Month: February 2011

***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.