The Long Hard Road of Social Media

There has been plenty of hype surrounding the potential of social media as a low-cost, high-impact promotional tool for business.

Much of the social media hype has been fuelled by the various success stories, in particular the YouTube sensations that have generated millions of views from relatively low-cost production videos. A few of the classic examples in recent years include Blendtec, Old Spice, Tippex and the Dollar Shave Club.


Blendtec is a premier example as it has managed to make everyday food blenders look cool and exciting. From their collection of videos, where they blend a range of bizarre items such as iPads, super glue and golf balls, they have reached a broad audience and have now surpassed 220 million views. But what is particularly effective about their videos is that they have generated such interest by simply demonstrating their blenders in action.

 

Another great success is the Old Spice campaign from 2010, which helped repositioned the brand to being a younger, more modern brand, and was able to generate around 1.4 billion total impressions in just six months through the combination of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and mainstream media.

So it’s no wonder that businesses are now increasingly looking at social media to dramatically grow their brand awareness, substantially leverage word-of-mouth and deliver significant increases in sales.

But unfortunately it’s not as easy and effective as the hype suggests. And as time goes on, it is becoming more apparent that social media is not a magic pathway to building a strong brand and growing the bottom-line. Indeed, for many organisations, social media is now proving to be a long, hard and expensive road paved with many pitfalls.

One significant pitfall is brand integrity. To generate social media interest, the campaign needs to be innovative, funny, controversial and/or grossly entertaining. That is often hard to do within the confines of a well-crafted brand image.

As an example, a couple of years back, Perth-based pie manufacturer Mrs Mac’s had a very successful online campaign in Australia that utilized numerous social media platforms. Their YouTube video from this campaign now exceeds 2 million views. However, I would suggest that the campaign was not overly consistent with the traditional image of their brand. 

Therefore, in their next online campaign, which was in aid of a new product launch, they took a more conservative approach in line with their traditional positioning. The end result was only a couple of thousand YouTube views in total and little interest in the new product as a result.

The growing cost and effort of social media, coupled with a long payback period, is also becoming more apparent. A good case study for this point is Westpac Bank. Westpac have had a social media team in place for a few years now, with the main goal of trying to leverage their 10 million or so account holders.

So how successful have they been in leveraging and engaging their customer base? Well, as at May 2013, they had less than 15,000 Twitter followers, just over 50,000 Facebook likes and only about 370,000 total YouTube views. Clearly, at this stage, I would guess that their social media investment has a negative ROI and is likely to have a long payback period.

Therefore, it appears that social media is becoming a long, hard grind without much of the magic that we’ve been led to believe. And for every success story, there are probably 100’s or maybe 1000’s of campaigns that went nowhere. While, I am still positive about the long-term value of social media for many firms, I would strongly counsel against the extent of optimism and high expectations that normally accompany social media activities.

Geoff Fripp
Lecturer – Masters of Marketing at the University of Sydney Business School

The end of one journey and the beginning of the rest of our lives

As I sat in the Great Hall of the University of Sydney on graduation day waiting patiently for my name to be called so that I could collect the degree that I had earned with its fair share of sacrifices along the way, I thought of what Graduation from the Master of Marketing Program at the University of Sydney meant to me. My immediate thoughts were: an upgrade in my LinkedIn profile, a few pictures on Facebook, and something new to frame and hang on the wall.

Past the short term posts on social media, what this degree has really offered me is a change in direction. A second chance. The opportunity to start a career better suited to who I have become beyond the Bachelor degree that I obtained about a decade ago.

When I started the program over a year ago I wasn’t entirely sure that I had made the right decision to continue my education. The idea of not working full time (although a number of my classmates continued their full time employment while doing the program) and getting back into assignment writing and presentations was quite daunting. Now that I’ve graduated, I can honestly say that doing this degree was the best thing that I have done.

I have drawn as much from the lecturers and industry specialists that have presented in class as I have from interacting with fellow classmates from a wide variety of professional backgrounds. Hands-on exercises and engaging lectures always made me look forward to attending class.

And as the 2013 graduating class gathered outside the Great Hall after the ceremony to congratulate each other, we took a moment to savor our accomplishments by tossing our hats in the air. Then we all rushed back to work to begin the rest of our lives.

Have you considered applying to the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney?

Mina D’Souza
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

Nike, Adidas, New Balance and PUMA Team Up for Boston

It’s hard not to feeling something when Boston is brought up. Amid tragedy, it’s undisputable that a sense of humanity is brought out in all of us.

This is so clearly shown with sportswear rivals New Balance, Nike, PUMA and Adidas coming together to deliver a simple message of solidarity. Their latest print ad has a simple message: “Today we are in the same team.”

It’s hard to be critical of this ad. When we are constantly being sold to, this simple message reminds us that at the end of the day, the companies out there are not only servicing us, but they are one of us. Sure, you can pick out all the financial motivations behind an action like this, but sometimes we just need to savor these moments of sentiment.

In terms of a lesson in marketing, perhaps the most important thing I take away is that fact that there are certain truths that apply to all of us. Sure, this advertisement is only a small gesture, but these gestures mean so much, because it accesses an aspect of humanity that lives in us all. It’s not really a matter of a common good, but an innate ability to care.

As a student in marketing, there are so many things we are learning, especially in terms of how to engage with people. We are constantly asking questions, looking outward, doing experiments and researching. We are so busy; we forget to look internally at ourselves. We cannot forget that we are also a part of the system.

So when I saw the collaborative ad, I thought it was great. Then I asked myself a simple question of “why?” I have concluded that it is because this ad has the ability to bring out the care in all of us, and this communal sense of care brings comfort in times of hardship. For four rival shoes companies to be able to do that with a simple message should show that we don’t need cheap tricks to engage with people. We should look deeper and have more faith in our audience and their ability to care.

I know this theory probably isn’t appropriate for every situation, but it’s something I feel is important, and that we shouldn’t forget. We should care.

Hongi Luo
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

Saturated by new ‘News’

So these last couple of weeks has seen an immense amount of information passed around on the Internet regarding Daft Punk. I’m sure you’ve already heard/read/seen/watched the fake fan made version of Daft Punk’s new song, Get Lucky. If you haven’t already, it’s incredible – listen to it here.

If you don’t know who they are (a French electronic music duo), that’s fine too, just follow along and I’ll get to my point soon.


So the abbreviated timeline goes something like this:

• Daft Punk announces new Album: crowd goes wild. 
• Speculation and fake ‘leaked’ albums pop up all over the Internet. 
• Hype fades ever so slightly 
• Daft Punk releases online series, The Collaborators, featuring videos of all the super famous musicians who have also worked on their album.
• Daft Punk announces that they will be releasing their new album in rural Wee Waa, NSW at an agricultural show. • Everyone is a bit puzzled…but hype skyrockets.
• A teaser of Get Lucky is played during Coachella festival. The Internet almost breaks when this news was released.
• THEN, Hedi Silmane, fashion designer, photographs Daft Punk for his new campaign for Saint Laurent (previously Yves Saint Laurent.)

