Phish and Ben and Jerry's come together

This past weekend in Burlington Vermont there was an interesting event that took place, Ben and Jerry's had a celebration in honor of their a15th anniversary of their most popular ice cream "Phish Food".  They used the local band to bring the community together, I attended the event.  It was an interesting approach on Ben and Jerry's part.  They promoted their product by having Phish host a cow bell ensemble, not just any ensemble but  to break the world record for biggest cow bell ensemble ever.  When I heard about the event I was excited to attend thinking that I would be able to attend an interactive concert with my favorite band. But what I didn't realize was that the event was mainly a promotional marketing ploy to get people to recognize and bring awareness to not only the "Phish food" but ultimately Ben and Jerry's as a whole. During the event a spokesman from the company opened the event with some words of Ben and Jerry's and as I was listening I realized that I had been duped into this marketing ploy and how effective it  was to gaining attention and publicity with the nearly 2000 other cow bellers.  I thought that this event tied in a lot with how marketing works because it is events such as these that attract consumers.  Do you think that this is something that the company could get away with doing often or is this something that can only be done on special occasions?



http://vtdigger.org/2012/04/16/icymi-audio-from-saturdays-yankee-protest-video-from-phishs-cowboy-weekend/

Mobile devices out performing PCs

An article on Direct marketing discussed how mobile devices are starting to become more lucrative and bring in more eCommerce than that of the PC like it once did. According to this article researchers and experts dint start to realize this until thanksgiving in 2011, this is when mobile devices rose 160% while the previous year they only grew 11.05%.  Needless to say mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets are sweeping the online market and truly transforming the way that we as consumers shop.  Experts are suggesting that in the near future all transactions and purchases will be made via mobile devices.  I think that it is extremely interesting to think that in the future we wont be using PCs at all and that everyone will eventually have a mobile device in order to purchase things versus the traditional way of  using a PC.  If this is indeed the way of the future then we will all probably start to purchase more due to the fact that we have these mobile devices at our fingertips. Do you think that Ecomerce will go up in terms of gross revenue if we all started using mobile devices for shopping?

Reference this article
http://www.dmnews.com/will-mobile-drive-more-e-commerce-revenue-than-pcs-readers-respond/article/233732/

Pinterest 3rd most popular social site

According to a report done by digital marketer report, concluded that the photo sharing web site Pinterest has climed to be the third most popular social media network.  Pinterest is a virtual photo sharing website that users share pictures and become pinned in pictures.  This is something that marketers are starting to watch closely. With Pinterest expanding so rapidly people are starting to see the potential use of this website as a way to reach consumers. Pinterest was started in 2010 and it was not until recently that it started to become as popular until recently.  Since January 2012 Pinterest has grown 50% which is an astronomical amount, although some experts think that this may just be a fad and that it may be over soon. While other experts and even some corporations are starting to use Pinterest as a marketing tool.  I think that this is some thing that could potentially be very useful in terms of marketing.  If the company continues to steadily grow at a rapid rate then I think that there is a good chance that it would be helpful to marketers, although if it is really a "fad" then it will  turn out to be not as helpful to marketers than it seems to be.  After reading this article I feel as though this does yield a great deal of potential to marketers , what if Pinterest ended up becoming most popular social media site, would it be more useful to marketers than Facebook or Twitter?

Deal or no deal

Recently this week I came home to my room mates watching Deal or no Deal, I usually do not watch TV but decided to sit and watch it and do some homework. I didn't think much of it when watching it and as the contestant came onto the show they showed a video that was produced to show the audience who he was and what he had done. This mans name was Autrey, he is also known as the Harlem Hero. He was recognized by NYC for being a hero after trapping a man under a subway car while a man was having a seizure.  I Found myself watching this and saying to myself wow this man did something truly courageous and was glad that he had the chance to be a contestant on the game show and have an opportunity to win money for his family. After watching the emotional movie prior to the episode I thought to myself about how this was purely a  marketing ploy, the company that makes this game show had this "hero" come be on the show. Although this is a great thing I couldn't stop thinking about how they were using this iconic figure as a contestant that everyone was rooting for to win.  I thought that this was an interesting move on the part of the creators of this show because by using this man to be on the show it grasped my attention and made me want  him  to win because of what he had done for a stranger.  This is something that many people don't realize while watching this show or any show for that matter. It is small things like this that makes you realize how effective these marketers are, by doing subtle things such as this it really gains the attention of the audience and viewers. Is that only this show or is this something that is happening around us all the time or are we just so used to it that we are accustomed to this and don't think otherwise? 

