Canadian University Marketing

I'm Off on a 7 Months Journey in Asia and Australia.

2009-08-31T17:08:00.003-04:00

I have been MIA in the last months, and I apologize for that. I've been focusing on working and preparing a trip to South East Asia and Australia.

For all my ozzie readers out there, I would love to go for a couple beers with you guys. I'll be landing in Sydney on January 11th, 2010. I know it's still in a while...

Cheeeeeeeers

Selling Features vs Selling Benefits

2009-04-02T19:56:00.001-04:00

Nowadays, companies have learnt to sell benefits as opposed to features. The automaker industry being the exception.

The idea emerged back in the days when Nestle launched instant coffee. They were originally advertising the fact that it takes less time to make coffee when using instant coffee, which did not work.
From then on they re-thought their strategy and decided to focus on the benefits, not the features. They then advertised it this way:

"instant coffee gives you more time to _______."

At the time, women where the primary buyers in a household and they were sold and finding more time to iron, cook or care for their husband.

It's out of date, I know. Yet it teaches us a valuable lesson that marketing today is not selling a product but rather a solution to a problem.

The Paradox of Choice

2009-03-26T14:07:00.003-04:00

This topic was inspired by a discussion we had in Professor Ken Wong's class on March 26th, 2009.

As marketers we are always pushed to offer more and more, hoping that one of the myriads of product variations will satisfy each customer.

As an advocate of simplicity, I will highlight why giving too much choice can hurt a company:

Post Purchase Reinforcement -- most of us will go out there after buying a product and find others who bought the same one to reassure ourselves in our decision. The more choice is offered the harder for a consumer to do so and hence the harder it is to keep him happy. That's the big issue telecommunication companies are facing today in Canada!

It's expensive to offer a lot of choice (inventory, R&D, employee training)

Therefore the best solution is to build businesses that only serve very niche demands and in turn offer no choice to their clients... just what they came in for. That creates happy customers through post purchase reinformcent and drastically reduces those expensive costs associated with offereing choice.

A.D.D. Brand Messaging

2009-02-20T21:30:00.001-04:00

The best advice advertisers will give you is to include no more and no less than one message per ad. Not two. One.

Our attention spans have significantly lowered over the years since more and more advertisers compete for our attention. Moreover, we live in a world where Millenials have learnt to multi-task, feed on bits and bytes which leads to significantly shorter attention span (ADD).
See the trend?

Twitter -- express your thoughts in 140 characters or less.

Facebook -- ligitimized the one-sentence "wall" messages. No need to write long emails or send postcards anymore.

No more word-cluttered magazine ads.

Successful blogs like Zac's Pigs dont Fly have short and to-the-point posts

Gen Y Will Change Today's Agency

2009-01-26T14:00:00.001-04:00

Today, agencies are hired by companies' marketing departement to advertise -- that's it.

What will happen when Generation Yers will run agencies in a few years?

Here is my take on it:
Increasingly, agencies will have to interact with customers and create a 2-way conversation not good old stuff-it-down-their-throat advertising.
A cartoon that has gone around marketing blogs for a while puts it best:

The New Agency
Let ad agencies play a major part in understanding the customer and having a constructive say in R&D. Agencies will clearly have an interactive element to all their campaigns to help give a face to each company. This dimension will give more responsibility to the agency and force it to really understand who they are dealing with before executing any campaigns.

So what's new? Ad agencies will be responsible for understanding the customer, not the external market research firm. Moreover they will have a seat at the R&D table.

Ken Wong and Travels

2009-01-15T15:59:00.004-04:00

I wish you all a great year 2009!

I've been MIA in the last little while. I came back from France where I had a good dose of internet detox which allowed me recharge my batteries and spend a lot of time snowboarding. HEAVEN.

Ken Wong

This semester I am lucky to have the best and the greatest marketing mond I could have hoped for: Ken Wong. This guy is a guru and I'm honored to be one of his students. Looking forward to that 3-hour evening class every Wednesday night! Inspiration for some of the content of the blog in the next 4 months will definitly come from those power-hours.