And now, after officially releasing Get Lucky, Daft Punk has broken the Spotify record in the US and UK for the biggest streaming day for a single track. I am sure they are not done surprising us with all their other hype-building tactics hidden up their sleeves just yet, but I’m beginning to worry this hype is going to break the internet for good. I know that sounds silly, but you get what I mean.

Google Trends Data for searches containing "Daft Punk"

Since the news of a new album in February, searches in Daft Punk grew pretty healthily. After March, ‘Daft Punk’ has been trending so much; it looks like it’s going to fall off the graph.

I know I probably sound like a crazy person, but it’s getting hard to keep up, and this ‘news’ is becoming a little old, pretty fast. Despite the obvious benefits of building all this exposure, there is the potential for the general public to get sick of it all, before the album is even released. When they are swamped repetitive information, there is a likelihood they may become desensitized to it.

However, on the other side of the argument is that when information is regurgitated so quickly in our hyper-connected age, could this tactic be a way of sustaining the audience’s attention? Repetition can really drill information into heads. When each day, we are bombarded with thousands upon thousands of snippets of information, perhaps this strategy of more is more could work?

I can’t decide where I sit between the two. I guess it all comes down to the circumstances, and to employ a strategy that is appropriate for what you are trying to advertise for. For Daft Punk, I think it’s getting hard to remember that while every other day more ‘news’ appears on the internet– this ‘news’ is actually just strategic, planned, and well executed advertising. Perhaps the very fact that I’ve forgotten I’m being advertised to means they’ve done a pretty good job.

Hongi Luo
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

Does the size of you connections on LinkedIn really matter?

A common joke nowadays is that the difference between networking and not working is just one letter.

I used to be relatively sceptical about the importance of LinkedIn for my career improvement until I moved to Sydney from Moscow about a year ago. In Russia LinkedIn is still not considered a useful tool for job seekers, as potential Russian employers would be more satisfied having a conversation with former employers rather than rely on information from the Internet.

In Australia, I see a ‘LinkedIn-mania’ among professionals. Everyone here talks about LinkedIn, thinks about LinkedIn and looks at your LinkedIn profile as soon as you get to know each other. Having just glanced at my LinkedIn page, a friend of mine immediately responded - you have no chance of using LinkedIn successfully unless you contact list is much longer (I have 82 connections). This makes me think: “What is LinkedIn really all about, and how does it work for professionals?”

Honestly I like LinkedIn since it enables me to keep track of my professional contacts in the cloud. However, I receive a lot of invitations and often cannot even figure out what the motivation for connecting is. The majority of these invitations appear to be meaningless and probably will never be converted into useful business opportunities. There is no doubt that LinkedIn makes business communication easier, but it could also make our network useless if the connections that we have are merely strangers. Does a sizable network provide the wrong impression: that quantity is equally important as quality. But let us look at our connection list from a practical angle: can we communicate with each of our connections in a business environment?

To what extent are these connections personal and thus to what extent they are valuable? In this case, the invitation process is a crucial step in gaining a connection. Even more, there should be an ethical standard where by when sending an invitation to a person, that you clearly state how you met or the purpose of why it would be valuable to connect. If this were the case, many people similar to me would be better off accepting invitations to connect rather than not even opening them at all.

However, I try to keep my connections down to those who I really know and I am comfortable with. I also frequently monitor my connection list and disconnect from those people I cannot recall.

This is why I am distrustful of those who get “over 500” connections. Have they just sent invitations to all their mail accounts (there is an easy tool in LinkedIn to assist with that)? Does this number of connections really mean business?

I have no doubt that the honest answer would be “no”.

Elena Sveshnikova
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

Do you read EDMs?

Electronic Direct Mail. Those pesky emails you receive every other day from that contact lens website you used that one time. You don’t read it, but you also don’t unsubscribe.

Last month before I moved to Sydney, I happened to glance at a friend’s empty inbox. “How could it be? It must be an internet anomaly!” I thought. I asked him where were his ‘opened but not dealt with messages’ and the endless unread mail from ‘newsletters you intend to catch up with one day’. He didn’t have any. He systematically unsubscribes from any emails he doesn’t want to receive.

Now I thought about this…mail I don’t want to receive… Sure, I delete 99% of EDMs I receive without even glancing at the subject title. But the idea of missing out on the potential of one day, missing out on an inkling of information may be of interest to me, really freaked me out. I’d never thought about ‘unsubscribing’ until now.

So what are people like me doing to people who are working hard at trying to market though EDMs?

In our Evaluate Market Performance paper, we talked about the power of amassing a list of email contacts. Email, considered to be more reliable than addresses or phone numbers, is highly valuable as a way to get in touch. But are people like me ruining the point of having a big list of emails in your database?

At my pervious employment, creating daily EDMs was even a part of my job! Just like any other webpage, we were able to analyse how long a person opened the email, whether they then clicked on a link, whether they made a purchase, or browsed our website – or whether it was sent to trash without being opened.

Even so, their purpose is totally lost on me. I can’t speak for others, but the ‘delete’ button is just a bit too convenient. So this battle between the desire for a streamlined inbox and wanting all the information all the time will never be resolved for me.

What I do take away from this realisation is that perhaps it’s not about how big your database is, but rather a database full of people who are not going to simply delete you. Companies now are too focused on tactics that pressure any passing visitor to join their mailing list, and neglecting the fact that not every person on the Internet is their target audience. The electronic age means information is so quickly transferred, but it also is so quickly forgotten.

The benefit of having a very specific database means that your EDMs could become a two-way thing; a portal for communication. When you are dealing with a specific market, there is the opportunity to target that market in ways you would not be able to if you were casting your net wider.

I guess the blame isn’t solely on the companies. We are also the ones who go and sign ourselves up for this in the first place. We, the ‘deleters’ of EDMs, are equally at fault for not understanding and aligning our personal brands with those companies we actually care about.

I have no solid answers to this dilemma. I will keep subscribing, and keep deleting, in the hope that one day my inbox will magically be empty of it all.

Hongi Luo
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

Even Margaret Thatcher has a Personal Brand

When Facebook has a group with nearly 40,000 ‘Likes’ whose sole purpose is to track your death, you know that you’re not in the running for a popularity contest. The Facebook group: ‘Is Margaret Thatcher Dead Yet?’ was created in 2010, and only changed its profile picture on April 8th from ‘NOT YET’ to ‘YES, Margaret Thatcher is Dead’. According to comments on the group, there were people that checked the page daily to see if she had passed.

