Journal
This is a humorous look at the (positive) features of traditional communications media (catalogues) presented in the same way as we are used to seeing for more modern products.
On a more serious note it really does highlight why some firms still use catalogues in a world dominated by electronic devices.
This video illustrates how a firm can engineer a viral campaign, but also how it can spin out of control and then has to be brought back to the firm's own direction.
Mark Kermode the British cinema critic shows how a cinema audience can co-create value from the most intangible of experiences, silence.
This is a UK social marketing campaign designed to reduce the public's consumption of sugar. As a social marketing campaign success cannot be measured in monetary terms, so it's worth seeing at the end of the clip how they measured success.
The campaign can be linked to a variety of basic and advanced behaviour change models.
This clip has an interesting observation about the value of grief and its role in exchange. The relevant scene comes at 3.35 mins into the clip.
This clip shows how public relations can be used to emotionally engage an audience and deliver specific marketing communication objectives for commercial organisations. You should note how thi campaign sought to change the attitudes of Singaporeans towards Singtel and the social marketing metrics that they used.
The stand out feature of this advertisement is that the focus is very much on the tourist experience, outside the hotel. It shows what being a tourist means to one person, how they derive pleasure from it and why they are loyal to the brand.
The link to Shangri-La is almost imperceptible, but it is clear. The advert shows the type of person who stays at the Shangri-La and there is enough video coverage of the hotel interior to show people what the quality of the hotel itself is like.
This is an interesting story about how shopping malls have been having a hard time in India. One of the reasons given by an industry commentator is that at the start of the mall development boom developers were too keen to sell units outright. No doubt they were attracted by the cashflow benefits and the chance to reduce the risk they faced in making a return on their investment. However this approach appears to have reduced the level of control they had over the tenants and as a result there have been problems for the management of the malls with owners not able to achieve the right mix of tenants or enforce policies on maintenance.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33021116
One of the issues around consumer and industrial marketing is their convergence (Wind, 2006) and a development which illustrates this, is commonly referred to as, 'bring your own device':
“Microsoft rose to dominance in an age when the CIO (chief information officer) really held the keys to IT decision making. Over the past five years, BYOD has really eroded the level of control that many CIOs have.””
The following video provides more information about this development and its implication for business buyers.
A document published by the Treasury of the New Zealand government provides insights into the real life differences between firms who develop relationships with members of their supply chain, in contrast to those who pursue more arms length exchanges. Here is an extract, followed by a video produced by Toyota which provides more detail.
“Toyota, as many other Japanese firms, maintains a small stable set of ’highly trusted’ dedicated suppliers, restricts competition for the various orders only to them, caring for their profitability and rewarding the best performing suppliers with a higher share of orders, while replacing those that fail to deliver the extremely high levels of contractible and non-contractible quality required.”
One of my favourite journal articles is, 'Service Quality, Trust, Specific Asset Investment, and Expertise: Direct and Indirect Effects in a Satisfaction-Loyalty Framework' by Jyh-Shen Chiou and Droge and published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science in 2006.
I like the article because it takes the concept of specific asset investments, something that is most often applied in the context of business-to-business marketing, and the authors apply in to the context of high-end cosmetics. The following quotations from the article help to explain why they are so relevant:
“Premium cosmetic products are high-involvement, credence products that require a lot of personal service. These luxury cosmetics are typically sold by highly trained beauty consultants at dedicated (rented) counters in high-end department stores. The consultants are usually the employees of the cosmetics company, not the department store. Their job has educational, experiential, and relational aspects and is similar in many respects to the job of B2B salespersons. Many strong interactive relationships develop between consumers and these beauty consultants.
Medicinal-type outcomes are often claimed or implied, such as impacts on the chemistry and structure of the skin. Often, specific products must be used in a specific sequence at specific times of the day (such as prescription drugs); educating consumers about this idiosyncratic product knowledge is the job of the beauty consultants. Outcomes are sometimes demonstrated to consumers using computerized photographs, but many products’ effects on the skin are long-term, and thus trust is important. ”
In the matter of a few short sentences the writers have helped to explain the key characteristics of these goods using relevant marketing concepts. They make clear how these offerings are intangible (despite being goods) and their credence attributes are also highlighted. Even though the marketers are trying to enhance the search attributes of these products (via the computerised photos), it becomes clear that in such a situation trust becomes important because the need to believe the salesperson's promises.
The video below illustrates some of the ideas referred to in the quotation above.
Also worth noting from the perspective of a marketer behaving in an opportunistic manner when dealing with consumers who may have limited ability to assess the offering, is this comment from the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) in the United States:
Cosmetics company L’Oréal USA, Inc. has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges of deceptive advertising about its Lancôme Génifique and L’Oréal Paris Youth Code skincare products. According to the FTC’s complaint, L’Oréal made false and unsubstantiated claims that its Génifique and Youth Code products provided anti-aging benefits by targeting users’ genes.
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2014/06/loreal-settles-ftc-charges-alleging-deceptive-advertising-anti
Discussions about risk and trust feature in many of the courses that I teach. I like this scene where Daniel Day Lewis highlights the risks the townsfolk will face if they get someone else to drill for oil on their land.
“Out of all men that beg for a chance to drill your lots, maybe one in twenty will be oilmen; the rest will be speculators - that’s men trying to get between you and the oilmen - to get some of the money that ought by rights come to you. Even if you find one that has money and means to drill, he’ll maybe know nothing about drilling and he’ll have to hire the job out on contract, and then you’re depending on a contractor who’ll rush the job through so he can get another contract just as quick as he can. This is... the way that this works.”
He then explains why he is so much more trustworthy:
“I do my own drilling, and the men that work for me work for me. and they’re men I know. I make it my business to be there and to see their work. I don’t lose my tools in the hole and spend months fishing for them; I don’t botch the cementing off and let water in the hole and ruin the whole lease. I’m a family man. I run a family business. This is my son and my partner, H.W. Plainview.”
Watching Jiro in action you can see how a product (the sushi) can be supported by a service component. In this instance, where the sushi is made and handed over by Jiro, arguably the service component dominates. Without Jiro being there would the experience still be the same - even with a very similar physical product?
Nice little story about how the fledgling Keurig, the coffee pod manufacturer took advantage of having larger competitors at the start of their product lifecycle. It's also a good illustration of the complementary nature of the promotion mix and how they can influence the different stages of the hierarchy of effects.
“Unlike Keurig, which had a shoestring marketing budget, these deep-pocketed competitors had more than $100 million to spend on advertising their new products. But Keurig was able to turn the competition to its advantage. “We piggybacked on all the marketing investments our competitors made developing [awareness of the idea] and doing TV ads,” says Nick Lazaris, who led Keurig between 1997 and 2008. Keurig let the competition spend freely on airtime, then sent reps into stores to do live demonstrations.”
This is how we are used to seeing Iceland:
This is how Icelandair prefers to show Iceland in relation to Europe and north America:
