Category: Comm 296

I have been invited to a marketing research group for Louis Vuitton Vancouver. There are few marketing field they reach on, such as show room, store style, show room design, brand image, customer service and so on.

I’m not a big fans of fashion updates, but I found out every LV’s window showrooms are all creatively designed. Sometime the design is strange; however, it’s very well attached to the product they are showing, to create allegiant and fresh image which matched LV’s brand.

This is one of the concept we learned in 296, the AIDA. The interesting window showroom certainly attach customers to walk in the store, and for Louis Vuitton, it’s very important for them to attract customer then they can follow up with other sale skill.

Today is the last class for 296. It’s actually an enjoyable experience to be in this class and I have learned some fundamental knowledge about marketing. The sprite of marketing is always be creative. There are no formulas for this field to gain success and achievement. However, there is one essential component that could lead a easier way to success, is smile.

One of the “marketing skills” I learn from our professor, Tamar, is to smile all the time. As I remember, Tamar always has her smile on her face during the lecture, office hours or even sometime I saw her around campus. This noticed me that smile while doing marketing could have the work process more smoothly. Smile break the boundary between people, and for marketing includes collecting surrey, doing research, cooperate with colleagues and presenting proposal etc, these all need people to work tight together. Therefore, smile is very necessary when involving with marketing activities.

So, keep smiling. 🙂

It was a tensive week last week for almost all the people around the world because of the terrible earthquake in Japan, and furthermore, the explosion of the nuclear plant due to the failure of the cooling system. Nervousness went through all the world and people were all together start fund raising for Japan.

It has been a terrible situation in Japan and all the japanese people are suffering in pain and fear. Good side is most cooperations and famous people quickly host donations and funds, trying very hard to help those people in Japan. Once for this big incident, News workers in different channel usually react the fastest. CNN creates a special Twitter account for reporting the news especially for Japan for the first time. It not only provides news about how is the progress for saving and redeveloping in Japan, but also there are news or story about how everybody else in the rest of the world are helping. They use the channel of Twitter, which popular for fast, realistic and widely spread, it matches the character of news well. I personally like it because readers can access information anytime when they have internet.

Not only cooperations and companies, individuals are trying to help in their ways. Few NBA stars are fund raising by donating $1000 per point they earn in game for Japan relief efforts (News link). Those stars promotes themselves, as attraction of others to join the fund. Also, it will help them earn positive image in front of the public by doing this too.

Here is a youtube link below from GlobalGiving Fundraising, an example of providing public to donate for Japan.

Today we discuss about promotion in the marketing activity, by showing the Coca-cola’s advertisement; it recalled me about the impressive promotion Coca-cola had done.

TV channels have been occupying large percentage of promotion until Internet came in people’s daily life for few decade. Coca-cola has continually creating special commercial that will impress watchers in many ways. For the AIDA model we studied today, I found a commercial matches it from Coca-cola.

From this commercial, they only capture different types of packing from Cola, but I found it coincidently, all the bottles are opened and cooling. From all these bottles, and by keep showing watchers this “cool drink” in red color bottles, it achieves the “desire” stage, and, at least, I want a Coca-cola after watching it!

Also, Coca-cola has another series of commercials that involved with cartoon and animals. Beside the one we watched today, Coca-Cola charactered polar bear  and penguin in one commercial (it never happened in real life because snow bear only exist in north pole and penguin only lived in south pole, which maybe is a strategy to show a fresh scene to audience too ). Polar bears and penguins are friendly in this commercial, and as a conjunction, Coca-Cola is always the key to solve conflict between them. And the theme of commercials often change along with some special dates, valentine’s, christmas,etc. For example, the theme of commercial I post below is “GIVE, LIVE, LOVE.”

Compared to Coca-cola, their rival, Pepsi, use a totally different strategy by promoting their commercial by many celebrities. This might help Pepsi gain part of the market by the effect of those celebrities, but for me, they are lack of creativeness, and they are shallow when Coca-cola’s commercial are filled with surprised and meaning. I posted a Pepsi’s commercial below, I agree it’s a costly one, but definitely not a good one.

I was randomly checking on the classmate list on the blog site to find some idea of this blog. When I get to my teammate Iris Chen’s blog and one other fellow Fion lee’s blog about “MUJI”, I was surprised that I missed this japanese brand who has great growth in Asia and promoting interesting marketing strategy for both their brand and products.

Going through Muji’s official website it’s “clean” style outlay which looks like “Apply style”. Informations are straight forward and matches the image of the brand which is “clear, simple, and clean”. Muji had done lots of brand extension in different production field, office material, such as pen, stapler, highlighter, notebooks (which is the first product line they had when they first establish the brand), fashion clothing, kitchen tools, bedding, even some small furniture, etc. The special of Muji’s product is that almost all the products are  highly designed to match the simple and easy style of the brand. Muji did a good job on keeping every product line has the same image that represent SIMPLE.

Muji is expanding in Asia which for my opinion, copying the way that IKEA was developing before. However, I think Muji is doing a better job than IKEA that will develop further. Because the effect of partners. Muji has been working programs integrating with iPad and iPhone, which is the one of the most popular devices in the world today, developing the application for the brand itself and providing the easy access of their catalog and upcoming product. Also, I found an interesting link at the bottom of the site, which show a partnership between Muji and LEGO, there is only one page for the site promoting “Joy of Building up, Working together, Using your own hand, Discovery” by different type of activities that Muji and LEGO’s products could provide.  I think it’s a great combination and to Muji especially , is a great help of clarifying the brand image that they promote the importance of communication and creation by hand, which is lacking in nowadays.