Lady Thatcher, who also goes by a number of names including Iron Lady, Tin Ear, and other colorful names that I will not repeat in this blog, continues to have such a controversial presence. Margaret Thatcher’s 15 second elevator speech would consist of a few facts including being Britain’s first female Prime Minister, and then being re-elected twice to the position. Her ‘personal brand’ is quite a unique one. She has truly left her mark on history.

Some love her, some hate her. Those who love her seem to be the winning side of her reforms, while her enemies are amongst those whom she showed little remorse for as she steamed rolled through her terms.

Personal branding and how we portray our personal brand is very important, especially if you are in a communications based role such as Marketing, Advertising and Politics. In the Internal Marketing Unit of the Masters of Marketing program, we focused on personal branding, particularly what it is, how to develop it, and it’s importance. It still surprises me how many people are not on LinkedIn, especially those who I would have thought surely would have invested enough time to create an on-line professional presence.

Even Margaret Thatcher is on LinkedIn. Her profile might not be very strong, but she still has a personal profile as well as a number of groups about her. And she’s on Facebook as well. Isn’t it time that you spend the time to create or update your on-line personal brand? Hopefully you too won’t have a Facebook group following your death, but rather your on-line presence will lead to positive things.

Mina D'Souza
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

Tic Tac Knocks Out a French Town

At one time in our lives we’ve all had to share confined quarters with someone who has bad breath. The worst part is that the only person who doesn’t suffer the consequences of the noxious odors is the person who has bad breath, as they often are unaware of their effects on their neighbors. Breathing by your mouth, usually relieves you of the effects for a while, but if you have to spend 8 hours a day boxed up in a shared cubicle with Mr. Coffee-Breath, or Mrs. Smoker-Mouth, not even mouth breathing can help you.

Tic Tac has used humor in the above ad to show the devastation of the effects of bad breath on a small town in France. This ad is a take on the flash mob videos that have popped up in the past few years. The best part of the ad is that you don’t need to speak a word of French to understand the key message: Tic Tacs will take care of your bad breath.

When completing the Innovative Marketing Strategies Unit of the Masters of Marketing we analysed how humour can be used as a powerful marketing tool, but also how when humour used poorly can have devastating effects for a product and/or brand. When using humour an ad agency has to be careful not to put a market segment offside by negatively stereotyping a group ex. all old people are grumpy, or all young people are reckless. Country, political situations and target audiences are important to consider when creating your campaign.

Ideally you want your ad to be memorable: people remember your ad AND the product being advertised AND one key message. The icing on the cake comes when people talk to their friends about your ad, that’s when you really know that your ad has been successful.

I think that Tic Tac has done a great job in the above ad because it has met all those criteria. It also has international relevance, which not all humourous ads can boast of as it can easily overcome the language and cultural barriers of most countries in the western world.

Next time you’re in a confined space such as a lift, a car, or even on the street asking someone for direction, have a Tic Tac handy!

I would love to know what your favorite humourous ad is.

Mina D'Souza
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

Branding the Un-Egg-spected

The other day when deciding on which eggs to buy during my weekly grocery shop, I stumbled upon branded eggs. By ‘branded eggs’ I don’t mean that there was a company name on the egg carton, these were literally branded eggs with the company logo printed on each egg shell.

Twelve beaming smiling faces greeted me as I opened the carton of eggs from Sunny Queen Farms to check that all the eggs were intact. These eggs looked ‘happy’ and were sparkling clean (no feces, feathers, or other egg debris… gross!). Just looking at these eggs gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling of happiness. These eggs HAD to come home with me. And they did!

Branded eggs? Brilliant. And ‘about time’, especially as everything else that I bring home from the shops is branded.

Eggs without branding are just eggs. They could be from organically fed chickens that were taken for walks twice a day, or even read a book at night, but for all I know, once eggs get taken out of their packaging and put into my egg-tray in the fridge, an egg is an egg, is an egg. Unless it has a smiling face on it or another branding stamp to differentiate it.

So why haven’t all egg companies jumped upon this very simple and probably not too expensive concept? It sure beats me.

Egg companies in my opinion waste money by trying to differentiate themselves by their carton packaging. They should really focus on the natural primary packaging of their product: the egg shell. Brand logo, expiry date, and even a short key message or company slogan should be printed on the egg.

Even my hubby likes the smiling eggs, and although he doesn’t yet remember the name of the brand, he no longer has to ring me in a panicked state from the grocery store to ask which kind of eggs to buy. He knows that the smiling face eggs are a sure win in our household.

What other products do you feel still have a long way to go in terms of branding opportunities?

BCM Sunny Queen Egg Case Study

Mina D'Souza
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

Reinventing a best seller

How do you re-invent and improve an already good product? Saatchi & Saatchi LA have decided that a re-invented couch should be made up of toned and attractive females in bikinis, and should also be made available in a male version of topless buff men in shorts.

This ad however isn’t for the re-invented couch, or edible pizza curtains, or for plants that fight crime, but for the launch of an improved Toyota Camry. The creative touch of re-inventing the ordinary almost ‘un-re-inventible’ is quite funny, but I didn’t find that Toyota, or Saatchi and Saatchi on Toyota’s behalf, communicated the crux of their campaign… the improved features of the Camry in this particular ad.

But do the details of the sedan’s ‘re-invention’ really matter in this ad? I don’t think so. This ad is all about gaining attention and having people remember the ad rather than the car. Remembering the car and linking it back to the ad comes later in the campaign. This strategy is often used in advertising, where making a lasting impression in 60 seconds or less is challenging with so many ads bombarding our daily lives.

So what makes an ad successful? When evaluating ads in the Integrated Communications unit of the Master of Marketing Program, we used the acronym ‘S.C.O.R.E.’ to critique the ads.

S.C.O.R.E.: S = Simple, C= Creative, O=Original, R= Relevant, E= Effective.

Successful ads would rate high in every one of the criteria.

For this Toyota Camry ad, the ‘re-invention’ concept is Simple, and focuses on improving an already solid product. Making an analogy to a reinvented couch, curtain, and crime-fighting household potted plants is highly Creative. I would give this ad two thumbs up for Originality, how refreshing is it to see a car commercial without seeing the car wind along a quiet country road with a picturesque backdrop. Was this ad Relevant? No, in my opinion, but the fact that the ad isn’t relevant to the car’s improvements makes it Effective because the ad makes the car indirectly memorable.

What ads have you found to be so creative that they become highly memorable?

Mina D'Souza
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

Taco Bell’s Internet Personality

I LOVE Taco Bell. I love them so much; I would take any opportunity to talk with people about how amazing Taco Bell is. All of their marketing efforts have worked on me, and I am a proud advocate for their brand. Which is a bit strange, considering I’ve never even eaten there.

Why all the passion?

Because Taco Bell’s Internet personality is someone I’d like to be best friends with. Sure, they’ve run the regular kinds of monetary driven promotions, donations, fundraisers so on and so forth. But it’s all the little things they do that add up to a quirky sense of humor, and a brand that isn’t afraid to have a little laugh at itself.

