Monday, June 24, 2013


Bridge of Life: Good Creative Save People’ Life


Good creative does not only bring people joy and fun, but sometimes can save people’s life. This is the for Samsung Insurance, which aimed to tell people to cherish their life. The whole campaign took place at Mapo Bridge, a well-known site in Korea due to the fact that there were more than eighty people committed suicide by jumped down from the bridge within five years.  
In this case, how can we prevent this tragedy from happening again? Fence? Nets? Instead of implementing these passive methods, Samsung Insurance chose to talk to people’s mind and heart.

How does that work?

Lights on the bridge sides will be lit up when people go passing the bridge. With light, sentences like “How are you? My friend.” “Go and see someone you miss.” will pop up to the pedestrians.  These sentences play a role of a communicator to these people who seek to end their life. At the same, the sentences also remind them the good things in their life, rather than depression and negative things.

Real Case

After the entire campaign was set up, the company received a letter from a person to show her gratitude of saving her life. She gave up committing suicide after she saw all and lights the sentences on the bridge. A precious life has been saved!

In sum, a good creative can not only bring people joy and fun, but also direct people to their right way. The campaign of “Bridge of Life” is the perfect example!!  

Sunday, May 5, 2013

The Lessons of the Power of Ten



I am really shocked and amazed after I saw the video. Frankly speaking, I have never thought 10s can bring us explore something grand like outer space and something tiny like quark and atom.  The Power of Ten” not only amazed me but also give me some lessons of both my life and Marketing part. 


Life Lessons

 As a student of marketing, it is really easy to meet bottle necks during the process of making up a campaign or marketing project. However, this video taught me to “ re-frame the question”, which means to look at the questions or problems from different aspects. Taking a step forward to the question may help me to learn more about the question and find out the crucial part that I have missed. On the other hand, taking a step back would help to learn more about the related content of the question.

All of these are alike the content in the video, taking a step back or forth allows me to see something big and small, which I think it would be extremely helpful in my future life, especially the moments that I have to make decisions.


Digital Marketing 

From the aspect of digital marketing, video “power of ten” reminds me the importance of UX (Want to learn more about UX? Click here!). I know it is quite a weird connection, but I think every marketer should really apply “The Power of Ten” when they are working on their digital stuff, including mobile apps and social media. In modern world, there are many digital things make people’s lives easier, but just a few of them are easy to use. Apple and Microsoft would be the best examples to support my points of view. Products from Microsoft do bring convenience to our lives, but they seldom provide a good UX at all. On the contrast, Apple devices not only bring convenience but also great UX. Designers would really take a step back and forward to see their product while they are designing to create a digital product that really bring brilliant UX to their users.

In sum, video “the power of ten” really amazed me and brought me a lot of new thought about the my life and marketing. Taking a step backward or forward can definitely help you explore something new about the world!      

Sunday, April 28, 2013


Five Things You Should Know!!!!!


Stop Here and Read! It is all about your Digital Marketing Strategy!


1. Learn your market

This is definitely the first step for the whole campaign. Try to learn more about your market, not only demographically but also psychographically! Sometimes, psychographic can impact your market better.  These data would determine how you are going to reach your customers and how effective can you impact the market. Only when you understand your target market well, you can start moving on to the next steps.

2. Make it engaging!

Since you have known well of your target. It is time to tell a good story and make it engaging for the audience. A good story can make people delighted, moved and even crying. It is all depending on the style of your products and services. The best example would be Dove natural beauty campaign. It tells a story to all women. The campaign itself does not push the products to the audience, but sell the emotion and the concept, which is more acceptable for the target.


3. Stand in the boots of your customers!

Try to provide an awesome UX to your customers. Modern people are getting less and less patient. Never, ever try to test their patience! You might have to make a big payment for that. In my blog, I have written a post about the UX by using the example of Southwest Airline. Take a look at it  and you will learn more about UX. Click here to see the article. 


4. Be alert to the latest event!

Stay alert at every moment! When there is a big issue happening, your brand should always be there. Take Oreo as an example. When 2013 super bowl game blacked out, Oreo quickly posted a picture on Twitter and said”You can still dunk in the dark”. Even though the picture itself does not promote Oreo cookies, it has successfully increase awareness from a ton of Twitter users around the world.


5. Unquantifiable Results

Not everything on the social media is measurable. Yes, things on Facebook or Twitter are trackable. There is a term named Dark Social, which means that some content is not trackable when the content is sent via email or other untrackalbe media. For readers want to learn more about dark social, Futurebook blog has quite a detailed article talks about Dark Social (Click here to see the article)

In sum, five points above are the things that you should before you want to launch a digital campaign, which I believe would be really helpful for you and your company! 

