CALLING ALL YOUNG, UPSCALE BUYERS!

Have you heard of Jaguar’s latest sports car campaign? According to their latest and greatest vehicle, if you are young and have an active lifestyle then this car is the one for you.

According to Brand Channel, Jaguar has been recently trying to compete with their largest competition of Porsche, who consumers also identify as a “legendary” vehicle through its appearances in classic films such as the James Bond Series. In order to overcome their high competition, Jaguar is releasing their newest advertising campaign of its all-new F-Type sports car.

“DISCOVERING A LEGEND FOR YOUR LIFETIME”

So let’s actually talk about the F-Type. What is so attractive about this new car? Well, as featured in the commercial, one can see a group of attractive young people standing in line to have their chance at driving this foreign automobile. One lucky guy stand at the front of line anticipating his opportunity to sit behind the wheel. As he looks at the car, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick into the commercial where he throws his keys at the guy first in line and says, “it’s your turn”. What is important to note is the line that follows soon after that of the voice over that says “it’s your turn to discover a legend for your lifetime”. Check out the commercial below:

REELING ‘EM IN

Not only is Jaguar trying to play the “bad boy vibe” in an effort to emphasize its front-engine and ear-wheel drive features, but it is trying to again, appeal to the younger generation of consumers by reeling them in with the legend factor. It is making consumers realize that they can afford a car which carries a brand that has been recognizable for decades, having a luxurious reputation, when the price point is a low $69,000. Not bad!

Rob Filipovic, general manager of product planning for Jaguar North America, put the brand’s advertising campaign perfectly: “it has a storied history. It’s more about reconnecting with the performance and design attributes that Jaguar used to stand for, and bringing them to the forefront for a new generation that isn’t necessarily familiar with our brands or cars”.

So what do you think? Once us college grads step into the real world, get a full-time job, and start making the money, would you take “your turn”in the Jaguar F-Type?

Works Cited

http://www.brandchannel.com/home/post/2013/05/13/Jaguar-Campaign-051313.aspx

http://media.dexigner.com/article/22928/Jaguar_F_Type_03.jpg

https://cdx.dexigner.com/article/22928/Jaguar_F_Type_04_thumb.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMZ-7kGu6Sk

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POSITIVE TWEETS DRIVE SALES

After having a delightful visit from Joy Cook, a PR knowledgist, in my Integrated Marketing Communications class, I stumbled across this article on www.marketingmagazine.com.uk about a recent study done by Deloitte, which I found related to Joy Cook’s insightful information about how to create buzz for your brand and the importance of Twitter.

So what did Deloitte find?

According to this Deloitte study, not only does the act of tweeting generate word-of-mouth effects which impact consumer demand, the act of creating positive tweets about a brand directly drive sales. Wow!

The study demonstrated that “a 30 percent increase in positive tweets is four times more effective in driving sales than a 30 percent increase in traditional above-the-line advertising”. More specifically, positive tweets had the most significant effect on sports games.

Gordon MacMillan, author of Marketing Magazine’s article “Twitter does drive sales says Deloitte study”, says the positive tweet effect is best seen through the launch of EA’s “Fifa 13” football title. With the overall goal of driving people to the game to buy packs, EA revolves it’s brand strategy around a single strategy of positivity. For example, community manager Alistair Reid of EA, described it’s “matches as marketing” strategy: “connecting their social media strategy to live events such as sporting events and TV shows”. EA does this by planning way in advance for matches such as Manchester CIty and Manchester United derby. According to Reid, “this allows EA to build the relationship between the fan and the game, and in turn drive engagement and sales through Twitter”. Through this positive tweet strategy,  EA generated more than 500,000 mentions and 29 percent engagement rates.

WHAT DO I THINK?

 I honestly think this strategy is brilliant. Considering there is so much negativity in the world, I think by spreading more positivity throughout the social media world is something that would be good for our generation when we have so much access to information about tragedy upon tragedy. I also have experienced being more engaged in positive tweets, especially within sports. As a huge Carolina Hurricanes hockey fan, I always tweet, retweet, and tweet @ the Carolina Hurricanes’ Twitter account because most of their tweets are motivational for their team or about strengths of players on the team.