Next Year

I have made the decision to travel for 10 months next year in both Asia and Australia. I will announce the creation of a new blog on the topic soon. How I'm gonna go about financing and planning this trip will be packed in that blog, so stay tuned. It will be be more personal than this one has been.

Happy Holidays and Thank You

2008-12-21T13:03:00.006-04:00

Morzine, France
Tomorrow I'm going back to my hometown to snowboard.

I wish you all a merry Christmas and do take valuable time for yourself.

On my part, I got some thinking to do for the year ahead. A couple new ideas for this blog are in order.

Thanks to everyone for following this blog. You've been great. Really.

I found some great pictures of Morzine/Avoriaz on Stubbornella Flickr account. Maybe that will be enough to convince you to come meet me on the hills next year. If you're around do email me.

Photo 1
Photo 2

What's Your Social Currency?

2008-12-19T06:13:00.005-04:00

Courtesy of xav

Gen Y is hungry for it. It comes in all shapes and forms and it's really hard to pin-point.

A touching picture? (BBC's Day in Picture)
An hilarious video? (SNL's best or SXEPhil)
An amazing service? (Pandora-Internet Radio)
A boss you can be proud of? (Richard Branson)
An incredibly inspiring lifestyle? (Tim Ferris)
A personal touch? (responding to each meaningful blog comment or email)

In the end it's about creating a relationship, something I'd want to share with friends.
How do you make a first time visitor come back? How do you turn a first-time buyer into a loyal customer? It's about consistency, being remarkable, being unique and building trust.

So what's your social currency?

I Hate Them But Still Use Them: Credit Cards.

2008-12-17T05:00:00.007-04:00

Here is a case that my friend Patrick Byers would have probably loved to cover in The Responsible Marketing Blog. It's so irresponsible.

The Case
Keep in mind this is just one of thousands of cases of credit card companies exploiting students on university and college campuses. More importantly this is a case of a credit card company hiding behind a marketing firm to do the dirty work.

Lawyers from The Ohio State University Moritz College filed a suite in September 2007 against Campus Dimensions Inc. for:

Failing to clearly state the conditions of an offer.
Using bait advertising.
Using "free" without clearly setting forth all terms and obligations of the offer.
Notifying prospective consumers about a prize or something of value without disclosing any and all conditions necessary to get it.

The reason for such a complaint is that the marketing agency representing a credit card company posted fliers saying "Free Sandwich and Drink" with no further indication that students would have to register for a credit card in order to get what was promised.

This story came to light because 3rd years students and a law professor investigated the company's actions on campus for a full year. Thank you!

My Case
I obtained one of my credit cards the same way: at a campus event where they were giving away a free "Queen's Unviersity" tee-shirt to everyone registering for a credit card which had a beautiful picture of my university on it. Who wouldn't want one?!
In this case, I was a first year student, and they blatantly exploited my feeling of patriotism and belonging towards my university.

My Big Question
Even though I consider myself very aware of misleading marketing tactics, I fell for it. How the hell can a 20-something student sitting behind a plastic folding-table bait me to sign-up for a credit card?
When last year I spent a year in Belgium I couldn't get one since they needed a year's worth of spending history. And I could only get one in a bank. That makes more sense doesn't it?

Those lax financial laws in North America are killing a society... and it started last year with the financial credit crisis.

via

Google and the Future of Business in the 21st Century: Google 411.

2008-12-15T14:28:00.000-04:00

The first reason I write this post to let you all know that you do not need to pay another dime for 411 services. Google has been working on a better version of that service and it's available to everyone in North America for FREE!

Here is the number and their website: 1800 GOOGL-411 (18004664411) and http://www.google.com/goog411/

Check it out and try it because the service is incredible and does not make any use advertising to finance it.

Google and the Future of Business

I think Google is a great example on how to do business in this century. They offer better services than their competitors but more importantly, they offer them for free.

It's a great way to get everyone on your side and inflate your stock price! If I love you, I'll go out of my way to give you business.

Who can hate --even a large corporation -- that gives back so much in forms of services, not money?

What are your thoughts on Google and their future?

Mobile Marketing - Ford Ka is Pushing the Envelope!

