Sunday, February 23, 2014

Blog Post #6: Are You Winning Or Losing?

What do you think about when you are buying something? Do you think about nothing? Maybe you stare blankly at all of the products and play some sort of grocery store roulette, but probably not. Even if you do not think that you are thinking about your purchases much, you still are. As consumers, we constantly are weighing our options, making little decisions about what we value more in that specific situation: value or price. Do we want the “extra duty” window cleaner that will protect windows from filth two times longer but is two times more expensive, or do we want the knock-off brand that will keep windows clean for a short amount of time for less? These are questions that we all ask ourselves, but they are also questions that marketers must ask as well. A marketer is always trying to get inside the heads of their prospective consumers in order to answer these questions, but it may not always work the way the marketer wants it to.

What I am talking about more specifically is called product positioning. A product position is the way a product is defined by consumers on important attributes – the place the product occupies in consumers’ minds relative to competing products. The thing about product positioning that is tough for marketers is the fact that the space that their product occupies in consumers’ minds is not up to them; marketers can only try to impact this. With so many competing products, it is very difficult to occupy a high-positioned spot in the minds of consumers. One strategy that marketers have devised is a positioning map (see Fig. 1 below). A positioning map shows what consumers think of one’s own brand versus competing products on important purchasing factors (such as price and quality). These maps can help marketers see if they are where they want to be or if changes have to be made.


Fig. 1: Positioning Map. Size of circle = market share


Sometimes companies are exactly where they want to be and no changes have to be made. Other times, however, a positioning map can be a wake-up call for marketers. When changes do have to be made to a positioning strategy, it is necessary to revisit the company’s value proposition, which is the full mix of benefits on which a brand is differentiated and positioned.  There are five different types of winning value propositions that marketers should aim for: more for more, more for the same, more for less, the same for less, and less for much less. In order to make sense of this, check out this graphic:

Fig. 2: Winning versus losing value propositions

Here are some examples of each type of winning value proposition:
  •        More for more: The North Face sells high quality jackets for high prices.
  •        More for the same: Lexus automobiles offer high quality vehicles for a lower price than Mercedes or BMW.
  •        The same for less: Stores such as Target that offer lower prices on products that many other businesses carry.
  •        Less for much less: Stores like Sam’s Club and Costco embrace low prices and little service or variety.
  •        More for less: Something that many companies claim to offer, but it is difficult to sustain such a proposition.

The important thing to take away from all of this is that there are many ways to “win” in the minds of consumers. There is no one golden rule to follow when trying to position a product, service, or idea. Choose for yourself, how do you want consumers to value your product? It is up to you. A closing thought and something worth thinking about: the idea of positioning extends beyond products and services; how do you want people to see yourself? How are you going to reach that goal?

Sunday, February 16, 2014

Blog Post #5: The Vital Importance of Grocery Lists


I am going to switch things up this week because I was struggling to find something I really wanted to write about. So this is going to be a hybrid post that is going to be personal but at the same time maybe lay down a kind of mission statement for the readers of this blog. As a college junior, I have been thinking about my future a lot lately. I have been thinking about internships next summer, finishing up college next spring, and my (hopefully) professional career afterwards. What I would like to do with this post is to talk a little about my goals as of this moment. I want to address some goals for this blog (essentially a type of mission statement), for this year, and for the far away future.

BUT WAIT. Before you go back to Facebook or Twitter because you do not want to hear about this random guy-you-don’t-know’s goals, read this at least. I want to get a point in here beforehand. This post is not only to personally help myself, but also to help all of those reading this, and here’s why. Recording your goals in some sort of permanent form can help immensely, and I could not recommend it enough. Recording your goals (especially by handwriting them) makes them concrete, it makes them very real and seemingly that much more attainable. It reminds you about what you are trying to accomplish and motivates you.

Think about grocery shopping for a second: if you make a grocery list, doesn’t it feel pretty good to cross things off of your list once you get them? Doesn’t it feel good to have everything crossed off at the end? I know this is something small, but it could be said that grocery shopping is made up of tiny goals. How many times do you go grocery shopping without a list only to realize hours later that you forgot to get the milk that you have needed for the past four days? Writing down the short-term goals to achieve the down-the-road goals helps you in the end because it allows you to process the steps it will take to achieve a larger goal. It is very possible that you could stall the achievement of that larger goal because you saw it as one big goal and not a bunch of little ones. The point isn’t that you have to write down every single goal at once and look at them multiple times every day, but it is that you can have something to refer back to and see how you are doing because we all lose sight of the bigger picture sometimes.

