This is the last week of lessons and especially my last week of lessons here in UBC. This final post should involve reflections about the video or the marketing plan in general; for me, instead, this post was useful to reflect about my whole experience here in UBC.

When I arrived in January I was catapulted into a new reality, everything was completely different: food and culture obviously, but also lessons, classes and modality of exams. I have never worked on a team project before and after these four months I think this is a really efficient way to develop some relational and communication skills. Actually I was really lucky with my team, we worked really hard but at the same time we had a lot of fun; they helped my to integrate in this new “world” and I learned a lot from them. Recording and editing the video was the hardest and the longest part, especially because we didn’t pleased, we wanted to do the best. We rented microphones and the tripod for the camera and we booked a digital media room. I didn’t even know it was possible! Everyone said the own idea and we put them all together to obtain that one that is our final version. Enthusiasm, organization, initiative, cooperativeness, listening and participating skills characterized our group; it wasn’t easy to match our commitments and find a time to meet, but we divided the work, we confronted and helped each other in a very efficient way. We did the best and in my opinion the result is pretty good! I’m really satisfied and I wouldn’t change anything! Lululemon wasn’t an easy company and I didn’t know anything at all about it! As me, also other members had never heard about it, we visited the store to try to get a feel of the culture and it really worked!

When I’ll be back in Italy I’ll have a really good memory about it and obviously I can say I learned something new and really important for my career. Thanks guys! 

It doesn’t matter if you are photography fans, if you are self-centered or if you are shy behind  a camera, you cannot get away from the “selfie” trend.

Women, men and unaware animals victimized by the selfie mania, the term means capture an image of one’s self using a selfphone. Surely, the culture of selfies sometimes encourages social narcissism, but for the savvy marketer, it’s also an opportunity for brand promotion. Just ask the marketing team behind Turkish Airlines’ “Kobe vs. Messi: The Selfie Shootout” video, which has garnered more than 74 million views in less than a week. And with a such flooded phenomenon, how couldn’t brands create real marketing campaigns?

Before creating a selfie marketing strategy you should understand if your target concerns directly the appearance and the look or not. Here some examples (but there are really a lot) :

Starting with perhaps the most favored industry, the clothing, focus on Ted Baker, an English company, that before Christmas encouraged shoppers in a campaign called “ Merry Kissman” which invited users to take a picture of themselves in front of the brand’s windows and then share the shots on social network in order to win some prizes;

Eyeglass maker Warby Parker faced a tough problem: how to get people comfortable buying eyeglasses online. Their solution: send the customer their top five choices and have them take selfies trying them on to post on social media to get their friends’ opinions. A plan that gives their customers the feedback they need to part with a few hundred dollars, and Warby Parker gets a bunch of social media marketing for free.

Finally Axe, that during Valentine’ s day launched #kissforpeace, a campaign created in collaboration with “Peace One Day” to promote their new “Axe Peace”. The brand invited fans to support the cause with a kiss, in the name of the famous saying “make love not war “,and share it on social with the hashtag dedicated.

When done right, a selfie campaign can be a trendy and relevant tactic with far-reaching, social potential.

References:

http://sparksheet.com/why-marketers-should-focus-on-the-selfie/

http://saydaily.com/2014/01/10-interesting-selfie-marketing-campaigns-.html

These days it seems there’s a Starbucks on every corner and you can’t imagine how much waste they generate by the nature of their business. Selling coffee, tea or else in a single use disposable paper cup is a quite wasteful daily job. Today the giant of all coffee companies set a new green goal to make 100% of their cups reusable or recyclable by 2015.

Various strategies have been carried out by Starbucks in making green marketing campaign: Starbucks started to think to create a packaging that can be recycled easily. As said by Starbucks: “It’s our commitment to purchase only the highest quality, ethically sourced and responsibly grown coffee. To reduce our own environmental footprint and fight climate change. And to give back to the neighbourhoods and communities we’re a part of”.