2008-12-13T01:34:00.006-04:00

I've spent quite some time lately understanding mobile marketing.
Given the novelty factor, many companies have failed in the early years and today it seems to mature and some companies are truly harnessing the powers and creativity that this medium can offer advertisers.

Go Find It
Ford Ka's 3D mobile marketing efforts stand out. The campaign was launched by Wunderman to announce the release of their new eco-friendly Ford Ka in London, England. The campaign targets young adults and consists of placing Code Stickers in bars, clubs, colleges and on the street. When people aim at the stickers with their phone a floating Ford Ka appears on screen along with a URL: GoFindIt.net.

How is that for catching your attention!

Now, the million dollar question for marketers is how to get your hands on innovative technologies like those? Integrate a R&D department in your agency?
.......did I just spoil a secret?

Thanks to Rick Mathieson and his blog.

Sharing and Protecting Your Ideas

2008-12-11T19:50:00.011-04:00

Courtesy of bartendermagic_com

Generation Yers,

Many of us have lots of ideas.
Many ideas don't stick for long.
And out of those that do only a small fraction actually become reality.

So what do you do with your ideas?
In my case, I write them down on one of my digital Post-it notes and the best ones make it to a Word document. It is important to be methodical and to write them down every time. The quality of all the ideas I've got give me peace of mind for the future because many can be turned into businesses with less than $10,000 in starting capital.

On the other hand, I've made the point a few weeks ago to share all those ideas that I know I will not pursue, on this blog. Seth Godin's latest post tackles this concept of selling vs sharing ideas. So I encourage everyone to share their ideas.

My Idea on Idea Protection
Here is a trick my brother taught me to protect your ideas for less than $5. It can make a very strong case against someone who stole it.

Write down you idea on paper and make sure to include as many details as possible. Mail it to yourself, preferably as Priority Courrier (signature required upon delivery). Now your idea is safely enclosed in an official dated package.

If Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss did just that when they sued Mark Zuckerberg for allegedly stealing the source code, they would have made a much stronger case against the giant social networking site.

Youtube Adsense Ads -- How Not to Use Them.

2008-12-10T06:00:00.001-04:00

There is a new movie coming out on December 12th called The Day the Earth Stood Still. The ad agency doing their advertising didn't get the memo on how to integrate Youtube Adsense Video with their viral material.

Clearly they spoiled the 2 minute video with the ad on the side. It defies the purpose of attempting to spread viral material. Doesn't it? Click here, and see for yourself.

Shock Tactics in Advertising -- Russian Real Estate

2008-12-07T14:45:00.001-04:00

Thanks to my fellow Canadian marketer, Jane, for pointing this one out in Dear Jane Sample.

To follow up on my previous post on shock tactics, here is an example of shock tactics being used outside of the realm of the public awareness.

Domu.ru (translated verison), a Russian online real estate service provider, is definitely getting attention and brand awareness because of these ads.

But is brand awareness more valuable than positive brand image?
Is quality more important than quantity? in this specific case?

The service offer and the aesthetics of the site are positive enough to potentially overcome the association I make between their brand and the half-relevant commercials.

This is a twist on old marketing. A high-risk marketing initiative in North America yet something that might work in Russia. Only time will tell.

What do you think?

My 2 Cents on Mobile Marketing -- Let Me Unsubscribe

2008-12-05T20:00:00.002-04:00

Courtesy of geekologie.com

3 Reasons why mobile marketing companies should give me the option to unsubscribe at the end of every promotional SMS.

You will make sure that I want to hear what you're ready to feed me
It's a good way to rate the success of a mobile marketing campaign
Being respectful will go a long way in preserving a positive brand image

My pick of successful mobile marketing and branding campaigns

McDonald SMS Lounge allows registrants to receive free offers on their phone -- Objective and nature of the content is exposed clearly.
Lonely Planet's iPhone application -- improved brand equity and free visibility with branded application.
Ciba Vision Turkey POP SMS coupons -- Eco-friendly alternative to reach out to youths.

