Monday, 20 May 2013
Thursday, 16 May 2013
Social media taking over down under?
Australian
marketing tactics
For this
final blog, I will talk about Australia? How do they sell goods in the down
under?
What I have
learned is that the marketers in Australia use a lot of various social media
platforms to distribute the content about the products.
I think
everyone know that the importance of investing in proper social media
advertising. When your company wants to launch a product it can be very useful
they make sure they are active on the internet; and by this, creating a company
Facebook account so you can reach more possible clients than when you only show
TV ads .
Australia
really learned this lesson. Australian marketers have introduced content
marketing in their approaches to reach more possible customers. Content
marketing is creating, offering and distributing content that connects to a
pre-identified need in order to enter into new relationships and strengthen
existing relationships. The social media has a dominant role in this because research
has indicated that the most of the consumers don't believe the advertisers are speaking
the truth in advertisements on TV. That’s why some Australian marketers have
invested in advertising through the internet. We all know that Facebook, Twitter
and YouTube are very famous social media nowadays. Australian marketeers have
invested on putting banners on websites, making your company noticed on social
media like Facebook, enewsletters and many more.
As previous
examples showed us, we can assume that people attach more value to the online
opinions of other persons. They expect from companies and organizations
relevant information, openness and solutions for problems or questions about
their products or their business goals, … Nowadays the people spent more and
more time on the internet; there they share their experiences with others. This
is really the future of advertising for companies. The Australians have started
to focus them even more than usual.
I"m curious
what the future will bring, but know that social media will be growing every year.
South-African economy?
South-Africa
Even if the
economy of South Africa is the largest one in Africa, you definitely can’t
compare their economy with one of our Western world. South-Africa has suffered
from the recession in the early 2000ths but the biggest problem for this
country is their high level of unemployment. So this situation for our Western
companies it wasn’t that profitable to launch some of their products in
South-Africa.
But still,
there are lying some
opportunities to enter an undiscovered market. But you need to have the perfect
product for it
.
The sport
fanatics amongst us need to know that the world championships of soccer were organized there. There was a lot of
work to lure investors but still, it is a world championship, with a lot of
viewers.
The
positive things about organizing this championship were that the inhabitants of
South-Africa had the opportunity to sell things such as the all known annoying
‘VUVUZELA’. Because of these little sales, the people could make sure they have
a little income so they could take care of their families. Also for the hotels
was this an opportunity to create a good experience for those visitors so that
they can come back. And of course at the moment of the championship it was really
interesting because all those teams and their supporters needed a place to
sleep.
But what
were the opportunities for the investing companies of this world championship?
The sponsors consist of Adidas, Emirates, Budweiser, Continental, Kia motors,
McDonald’s and so on. They had the opportunity to start making the African
people being familiar with their products.
After the
circus of this world championship everything became ‘normal’ again, the
situation of the huge part of the people of South-Africa, who were poor, is
being forgotten, fans and teams went home, … South-Africa was back on his own.
Wednesday, 15 May 2013
Home country Belgium..
What about
my own country? I love being a Belgian; we have all what we wish for except
nice weather conditions. We have our famous chocolate, beer and French fries.
But what about the marketing in our country?
In Belgium
we have between tv-shows a lot of commercials. They are all different, some are
funny, some very serious and so on. I need to tell you that I have seen one who
caught the attention of the Belgian audience. It’s the commercial of TNT
Belgium. They have set up a big red button in a small Belgium town with a sign
that read ‘Push to add drama’ and waited for someone to push it. The second
someone pushes the button chaos breaks out, a man on a stretcher falls out of
an ambulance, another man fights paramedics, and an all-out gun battle breaks
out in a police chase. TNT knows drama. This commercial is one of the most
written commercials in the Belgian newspapers when it came out. We all were
shocked in a positive way. It was really unexpected but on the other hand
really effective.
A second
thing that I have already mentioned in one of my previous blogs was all about a specific ethnic group, the
Turkish community. Base has a lot of mobile phone subscriptions. After a study
they have noticed that they have a huge group of customers that have a Turkish
background, so Base came with the idea to launch a new subscription especially
for this ethnic group. The advantage this group gets is that they can text to
friends and family in Turkey, which is very cheap. This new subscription is
called Al Yildiz.
I can
conclude that here in Belgian, the commercials are really present. TV stations
like ‘VIER’ have a lot of time between their TV shows to fill with commercials.
The commercials in Belgium are quite effective. My second example can indicate
that the marketers of Belgian companies really do their best to try to attract
this certain ethnic group. We will always take the opportunity to attract these new customers by adapting our products to their specific needs.
Monday, 13 May 2013
Crossover marketing mistakes
Crossover marketing mistakes happens all the time. However we try to avoid it, we often
see the mistake to late. Having a poor
understanding of the influence of cross cultural differences can eventually
lead to blunders that can have damaging consequences. Some people find it comical
others offensive. So let us end this
blog with 10 humorous crossover marketing blunders. Try not to laugh.
1. Locum
is a Swedish
company. As most companies do at Christmas they sent out Christmas cards to
customers. In 1991 they decided to give their logo a little holiday spirit by
replacing the "o" in Locum with a heart. Enough said.
2. Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, Later on they found out it was the name of a notorious naughty magazine.
3. Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign: "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux." Really?
4. In Italy, a campaign for Schweppes Tonic Water translated the name into "Schweppes Toilet Water.
5. Honda introduced their new car "Fitta" into Nordic countries in 2001. If they had taken the time to undertake some cross cultural marketing research they may have discovered that "fitta" was an old word used in vulgar language to refer to a woman's genitals in Swedish, Norwegian and Danish. In the end they renamed it "Honda Jazz".
6. The soft drink Fresca was being promoted by a saleswoman in Mexico. She was surprised that her sales pitch was greeted with laughter, and later embarrassed when she learned that “fresca” is slang for "lesbian."
7. When Pepsico advertised Pepsi in Taiwan with the ad "Come Alive
With Pepsi" they had no idea that it would be translated into Chinese as
"Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead."
8. Engadget, a web magazine, famously called
out Sony's PSP campaign in 2006 as being clearly racist. The ads were promoting
the new white PSP. The ads featured an aggressive, strong-looking white woman
clawing, clutching and otherwise dominating a subordinate black woman. The
campaign was universally panned as racist and Sony yanked the ads, apologizing
for its lack of sensitivity.
9. "Traficante" an
Italian mineral water found a great reception in Spain's underworld. In Spanish
it translates as "drug dealer".
10. In the late 1970s, Wang, the American computer company could not understand why its
British branches were refusing to use its latest motto "Wang Cares".
Of course, to British ears this sounds too close to "Wankers" which
would not really give a very positive image to any company.
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