I discovered that it’s not just sports though, despite the statistics. Apparently Burberry sent personalized thank you tweets to all of those who streamed London Fashion Week. Again, something positive and something that is engaging customers with a brand.

Works Cited

http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/article/1179092/Twitter-does-drive-sales-says-Deloitte-study

http://dawncompk.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/twitter-file-670.jpg?w=670&h=350

 https://tech-ticks.info/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/EA-Sports-FIFA-13.jpg
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IF YOU LIKE IT THEN YOU SHOULDA PUT A RING ON IT

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TOP OF THE LINE SHOPPING: TOPSHOP’S DIGITAL FASHION SHOW

But what if I told you that it was possible to have not only your very own front row seat to Fashion Week but also the opportunity to buy, on the spot, everything you see come down the runway?

Meet Justin Cooke, the Chief Marketing Officer of Topshop, one of the most popular British fashion brands in the world, where not only average day consumers wear it for it’s comfortable price point, but celebrities are even crazy about Topshop.

Justin Cooke: CMO of Topshop

 
Justin Cooke has caused Topshop to be one of the most innovative fashion retail brands on the market, especially this month, due to the introduction of “The Future of the Fashion Show”, a digitally run fashion show. I read about this digital experience on Ad Age and found it very compelling and extremely creative, something that I believe all fashion retail brands should incorporate into their company if they want to get their consumers engaged with their brand. The event proved to be a huge success, drawing in 2.1 million viewers from 100 countries. Wow!

Through partnerning with Google, Topshop has created a multiplatform experience where these 2.1 million viewers watched London’s Fashion Week from different points of view, whether it was the view of the model on the runway or as Ad Age writer pointed out, or through the view of the handbag being held by the model on the runway. Wow.

KNOWING THE TOPSHOP CONSUMER

Topshop has had everything going for them – celebrities wear the brand, consumers love the brand, and sales have been phenomenal. But Cooke seems to want to push the envelope with knowing this beheavior, which I believe is extremely smart especially in a market where there are many strong competitors – “all we need to do is scale that behavior because it’s not a global brand by proxy of the fact that we don’t have the stores. So the biggest opportunity is how do we take it to a wider audience? Digital becomes key to that”.

Topshop seems to know their consumer through and through, especially what drives their behavior: digital. Cooke says that Topshop knows that their consumers are digitally inclined, where they are constantly on their mobile phones and taking pictures of products through the use of QR codes. With this consumer insight, it makes sense that Topshop wants to create a digital fashion show, simply because that is what their customers want. As Cooke says, the digital fashion show is “digital dynamite” because of the sole reason that the Topshop customer is engaged in what drives them in their every day lifestyle: “this is digital dynamite because you’ve got these kids that are super-engaged. You’re bringing innovation in product, in experience, so it should be exactly the same in our communications”. Brilliant.

Cooke is right – this is digital dynamite because it is getting that customer interaction, which is the main support and huge driver to producing sales within a brand. This goes back to what Don Schultz, author of Creating Customer and Market Value was saying: value is in the eye of the beholder, where the customer is the determining factor to what value the product or services offers to an individual.

As a consumer of Topshop, I see huge value in this brand. There is value in the fact that I can change characteristics on the models and purchase what I see on the spot through this digital fashion show. It allows the consumers to have fun with being engaged with the brand, and that my friends, is what drives a successful brand.

Works Cited

http://adage.com/article/cmo-interviews/topshop-raises-digital-bar-fashion-world/240100/

http://www.davidtett.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Topshop-1-599×398.jpg

 https://fashionandmash.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/topshop2.jpg?w=810

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GLASS, TELL ME ABOUT GOOGLE GLASS

Have you heard about the latest phenomenon, Google Glass? Well, if you haven’t, I am about to blow your mind.



