Choosing over Blackberry or Iphone for a new phone is a hard one for me. On one hand, Blackberry is more business oriented phone and on the other Iphone seems to offer more for a college student. A couple days ago, checking over the product review of them, I found an official Blackberry blog. It was really useful that it has so much informative blogs teaching about how to use the phone more effectively. After reading one of its blog call “BlackBerry Webworks Webcast Series Wrap-up”, I found out that BlackBerry offers so much more than I thought and it was fascinating. It talks about different technical tips about using its apps and make them so much easier for people to understand. Other than the blog part, the website also links much more other BlackBerry related websites which will essentially gives reader more emotional attachment to the products.

Using blog as a marketing tool is really effective for companies without any doubts. It gives consumer or potential consumers so much legit information in an informal way I will say. It is easier for users to ask questions too which I think it’s really cool. Easy access for internet also adds value to running a blog online. People reach the information channel faster and easier than before. Blog, it provides people another great lifestyle!

Sapporo beer, I was totally attracted to the topic when I saw the blog about it. The reason is that I like the taste a lot. Digging into the topic in Amanda Liu’s blog post, I then realized it is about a new online commercial it produced. Basically the commercial showed the process of how the beer was made. And, I agree with her for the idea that it gives a good sense of Japanese culture by using traditional Japanese music, wrestling, and etc. Then think back to a marketing lecture couple weeks ago, I realized this commercial is actually very similar with one of the Coca-Cola commercial we saw in the lecture. So, my question here is how effective and ethical is imitating an existing idea of a commercial. First off, which company “borrowed” the idea from which? With some research, I have found Coca-Cola has introduced its commercial in 2006 and the Sapporo beer commercial was on it about a year ago. Despite that they are both very fascinating commercials, I find they are also similar in ideas. That would probably have no legal issue since they have much different as well. In my opinion, this commercial will be very effective because they have borrowed a successful and amazing commercial and they have made it very unique in its way as well. Here are the two commercial, please take a closer look!

When I think of coffee, all I think about is Starbucks and the green lady logo. Just recently I have came to know that Starbucks has changed its logo again. This time they take off the words. What a cool idea, it takes Starbucks to a whole new level in its 40th anniversary! With the reputation of its premium coffee, Starbucks has already build a strong emotional attachment with its consumers. People now don’t have to read the name before recognizing the brand that almost everyone knows Starbucks now.

Finding other blogs about Starbucks, I realized how much attention people now give to this great company. For example, Tom Rattray’s post “Starbucks Coffee, Direct from the Fields to a Store Near You” talks about Starbucks’ new commercial which has gave me so much knowledge about its new marketing strategy of making coffee personal and special! As he mentioned in his blog, Starbucks uses pull strategy to have more customers coming into the coffee shops. Starbucks keeps innovate new marketing strategies to let people notice and purchase them. From my understanding, Starbucks has became animportant part of people’s lives! The marketing strategies are very impressive! I am looking forward to learn more in the future!

It is not uncommon to notice that companies hold their inventory of new products to motivate buyers. People line up for a long time and purchase a new invented product to satisfy their emotional needs. Apple is the master at this strategy. As a matter It is not uncommon to notice that companies hold their inventory of new products to motivate buyers. People line up for a long time and purchase a new invented product to satisfy their emotional needs. Apple is the master at this strategy. As a matter of fact, they have good products to offer to people. They also adopt inventory holding strategies to keep customers interested and excited about their products. In the beginning, Iphone, as a good example, has always been getting the attention from customers because people have to line up for it. There is always this huge demand from customer which is one of the pull strategy Apple uses. However, launching the newest Ipad 2 on March 15th, Apple this time have adopted a different approach. This time, they do not hold much inventory as they used to do before as a news article mentioned on Yahoo news. This approach will prevent employees from making inventory and order mistakes which will provide a better customer services. However, it also brings up some other problems at the same time. Black market in China is one of the most severe issue that “[they] buy from here, then sell” back to China, making about $1100. Apple’s successes with their marketing strategies have proven their market power and customer loyalty in this industry. And, now maybe it is the time for something different!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20110316/bs_nf/77739

Many people have experiences of people coming to the door and performing direct selling. However, nowadays, people don’t appreciate direct selling too much because some of them had bad experiences, and a lot people just don’t know why they still do such an old school selling style. As a door-to-door salesman, I have found some reasons why people do direct sales in 2011 according to the marketing mix.