Featuring...
A big thank you to Graham Brown, co-founder of Mobile Youth, for naming me one of the top 20 youth marketing bloggers. If you want your daily dose of quality news and insight on the subject go check them out; they've been around since 2001 for a reason.

Mr Brand Ambassador & Mrs Hometown

2008-12-03T17:00:00.002-04:00

Morzine, France. My hometown. Picture from my Flickr photostream.

Brand Ambassadors
Yesterday, I had a lot of fun distributing promotional material for Microsoft's campaign theultimatesteal.ca, but I quickly realized that not everyone can be a brand ambassador.
Not everyone can positively interact with 500 strangers in one day.
There are two-ways for companies to conduct guerrilla marketing and/or promotional efforts. One is to hire a mobile team that will spend a couple days on each campuses. The other way is to hire current students to act as ongoing ambassadors in their respective colleges.

The clear advantage of having existing students is their knowledge of the campus and their existing relationships. The main barrier, however, is the difficulty and resources needed to recruit the right people.

In my case, they did a 10-minute phone interview. That's clearly not enough when you know that good brand ambassadors need to be presentable, good communicators, friendly, self-motivators and reliable.

The Idea
So to save money to ad agencies, let's start a company that specializes in interviewing and cataloguing 10-20 people in each universities, on a yearly basis. Their picture, experience and bio can be shared with companies that need local brand ambassadors. In turn, those companies can be put into contact with each respective brand specialist without going through the hassle of recruitment. This saves companies and agencies time and resources and most importantly, it reduces the risk of hiring the wrong people to virtually 0%.

Self starters, I've identified a clear gap in the market, so get out there and make Brand Specialist ltd. a reality.

[edit: Thanks to Katherine for pointing out an Australian company doing just that called Student Marketing Australia.]

A Real Mystery -- F.E.A.R. 2 Silver Case Advertising

2008-12-01T01:10:00.011-04:00

F.E.A.R 2, a soon-to-be-released first shooter video game has launched, what in my eyes, is probably one of the best use of online communities to create the most original and engaging online ad campaign.

SxePhil, a Youtube blogger, and video game player, that I follow on a regular basis posted the following video

Furthermore, Mike Fahey, a prominent gaming blogger received the same letter and had to pick up the same mysterious case from a nearby storage facility. He wrote about his 'mission' in this post which got tremendous attention from his community.

Here is why I like this campaign:

It is an effective way to reach out to trendsetters in a genuinly exciting way
It engages the followers, online communities and friends
The proper use of suspense is a great tool to stimulate the target market's memory buds

Anyone realize how I got a little excited about this one. Let's find out what will be in the case on December 5th!

[edit made dec. 8th: to find out what was in the case click here]

MTV Switch -- Going Green or Greenwashing?

2008-11-25T18:33:00.008-04:00

MTV is using its strong influence over youths and young adults for a good cause: it's called MTV Switch.

The 'Emerging Hands'

Found on Ads of the World, this is an original way to communicate their message! It is clear and the call to action is there. The two hands holding the sign are controlled by a small submarine around canals in Amsterdam; the sub better be eletric-powered :D

Their Flash Site

Check it out at mtvswitch.org. The flash site is incredibly slow, videos are even slower to load and I found very little interesting content. I don't see how this site will positively change visitors' habits towards being more environemtally-friendly. The fact that the site is all show and no content is a very big sign of a hollow campaign aimed at increasing their image, not the planet's!

TV Ads

MTV Switch 2008: Flush Less

MTV Switch 2008: The Green Song

MTV Switch 2008: Real Life's Better - Better

My Thoughts

Personally, I find the campaign to be a big PR push with little meat behind it; what saves them from getting bad press is Oglivy's creativity! Two of the ads had a clear call to action: the Emerging Hands and the Flush Less TV ad. However, the other TV ads attempt to drive traffic to their website, which seems to be the focus point of the campaign. Since the site is so weak, the whole campaign lost its credibility.

In conclusion, and to make good use of Stephen Colbert's lines: the tip of my hat goes to Oglivy for a great campaign and the wag of my finger goes to MTV for attempting to greenwash me and exploit the green movement to help their image.
Actions speak much louder than words, and all I saw were words.

