The Marketing Peg

In my promotional management class, I was taught that there are 3 types of ads which will attract attention. Three things that attract people's attention 1) Babies 2) Animals 3) Sex Simple but true right? Remember the last time you saw an advertisement with a baby featured in it? Let me give you an example. A classic ad which uses babies. This ad was from Parmalat milk. Their campaign's slogan was - "Because we're mammals". http://www.ciadvertising.org/sa/spring_03/382J/grace/milk_page_nizan.htm Aren't they cuteeeeee? I especially like the panda baby. Maximum cuteness!! Yea, so, babies. Babies attract attention ;) Next, we'll move on to animals! Animals are always cute aren't they? Imagine an ad with this cute lil' hamster. awwwww..... got this pic from google. link: http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb255/fhat1/hamster.jpg Actually, I did see an ad recently with a hamster. Can't find it now though, but no worries! I found another ad with a h...

Ever seen a commercial which makes you cringe? No? Well, then feast your eyes upon these two videos by Allswell. It's a local made advertisement, which is grossly Singaporean. Not that being Singaporean is bad... No, I definitely don't mean that. But the execution could have been much much better. Having the Singaporean accent is fine (I think), but the actors also looked like this was their first advertisement ever. Maybe that's Allswell's strategy when they made this commercial. They want people to cringe so that they will talk about it. Well, if that's the case, I think they have succeeded. Haha. But if their strategy was to go all out so that the locals can relate to it... then I'm sorry... it just made my goose pimples pop. I first chanced upon the first advertisement on TV mobile. My first thoughts were: "no taste". "cheap ad". Definitely not speaking to my generation. The "auntie" generation perhaps. Then when I saw the secon...

Spotted this ad in Her World magazine recently. Grammatical errors get to me. So when I saw the copy for this, I couldn't help but put this up. "You can't missed it"?? Shouldn't it be: "You can't miss it" instead OR "You couldn't have missed it"? Find it strange that they even published something like this. I mean, people are not perfect, and everyone has made his/her grammatical mistakes before. But the fact that you're going to publish this as an ad, shouldn't someone have checked it? Also, the copy is only a one liner, not like you could have missed the error. Odd. Unless some of you think otherwise--that it isn't a grammatical error. Then you'll have to explain why. Cos I see it... I see it very clearly. It's a mistake there. We can see that Perrier is/was the sponsor for the Her World golf challenge. Didn't the magazine people vet it? Really baffles me. *shrugs* This post is not meant to put any company or a...

These are real life examples in Singapore. Of cos, some people may beg to differ, but nonetheless, just some opinions of mine so that others can probably create better and more sensible ads =) P.S. This is of no offense to any of the sponsors/companies/advertising agencies or anyone who created the ads below. L'Oreal UV perfect This is how the overall ad looks like in a female magazine Notice this part of the ad. The copy says "30 years old without UV care" for the left one and the one on the right says "30 years old with UV care" You probably can't see if from the pic, but they did use DI to create a difference. Yea, I know that most (or can I say all?) ads use digital imaging, but do you have to make it so obvious? By using the same person and depending on DI to convince consumers, I don't think it really works. In fact... the ad probably will look better without this section. Kellogg's - Special K Saw this ad at the bus stop. So what does this m...

I think some of you have already seen the video of the Raffles Place Ghost being uploaded to youtube (with more than 260,000 views to date). If you haven't seen it yet, you can view it below. Many who've viewed the video were very curious on the authenticity of it. Below are some comments of those who kinda believed the footage: who ever post this video, do tell me which area is this..i mean which area of the building is this.. gosh. i had a rude shock. not sure if this is real but it is very scary. raffles place can get quite eerie at night especially when it is very quiet. seems real leh... to me at least. coz maybe i heard alot of scary office ghost stories before. i don't know whether this is real or not lah, but i heard alot of stories from my mum about how during world war 2, a bomb was dropped at raffles place and alot of people died during the war... i don't want to work there!!! :[ And then there are skeptics who doubted the authenticity of the video: there...

We all know how tough it is to attract consumers' attention amongst all other competing advertisements on the streets today. But this one thing never fails - sex appeal. And HBO Asia has used just that... well, sorta. HBO Asia has launched an advertising campaign, featuring a red brassiere hanging over its bus shelter creatives, for the latest season of Entourage . Around 400 bus shelters will carry the advertisements which feature the cast of Entourage with the slogan, "The Naked Truth of Superstar Life" but only eight will feature the racy brassiere versions. Timmerman & Tan helped with the creative while Mindshare did the media planning. - Marketing Interactive If you wanna catch a glimpse of those racy red bras in action head downtown soon! (my guess is that a couple will be placed in Orchard Road - it only makes sense since it's bustling during the weekends) Campaign ends mid-may. I can't wait to see the reaction of people who pass by those bus shelter...

