his treatment by submerging the product material under water for months and it amazingly retained its quality!

Cardboard Furnitures
I’m sure many of you want to get your hands on this bike ASAP, as I do as well. I am also fascinated by how this changes the game yet again for what we consider as raw material for products that are usually made with metal or wood. (There will be no metal parts at all for the bike) We have seen how designers make cardboard furnitures with surprising structural strength, but in most cases, it was in the nature of a showcase or an experiment. Making this material waterproof & fireproof just might eliminate the barriers that keeps it from causing a huge disruption in consumer products. Imagine furnishing your house full of light-weight, cheap, and recyclable, and waterproof furnitures. And it wouldn’t take a village when you have to move!