If you ever stumble upon Taco Bell’s Twitter or Facebook page, their online teams are often quick to respond – and respond with a bit of delightful tongue-in-cheek. Many service companies find social media hard to deal with because the nature of the forum can lead to disgruntled customers openly tarnishing your good name. Taco Bell is not immune to this, but instead of standard replies, they often respond with personalized solutions. Not only that, it’s obvious that their web team are given the authority to reply to customers with something a little unconventional.

 

So why is this so important in social media? For me, it’s the feeling that I am engaging with more than just a company – that there is a personality behind it all. You can find endless examples, like the one above, of Taco Bell just being a nice guy. And isn’t it much easier to engage with a ‘nice guy’ than a company that sees you as another statistic? Engagement goes both ways, and Taco Bell proves that giving a little back has huge returns.

Although some can argue this is all just a part of the marketing strategy of an emotionless company, when it comes to Social Media, the notion of ‘perception is reality’ rings true. Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt for other companies to take a leaf out of Taco Bell’s book, and spend some time being a ‘nice guy’ on the Internet (or at least a guy with a sense of humor).

Hongi Luo
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

The Block: securing the best ROI on your property

After watching ‘The Block’, a reality home renovation series on Channel Nine, I have come to the conclusion that there are many crucial factors that can affect the selling price of a property. It’s not only about how well the home is presented, (although that does feature high on directly affecting selling price), having a sound marketing strategy for the property sale is key to getting a high ROI for what is usually one’s highest valued asset.

There are many decision that need to be made when selling a property such as: when to put it on the market, which agent and real estate company to sell with, will the property be sold through an auction or a private sale, who will be the auctioneer (if the property sells at auction), your asking price, where to advertise… and the list goes on.

Although the TV show ‘The Block’ did not focus on how much time each bidder spent inspecting the property before showing up at the auction, on average, people spend more time choosing a car than they do on inspecting a property. According to the Melbourne Bank, potential buyers spend on average 45 minutes or less inspecting a property before purchasing it (that does not include the time spent researching the property market or the area). Since buyers don’t spend much time within the four walls of their potential new purchase, marketing the property before inspection is crucial.

An important part of the marketing strategy for the sale of the property is the advertising. The local newspaper, Australian real estate web sites, Asian real estate web sites, sign posting outside the property, and mail drops are some of the advertising options to choose from. These all cost money and it is best to understand what historical ROI these mediums have before making a decision.

A phone call to my local newspaper quoted me almost $1000 for a half page ad in the real estate section for one week. That seemed to me to be quite expensive for old fashion print media, especially when so many people are turning to on-line search engines for property searches. That said, understanding where your target market looks for properties is crucial when finally making the decision on how and where to advertise.

Although not all of us are talented home renovators like the contestants on ‘The Block’, highlighting your property’s desirable features as well as features that make your property unique during your marketing campaign is crucial. Perhaps a tasteful colourful painting on the living room wall, or a home smelling of freshly baked bread would be a suggestion for standing out that is achievable for everyone regardless of your renovation skills.

If you have sold a property, do you have any marketing strategies that you found useful that you are willing to share?

Mina D'Souza
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

Sony Xperia Z’s Missed Adventurous Market Segment

The latest smartphone hitting the Australian market is Sony’s new flagship smartphone, the Xperia Z. The company claims that the phone is waterproof and dustproof, these features can be extrapolated as making the phone ‘adventure proof’.

A phone that can be dropped in up to a meter of water for 30 minutes and still function normally would be appreciated by anyone who has had to dig deep into their pocket to replace a handset that has been ruined by exposure to water. None of the other phones dominating the smartphone market to this point can boast of being both water and dustproof (ex. Apple’s iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy S3, HCT One).

The Xperia Z is very much targeted at the upper class tertiary educated 25-40 year old who enjoys life and appreciates a quality phone camera that will capture their adventurous moments. A market segment that Sony has missed in terms of targeting are mothers of young children, who highly value anything that is electrical and waterproof.

With sons aged 2 and 3 years old, (who I collectively refer to as my ‘jungle animals’), I am constantly in the middle of daily if not hourly ‘adventure’. I have had to replace a smart phone after ‘nobody’ dropped it in the toilet recently. It’s replacement was quickly covered with a military grade, dust, water, and shock proof case. The downfall of this case is that the sound is very muffled, leading me to question why I have a phone if I struggle to use it for it’s most basic of functions: communicating on the phone.

The number of times that I have to ‘rescue’ my phone from testing the true capabilities of its protective case vary on a daily basis, but usually range within the 5-10 mark. Fish tanks, sinks and bath tubs filled with soapy water, and even sprinklers and swimming pools are potential dangers to my phone. Ideally I want to have a phone that I can use without a cover and be assured that it is going to endure a day in my household.

Had the Xperia Z been targeted to also include those caring for little ones, I’m sure that Sony’s ‘waterproof-dustproof-adventure proof’ features would have been recognized as sought after handset for this market segment.

When have you seen a product overlook a very relevant segment of a target market?

Mina D'Souza
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

Centenarian Oreo stays Young through Social Media Campaign

Not every brand survives 5-10 years of existence, and even fewer can brag about being a centenarian. So what’s the secret behind Oreo’s over 100 years of success? Good Marketing of course.

Recently Oreo, the delicious crunchy dark chocolate cookie whose two biscuits sandwich a disk of contrasting white ‘melt-in-the-mouth’ sweet crème, has focused on building a strong and creative social media presence.

A highly relevant advertisement on Twitter during the 30 minute blackout at the Superbowl this year has made Social Media Marketers turn to Oreo in terms of resetting the bar for social media campaigns.

Oreo has struck gold once again with their latest social media campaign. They have chosen 4 teams of ‘Super Oreo Lovers’ with mechanical backgrounds to build ‘Oreo Separator machines’. The overall goal of the Oreo Separator is to separate the cookie from the crème so that the preferred part of an Oreo cookie can be fully enjoyed. The above video is just one of the 4 inventions created for this purpose (the other three videos can be found on YouTube). This video obtained over 4 million views in less than 4 weeks, a result even better than what the Oreo marketing team could have wished for.

Oreo has managed to obtain such a high number of views on YouTube by tapping into a key insight: People have a preference between the cookie and crème, and are therefore interested in separating the cookie to isolate and eat their favorite part. In the past Oreo has used this key insight to build campaigns based around ‘how do you like to eat your Oreo?’. They have now taken this concept a step further and have asked the more mechanically inclined ‘how would you separate your Oreo?’.

Other leading brands such as Coca-Cola, Gillette, and RedBull have successfully navigated the social media domain. History has shown that to have a successful social media presence you must be able to continue to provide creative and relevant material.

I’m looking forward to see how Oreo will maintain the social media buzz around their brand for decades to come, especially now that the bar has been raised.