Starbucks has long made environmentally responsible practices a core principle, and the January launch of a new reusable plastic cup was presented as their last take at it. With about 4 billion single-use paper cups going into the trash each year, the company set a goal of having 5% of all drinks sold in reusable cups by 2015.By 2012 Starbucks launched also a campaign for the Earth Day: the big picture where thousands of New Yorkers trade in their paper cups for reusable mugs.  Each coffee cup placed on the sidewalk leads to the formation of a design.  In the end, the large cup display forms an aerial mural of a sequoia tree. And to promote this campaign, Starbucks provided free coffee to customers who brought in their own reusable mugs.

Green marketing campaign is a new way of doing marketing; of course it is not easy to do this kind of campaign, need totality and continuities to do that, so your customers will take you seriously. With totality businesses you can

save the earth through your products and could even propitiate for consumers who want to save the earth.

References:

http://inhabitat.com/all-starbucks-cups-will-be-recyclable-or-reusable-by-2015/

http://ibrandstudio.com/articles/starbucks-green-marketing-campaign

Hours and hours spent on Facebook, on Instagram, leaving a comment or sharing any kind of subject, from foods to cats. Are you a social dependent as well? No worries, Coca-Cola has come up with an unusual way of getting us to put down our smartphones and break the social media habit.

The brand has designed a “Social Media Guard” for its latest ad that promises to “ take the social out of media and put it back in your life”. The commercial mocks people who Instagram photos of their meals instead of talking to their friends over dinner, dads who ignore their kids because they’re on their phone and little children who are too busy looking at cat videos to notice their actual pet cat.

A tongue-in-cheek product, similar to a pet collar that dogs wear to  keep them from scratching and licking their wounds. Fashioned in Coke’s signature red color, the Social Media Guard is meant to help people refrain from staring down at their phones. This is the magic cure against all of social-media illnesses, that force us to look  up from the screen , to witness sunsets and look into other human beings’ eyes.

The takeaway from the commercial could be that enjoying an ice cold Coca-Cola will put you back in the moment and make you stop frantically checking to see if anyone’s faved your latest pithy House of Cards tweet. The soda also might send you on a corn-syrup-induced sugar high, too, but it’ll only help you tweet faster.

Coke’s not the first brand to use a social media platform to taunt social media users. Last June, Applebee’s mocked mommy bloggers, Twitter users and Pinterest users in its “Life’s Better Shared” campaign. Buick’s “Get Off The Phone” video featuring comic duo Rhett and Link is even more similar to Coke’s latest campaign, urging people to “Get in the Moment” by putting down their phones.

References:

http://betabeat.com/2014/02/coca-cola-ad-debuts-handy-social-media-guard-to-keep-you-from-texting/

http://lifewise.canoe.ca/Living/YourLife/2014/02/20/21484966-relaxnews.html

http://marketingland.com/latest-spoof-ad-coke-wants-give-world-pet-collar-cure-social-media-addition-74755

Welcome to UBC Blogs. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

We usually  use marketing and ethics as opposite words. Marketing activities, in fact, are often connoted as  activities that violate fairness , honesty, responsibility and transparency principles.

Some researchers define marketing as an instrument that offers high quality life-style. According to this definition, it should have an important social role contributing to deliver improvements in consume standards without being detrimental to business competitiveness.

Companies  often must choose between taking the high road and making the decent decision versus taking the low road and breaching their customers’ trust, in fact is common using words  and phrases that make your small business sound attractive and enticing, even when your message uses phrases that exaggerate and inflate.

 Unfortunately it is very common with unethical marketing today, I really hope it gets better, that companies start taking responsibility!

Some examples of ads I consider to be unethical:

At the first glance of it you may think that it is a pregnant woman holding a glass of beer. Now, we all know that beer is not for pregnant women right? The beer might be non-alcoholic but is it acceptable? Whenever you take a look at it, it is still a beer and it would be really hard for customers to accept it because in reality, beers were meant to be alcoholic in the first place.

People tend to criticize almost everything and each of us thinks differently. Marketing should be done in such a way that you want your target consumers to feel that there is value in what they receive. Trying to understand and being aware of your surroundings will really help you decide on ethical ways of delivering marketing strategies. It would also help if it holds integrity and assurance. These will keep customers coming back with thoughts in their minds that they are valuable.

References: American Marketing Association: Statement of Ethics