What do you guys think?

Microsoft and Canadian Students -- A love affair?

2008-11-21T20:38:00.002-04:00

Who's targeting Canadian students?
Microsoft is working with Youthography, the leading Canadian 'youth marketing' agency, to market their full Microsoft Office package of 9 products at a very advantageous price. Microsoft Ultimate Steal offers all their products at a 91% discount to Canadian students, the product sells itself.

Is Microsoft trying to recapture their dropping market share on university campuses?

Postering and Un-postering
I'm currently working with them as a brand ambassador at my university to execute their integrated marketing campaign over the course of a few weeks. We do everything from online viral marketing, postering and promotional item distribution. Check Adjoke's post for an example of one of the online viral material that we spread across canadian college student communities.
So we plackareded the university with the posters that we were provided with. The idea was to tease students for a week with the following poster and then release the website address on a sticker the following week.
However, a week later all canadian brand ambassadors had a new task: to take the posters down!

The poster

The sticker

So what's wrong with it?

The kid on it looks very young and many university students may have problems relating with him.
The two-step campaign did not create suspense, it created frustration because the advantageous deal was put out there without the site to access it.

What's your take on it?

I'll receive the new poster in a week, so stay tuned to find out what it will look like...

Creativity Outside the Agency -- Pronto Condoms

2008-11-17T19:40:00.005-04:00

Clearly, "the quickest way to get it on".

What do you think about Pronto Condom's R&D efforts?
I meant to feature this example because it has real value in showing that all aspects of the marketing mix deserve attention. I think that even though the innovation itself will solve some men's 'condom frustration', what drives sales is the simple fact that they are different in an industry where all players virtually sell the same product.

Why are they only in South Africa?

Thanks to Ideate for pointing this one out.

The Cigarette is Dead -- Public awareness campaign at its best

2008-11-12T15:47:00.008-04:00

As I have said before, I want this blog to become a treasure box of good and successful ideas as well as provide the right insight to marketers looking to target students. On that respect, public awareness and anti-smoking campaigns do not have the greatest track record when it comes to convincing teens and young adults that cigarettes are not cool.

I feel very strongly about the issue since I have stopped smoking since September 9th, 2008.

The Cigarette is Dead is a great example of a successful way to tackle such issues with teens and young adults. The 'movement' was born in Colorado as an initiative funded by Amendemant 35 and created by STEPP and Cactus ad agency.

The campaign and movement makes use of many channels to create the biggest impact possible: to convince and spread the message! They used some mass-media media to spread the message such as TV and billboards. However, their recipe for success was in part rooted in the fact that they painted murals, stenciled sidewalks and handed out promotional material on university campuses -- guerrilla-style.

What makes this campaign a success?

The campaign feels like its grassroot and rebellious, which is the feeling many are after when starting smoking.
The perpetrators of such a movement will be perceived to be cool trend-setters in the eyes of the target because the face of the movement are youth (campus teams).
The concept of higher authority being involved (parent organizations or state bodies) does not come into question because of such a deliberate use of advertising channels.
Claiming that 'the cigarette is dead' uses social approval cues as opposed to rationale which is much more impactful because smoking, in essence, is not a rationale decision.

Ambiant Ads

TV ad -- used for TV and projections on buildings

More photos from campaign/movement on Flickr.
Thanks to Responsible Marketing Blog's post for pointing out the campaign.

The Best Way to Target College Students! Honestly?

2008-11-11T18:35:00.008-04:00

While browsing through Capital C's blog I came across this online study conducted by Exact Target and Ball State University. It depicts the most useful types of advertising according to college students. I've always thought that getting insight from one's target market is best, but come on, what is this study good for?

Does it really evaluate the usefulness of any of those medium?
Isn't there a big f*cking gap between what one perceives to be effective and what is actually effective?
Isn't the list representative of the exposure level to each ad medium? TV has forced-upon ads whereas the Internet doesn't.

Now I'm curious, does this have any value to marketers? Did I miss something? I might...