Mina D'Souza
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

Personal information. Where to from here.

The Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney was fortunate to have Jodie Sangster, CEO of the ADMA (Association for Data-Driven Marketing and Advertising) present as part of a panel discussing the use of personal data for marketers gain.

Jodie explained that a customer’s journey starts from the minute you start talking or engaging a potential customer to the point where they are no longer your customer anymore. Between these two goal posts is the window of opportunity for your brand to impress customers and to keep them on side with your offerings.

Maintaining these two goal posts wide apart on a time line means that you are keeping your customer for as long as possible. The way to do this is by engaging with them. What better way to engage with a customer than to use the information that you have collected about them to better understand their needs and interests and then to serve them individually targeted messages?

So where does the ADMA fit into all of this? The Associations role is to work with government and business to help determine fair ground rules for customers and businesses, considering both of their interests in advertising and marketing transactions.

Jodie stated that the discussion regarding data is being pulled in three distinct directions when it comes to the use of personal information in targeted marketing communications:

1. Businesses want to use data so that they can offer more relevant, targeted messages to customers. 
2. The government considers the realms of personal data being used by marketers an “unmanageable” according to Jodie. There is a lack of understanding of how data is being used, and the laws that have been established to regulate privacy are struggling to keep up with technological advancements. 
3. Then there is the consumer sitting in the middle of this rapidly developing area of privacy laws. Customers divulge their personal information for a number of reasons, and in return they want their personal data to be treated with respect. If the line of respect is crossed in terms of exploiting personal data, customers will become understandably upset.

Jodie and her colleagues at the ADMA no doubt have their job cut out for them as I can imagine that there is not a dull moment in their Sydney based office.

How has your company kept up to date with changes to the regulations concerning the use of personal information for marketing purposes?

Mina D'Souza
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

John Sergeant’s take on the Magic of Marketing

I’ve crossed paths with John Sergeant on enough occasions to predict that when he opens his mouth to speak you know that you are in for a succinct slice of his wisdom delivered with humor and enough wit to make even the driest of topics interesting.

It was no surprise that John had a room full of current students, alumni, industry leaders and fellow teaching staff from the Master of Marketing Program at the University of Sydney intently listening to his panel discussion on the future of marketing last week.

When John addressed the questions of what do Marketers do, he didn’t hesitate for a minute to think about his response. He said, “Marketers produce an intangible good. It’s magic. A Marketer’s job is to infiltrate the magic into the business in a way that makes it relevant to individuals”.

When asked ‘How do you understand the magic that marketers do?’, John responded, “you have to start by getting out of the mental habit of referring to human beings as consumers. Habits of speech become habits of mind. Continually referring to people as consumers is a habit of marketers that stands in the way of delivering empathy”.

John even delivered a potentially lucrative offer to his future 2013 students. Students that catch him referring to people as ‘consumers’, will be paid 5$ out of John’s hard earned cash in return for his sinful referral.

It’s easy to forget that our business is about adding the magic and not simply dealing with the numbers that present themselves as a result of the data explosion. What is important, however, is to understand the insights that the data offer us, turn those insights into a very fine magic powder and then sprinkle that magic powder over the business. And that’s what Marketing is all about, according to John.

Mina D'Souza
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

Digital Marketing: Understanding where your target audience is on-line

James Butcher, Group Sales Manager at Microsoft Media Networks shared his wisdom on digital marketing at an event hosted by the University of Sydney’s Master of Marketing program last week.

When James started working in on-line marketing 8 years back facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest didn’t exist. Running on-line campaigns was a simple task of creating a presence on Google’s ‘Search’.

How things have changed
 
With the predicted shift of tablet devices becoming the primary household computer based device by 2015, James believes that on-line marketing will gain in importance as more people will be able to connect to the internet easier.

According to James, on-line marketing is now all about tapping into the passion points of your target audience so that you can better understand your customer’s internet comings and goings. The ultimate goal is to create advertising touch points for your product or service to parallel their on-line locations.

For example, if an Axe/ Lynx deodorant (Unilever product) digital marketing campaign was created for a target audience of males aged 25-30 years old, digital Marketers must understand what interests they are likely to have and what other media they are tracking on-line in the day. In the morning while eating breakfast, where are they reading the news? During lunch, are they check the footy scores on-line? In the late afternoon do they use the internet to quickly catch up on celebrity gossip? How much disposable income do they have, does this affect how much time they spend on-line? Are they city dwellers? Have they previously engaged with the brand?

There has been an enormous shift in on-line marketing recently. I’m keen to see what the digital marketing space will look like in 5 years’ time.

How has your company shifted its on-line presence in the past 3 years to adjust to more tech savvy customers?

Mina D'Souza
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

Samsung Galaxy S3? Apple iPhone 5? Sony Xperia Z? Or Nothing

It is time for a new smart phone. My iPhone 3 has been losing one function at a time due to wear and tear. Last week I realised that I could no longer turn off the phone, two nights ago the volume control stopped working. I thought that buying a new phone would be a fun and easy activity.

A visit to the local Westfield to check out smart phones left me overwhelmed. With 40 phones to choose from and just an hour up my sleeve to choose the right phone, a quick decision was necessary. For me, a phone is not just a piece of plastic/metal with a fancy screen and some buttons on the side. A phone isn’t just a purchase, but rather more like an adoption. The phone that I choose would be another member of my family…. it would follow me around for most of the day, live in my handbag, have a safety case, be invited to all family events, take pictures of my family, video birthdays and graduations, text my friends, call my parents. A phone is my ‘digital’ best friend.

So after chatting with the smart phone expert at one of the leading mobile phone shops, I decided that I just wasn’t ready to buy. There was too much choice. I needed to go home and do a little bit more research and figure out what were the most important features for me. Did I want to just purchase the new iPhone 5 and then realise that the Samsung Galaxy S3’s camera was better, or would the Sony Xperia Z suit my needs because it’s waterproof and that would surely protect my phone if one day the kids were to decide to put the phone in the fish tank, or worse, the toilet?

This scenario isn’t uncommon. When customers are presented with too many choices, a phenomenon called ‘choice paralysis’ occurs. It can be easier to make no choice than to make a choice that you will regret post purchase. Studies have shown that people are attracted to variety, but find it easier to choose a product and complete the purchase when there are a smaller number of choices available. Post purchase regret is also less of a factor when the amount of choice is less.

So what’s the perfect amount of choice? 2-3 items, or 9-10 items, or somewhere in between? Does it vary for the type of product? Marketers must determine how to frame products to make customers feel that they have been offered enough variety but not too much choice to make a customer second guess their purchase.

I still haven’t decided which phone to buy but I have narrowed the possible 40 phones down to two finalists. I no longer feel as overwhelmed with choice because I have taken the time to research my decision. This luxury of product research does not occur for all the products that I buy, but for this purchase I wanted to get it right.