Sunday, April 21, 2013


Dying QR Code and Thriving NFC?


“QR Code is dying?” “QR Code will be replaced by NFC soon!”  With the advance of technology, it is said that QR Code would be replaced by NFC, the modern technology that can help users hold data in their mobile devices and utilize it in many different domains, including paying bills and retrieving information.  Many people nowadays start to complain about the complicated process to use QR Codes.  Take out the phone, download the app, scan and wait, finally the link pops up.



However, I personally think that QR code won’t be replaced by NFC based on some reasons.

Comparison
Below are some basic comparison of QR Code and NFC.

QR Code
NFC
Infrastructure
QR codes use the camera already in the phone and only need a small “QR reader” app to enable the device to support the technology
NFC technology requires special “initiator” hardware that creates an NFC field searching for a “target”, a NFC chip that holds data for the device to pick up.
Reach
There are still very few phones that support NFC on the market
Frequently used in modern market by companies.
Production & Implementation
Generating QR codes is simple once you have a generator. The barriers to adding QR codes are really very low
To implement NFC a publisher must embed a NFC chip into every target
Price
Low (nearly zero)
High

For me, I think QR Code is alike website URL, a way for users to retrieve information more easily. It is not a new technology for people anymore, but it is indispensable for internet users. NFC is undoubtedly a technology that will bring convenience to human’s life. However, the usage of NFC requires high support from technology for users, which is the reason why it still needs some time to reach a high popularity of people using NFC chips.   


Price
Generally speaking, adapting NFC is more costly than using QR Code. A QR Code can be printed with nearly no extra cost for a company. However, to support NFC, a company has to invest high amount of money on hardware updating. For some relatively small- scale companies, NFC wouldn’t be best choice for them due to their limited budget.   

Different Usage
Finally, one of the most important reasons that convince me that QR Code will not be replaced is because QR Code and NFC can actually work perfectly and separately in deferent media. QR Code would works good in some small printed medium, such as cookie packages or magazine.  On the other hand, NFC would work perfectly in the outdoor advertisement.

In sum, based on the reasons of price and usages, QR Code is not going to be replaced by NFC in the future. I think they would work coherently in different mediums. 

Saturday, April 13, 2013


One of the Best! Singapore Airline



What pops into your mind when you hear the name of Singapore Airline? Probably is their super well-known high quality service. Named as number one in almost everyone categories, Singapore Airline is the biggest winner in the 2013 competition by Travel + Leisure, which is one of the most prestigious awards around the world. However, besides to its considerate and comprehensive services, I think the success of Singapore Airline can also be contributed to its great UX from the official website and apps. Below I am going to talk about Singapore Airline’s official website and its mobile apps.















Comprehensive Content & User-Centered

Believe it or not, Singapore Airline website has concluded everything that you need in its website. With well-organized categories, audiences can easily find the information they need through the website. The left side of the home page is a part that allows customers to search and book tickets in a more efficient and accurate way.  On the right side, it shows out all the discount information and flash news of the Airline Company. More surprisingly, even though the website language has been changed into the Chinese user page, all the content are correctly translated and remains its comprehensive information. Many other airline websites fail to make. Once their website language have been switched into Chinese, it would lose many content and some words might been even mis-translated. Thus, I think that is quite a huge achievement of Singapore Airline.

Elegant Style

I personally like the design of the website because it has infused with some Singapore local culture, which makes the website looked extraordinary and elegant. The whole website is composed mainly with blue and gray. At the background of the website, it also has Singapore’s traditional pattern that put more positive effect on the whole web design.  

Like us or Follow us

Under the website, there are two hyperlinks for users to like the airline company on Facebook or follow them on Twitter easily, which I think is one of the most important parts of the website. With the hyperlinks, the company can arise more awareness through social media. It also provides more opportunities to the company to have more interaction with their consumers, building stronger relationship and loyalty.   


Now I am going to talk about the mobile app named 
SQ Mobile.

The official App released by Singapore Airline has almost every function that a customer need. However, compared to its website, it seems like it still has a huge room to be improved. After being updated for many times, the app still fails to remember the user’s log in information even though it has been told to remember it. As for myself, I can totally understand how annoying it is to staring at a small screen and trying to type in the long password with the dumb fingers.  To achieve the great UX, SQ Mobile still has a long way to go! 

<-- Click the pic to see more comments of the app! 

Sunday, April 7, 2013


Emotion Does Make for Great Web Design


Today, the whole story has to begin with this guy…..


In 1776, Thomas Jefferson has declared that “All men are created equal”. However it seems like he forgot to finish in his sentence that “but all men are created with differences!”  