What am I forgetting this time?


So without further ado, here is a list of short-term goals I have for this blog:
  • ·      Maintain an informal but informative blog that people enjoy to read.
  • ·      Enhance the marketing knowledge of anyone who wants to listen, and even the knowledge of those who thought they did not want to listen.
  • ·      Write material that keeps people interested.
  • ·      Work on creating more interactive posts with things like videos, games, links, and pictures.
  • ·      Get 1,000 page views by the end of April.
  • ·      Get at least 10 subscribers by the end of April


And a list of some more personal goals:
  • ·      Contact companies about internships for this summer.
  • ·      Apply and interview for internships.
  • ·      Get hired for a paid internship that I am passionate about.
    • *I was checking out an internship with Unum the other day, it seemed pretty sweet*
  • ·      Dress more professionally/not like I’m still in high school.
  • ·      Get a gym membership over the summer.
  • ·      Graduate undergrad with honors and a GPA over 3.7.
  • ·      Attend a reputable grad school for either law or business.
  • ·      Do something that I love for a living.


I’ll wrap it up there. As a side note before I close this post out: quantifying goals can make them even more real to you, and it can be a fun challenge. You can even set different thresholds, too (this month I am going to lose 5 pounds, next month I am going to lose 10, etc.). Hopefully this post helped some of you because I know it was certainly helpful to me. I know you never know which way life is going to take you, but having a plan based on a passion certainly does not hurt.

Sunday, February 9, 2014

Blog Post #4: If You Go to College You're Worth 37 Cents

“What? Only 37 cents! I am worth way more than that! I went to college!” you say. Easy there, chief, I am not talking about the value of your life. You are probably worth at least 10 dollars. Okay, okay, maybe you are worth a little more than that. But what am I talking about? I am talking about how schools in higher education, like Saint Michael’s College (where I go), value students in the early stages of the college search when they are merely prospects. I will explain this further later in the post.

College students of the past 10 or so years: have you ever thought about all of the schools that were crazily vying for your attention when applying for college? If not, think about it now. Think about all of the pamphlets you read, all of the emails you received, mailings you read, and all of the college visits that you went on (see Fig. 1 below). At some point it probably all blurred together because of the sheer volume of stuff you were getting. I know it did for me. Now think about the amount of students that each one of those colleges was contacting with the same, pamphlets, emails, mailings, and visits. Yeah, that is A LOT of stuff that these colleges are sending out and a lot of money that they are spending.

Fig. 1: Some of the materials that St. Michael's sends out

Colleges now are competing with each other more than ever. In the recent past, namely with the explosion of the Internet and with it things like email and social media, it has become increasingly difficult for colleges to vie for the attention of prospective college students. There are so many distractions that the contemporary American teenager deals with, so it is tough for colleges to find ways to break through the barriers. Once the colleges do break through the barriers, though, many schools do not want just any student. They want the best students there are.

Now this leads me into what you really wanted to know: why you are worth 37 cents if you went to college. The Saint Michael’s College Vice-President of Enrollment Management, Dr. Sarah Kelly, visited my marketing class this past Tuesday. She talked to us all about the many facets of higher education marketing, namely in light of Saint Michael’s. One of the ideas that she introduced was the concept of the “student recruitment funnel” (see Fig. 2 below). This past year in the United States, there were 4.5 million new college students that became part of the funneling process. Saint Michael’s, a school of around 2,000 undergraduate students, though, is not looking to appeal to all of those 4.5 million. So what Saint Michael’s and Dr. Kelly do is they buy the names of 110,000 prospective students (based on SAT and PSAT scores) who may fit the Saint Michael’s mold. The cost of each one of these names: 37 cents. 

Fig. 2: The funnel that all college students go through

That makes a lot of sense, right? They pay 37 cents and you pay 50,000 dollars per year? There is a lot more to it than that, since colleges spend an exorbitant amount of money on marketing, but it is interesting to think about that for a second.

One takeaway from all this, though, is that current and developing society is becoming an increasingly noisy place. It is incredibly difficult to find out whom your target market should truly be and how you are going to reach them, especially in light of the technology that many of us have at our fingertips. It is more important than ever to think of how to cut through the noise as a marketer, whether you are marketing your personal brand or some other brand. How are you going to stand out and avoid becoming part of the noise?