–         Promotion

Low advertising expense – despite of other creative ways, many companies spend ton of money just by putting some TV commercial to market their products. However, as a direct selling company, it does not do much promotion to save more capital for profits.

–         Place

Normally, when people see something useful and cool, they will have strong emotion toward it at the moment. Since those sales are mostly made at home, people feel more comfortable to make a decision. If they have more choices at the mall, this urgent feeling will fade off once they conduct more research and comparison on that product. Thus, direct sales, more importantly for door to door sales, will speed up the process and help people make a decision at home or in their office.

–         Price

In my opinion, most direct sales companies offer lower priced products or services since they can save much money from avoiding capital investment. Dealers in this business will be able to make more commission comparing to other in-store           employees.

–         Product

As a special business model, these companies also offer special products. These products are normally attractive in the first place too.

These business models use their niche to become the differentiated industry and provide customers with special experience. Their special marketing mix and value proposition offer them the successes in the competitive markets.

***CLICK for the Pepsi commercial***

Big company spends millions of dollars for their commercials every year. As a matter of fact, Pepsi is the leading company for advertisement. “What a hilirious commercial. Coke definetly get owned!” laughing from my friend when we watched a commercial on Facebook. Couple years ago, Pepsi launched a commercial which was described as “hilirious advertisment about Pepsi” on YouTube.  While it seems like a very funny and entertaining commercial, in my opinion, it has a couple of ethical issues both for the society and its competitor Cocacola.

While having a young children as the main character in the commercial, it casts the sight that kids will seem adorable and smart for doing something like that. Meanwhile, from watching this commercial, kids will not only learn that it is acceptable to wasting money but also the “art” of using others as a step stone for what they want. When kids see this commercial at a such a young age, they will learn and implement the idea somewhere else which can be a unethical action to perform.

In the commercial, the kid steped on Cocacola to reach Pepsi on the top of the vending machine. This severely impacts viewers’ perception on Cocacola brand and makes Cocacala as the cheap and unwanted product which could probably destroy its image. I think it is not fair in the competition with Cocacola and will lead to many other competition issues among these two companies in the future.

However, fortunately, this commercial was only put on YouTube instead of the TV which, I guess, was opposed the the Cocacala company in the publishing process. Overall, I think company should not put such commercial up as the competitive weapon because it hurts both the viewers and other competitors.

People love “FREE” Staff! Yesterday and today, McDonalds in Vancouver and Toronto have been giving out their new introduced Buttermilk Biscuit Breakfast sandwich for free. Comparing to last time when I was lining up for free coffee, it was way more people this time. Spending about 10 minutes lining up, I tried my first Biscuit sandwich today. In fact, a couple days earlier, they were promoting this as “Buy One Get One for Free”. “No wonder why they give it out for free,” my brother said. I thought about it and, once again, I related it to marketing!

-WHY?

Learning: in general, people are reluctant to change and they do not want to try the unknown. By doing this, people will have a chance to learn the new experience they have with McDonalds. Also, McDonalds is working on the “Law of Average”. At the end of the day, some people will like it and other people will still buy other products. One article mentions, “the strategy is well known to any good crack dealer: give people a free taste and soon they’ll be back.”

Organizational image: by promoting new innovation and free sandwich from different social media, potential consumers will automatically develop strong emotional attachment with McDonalds and their new products. Thus, customers will visit the sites more often in the future.

