Reviving the Brand and the City

Through strong use of appeal to emotion and visual intrigue, the advertisement for Chrysler went viral to the residents of Michigan and across the nation. Priced at only $18,000 the car looks and comes across expensive and luxurious against the somewhat dismal background but is still an attainable price for the average car shopper. Referring back to its roots in the city of Detroit, the product is exemplified as the regeneration of the city, and bringing Detroit back to life. It showed Detroit at its grimmest, from abandoned buildings to hard working people. Eminem, a Michigan native, serves as the opinion leader of the new Chrysler 200. With Eminem as this spokesperson, it further drives in the loyalty Chrysler has to the city.

Serving as the winner to the Super Bowl armchair ad-critic analysis, the ad was a hit. Post Super bowl the ad was the number two search term on Google, beating out the Black Eyed Peas, the band that performed during half time. Search traffic for the Chrysler 200 was 685 percent higher than a normal Monday. The ad is now at sixteen million views on YouTube, clearly proving the appeal to audiences.

I think this is an example of good marketing because it draws you in, and has strong emotional appeal. It gives you a history of the car and its roots in Detroit. It made people feel like they wanted to be a part of the new generation of Detroit by purchasing the new Chrysler 200.

Gamestop New Game Trade-ins

When a new highly-anticipated release comes out, Gamestop (the store that offers new and pre-owned games, as well as trade-ins for instore credit and cash value) offers their highest reward for game trade-ins.  This is a strategy that involves, price, place and promotion.  It is a good strategy for the business, however, it may not be the most suitable for the consumer.  Gamestop uses its location as a place, where people frequent, to get its word out about discounts offered towards newly released popular games by trading in.  However these games accepted toward trade-ins are a select few, highly antipicated and popular new games themselves.  This is an example of promotion, as they use a high priced, highly demanded release in order to sell these discounts. These trade-in values are a very good deal, in order to bring the price of merchandise more available, however the question is do gamers want to trade-in their brand new games in order to own another?  This strategy is very successful indeed, however, as a consumer, I would rather hold onto my purchases until, I decide that I am ready to trade in, if I ever choose to.

"Havainas, everyone wears it"

    Havaianas is one of the most popular brands in Brazil, and its main product are the flipflops. It’s funny to say “flipflops”, because in my country the word that we use to refer to the product is the name of the brand, which demonstrates its power and the monopoly that it has in the product. Formerly in the 20^th century its target market was the middle class and low, and the differentiation was quality, durability and low price. In the 90s the brand changed its positioning, with a huge success; its price went up, lots of different types and models were made, and they did a segmentation, with flipflops to kids with mickey mouse’s face on it for example, to young people with the possibility to personalize the product by putting a strass or changing the color, and for adults and older people there are models with more basic colors, that’s why the slogan’s “Havainas, everyone wears it”. Nowadays, the brand’s expanding to other countries and its commercials are always funny and entertaining, and show a lot about the Brazilian culture. This one that I chose shows that expansion, with the three Brazilian guys watching a soccer game with the flipflop, saying that it’s their lucky charm and don’t win the game because three Italians cheering for the opposite team are also using the flipflop with the same purpose.

   The brand has its own stores but the products are also sold in supermarkets and basically everywhere, but not with the variety found in the stores, so you don’t have the same experience. The marketing strategy is amazing and very effective, cause it created a major relationship with the customers. I wouldn’t buy flipflops if they weren’t Havaianas, that’s something that doesn’t even cross my mind. And I can say without hesitating that I don’t know a single Brazilian that doesn’t have havainas or that has just one pair.

Marcella Galeotti

Hitler Did Nothing Wrong

With the way that marketing is evolving today, companies are looking for more and more ways to advertise their products. However, not all of these are successful, especially when the internet is involved.