Google Glass Head-set

Set to launch at the end of 2013, Google will release Google Glass, augmented-reality wearable glasses where you will be able to essentially do anything: surf the web, record a video, take a picture, skype with a loved one, see the weather, etc. all in front of your eyes for you to literally, not figuratively, look at. To sum it up very simply, anything you could ever think of that would be able to do on a smartphone will be converted into this super-technology savvy headset by just simply asking “Glass” to perform a certain function just as you would with Siri on Apple’s iPhone. Here is a very well-crafted and self-explanatory video of what Google Glass would entail created by Google themselves. My jaw seriously kept dropping further and further into the video because I could not get over that this may be the future of mobile phones or, better yet, technology in general:

http://www.google.com/glass/start/how-it-feels/

Here are also some pictures I got off of Fast Company to help you get a better idea of what Google Glass is about:



Reading Music

Sending a Picture

Traveling through the Airport

Every media, advertising, and technology news website as well as companies that believe they would benefit from this product has gone bonkers over these innovative glasses. Just to name a few:

Warby Parker, the most recently hyped fashion glasses company is looking into helping Google design fashionable versions of this headset for consumers to wear.

Jet Blue, one of the most popular airlines and known for clever advertising campaigns such as it’s 2012 “Election Protection”, supports this product and says that it would allow consumers an easier way of accessing the most up-to-date information regarding gate and departure times as well as baggage claim information

Agency Republic, a marketing agency in London, says that these glasses will help with 911 calls for people who may be at the scene of a medical situation or an investigation.

Talk about a purple cow….

But of course, there is a catch.

PRICE MAY SHATTER GOOGLE GLASS

Although this product is predicted to be the most popular and sought-after product of the 2013 holiday season, the price may be a problem for Google considering the price of these glasses are predicted to be around $1500, a very big chunk to your holiday budget if you ask me.

So will this product sell at that price point? Well, one could argue that people are loyal customers to Apple, who sells $1500+ laptops as well as has the most expensive tablets on the market and even with all of these expensive aspects, Apple is still popular.

However, in my opinion, I think this product will have trouble in the market because I simply do not think the timing and price are right. I believe that timing is everything, especially for the launch of a product like this that no one has ever experienced before. I believe that this product would be a very popular and sought-out product maybe in 2020 and not 2014. I think people are still adjusting to their smartphones and are comfortable with it – they have Siri to tell them what they want to see or hear. I could be completely wrong but I think Google should hold off a couple of years before launching this product.

However, because they are predicted to launch this product this year, they need to lower the price. I think that because this is such an over-the-top product that no one has ever seen before, it must be priced way lower than $1500. I believe people will be more inclined to purchase something that they feel comfortable with because it is familiar – this is a foreign concept, especially to someone like me who is pretty tech savvy. People are willing to spend $500+ on an Apple iPad because it is just a bigger version of their smartphone or their iPod that they are completely comfortable and familiar with. Google Glass is a product completely by itself – a ginormous purple cow.

What do you think?

Works Cited

http://www.fastcompany.com/3006477/if-we-had-glass-what-wouldnt-we-do

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57570779-1/confirmed-google-glass-arrives-in-2013-and-under-$1500/

https://www.fastcompany.com/multisite_files/fastcompany/imagecache/inline-large/inline/2013/03/3006477-inline-jetblueglassinline.jpg

https://www.fastcompany.com/multisite_files/fastcompany/imagecache/inline-large/inline/2013/03/3006477-inline-signlanguageglassinline.jpg

https://www.fastcompany.com/multisite_files/fastcompany/imagecache/inline-large/inline/2013/03/3006477-inline-guitarglassinline.jpg
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STILL IN A TIME WARPAfter reading the article, “The Courage to Advertise Without Female Stereotypes”, on AdWeek this morning about how Target, Huggies, and Tide have done a great job at not maintaing offensive female stereotypes in their latest adverti… Continue Reading →