Monday, February 3, 2014

Blog Post #3: The Marketing Mix and the Super Bowl

I know that I usually post on Sundays, but with yesterday being a marketer’s dream in the Super Bowl, it seems fitting to do a post about the Super Bowl commercials. It also seems fitting because the commercials were about the only (at least slightly) entertaining part of the Super Bowl. Congratulations to the Seahawks, though, they really deserved that win. One more football related thought before moving on to the marketing: why can I never escape the Eli Manning struggle face as a Giants fan? They even showed it when he was not playing…sigh. Anyways, I want to extend my apologies to those who looked for a post yesterday. Hope this post makes up for it!

So in talking about the Super Bowl commercials, I would like to approach them from the perspective of the marketers. As a marketer, there are four very important aspects to consider. These four parts, known as the four P’s, make up what is called the marketing mix. The marketing mix is what a marketer can control in order to influence consumers. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. For the sake of time and to get straight to the point, I have linked each of the four P’s in the previous sentence to definitions from businessdictionary.com that will hopefully help in your understanding. I am going to analyze three different Super Bowl commercials that I found to be very effective in light of the four P’s and their target markets.

*It is important to note beforehand that most commercials will not necessarily incorporate aspects from all four P’s. Most commercials will focus on one, maybe two P’s and attempt to sell the consumer on those.

The first commercial I want to address is the TurboTax commercial called “Love Hurts” (video below). The commercial brings up the concept that the Super Bowl is not actually a national holiday because most of the people watching already saw their team fail to reach the big game. This concept is then likened to watching your “girl” with another guy (named Sean in this case, who is absolutely hilarious) at senior prom. The commercial closes by showing how it is possible to make it your holiday by getting a big refund using TurboTax. TurboTax’s target market is very large in being everyone who is not a Broncos or Seahawks fan, but I think that they were very successful in reaching them through the effective use of product, price, and promotion. I would argue that TurboTax most effectively used promotion and price because the company was able to appeal emotionally to a large amount of people by showcasing a largely relatable experience while also showing that the specific Federal FREE Edition service that they are offering is completely free. The product aspect of the marketing mix was not necessarily the strongest selling point of the advertisement, although it is important.


The next commercial that I am going to talk about is Chevrolet’s “Romance” commercial (video below). Most of us are familiar with Chevy’s tough-guy pick ‘em up truck advertisements, and this one starts no different (I was thinking: “Oh boy, here we go again). It starts out with a man hauling a bull in a trailer with his Chevy with narration pertaining to the man, but then the narration shifts its focus to the bull. The bull, an “eligible bachelor,” is then released into a pen full of cows to the narrator saying “Hello, ladies” as the commercial comes to a close. Chevy’s target market for the Silverado pickup truck is no different than the usual everyday working man, but the company places a different spin on the ad. From a product standpoint, Chevy is able to exemplify the extreme towing capacity feature of the Silverado by showing that it can easily tow a bull in a large trailer. The comical spin on the commercial is unexpected, making the ad even funnier and a good use of the promotional aspect of the marketing mix. While it is funny, the humor does not distract from what is being sold.


My personal favorite commercial that I also found to be the most effective is the RadioShack (called “The Phone Call”) commercial (video below) that starts with the line, “The 80’s called, they want their store back.” The commercial then moves on to show many quintessentially 80’s folks like Hulk Hogan and the TV show character Alf coming in and taking old radios and massive computer monitors. The commercial ends with a transition to a present Radio Shack that has all of the latest technology. The strongest aspect of this commercial comes with the promotion. Most people who watch the Super Bowl lived through the 80’s and will be able to relate to most of the cultural references made, which gives Radio Shack a leg up. Including Radio Shack as one of the cultural references is certainly an interesting idea, as the company then moves on to show that they are changing with the times and becoming a hip store. There were no specific references to product, price, or place in the ad, but the commercial did show that the company does have a lot of contemporary technology products available.


All in all, I felt that this year’s Super Bowl commercials were quite good. The successful ones were able to appeal to emotion and/or showcase some sort of experience that the product or service will provide. The unsuccessful ones, though, were unable to do this because they did not focus enough of their efforts on aspects of the marketing mix. I apologize for not getting to any of the commercials that I thought were bad, but if you want to check them all out, here is a link to Bleacher Report’s analysis of the commercials (videos included). Have a great Monday!