By all these effort, Muji could possibly grow into a huge brand which could become a lifestyle.

After studying about STP process, I have notice about the importance of positioning for a product. And it’s essential for the manager to have an idea of the position of the product in the market before launch.

I have been working to start a business to import the wine produced in BC  to mainland China. The concept of starting this business is because there are more copycat products in the Chinese market, and people are doubtful about the quality of whiskey and vodka. I noticed it when I was in China, and I heard that customers are more likely to consume white or red wine when they go out for dinner or after party because it’s not easy to counterfeit. On the other hand, BC is famous for local wine production with the medium taste (fruity and dry), which helps me obtain the information and control the transportation for supply handy and efficient.

Then I found a winery producer in Richmond, they offers varies wine that I can choose, for both cheaper and higher class wine. I can match the market demand for both economic efficient and others that looking for more quality lifestyle in China. I still approaching the supplier and I will figure out which 3 wines I will choose in the first shipment in later next week.

Here is the site link of Isabella Winery: http://isabellawinery.com//

I believe many of you have been to Apply store and spend some time using their new product, either the new Macbook Air or the iPhone4. Or some of you that used to play video games might have downloaded a “trial version” form the site prior to the publish day of the game.

Trial is an essential economic activity during a promotion period and it provides great deal of marketing information as well. From trial, customers will be able to know about the product not only by advertisements or imagines but also use part of the service before they consume. This will let the product “sells” itself because customers will find out the how the product will better service their life. Also, trial will keeps consumers focus on the product even the product is still developing or not yet published by leasing part of the service that consumer might be interested and attract potential customers. Trial is a great tool to test the market when the product is still under developing, developer can project the sale, feed back of the product during the trial period then to improve the product. Finally, the trial that offering customer experience will help customers get ready for the new system or new version, then customers will be more used to and relied on the service or product when the official is released.

Apple store has been doing a impressive job with all the trial product in the showroom, letting the customers knowledge the new product. The most successful case is when the iPhone4 released, there is even a lineup for the trial in the shop. And it definitely promotes iPhone4 and achieves a great success.

I was struggling for my blog this week again. I randomly browsing my colleagues’ blog then I found this very interesting topic I want to talk about this week as well.

The topic is about marketing strategy for VolksWagen, the biggest Motor company in the world today. VW owns many motor brands, Audi, Lamborghini, Porsche, Bentley, Bugatti, and few other smaller companies. Since, as a boy turns into a man, it’s necessary for me to know about these motor brands, and I found out the stock value of VW continually increases along with the expansion of VW.

VW did a great about marketing positioning, because they own a bunch of brands with different level of motor products which can easily lead to price competition within the same company. Few years ago, I have been started seeing Audi kept showing on the movie screen. In the movie, Audi always advertised the performance, elegant, designed, exotic, and reliable in the movie. One of best examples is the R8 model in <Iron Man>. By sponsoring the movie, Audi raised it’s imagine to a higher level competing with BMW or Mercedes Benz, and it smartly let more people observed and knowledge the change. In addition, this will help VW to separate Audi with itself, avoiding market share competition.

On the other hand ,Volkswagen is seem to be more basic, efficient, gas saving, but same performance with Audi. And the advantage of VW is the price compare to other brands, but competing with Toyota, one large company from Japan. But since the news about few gear and brake system problems with Toyota, it becomes a downside for Toyota, and VW changes it’s strategy to the point of safety and reliable in the market. It’s a smart switch and achieve VW beating Toyota on sale for 6 months. More interestingly, VW put a lot of effort on it’s advertisement to make watcher think and try to impress them by ideas. One of the advertisement I found very interesting is the one Colin post on his blog this week.

Here is the link to Colin Cheng’s post: https://blogs.ubc.ca/colincheng

There is an old saying “timing, place, and man power would be the key to achieve success” in Chinese. It’s somehow similar to the “4Ps” in the marketing mix which is “Product, Price, Place, and Promotion”. And I want to talk about promotion this time.

In my opinion, timing is always a good friend of promotion. Because whenever promotion comes in a good timing, it’s always easier for promotion to achieve the goal. And i feel strong for it especially when the time is Christmas in Canada, and Chinese New Year in China.

When there is long holiday, for example, Summer break for students, Christmas, Thanksgiving, there are always a big sale among the stores and shops. Package, discount, promotion signs are all around the street to attract buyers sight. And I find out this period of time is whenever season change for old product like clothing,or a promotion period for a new product. Promotion is important because it helps the product “speak” for itself and spread the information around the people,and it’s the key for the user to get used to the product then build loyal relationship between customers and the product. Promotion is a effective way to fight for market share and break down other product’s consumer loyalty because consumer is looking for better product all the time.

Overall, let the product speak for itself is the main goal of promotion.

Advertising is a huge part of marketing activity.

Nowadays we are absorbing information through varies of ways from the time we open our eyes in the morning and before sleep at night. Websites, posters, newspapers, magazines, emails, instant messaging, blogs are filled in every minutes of our life. And since the technology improved, it’s getting more efficient for us to learn knowledge or to search for information we want.

I think the key of a successful advertisement is to impress people by just one glance. It’s important for that piece of information “stand out” and leaves some questions or thoughts to those people who see the advertisement.

Color is usually the most common way use by advertisement. Because color itself can be used as an information hint, such as red is commonly representing passion, danger, and warning, etc. It gives out messages more directly because of the “nature” of the colour.

Furthermore, sound sometime can do a better job on delivering message because it’s more efficient when people is not paying attention on the advertisement but somehow human’s brain will “receive” the information still.

Therefore, for a good advertisement, it’s important to concern in varies way when we work on it.