Digital advertisement

An interesting study was conducted by an online marketing company called com-score, they conducted a large scale study on many corporations such as Kellogg, Chrysler, Allstate and Sprint.  What they wanted to know how they could improve  their digital adds and increase sales. They wanted to find how they could be most effective with these advertisements and get reach the intended audience.  This is not exactly the easiest thing for an organization to do, many marketers are starting to question which is the most effective way to reach the intended audience.   well this study concluded some interesting results, for example "demographic targeting worked best if objectives were broad—for instance brands focusing on customers within a large age range reached their targets with 70% of ad impressions. By adding more granular criteria, such as income or gender, ad delivery accuracy declined". Some experts are starting to believe that by narrowing down an add to a select age group is too broad to reach customers so they are trying to narrow this down to reach customers by directing adds to certain peoples behaviors.  This is something that is still being studied. Researchers also stated “It shows us is there's a lot of room for growth,” Vollman said, acknowledging the need for ad publishers to refine their pricing structures. Although marketing techniques and approaches are always changing so rapidly largely in part due to technology.  This is something that we as marketers need to stay in tune with so that we can be as effective as possible.  I think that it would be interesting to see if behaviorally based adds are significantly more effective or if reaching a broader target market is more economical. 

the article-http://www.dmnews.com/report-many-digital-ads-not-delivered-to-right-audience/article/233762/

mobile devices

After reading about different things occurring in the marketing world I came across a lot of articles that had to do with emails and mobile phones.  I recently wrote an article about how marketers are trying to break through with marketing in the mobile sector and this article correlates a lot to the last one i read and i thought that this would be a good article to compliment the previous. This article was written about a study taken by the Comscores.com, what they did was a study that was about major trends in consumers smartphone shopping behavior. I have never gave much thought about how such an easy concept like getting consumers to use thier smart phones for shopping could be so hard and studied so thoroughly. A spokesman from Commscores said that More retailers have developed apps and optimized their sites for mobile browsing, making it easier than ever for consumers looking for product information or doing price comparisons to do so from their phones." This article has given me a new outlook on how important marketing is and how it is always transforming and revolutionizing as technology continues to improve.  As technology improves so does marketing and the ways in which marketers reach their consumers. In conclusion it is imperative that marketers are always on thier feet because they need to be in tune with what will reach consumers and what wont because it is always changing, and by not utilizing these resources then retailers are losing millions of dollars.  This leaves me with the question of how come aren't  all businesses trying to reach out and use mobile smart phones as a means for marketing and advertising?

http://www.dmnews.com/mobile-computing-will-disrupt-retail-sales-funnel/article/229384/

tablets and advertising

The article that I found was one that tied into many of the topics that we have been discussing in class for the past few weeks. The article talks largely in part with how many retailers are starting to realize that after doing environmental scans of consumers in their area and consumers everywhere for that matter are technologically ahead of the retailers for a change. This is because a recent study showed that nearly one third of the top online retailers have optimized their sites for tablets, while just 59% have smartphone specific sites. This is a perfect example of how these companies are doing environmental scans to see what the consumers need, although this is only half of the battle. The next part of this is implementing a plan to target this growing number of consumers that have tablets, this is what I would consider to be the environmental analysis.  I believe that many online retailers are gonna catch on to this and realize that they are not utilizing their marketing powers and advertising opportunities to their potential and to their advantage because today more and more people are starting to buy tablets.  The article also went on to state that this report that was done out of a 100 online companies Nike was the only one that took full advantage of the tablet, the study showed that the company had created a iPad specific site.  I found this article to stick out from others because it really proves how rapidly things are changing in the marketing world for example technology is always progressing therefore marketers need to be evolving in order to keep an edge on the consumers.  This is so important because if they are not in tune with what technology and with what the consumer has at their disposal then they are automatically a step behind the consumer and the job of marketers is to be ahead of the consumers in order to give the retailers the advantage that they need in order to be as successful as they can be. This article really made me think of what will be in the near future in terms of how marketing will change and evolve as technology does. Will marketers ever be able to be one step ahead of the consumer if technology is always changing or will technology set a standard for  marketing tactics to always progress and change as rapidly as technology does?

http://www.dmnews.com/study-retailers-overlooking-tablet-and-smartphone-opportunities/article/228004/