I don’t know about other people but I remember a time when I was a kid when there were games and toys that were so popular that everyone had them. For example Pokémon cards, Furby, Yugioh cards etc…What happened to these games and toys? Why are they not as popular as they once were? There are a few applicable terms I learned in my marketing class, one is an instant bust and the other is fad.

Fad

A fad is a game, a toy or something that was popular for a while then abruptly stops being popular. I noticed this happen with toys like Furby and Pokémon. 

Fads come and go and when a company makes a toy that becomes a fad the lifecycle of the product changes. This sometimes can be a problem for a company if they didn’t plan for that. There is a way to pre plan a products demise, that’s by having a pre planned obsolescence. This is where a company releases a product on the market and in 6 months they plan to have another product to replace that one. Apple does this well with their phones every year.

Instant Bust

Instant bust is when a company launches a product on the market and it does not sell. The company then lacks the resources to continue to market and produce the product. Many big companies have had instant busts one very popular one is Pepsi Blue. This product went nowhere in the North American market and cost Pepsi million of dollars.

I know that I don’t want to make a product that becomes an instant bust or a fad because either way in the long run you will lose money, and no business wants to lose money.

Ignorance Of The Law Is No Excuse… For a Marketing Manager

Are companies following marketing laws or just stretching the truth? Have you ever stopped to think about the savings companies boast in their ads and thought, can that be true? The truth is that companies are sometimes deceptive. There are several ways companies go about ignoring pricing laws.

One of the ways companies mislead consumers is by Misleading Price Claims (MSLP) (CMIA). This is when a manufacture suggests a price point to a retailer but the store sells it for a lower price and then has a sale. The retailer advertises that you save X number of dollars, but the number of dollars saved is from the manufacturer’s suggested price to their sales price.

For example: -Manufacture suggests product is worth 500$

                        -Retailer sells it at 400$

                        -Retailer has sale, and sells for 300$

 Then in the flyer retailer says you save 40% because 500$ to 300$, but it should be 400$ to 300$ which would be 25% savings.

Another way company’s trick customers, is the Bait and Switch (CMIA). This is where a company has a sale on a product, but has little in stock. When the company runs out of the product they show the customer a similar, but more expensive product. Most consumers fall for it because their already in the store and they wanted the product.

Occasionally, different companies with similar products have met with each other to set a high price, so no matter which brand the consumer gets they’re paying a high price for the product. This is called Price Fixing (CMIA).

Another method is Predatory Pricing (CMIA). This is when a company sets the price so low no competition can compete. The downfall if doing this is that the company doesn’t make a lot of money. This is illegal for companies to do, but it is really hard to prove.

All of the marketing methods above are illegal. Though these deceptions can seem inconsequential the company and consumer should be on level ground. The laws are safe guards for consumers so that they can make informed decisions.

This is a video of more marketing laws that were not discussed in my report that I found to be interesting.

www.google.ca

www.youtube.com (Guide to Money - Immutable Laws of Marketing)

Canadian Marketing in Action (CMIA) 8^th edition Keith J. Tuckwel

Mobile Media... Marketers Are Now Stalkers

Why is mobile media an effective means of marketing and advertising to a consumer? Maybe it is because there are over 3.4 billion people with active mobile devises. There are 3.1 billion unique owners of at least one mobile phone and subscription. Also, out of the 3.4 billion active mobile devises 1.55 billion devices received a form of advertising last year.

The reach alone for iPhone, Android, iPad and Blackberry applications is over 40 million people. This allows marketers to target a large percent of the population with ease. Now from social media it is easy to figure out a specific person or group’s interest. This gives a marketer the information needed to maximize impact with sophisticated targeting to allow them to market to a consumer with little cost.

Due to new technological advances, marketers are now using interactive ads to market products to consumers. A good example of such an ad, is a flash game called Chevy Cobalt labs. This interactive ad allows the consumer to ‘drive’ a Chevy Cobalt and choose certain design elements for the vehicle. After the consumer is finished an ad pops up that allows the consumer to go to the company’s website and potentially buy a new Chevy Cobalt.

With the advancement in the mobile media technologies, marketers can easily find out if their ads are working. By this I mean the success of the ads is measurable. Marketers can find out how many people viewed the ads, as well as how many followed the ads to additional sites of interest.

Based on the facts above I think mobile media is an effective form of advertising, because there is the potential to target billions of people and easily send the ads to them. Mobile media allows marketers to send interactive ads to consumers, and because mobile media allows marketers to easily see the effectiveness of the ads; this presents a direct marketing advantage for marketers.

These are a few websites I looked at:

http://www.greystripe.com/advertisers/?gclid=CM_DjY7RpKwCFQyFQAodbAhqBA

http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2009/06/why-wildly-varying-research-on-mobile-advertising.html

8000$ for 150 Words or Less

Why is social media so popular? Maybe it is because 77% of the world’s population uses the internet on a regular basis as of 2010 world internet usage.  The internet is an effective tool for marketing a product to a potential consumer.

Social media such as Facebook and Twitter can be useful for marketing a product to a consumer. This can be done numerous ways. Some of which are celebrity endorsement, testimonials, and sharing your thoughts on a product or company for everyone to see. One of the more popular methods is celebrity endorsement. To do this on a social media website is different than on a television commercial. This is done by paying a celebrity to say something positive about your product on a social media website; this allows all of the celebrity’s followers to see the post. Unlike in social media, in a television commercial the celebrity has to interact with the product and this method can be costly.

The way the cost is calculated for celebrity endorsements is based on a number of factors; the popularity of the celebrity (so how many followers) and what is the product. The social media of choice is twitter.  A celebrity that uses this is Kim Kardashian. She has over 3 million followers and she charges 8000$ for a tweet (Kim Kardashian).  Sounds crazy doesn’t it?

Well, it works. Celebrities do it all the time. Also, this is an inexpensive method for an advertiser who wants a celebrity endorsement, but can’t pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a regular television celebrity endorsed ad. Now that internet and social media is becoming more popular, the celebrity tweets are on the rise and are sure to be for a while.

These are a few website I looked at.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/11/02/prweb8928438.DTL

http://www.internetworldstats.com/am/us.htm

I could not find a video for celebrity endorsements on twitter specifically, but this is a good video to show what celebrity endorsements in commercials are. This is a commercial for Nikon’s new camera with Ashton Kutcher as the celebrity endorsing the product. This probably cost Nikon in the 100 thousand dollars or more range to pay Ashton to do this.