When did you feel like you were overloaded with choice and decided to walk away from a purchase rather than have post purchase regret?

Mina D'Souza
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

Facial Recognition Technology and its use in Marketing

How would you like to walk into a store and be advertised products that are best suited for your age, gender and demographics? How could a store possibly manage to tailor marketing campaigns on an individual basis?

The answer is through facial recognition. If you are unfamiliar with facial recognition, it is technology that scans your face, determining your age, gender and possibly even your name. Military and law enforcement agencies have been using it for years, but now with a potential to be used in the field of advertising, the fun stuff for us marketers begins.

Many opportunities exist with the information that can be collected with facial recognition. For example, you can know precisely what type of customers come into your store at specific times; you can determine even repeat customers across a number of stores allowing you to uncover trends which can be used to your advantage.

Facial recognition technology can be used to solve business issues. For example, you wanted to grow your customer base as the owner of the local pub. Data from facial recognition technology determined that between 6:00-9:00 on a Friday night your pub was 50% full with 75% male customers between the ages of 25-30 years old. Ideally you want your pub to be at least at a 70% capacity, especially on a Friday night. Wouldn’t you consider offering a special on cocktails targeted to increasing the number of ladies aged 23-27 years old in the pub?

In futuristic movies, facial recognition is even used to identify mood and ads are served to cater to that mood. That’s inching onto the creepy side of things in my opinion. I know that I would not like to walk into a supermarket in the middle writing an assignment for Uni, slightly stressed, and be served ads for ice cream and chocolate.

What’s there not to love about facial recognition? Those of us that are concerned about privacy would argue a lot. Where would boundaries be placed in terms of protecting identity? Is facial recognition a marketers dream come true or a Big Brother scenario waiting to surface?

Mina D'Souza
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

Google ‘Scroogles’, making Microsoft Outlook appealing

Have you been ‘Scroogled’ recently? I know I have. When writing a paper on Cirque du Soleil as part of an assignment for Innovative Marketing Strategies class (Master of Marketing Program at the University of Sydney) I kept getting served ads about Cirque du Soleil.

Having seen a number of Cirque du Soleil shows, I truly appreciate the innovation and creativeness of the production. I did not however appreciate that Cirque du Soleil was invading my ad space which essentially gave me the feeling of being watched.

So how did these ads just start showing up coincidently at the same time that I was writing numerous emails to my fellow students in my presentation group about the Cirque du Soleil? At first I thought it was just by chance, but as time went on and I kept receiving ads related to words I was using in my Gmail emails I realised that I was being Scroogled!

Microsoft, Google’s competitor came up with the term ‘Scroogle’ by blending the words ‘screwed’ and Google. So being Scroogled poetically implies you are being screwed by Google.

Many Gmail users are unaware that Google’s Gmail system scans emails for keywords and then uses these key words to serve you ads. Brilliant? Perhaps. Invasion of my privacy? Definitely!

As email providers might just become the new competitive platform (at least until the next iPhone or Apple product comes out on the market), privacy policies will be held in high regards as a deciding feature to stay with a current email provider, or to move to a Microsoft’s product such as Outlook.com.

Microsoft’s Outlook.com offers many desirable features over and above those offered by Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail. Among them is privacy (currently being violated by Gmail in my opinion), sophistication in that Outlook.com can be connected to your social media networks, and a sorting option that makes it easy for a user to prioritise their emails.

I’m tempted to ditch my Gmail account because I don’t want to feel like my emails are not private. Do you feel that Gmail fairly communicates this lack of privacy to subscribers? How will Gmail have to modify their activities in the future to stay competitive?

Mina D'Souza
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

The Harlem Shake, Gangam Style, The Man Your Man could smell like, Evolution of Dance… What made these videos go viral?

When chatting over the phone with my parents last week we got on to the topic of viral videos, and in particular the latest viral video, The Harlem Shake. My parents were quite concerned that I was watching viral videos because they honestly thought that doing so might leave me with a virus on my computer.

The following 30 minutes of our conversation was spent explaining to my parents (both are in their 70’s), that viral videos do not leave viruses on your computer, but rather they are considered ‘viral’ videos because the way that the video gains popularity mimics the spread of an influenza virus. One person watches a video and they share the video with a number of their friends who then forward on the video link via email, video sharing web sites or social media to their friends. In no time at all the video has been shared exponentially, and is officially considered ‘having gone viral’.

Once my parents had been reassured that I was not putting my computer at risk of disease, they asked a simple question that I didn’t have the answer to: “Mina, what makes a video go viral?”. Although most kids over the age of 6 have the answers to all of their parent’s questions, this one caught me by surprise.

If only us Marketers had the answer! I decided to do a little research to find out the answer to that question. After searching hours on my virus free computer I realised that the question ‘What makes videos viral?’ falls in the same bucket as ‘Where can I find out the winning numbers for next Saturday’s lottery?’.

There is no winning formula that has yet been discovered that will consistently result in viral videos. I did however find a number of common elements in viral videos:

1. Humor 
2. Strong Start: Enticing title, alluring description, and visually appealing video thumbnail enticing potential viewers to click through.
3. An emotional response
4. Sarcastic narcissism
5. Community participation
6. The element of surprise/originality
7. Identification with the target audience
8. Must be short, ideally less than 2 minutes in length 

The Harlem Shake is a perfect example of these 8 elements at play. PSY’s Gangnam style, Old Spice’s The Man Your Man Could Smell Like, The Evolution of Dance, and Kony 2012 are all examples of highly successful viral videos where many if not all of these 8 elements were present.

Next time I chat with my parents I’ll at least have the above list of elements a video should have if it is aiming for ‘viral status’. What I won’t have however, is a logical explanation for what people are doing in the Harlem Shake.

Have you been part of creating a viral video? Any secrets you want to share?

Mina D’Souza
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

Oreo, Audi and Tide clear winners at the Superbowl

Superbowl XLVII has come and gone with the Ravens as the victors. There are however a few other notable winners this year that went home with thousands of tweets, a trophy of sorts for Advertising and Marketing departments, earned by dominating on-line social media creativeness and speed.

With a half hour blackout during the football game resulting in extra unforeseen advertising opportunities, only a handful of brands jumped on the Tweeting ‘brand’-wagon. Among the more successful were Oreo, Audi, and Tide. While the Ravens and 49ers were pacing the field during the blackout trying to prevent their muscles from cooling down, things were heating up within the advertising and marketing teams for these companies.

Oreo’s power outage tweet read: “Power out? No problem. YOU CAN STILL DUNK IN THE DARK”, with art work representing darkness with an Oreo in a dim spotlight. Oreo was able to capitalise on the advertising opportunity because their advertising firm and Management team were watching the game together and all powers needed to approve the ad were in the same room.