Something I found in my email a while back which I like to share. Life-size stickers of people were pasted on automatic sliding doors at a mall in Mumbai , India. When someone approaches, the doors move apart and it feels like the people on the door are moving away. The person entering finds the message, 'People move away when you have body odour' . Advertisements for a job-recruiting company in Berlin , Germany depict people working in vending machines and ATMs. It delivers the message, 'Life is too short for the wrong job' . A creative ad by Mini Cooper placed at the Zurich , Switzerland train station, shows people climbing into or out of the car, when they are actually entering or exiting stairs. Singapore should really have some of these awesome ads, don't you think?

Some time back, a friend of mine exclaimed that marketers, public relations and lawyers are basically, well... liars . I guess his stand was that since these people only present the "good" side of things, and not disclose or present the "bad" side, it misleads people and therefore they are lying. Since I am a marketer-to-be myself, I defended his claim and said that we're not liars... we're just making things (positive things, of course) visible for consumers so that they can make better decisions with the options laid out to in front of them. Well, I wouldn't say that marketing, PR and law lie. If I were to put it in another way, then I would say it is manipulation . Haha . Only the positive things are brought to light while the negative things are hidden (or not placed too much emphasis on). Afterall , these people have objectives and clients to serve, and this is probably the way things work. But I do agree that they are all rather manipulative haha...

I had my hell week last week with 3 exams which were all marketing modules. Then I thought about how nice it would be if I were back in Copenhagen listening to the Services Marketing teacher speak and only attend an verbal/oral test (aptly called oral defense which lasts for only 20 min). Thinking about him made me remember of his most favourite topic - benchmarking. I remember he always told us that a marketer has to not only know the theories behind marketing, but also how to be creative. Is creativity born or made? Well, to him, it can be trained. How? One way is benchmarking . The norm for benchmarking is to compare yourself to the best there is in the industry. But to him, this is being myopic. His favourite line... " Do what McDonald's does. Mac benchmarks itself against, not KFC, not another fastfood restaurant, but F1 " Yes, Formula 1 . It's a good benchmark if you consider that when it comes to the pit stop, the personnels handling the racing car have to be ...

The first and foremost question would be: What are the benefits of marketing to the University community? The answer is simple. Firstly, holding your marketing activities in the University would allow a more specific target market . At least you know the age group and segment of the consumers who are affected by the marketing stimuli within the University. That way, if your product is for the age group which includes undergraduates, it is a more direct approach as compared to mass marketing. Or, if you'd like a even more niched target segment, for example, ladies who are interested in networking, then clubs like NUS 85 Broads Club would be relevant to approach. Having a more targeted segment also means less cost incurred. Instead of mass marketing to the public and competing with other advertisers out there, why not just directly bring the product/company to the school where your target segment can easily comprehend and digest? Apart from marketing, HR has some benefits to gain t...

In the past, we were all so focused on the traditional type of marketing. Usually with its main focus on products, and of course, the most popular strategy in marketing are the 4 Ps and how you manage them. The 4 Ps , they also mean product, price, promotion and place . I've been so familiar with that ever since my MKT1001 Principles of Marketing course in NUS. Never forgot about that. In my basic marketing class, I was taught of how to position the product. Many models such as the Ansoff Matrix was applied. Everything was about the product : How you should design the product , whether its functional, how much one should price it, what advertising strategies are needed to promote the product and where you should sell the product . The main focus was... the product . Then when I come to Copenhagen Business School and took my Advanced Service Marketing course, it is all about the service - the experience. Marketing has shifted into a new paradigm that involves the service . Everyt...

The video above is an ad made by Apple to show consumers the differences between a Mac and PC (or rather, more specifically, Windows OS). This was supposed to generate good publicity and sales I would guess. Cos I doubt that they will hire the famous guy to act as the Mac "just for the fun of it". Using YouTube as the advertising medium is a good way of generating publicity, especially when 900,000 odd views have already been clocked for this ad. But is this good publicity that we're getting at? Looking at the comments , you would find that most of it are not exactly "pro mac". " Pcs cant do anything fun.... there are hardly any mac games and the few that r arent very good" "How the hell is Mac better than Windows AND Linux. Windows = Program compatibility. Linux = Stability, performance, security, open source, free, eye candy. Mac's positives are about the same as Linux except its costly and not open source. The only reason I see to u...

Yesterday during my class, "Organizing global business and marketing", our teacher talked about Tony Fernandes. Hear his name and you will exclaim,"AirAsia!!" Then we were talking about AirAsia's slogan and how it influenced the whole airline industry today. What the slogan is? "Now everyone can fly" So my teacher was rattling on about how AirAsia managed to capture a niche in the airline industry and make air transport affordable to everyone. "AirAsia created a niche for themselves. Not Malaysian airlines nor Singapore airlines could do the same. AirAsia made flying affordable for everyone unlike the 2 I mentioned." My immediate reaction,"Huh?" How could he compare the airlines like how he did? Singapore Airlines comparing to AirAsia? What a joke. And he was telling us how AirAsia created a niche while he brought SIA and Malaysian Airlines into the picture? Firstly, SIA is definitely NOT in the same leagues of AirAsia. WHY? Because...