As a marketer, to cater the need of the consumers, we have to identify the segmentation of the consumers who share the commons and differences.  Each of our customers has demographically different (no matter significant or subtle); including gender, income and age, even various psychographic conditions. Only expressing with the different and personalized information and technique can a marketer easily draw the attention and talk to the target audiences more accurately. Thus I totally agree with the Kare Aderson’s viewpoint that understanding the science behind human thought is crucial to designing an idyllic experience on the web.  Below I would like to illustrate my points of view through the example of the Southwest Airline.


What Exactly Does The Audience Want from Us?  

First of all, we have to identify some background of the target. People go to Southwest Airline website might expect to find some cheap –priced ticket with high quality plane service that is also attracted by the brand image “Luv Fun” of Southwest rather than Virgin Airline that emphasize the high technology devices they provide. Here is how the Southwest Airline looks like.



















User Centered

What do people look for when they are searching on the southwest website? Airplane tickets, of course.    To help their consumers retrieve the information faster, the company place the discount promotion at the center of the page. Thus, on the time the customers open the web page, they can immediately acquire the info and click the hyperlink to get more further information. What’s more, Southwest also provides customer to do quick ticket search at the left column on their official site, which offer more efficiency for consumers to find suitable tickets to satisfy their need. Finally, all the information, including flights, cars and hotels, on the southwest website does match the traveling needs of their consumers.

Don’t Be Annoying!

One of the reasons why I pretty like the website is that they are not annoying at all! As for many other websites, once you open their pages, tones of pop-up advertisement would block your view from the original site that you want to see. So far, I have not meet this problem on the Southwest website, which is kind of relief to me!

Clean and Organized Layout

With blue and white colors, the webpage of Southwest Airline always make me think of sky. Their website is clean and organized. With clear categorizing system, the consumers would be able to find information within a short time. Moreover, the website leaves some blank spaces, which help the website to be seem more spacious than it actually is.

In sum, I do think that the website page of Southwest Airline does quite a good job on UX for their website that provide comprehensive organized information and clean layout to the audiences to satisfy their needs. 






Sunday, March 31, 2013


Why and How to Make Up a Good Disclosure?


 Caution

This article is not allowed to copy without the permission from the author (and that’s me!) People who break the rule would get a punch on the face from me. (Just kidding!)


 


The  sentences above are a kind of “DISCLOSURE” that we are going to talk about today! A good disclosure is really important for a whole digital marketing campaign since it can help you build higher reputation and keep you away from the trouble.  Since there are more and more information flows on digital media, it is getting tougher for a marketer to make disclosure to be seen by the customers effectively.  In most advertisement, the positive points of the products would be emphasized. However, when the product has side effects, especially the products that is related with human being’s health and property, and the advertisement mention nothing about it, it would cause the manufacturer into a BIG BIG BIG trouble! Thus, it is definitely a crucial issue for people to know how to write a clear and good disclosure for your readers.
Here are three simple rules to make a good disclosure:

The Right Placement

Put the disclosure at the spot that is easy to been seen, especially at the place that is near to the claim. In modern days, disclosure is often placed at the end of the advertisement with a vocal sound reading all the content of the disclosure to draw your attention.

 

Make the Disclosure Truthful and Conspicuous

Tell the truth to your customers. If you lie, you might get yourself into a big trouble. In Taiwan, there are cases that some medicine manufacturers claimed that their products can help customers lose weight without causing you any side effect. Nonetheless, medicine- users found out that taking the pills might make you feeling dizzy, disgusting and even fainting. Ultimately the company got sued and bankruptcy.

 

Make Repetition

Repeat the disclosure as many times as possible since your audience would not be able to catch up with your information at the first time you show the content of the disclosure (or they might even not notice that).  A digital marketer can repeat the disclosure with the repeated claims as needed. If the marketer has more information to tell the customers, he/ she can even provide a hyperlink to the customers, but make sure make the right label for the hyperlink.

All Rights Reserved

Sunday, March 10, 2013


Statistics can Tell: the Most Powerful Social Media

What can Frontier Airline do for their future Marketing? 

Make a guess that which social media earn the highest rate of trust from customers. Facebook? Twitter? Surprise! It is Blogs! According to the website “Micro Explosion Media”, blogs have 31.3% possibility to successfully influence the purchasing decision of the market; meanwhile Facebook acquires 30.8% and Twitter gets only 8.0%.  Here is my thoughts of the reasons why blogs would earn more trust than other media. First, the author of the blog would be an opinion leader for a certain group of people. Second, too much fake or fact- twisted information are now spreading on Facebook, Twitter and other social media.