There are multiple examples of people trying to raise awareness of themselves, or their product through trying to do an internet poll. Whether it's Justin Bierber's "My World" concert, asking the people to pick where in the world he goes next (North Korea) to get his fans involved, or Pitbull teaming up with a product called Energy Sheets to see which Walmart Pitbull would visit to promote their product (Kodia, Alaska) in an attempt at market penetration, these have never been successful. The biggest flop ever for this however, has to be Mountain Dew's "Dub the Dew" campaign. As part of a new apple flavor of Mountain Dew, they started a poll asking people to vote on a name for it. They winner? Hitler Did Nothing Wrong. Now, this backfired to tremendously, that they canceled the promotion, and aside from a brief release as Mountain Dew Crave, the product never saw the shelf.

I think that while the idea behind these promotions is a good one, most of the people forget that their target market is a small part of the internet, and they're not going to be the only ones to notice it. However, if their marketing objective is to raise awareness of themselves or their product, then they're doing a good job of it. These stories have made headlines in multiple major news networks including ABC News and Time Magazine, which gets them more exposure than they may otherwise have had.

Everything I never knew I wanted!

I was on tumblr when I first saw the ad for Phonebloks. I rarely click on videos while scrolling around my dashboard but the comment underneath it caught my attention; it went something like this: “...the new iPhones look interesting. But this is an excellent idea for the future of cellphones.” And so I clicked. Within 30 seconds, I wanted one. After the 2 minutes 46 seconds, I wanted everyone to want one. Something in the simple explanation of how the device would work, the idealist opened platform and the possibility of customizing the phone to one’s liking created a need in me that I didn’t know I had. My iPhone seemed irrelevant. I was already hooked and moments later I was using all my social media reach to bring them more attention; their marketing objective to increase awareness of the idea worked on me without me even realizing it. And I wasn’t the only one. In less than 24 hours – 6 days before its official launch – the Phonebloks’ YouTube advertisement went viral! Both Reddit and tumblr loved the idea so much, it crashed Phonebloks’ website. In less than a day, they had reached 200 times their initial goal for 500 supporters on Thunderclap. 

The way ad is designed as a great impact on the ‘why’ of such a success. Even though the ad appears to be talking to a mass market, showing you examples of all the different people who could benefit from the different bloks customization options, they are really focusing on two main target markets;  social media users and ecologically-friendly people. The ad focuses really on two main aspects which reach those target markets perfectly. They start by show you how wasteful current phones and how to help eliminate that specific problem by simply giving the project a voice using three of the biggest social media websites; Facebook, Twitter and tumblr. Since I am both a bit of a hippy and a social media fiend, I guess I never stood  a chance!

Yo MAMA is Marketing?

The first time I saw the Kmart Ad “Yo Mama” Back-to-School Ad, I cried laughing.  I even went on YouTube to watch it over again and again and again.  How clever!  Then, out of nowhere it hit me; HOW OFFENSIVE!  The ad does not take a smart or realistic approach to ethnic characteristics but a very stereotypical one.  In addition to this ad, there is another advertisement titled “My School Bus is My Limo” which I think is fun and youthful.  What’s the difference?  I think the “Yo Mama” advertisement has a well selected, diverse group of stereotyped caricatures playing well defined roles in the commercial.  I even think there could be an insinuation that one of the kids is homosexual.  There is a big difference between cultural diversity and blatant stereotyping.  And, there is a difference between reaching a young target market and throwing offensive stereotypes into kid’s faces.  Both of the video were very successful online and they both went viral and they both commanded lots of buzz and controversy.  While some people were offended by the “gangsta” portrayals, I think that accusation is off base and overall the controversy did not hurt Kmart. It actually helped them online.  Kmart’s online sells are increasing by double digits but overall, the company is still losing customers and sells are continuing to decline which is the key measure of successful marketing.  Unless the company’s marketing objective was to increase online sells, my opinion may not be the reason the advertising did not work but the advertisements can be defined as “the bomb” in two different ways.

Kmart has figured out how to make great viral advertisements (which can be tricky) and increase their footprint digitally but these campaigns are not translating to store success.  The “Ship My Pants” advertisement produced 19 Million YouTube hits and 2 Million shares.  The company took a risk and they were able to translate test marketing online to broadcast television but the results are not showing up in company profits.