The Ravens and the 49ers weren’t the only competitors out in the field. Audi’s tweet had a message clearly aimed at their direct competitor Mercedes-Benz (@MBUSA) who holds the naming rights to the Superdome where the game was played.

Tide a popular laundry detergent brand wasn’t going to wash away a great opportunity to build on their TV ad where millions had already been invested. Tide’s tweet focused their message on preserving dark clothing color while getting rid of stains.

And the list of other brands that participated in Tweeting ads during the power outage goes on. The lesson learnt is a valuable one. One that we focused on in the Integrated Marketing Communications unit of the Master of Marketing program: strike while the iron is hot, as timely innovation with a dash of humor can leave a lasting impression that’s hard to wash off.

Has your marketing team ever had to create an ad in less than 20 minutes?

Mina D’Souza
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

The power of storytelling

Do you ever wonder why your great ideas sometimes don’t resonate and become adopted while some other seemingly mediocre ideas are embraced? The way they are communicated may have a lot to do with it.

While preparing for an upcoming presentation, I found myself searching for more compelling ways to communicate an idea. I came across the work of Nancy Duarte, a communication expert who is behind some of the world’s most influential business communications.

According to her, ideas are conveyed most effectively through stories. In the above video, she uncovers the “shape of a story” from renowned works of cinema and literature, and then demonstrates how to incorporate stories into your presentation.

Peter Guber, the author of “Tell to win” supports this view saying that stories can act as Trojan Horses. He argues that, when absorbed in a story, people detect fewer inaccuracies and inconsistencies. More importantly, they don’t seem to care about the errors. However, when reading dry and factual content, people seemed more critical than when reading a story.

But why is it that humans seem to be “wired” for stories? Why are they so effective?

As we explored in a previous blog about neuromarketing, people make most of their decisions based on unconscious emotions as opposed to rational logic. Data dumps, dense PowerPoint slides and pure stats do not emotionally connect people with your idea. The best way to do that is with “Once upon a time…”

Neuroscience also shows the brain works by associations producing webs of interrelated concepts. Countless mind mapping tools and techniques are founded in this simple fact. By linking your ideas to commonly known stories, you are leveraging a previously established neurological path in your audience’s memory. They will be able to more easily associate your ideas with that known path provided by stories. This way your ideas become more meaningful and memorable.

What other insights do you know about stories and presentations?

Adriana Heinzen Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

SodaStream vs. Coke & Pepsi

SodaStream’s direct stab at Coke and Pepsi with its original Super Bowl ad saw them having to replace it with a toned down version, which in turn generated more awareness for the brand. The replacement ad featured generic soda brands upon request from broadcaster CBS, which wasn’t keen on causing a stir among some of its largest supporters, namely Coke and Pepsi.

The ad had a strong single minded proposition: when customers make their own soda with a SodaStream, they don’t waste plastic bottles. The insight of billions of bottles ending up in landfills every month provided the basis for a compelling brand story.

Leveraging the David vs. Goliath narrative, SodaStream is a classic “challenger” brand. According to Adam Morgan, author of “Eating The Big Fish” and expert in the field: “The narrative is that through being fleeter of foot, more innovative and creative, possibly by being an out-and-out maverick, a small business can take share from a larger one.”

In the Master of Marketing consumer behaviour lectures, we explored different brand archetypes, including “The Irreverent Maverick”, which is often associated with challenger brands. It defies social conventions and challenges “normal” behaviour with wit, humour and even shock tactics.

In the end, the controversy around the Super Bowl ads created a huge awareness for the unaired ad with over 4.5 million views on YouTube, while the official Super Bowl ad had just about 200 thousand views. With large business proving they can also benefit from challenger thinking such as Unilever’s Dove “Campaign for real beauty”, I’m keen to see how Coke and Pepsi will react.

What lessons can large corporations learn from challenger strategies?

Adriana Heinzen
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

Google and Amazon battle over online shoppers

"Amazon wants to be the one place where you buy everything. Google wants to be the one place where you find everything, of which buying things is a subset" setting them up for a natural collision as Chi-Hua Chien, a partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, has it.

As many as 30 percent of US shoppers started their product search in Amazon.com compared to 13 percent who started a purchase search in engines such as Google in 2012 according to Research firm Forrester. Two years ago search engines were the preferred starting point for purchases search and Google is now on a mission to recoup online shoppers as much of its business depends on product searches and related ads.

Google’s product search engine, Google Shopping, was recently modified charging retailers a fee to be listed in the results. By turning top search results into paid ads, Google addresses allegations of biased search results by its rivals. This is clarified to customers by a discrete disclaimer on the top right corner “Google is compensated by these merchants. Payment in one of several factors used to rank these results”. Google also recently bought BufferBox, a company with a network of lockers that customers can use to receive parcels, which further emphasises its intention of playing a larger role in online retail.

Amazon, in turn, is selling ads that are displayed to the side of product search results on its website. According to comScore, the number of ads has more than tripled compared to 2011 figures. Although still a fraction of Google’s ad business, Amazon is using newly developed technology to leverage the customers purchase history and allow marketers to target ads at specific segments on Amazon.com and on other websites. This is invaluable data to advertisers as it tells them what customers have just bought and what they are trying to buy right now.

Other online giants have their eyes closely focused on Google and Amazon’s cat fight. Facebook, with its own search and advertising ambitions, has been lurking in the shadows, while Microsoft has put its gloves on with an anti-Google campaign launched last year. Having accused Google of "unfair pay-to-rank shopping practices", Microsoft has gone as far as putting up a site named “Scroogled” in a bid to deter customers from using Google’s new shopping service.

So far, Google Shopping has been seen by many customers merely as a showroom to figure out what items meet their criteria, a similar role to the brick and mortar retailers nowadays. Once customers figure out the brand and item they are searching for and get an idea of the average retail price, many still head straight to Amazon or eBay to make the purchase. The main reason is convenience and trust. Shopping direct from the vendors is still largely seen as a hassle due to the many steps involved in filling out forms, addresses and giving away card details to yet another unknown entity.

Google has pushed vendors to step up their customer experience last year when it released a series of humorous videos parodying customer’s frustration when shopping online. Now it seems to be taking matters on its own hands with a certification service highlighting merchants that ship quickly and up to $1,000 in "purchase protection" as well as its own Google Wallet payment service. In our Internal Marketing lectures, we looked at many service companies initiatives to ensure a consistent brand experience at every customer touch point. Google Shopping is still far from Amazon’s streamlined service but it is certainly heading in that direction. What other advancements could Google Shopping employ to improve customers’ experience?

Adriana Heinzen
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

Can Alicia Keys help Blackberry to “keep moving”?

Blackberry has launched its largest campaign ever for the make or break new operating system OS BB10 and a new range of products. The campaign will carry a “keep moving” theme to demonstrate the software’s capabilities. Among the central features are a smarter predictive keyboard and a “hub” for notifications from email, Facebook and Twitter.

