Branding or Advertising? #10

Marketing is in so many places. A lot of times I don't even notice an Ad or labeling, because I am so accustomed to seeing it. Last night I decided to take a look and see the advertising.

I went out and had an event downtown. My friends and I did what we call "pub golf". Where we go and have beer at a few places and we had teams. It was pretty fun just to hang out with my friends after a few weeks not no seeing them.

First thing I noticed was branding. It was everywhere: it was on our clothes, it was on the beer glasses, the mirrors, the neon lights, it was in window signs/banners. Branding was just a huge portion of last night from what I noticed. I also think that makes it easier. If you just use branding some people are loyal to that, also many people were drinking so any complex advertising may not work. Is there a huge difference in advertising and branding? I'm pretty sure they overlap a ton. First you need a brand, and you have to advertise for it, then once your brand is established you can use that logo in so many places and people will know what it means.

The very little advertising I did notice was coupled with the branding. I did see a lot of companies that use larger companies to get their product across. An example would be a coca-cola sign with your companies name on it. That way you still are able to get your own name out there, with the help of larger companies.

This is an example. I got this image from the web, because I didn't have my camera on me last night. These types of signs allows for the company to get their name out, and also a way for coca-cola to advertise/brand.

All in all, I found mostly branding as a part of a night on the town. There were street ad's, something like a poster or small billboard, but I know I didn't stop to read them. I think branding has it's great place to be able to reach and get into people.

Spring break in Scotland and Ireland. #9

Besides the fact that my trip with my wife was completely awesome, I honestly was looking for marketing stuff the whole time. It's like a completely different country over there (that's a funny).

The first picture I found was in Frankfurt, Germany in the airport on the way over to Scotland. It was the first ad that surprised me and made me take a second look, which I think is the point.

This was in the men's restroom, and this is the hand dryer next to the sinks. This is a LCD screen that rotates ad's. Not like a tv, it's not a video, just images come up more like a picture frame that we have in the states.

This made me turn and look a few times, I thought this is exactly what marketers want. This was a niche that had been created. You can't help but see this spot, even if you don't wash your hands its on the wall as you're walking out.


The second one was almost 1 hour later right after the first. I was on the plane flipping through the duty free magazine and bam. Cigarette ad's, but not like the ones you see in the states. This one has a bold identifier on it.

Directly on the center of even the ad there was "Smoking kills" in bold letters on every single cigarette brand. This I thought, well this is obvious because of regulations, but this was still bold and out in the front. I hope that whomever got the laws passed are pleased because their message was loud and clear and someone else paid for it.

I saw small ad's everywhere. On a car registration where if you were outside the vehicle you can see what year/ whatever other info. On the inside (this was a taxi) it was an ad for some local restaurant. I wish I had gotten a picture of it, but I was kind of running around and enjoying my vacation.

Here are a few photos I took with my ipod while running around.

That is a bowl at Newgrange, a place that was built before the pyramids.

Dunnotar Castle.

New Shoe #8

For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, read last weeks blog. I introduced all of this as a topic.

I'm pretty excited about this week. So far we have been just in the middle of the pack, because we have been doing some spending that other 'companies' (my classmates) have not been doing. We currently are in 4th place overall (out of 13 teams). That's OK, but not for us. Fortunately we have been sticking to our original game plan to put maximum amount of money into product development. This means that our shoe product is already at level 3! We are about to be able to enter into the foreign market.

Tim, and Kt have been great as partners. I'm glad that when I have to rely on 20% of my grade it'll be with people who want to pass with flying colors. The first 2 decisions were relatively quick, they were within 4 days of each other. We have to wait for this week's decisions to close out on Monday evening.  I am fairly certain that we will get closer to the top team on income. We pulled out all the stops and went more aggressively to reach level 3 on our shoe development. We WILL have access to the foreign market (as I said) and this will expand who we can reach. We will be able to sell more shoes. More shoes is more profit, and we should be the first team to make it to the market.

In a different set of news we also put in contract bids. That is where we just try to sell our shoes that won't have our brand on them, we sell them for just a little bit above break even costs. Fortunately our break even is low, so hopefully the other companies didn't out bid us. We won't know until Monday.

Post # 7 New Shoe Simulation

Our class has this simulation that is worth 20% of our grade called "New Shoe Simulation". It's pretty different from other simulations that I have done for St. Mikes in the past. This you are pretty much a marketing person for an athletic shoe company. The last guy was fired because he/she couldn't produce so they hired me. I have control over much more than marketing though. The simulation guide goes into detail about a home, domestic, and foreign market. I can develop my product (put money in and get a better shoe). I deigned the COMPANY logo, not just a shoe, so I pretty much created a brand.

I get to do this simulation as a group project. Very fortunately I got to choose my own team and am working with Kt Copp and Tim Nagy. We got to do 2 weeks of practice simulation. It was pretty awful the first week (in theory) because we went further in the hole. Then the 2nd week we pretty much spent no money on any product development, no money on advertising, no money on customer promotions, no money on dealer promotions, and no money on market research (those are some of the fields we have control over). This simulation then says we did awesome. The only issue I personally had with that is the first week we followed the guide to the letter and went so far into the hole! The "student guide" has money values put on each of the above mentioned categories i.e. don't spend more than 2 million on product development. We put in exactly 2 million but it only hurt us further.

We have to put our thinking caps on because the real simulation starts this week. Our goals are to develop our product quickly and get to level 2, so we can buy into the foreign market. We only start out with home and domestic market capability. We also want to just crush in our own home market, if we can boost and have a solid home market, then that will carry us through all the other markets. We aren't very focused on the domestic market. We got to read one of last semesters simulators and they didn't even get to go to the foreign market. Reading that persons numbers, we see that they could have done very well for themselves. We have 8 weeks of doing decisions and building in our markets. I think collectively we will do just fine. This is worth 20% of our grade, but the rubrics on grading shows that we have to use the tools we learn in class to make this happen. I am confident that us 3 will be able to pass this with flying colors.