Thank You

Thank you for tuning into my blog. I hope it has been interesting to you and possibly shown different ways to look at business and marketing in general. It was fun to learn to use one of the growingly more popular social outlets and express my own views. Thanks again.

Ending on a Funny Note

I thought the best way to close a blog from a marketing class was to show one of my favorite commercials. The reason for this is because if a commercial can be enjoyed by a viewer than that person has a much larger chance of showing interest in the advertised product. With more interest comes a possibility for more customers and more revenue. So, in my opinion, a successful commercial is the quickest way to making money.

The favorite commercial..... The new Heineken ad. The quickest way to my heart is making me laugh... and this definitely made me laugh.

Pricing Matters

Pricing can make or break a product, and other times it can set yourself apart from the rest in a good way. For instance, I am a person who loves fast food. I go to McDonalds probably much more than your average health professional would like. But i find myself going there not for the "great" food, but for the prices. Getting a decent sized meal for under $5 is a tough thing to find these days. So for the college student I think the cheap meal is the best meal. Clearly this doesn't stay true forever. At some point you must be able to throw away quantity for quality. And its there that the better restaurants make their money. Pricing something high can make the customers believe they are about to enjoy something that has a very high quality. So where i find myself eating at Mcdonalds now, I'm sure that later down the road when trying to impress a coworker or business associate I will not be pulling through the drivethrough with them asking for fries with that.

Guerilla Nike

Advertising is one of the most interesting parts of all of business in my opinion. So i was fascinated when the promotion topic came around. Most importantly the Guerrilla adverting. All the pictures on the class slides were very interesting to look at, and so i went searching for one to be able to put on here. I found the Nike Guerrilla advertising campaign to get people to run instead of drive for a day. I thought it was interesting because in a big city people are going to notice this very easy and be curious why there shoes on cars. It was a great idea, and something, I'm sure, that definitely brought more attention to Nike.

The future and New Innovations

The Microsoft surface computer is probably the best example of a new innovation that i could come up with on the spot. Where it is not entirely new, it has been out for 4 or so years, just hasn't been released to the majority of the public yet. But the surface computer is one of the coolest products to come out in a long time. With a wide array of cool features it is bound to be a big hit once it becomes more affordable. The surface computer uses a multi touch screen surface to allow people to interact with it in more than one place. You can drop your phone on top of it and literally pull pictures out of it and toss it to a Zune or onto some other portable device. You can interact with maps, using your hands to zoom in and out. And you can also even flick animated condensation drops around the table from a drink that had been placed on top of it. So for the topic where we were discussing new innovations i could not think of anything better than to show the capabilities of this computer. As discussed before, the most important thing in the business world is to be ever changing and to not be afraid of taking risks. The people who designed and supported the surface computer were most definitely not afraid to be gutsy.

Targeting the Right Crowd

Targeting the right market has been something that has been drilled into my head ever since I've started learning about business. So much now that it seems to be common sense. Would you ever advertise a new dirt biking oriented clothing line to an elderly lady? It just wouldn't sell. Segregating is normally frowned upon, but in business it is key to be able to distinguish between the kind of people that will buy your product and those that want nothing to do with it. I'm sure there are plenty of examples where through poor research a product was targeted to the wrong market and failed miserably. On the surface you can never really tell that you are personally being aimed at by a company, but just a quick glance at a product from a certain company and some thinking will show that it is meant for a specific person.












This advertisement of the DC brand shows their brand logo caked over pictures of skateboarders. Everything they sell is targeted for these specific types of people, and it just so happens that every person here that is skateboarding is wearing DC apparel.

Loyalty is the Key

Thinking about what was talked about in the unit talking about consumer behavior and even other marketing goals in general I've been able to conclude that getting customer loyalty is the key to being successful. Brands like Coke have created a loyalty that have kept customers coming back for more for years and years.

The best example i can come up with is the video game war. Fan boys are hardcore loyal customers. You can go on video game websites and just read the discussions on some of the forums and the threads there, and even if the same game is on two different platforms, say Xbox and Playstation, the fanboys will find a way to argue over which one is best. And what it comes down to is simply just the loyalty they have for the system. For instance, I've been an Xbox fan ever since it came out and have never thought of turning on Microsoft and going over to the Sony side of the fence. This may stem from the fact that my dad works for Microsoft or maybe even just that i got hooked from the first Halo. No matter how it happened, I've been glued to the Xbox franchise and Microsoft will continue recieving my money for years to come.

Market Research and Focus Groups

For this section i wanted to find a video from the show the apprentice. The main reason for wanting to find this video is because it was a show I used to watch in my high school marketing classes and was something i started watching when i was finally understanding marketing and business strategies, and also because what the teams had to do in the show, strategic marketing and planning, is exactly what i would like to see myself doing in a few years. But the video i wanted to find was of a focus group in one of the seasons where the teams were supposed to create a toy and pitch it to a group of children and see their responses. The teams were judged on the childrens responses. The teams didn't do too great but it was a great introduction and example of how important marjeting research can be. If either team had just created their toy without administering any research they would have been selling an unwanted product to a market they do not understand at all.

Thank you to CartoonStock.com for the cartoon!

Market Planning and the Top Wrap

For the marketing 360 class we have had to come up with a product, and my group and I created something called a Top Wrap. Which is essentially a silicon cover for your laptop that protects it from dings and spills and the works. I thought using the Top Wrap would be a good way to demonstrate different marketing plans and their uses. For instance, due to the fact that the Top Wrap is a new product entirely and we are a new business the best plan for us would be to use a diversification strategy. In this form of market planning you sell new products in a completely new market. You tailor make the product for the people in the market you are entering. But, in using this method you need to be clever and find a way to reach your audience effectively. 

One of the other marketing strategies is the market penetration strategy where you push sales of an existing product to an already established market. Your goal here is to just sell more of what you have, and you can reach this by having discounts, selling the product at more locations or even something like changing the product packaging. The last two marketing strategies are market development, selling an existing product to a new market, and product development which is the selling of a brand new product in an existing market. These are both just opposites and are simply situational.

Quick Intro

Just as an ice breaker i decided to find a a clip that may be a little
controversial. This video shows different aspects of marketing, what it
once was, and what marketing has become. I don't believe that the video
is saying that marketing has become bad, its just saying that there is
so much out there. In an expanding world marketers need to be more and
more clever and try harder to seperate themselves from the pack. To be
successful you must be willing to take risks.