The campaign
The mobile manufacturer announced on its launch event that Alicia Keys would act as its global creative officer. The 14-time Grammy Award winning singer, songwriter and entrepreneur will be joined by film director Robert Rodriguez and author Neil Gaiman in a series of online films demonstrating how they engage with their BB10 devices and inviting users to share their own stories. The heart of the campaign consists of a real-time marketing drive across search, video, direct marketing, social media, CRM and mobile.

How it will be assessed
According to BlackBerry’s CMO, Frank Boulben, the central measure for Blackberry success and market share will be the Net Promoter Score (NPS), adding “we want the first customers using BlackBerry 10 to recommend to friends and family.” As seen in our Marketing Performance Evaluation lectures, NPS measures the "willingness to recommend" a product and is usually adopted for higher involvement products, where opinion leaders and WOM is in play. It is becoming an increasingly popular customer loyalty measure with growth of social media. Although all companies have their favourite metrics, some going for the traditional Customer Satisfaction measure while others adopt the famous NPS, the growing reliance on a simple single customer metric won’t provide them the full picture and can be dangerous trend.

Target market
BlackBerry’s global market share fell from 20% to roughly 6% in the last three years and many see this as a last resort to recapture old and new users. The company is aiming to expand beyond corporate users and appeal to working moms. Boulben described Keys as the embodiment of a "very typical BlackBerry user" who is a "working mom" and runs a small business.

"Faced up against guys with significant market share, BlackBerry needs to find areas where it can make headway in. They can't compete broadly and they can't compete everywhere," said Stephen Baker, a VP of industry analysis for consumer technology at NPD. "If they think women is how they can do that, and it's a big enough segment and there's an opportunity there, then God bless them, they should go for that."

Celebrity endorsement
Celebrity endorsements are nothing new and they can often be an effective marketing tool if the company can find an authentic advocate for their brand. Alicia Keys seems a good fit with their new target audience; however, some analysts question her suitability as an endorser for Blackberry. To make matters worse, her official Twitter account showed her posts just days before the launch event were published from an iPhone and used Instagram to share all photos — an app that’s not available on BlackBerry according to a recent NYT release.

How NOT to do it
BlackBerry isn't the first tech company to employ a celebrity to boost its credibility. Three years ago, Lady Gaga was named creative director of Polaroid and she even designed a printer for the company. Two years ago, Will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas was announced as the director of creative innovation at Intel. These high profile job titles attempted to make the relationship more authentic when it involved little more than just posing beside the product in exchange for a large cheque.

A different spin on product endorsement
To distance itself from those claims, Boulben has stated the Alicia Keys hire is different from “traditional product endorsements” as it is based on user experience. "You won’t see the celebrities in the 'Keep Moving' campaign on TV. The 'Keep Moving' TV campaign is all about showing the product experience in the flow of your professional and personal life." Activity will include Alicia Keys creating a video in each city where she is performing her “Set the World on Fire” tour, with each customised video based on ideas she receives from fans.

Is it this kind of celebrity endorsement a good investment?
Do you actually need a famous creative director when you truly have great product design? Why doesn’t Apple have a celebrity creative director? Do you think the women audience targeted by Blackberry could be better inspired by an authentic ambassador, such as a young mother who genuinely loves the product, sending the message that it is the users who really matter when it comes to the design process?

The global mobile market could really use more competition right now; let’s hope Blackberry can “keep moving” with its ambitions.

Adriana Heinzen 
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

The Spiegelworld Empire – reimagining the world of circus

With the Sydney Festival celebrations taking over the city, numerous world-class acts steal audiences’ imagination and defy the world as we know. Reinventing the traditions of circus, cabaret, variety and burlesque for the 21st century audience, Spiegelworld has brought its new show, Empire, from New York to Sydney for this month’s festival. Following a sell-out in Broadway, the mind-altering show takes audiences through the underworld of kinky contortionists, rich impresarios and daredevils inside an authentic Belgian spiegeltent. The acts are played out almost on the laps of the audience as performers are squeezed on a 9-foot diameter stage adding to the intimate atmosphere nowhere to be found in large mainstream shows.

The Empire has been described as the early days Cirque du Soleil, when the shows had no storyline and were purely centered on emerging raw talent. Back in October, when the Cirque du Soleil was in town, we wrote a blog about the challenges in envisioning the Cirque du Soleil strategy for the next 10 years, a case study from our marketing strategy course. In the same way, I now invite you to envisage how a show like the Empire can grow without losing its grungy, cheeky and fresh appeal.

When looking into the future, niche arts companies face the challenge of potentially losing their “cool” in an attempt to attract larger audiences. This would in turn open space for new upcoming acts to fill the demand for underground and independent art performances. The Empire show is definitely not for kids and family. How much would they have to trade-off to capture that part of the market? Another alternative for growth would be to continue to focus on the same target audience and expand their range. Bringing new types of acts that cross the circus border seems like a more feasible option. In fact, by hesitating to use the circus designation and calling themselves a variety show, or simply “spiegelworld”, they seem to be heading in that direction.

This challenge is faced my many SMEs which have a niche audience and are strategising future growth. The danger in adapting their value proposition in order to appeal to a wider audience and grow is that they will lose their sustainable advantage. Do you stick to your niche audience and present them with new offerings, increasing your range? Do you look for similar niche audiences around the world? Do you modify your value proposition to appeal to more segments and have a more mainstream offer?

With all of these questions in mind, how can Spiegelworld successfully grown in the next 10 years?

Adriana Heinzen
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

SuperBowl 2013: The Talent Show of Ads (interrupted by a game of football)

How often do advertisers get the opportunity to enter into an Ad Talent Show guaranteed to be viewed by more than 110 million viewers? Viewers however should be forewarned that the ads will be interrupted briefly by grown men in tights running around chasing a football.

SuperBowl 2013 is right around the corner for our North American ad lovers, (and also for football enthusiasts). Ad agencies across the US have been preparing for the ‘ad talent show’ for months. With 30 second advertising slots devouring up to $4 million of a company’s advertising budget, advertisers have 30 seconds to showcase their product, make it memorable and convince customers that clear benefits exists for their product. No pressure.

A few strategy savvy companies such as Coke have decided to make every one of their hard earned advertising dollars count by creating a social media buzz around their SuperBowl ad. Their campaign features a ‘pre-ad’ to be aired in the weeks leading up to the big game where by viewers can vote to influence how the Coke ad pans out on the big day. Viewers not only can vote for their preferred ending, but they can also vote to sabotage other people’s votes. This strategy adds to the level of competition and consumer engagement. The most voted ad ending will air right after the whistle is blown announcing the end of SuperBowl 2013. Another simple and memorable marketing strategy.

What marketing strategy has stood out for you in terms of SuperBowl ads?

Mina D’Souza
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School