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...

Recently, or maybe not that recent, I've noticed that there has been an influx of blogshops. For the unsure, blogshops are just like any other shop, selling just about anything, just that it is set up online. Being an avid shopper, as well as one who spends time on the internet often, I have seen myself succumb to buying from blogshops. Many a time, my purchases are sweeeeet! I've not met any dead sellers or had any trouble with getting my items. But don't get me wrong... I still shop at retail shops. In fact, I love both :) Blog shops are fun to scroll through when I just don't have the time to step out (when exams are round the corner). Apart from being a buyer from online shops, I have also tried selling stuff by setting up my own blog shop. It didn't go so well though. Naturally, I prefer buying to selling stuff. Those who buy from blogshops, you may think that it is easy work, but it is a hell lot of work for the sellers. They have to choose the supplies from ...

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...

We all know that localization is important. Because it will be more relevant to the people looking at the ad. You can even see that from online marketing. For example, I signed up for Yahoo! email using yahoo.com instead of yahoo.com.sg, just because I thought the "sg" didn't look as cool. However, the ads that I got were all related to the US, which I learnt how to ignore in time. The good news it: recently, I was given the choice to change the ads to Singapore based ones, which were definitely better and more interesting. We've also seen the localization of musicals, which I have written about in another blog. The example was a personal experience of mine while watching the musical "We Will Rock You", where parts of the actors' scripts were changed to suit the Singapore culture. Evidence of localization in "We will Rock You" - adapted from pegpeg.wordpress.com 1. When the lead “accidentally” knocked into one of the audience down stage, he sa...

Interning at a prestigious FMCG really is an eye-opener and made me understand more about the marketing obligations and activities of marketing in Singapore. (I'm actually referring more to those who are working for huge MNCs with the headquarters situated in a country with 4 seasons). "Obligations" is the word used because marketers in Singapore... well... don't really have a lot of say in the marketing mix. For non-marketers, marketing mix means the 4Ps which equate to Product, Price, Promotion and Place. We are mostly told what to do... in a way.. I'll explain. Product I've learned, that when working with a large MNC, there are regulations and guidelines which have to be (strictly?) adhered to. Let's talk about the first P - Product. The headquarters (let's just assume that this is the US for convenience sake) sends you the product that they have come up with - the product is not fully developed yet, of course. Excellent, you get to try it out and g...