Low-budget Entrepreneurship and TalentEgg.ca

2008-11-10T17:56:00.003-04:00

This post will be a little off-topic as the entrepreneur inside me wants to share some insight through a couple of great cases. As the founder of FreeFolder, a company that I put on the back-burner for a while, I felt the need to point out a growing philosophy amongst Web 2.0 entrepreneurs.

Start-ups: turning lack of resources into strengths
For those of you who don't know yet, I'm a big fan of Tim Ferriss' thoughts & approaches about starting and running businesses. As he puts it best, having few start-up resources "forces you to be clever, to dissect problems instead of throwing cash at them, and to innovate instead of imitating better-funded competitors." Furthermore, Jack Ma, founder of alibaba.com, commented on his website's IPO of $26 billion saying the following:"there were three reasons why we survived. We had no money, we had no technology and we had no plan. Every dollar, we used very carefully."

TalentEgg.ca
That brings me to Lauren Friese's venture called TalentEgg which I fully back and support. It is a job search website that specializes in putting Canadian graduating university students directly in touch with firms looking to hire them. For many university graduates, differentiating themselves from the thousands of graduates is hard, which is where TalentEgg comes handy. The site allows each student to create 'Talent Cards' to let companies know a little 'extra' about them such as a personal story, a travel experience or simply some words of wisdom. Companies are starting to recognize the value in such a concept in an era where personal branding is becoming more and more important. Lauren explains that "Talent Cards give graduates the freedom to show employers why their life experiences make them a great fit. They are the 3-D version of Resumes."

Talent Egg and Organic PR
Lauren documented her journey starting the site and how she used a $12,000 start-up budget in a year time to set-up, market and grow TalentEgg. With such financial limitations, she was forced to turn to organic PR and exploit Web 2.0, word-of-mouth and approaching the right people in order to get free (and genuine) visibility in the press, on TV, at conferences and online. Her PR exposure is referenced here.
In our email conversation, she highlighted how she "very much believes that 'organic' word of mouth via PR [and] 'being remarkable', is MUCH more valuable than buying ad space. Organic marketing has credibility, bought marketing/advertising has none." Moreover, she chose to "compete [by] being special" and making graduating students look special.

To wrap up this post, I encourage every student, wishing to stand out in the eyes of recruiters to register on TalentEgg, as well as every company looking to find the right talent to post on TalentEgg.
Lauren, best of luck in your eggciting journey.

Remember that Microsoft and Nike both started with less than $10,000 in start-up capital.

Award Winning Guerrilla Marketing -- Toilet Plungers as Ad Medium

2008-11-08T20:52:00.012-04:00

Toilet Plungers?
At the Marketing Magazine 2008 Innovation Awards, Colour Creative Persuasion Inc. received the gold prize in the "targeted marketing: young adults" category for the work they did for student-geared Landlord Lou.

The Campaign
It consisted of placing 3,000 toilet plungers around Halifax, Fredericton, Moncton and Saint John in New Brunswick which all had the website's URL. To leverage the effectiveness and buzz of the campaign, Colour Creative put up posters and took up a few ads in urban weeklies encouraging students to find the plungers -- treasure hunt style. The clear purpose of the campaign was to draw students to their website which had a link to their extensive number of apartment listings as well as some viral videos to help brand themselves as the best landlord in town.

Posters

Microwave

Sex Feens

My Thoughts
The campaign got some buzz on Facebook, Kijiji as well as 7000 hits on their website. So clearly, their objective was attained and their brand image very likely increased as well. Moreover, I admire campaigns targeting students that make smart uses of various media to increase the overall efficacy of it.

But seriously, was it worth putting that much effort into it?

Chewing-Gum Guerrilla Marketing -- Cast you vote with gum.

2008-11-08T15:57:00.007-04:00

This might not be the most democratic way to vote, but it is an incredible way to conduct cost-efficient polls ;D
I found the idea very creative and, even though its a little past the US elections, I could very well see its effectiveness on college campuses for:

Student body elections
Polling peers on any issues
Raising awareness about virtually anything in the form of a vote

Picture taken in South Beach, Miami by berggam. Check out out Gum Election 2008 for more.

Anyone notice how the two anti-Obama supporters did not dare put gum on his face...