Overall, McDonalds has done a really decent job with promoting themselves as a great junk food restaurant. Nevertheless their marketing strategies are the essential factor toward their success. I am looking forward for their further creative innovation and cool marketing ideas.

CUS election, the busiest week for the CUS in Sauder, is taking place this week and getting more and more intense. As a second year student who just learned a little bit about marketing, I found it really interesting to see how all the candidates run their campaign and market and promote themselves. From my knowledge with marketing so far, I found 3 commonly using marketing tactics taking place this week.

–          Tangible advertising: All the candidates give out free gifts in classes and put up their posters around the buildings where all commerce students will have a chance to see and to learn about them – “Learning affects both attitudes and perceptions” (Marketing).

–          Social media: As Generation Y, we are heavy on the Internet and technology; Facebook, Youtube, personal website, blog and e-mail are all being used this time. Every day, we receive e-mails informing us about Facebook updates, new and fancy Youtube videos and candidate greeting cards.

–          Word of mouth: An important factor for people to make decisions is social factors. For us and for this special event, the key is our reference groups – friends. By attending all the events holding by Sauder clubs, all candidates approach to all their friends in person. Once people hear their friends voting specific candidate, they will do too! That’s the power of relationship!

This time, what they learned from classes are all turning into application. From marketing plan to website designing, from public speaking to effective networking, all of the candidates are trying their best to achieve their goals. It’s fun and amazing to see all the cool strategies they use. More importantly, it is also fascinating and inspiring to see these motivated and ambitious individuals fighting for their dreams.

Not only products need marketings, people need them too! With the increasing trend of writing blogs, many people start to spend ton of time on blogs; and, a huge portion of them closely follow celebrities! Now, the question is, in reality, do blogs promote celebrities or celebrities promote blogs?

It is not hard to understand that celebrities need to make their lives a little bit public to promote themselves. Before blogs have ever existed, the media always “help” promoting celebrities, sometimes positive and sometimes negative. And, the media will always make sure those superstars appear “hotter”! This will not only market the media themselves but also helps those celebrities to gain popularity! However, sometimes, those superstars do not really appreciate the media’s efforts. To change this phenomenon, blogs and other online tools start to become an indispensible part for some of those celebrities to gain popularity, and always in the positive way.

From celebrities’ massive usage of personal blogs including personal pictures and interactive conversations, this social media gain so much more attention from other people. People get on blogs and start to write about themselves. In turn, blogs get what they want which is popularity and people get what they want which is other people’s attention-it is a win-win situation.

Blogs and celebrities is just one of the examples where two of them depend on and benefit from each other.  This kind of marketing strategy is very simple and useful out there in the market! And, to market successfully, we should consider other people’s benefit while get yours.

Last weekend, I went to a company seminar in Nashville, TN. It was very crazy that I took 4 flights together in 3days, going through 4 different air ports. Since I spent a lot time in those air ports, I noticed many interesting marketing strategies and was amazed how much thought they have been putting together to market varies products through the four Ps concepts.

Product: Due to many people take flights for business reasons, the air port often offer lots business related reading magazines and books, brand name clothes like Hugo Boss, expensive makeup and, surprisingly, Blackberry retail stores. Also, two out of the four also offer shoe cleaning services.

Price: It wasn’t hard to notice the product prices in the air ports are usually higher due to their specific target markets; they know people have to purchase foods and water and some will buy those expensive products to fulfill their time in the air ports.

Place: One interesting fact I noticed was that the air port in Nashville does not offer much staff but only some music related gifts because the city is known the music city. I guess the reason might be that not much people go there for business trips. To effectively located their products and wisely use the limited space in the air port; they always put shops on the way to the waiting areas but not much staff for those people who just get off the air planes.

Promotion: Usually, the air ports put those products to add values to travelers’ experience and elevate the position of the consumers by providing appropriate products.

Overall, I had a very good week in the States, and it was even cooler to see how businesses apply marketing strategies in the real world.