Author =Spokesperson

A lot of people are unable to make decision on which product to buy or unwilling to try something new during the process of their purchasing, especially when the products have something to do with their property, life and health.  At this time, an author of a blog can be a strong opinion leader because he/she acquires high credibility from their supporters. In some aspect, I think an author play an exact role as a spokesperson. After the author experiences the products and shares it on the website, people would think that since the author has experience it in advance, his/ her comments would be worthy to take into consideration. Afterwards, the credibility reflects to the author from readers would be stronger if the readers find out what the authors’ comments is coherent to their actual usage experience.

Fake & Fact- Twisted Information

Due to the rapid –growth of social media, people now receive explosive amount of information. However, without proper information filter system, social media can easily spread fake information and mislead users. Thus, media users are now getting tired of being cheated by unreal information. This is probably one of the most critical reason why people now have less trust on social media.

Future Possible Marketing Media for Frontier Airline

Frontier Airline is the small-scale company that my group currently put focus on. So far, Frontier Airline utilizes mainly Facebook and Twitter to share stories and discount information, but not on blogs. It is so rare to see people share their actual experience with Frontier Airline on the internet. Since customers would put more focus on real taking experience, plane service and safety when they are choosing Airline Company for their trips, Frontier should invest more money on blogs and have some tour blogs writers share their awesome experience of taking Frontier Airplane. By doing so, it would be more easily for Frontier Airline to acquire higher credibility and awareness. 

Sunday, March 3, 2013

TED Speech: How to Fascinate?

Learn More about Your Triggers

 Speaker: Sally Hogshead

I have to confess that I feel the speech is CRAZY INTRESTING to me! It is so surprising and humorous of author to make a metaphor between marketing and the couple matching website, which really draws audiences’ attention at the beginning of the speech. Sally Hogshead has mentioned a “Nine Second Rule ” in the speech, indicating that people would decide whether paying attention to you within the first nine seconds which refers that a successful marketing strategy has to intrigue the targets’ curiosity in nine seconds. In my opinion, Sally Hogshead herself has applied this rule successfully and tactically when she make asking audiences questions about the experience of being on a matching website as the opening of the speech.


Sally Hogshead
Here is a quotation from Sally Hogshead impress me profoundly- It doesn’t matter how incredible your ideas are, if nobody knows. In the sentence, it reminds me the importance of utilizing media to express ideas accurately to market, which also perfectly explains the cause of the incredibly high charging fee to play a commercial in Super Bowl. With high exposure possibilities, even though it takes more than three million dollars to play an advertisement in Super Bowl, it is a worthy investment for companies.

Triggers Test Results


According to the speaker, the personalities of humans can roughly be separated into seven types, including power, passion, mystique, prestige, alarm, vice and trust. Each word represents the different triggers of the tester, such as power means you might have authority in lead others.
Here shows the individual meanings of each types:
 

 
 
 
 
After the test, I found no surprise to know myself equipped with high proportion of passion and alarm, which means I am relatively enthusiastic toward working, and also tend to be sensitive to any changes in my work. What’s more, the test reminds me the low percentage of my trigger “trust”, indicating that I should show more stability during my work to earn others’ trust. Finally, the test systems sums my personality up as The Orchestrator, standing for a person who is attentive, detail- oriented and dedicated.
 
 

 

 

 

  

 

The Role of Building Personal Brand

Andrew Zimmern who is a well-known host from Bizarre Food is my favorite host around the world. Once people mention him, the tone for Andrew Zimmern would be charming, friendly, creative, brave and humorous. Andrew Zimmern shows all of these personalities in his shows and also on his twitter pages. On his twitter, Andrew Zimmern not only posts every information of weird food around the world to support his image in the show, but also shares some information of helping others to strengthen his image of his tolerance to difference cultures and warmth toward the need. He now has a strong personal brand image that Toyota has him as a spokesperson for their new series of campaign that put emphasis on encouraging customers to purse individual life style.  To learn more about Andrew Zimmern, visit his twitter page here:  https://twitter.com/andrewzimmern

 

Sunday, February 24, 2013


HMV: A Company Defeated by Social Media  

  COMPANY BASIC INFO
  Type                  Public limited company
  Industry             Retail
  Founded             London, United Kingdom (20 July 1921)
  Headquarters     Maidenhead, Berkshire, United Kingdom
  locations            273 stores across 8 countries 
  Area served       United Kingdom, Singapore and Hong Kong



Oh My Goodness “was the first sentence that popped up into my mind on the time I finished reading the articles about the case of HMV. Frankly speaking, I have Never Ever thought the words on social media can actually turn a prestigious company into a notorious firm, even destroy it.  Based on the information offered by the readings this week, we can roughly outline the ups and downs of HMV Company.

First of all, all the negative contents posted by laid off employees on twitter absolutely ruined the reputation of HMV. Even though HMV has deleted all the negative posts and apologized within hours, the company has inevitably left the audiences a really bad brand image. Finally, the causes of the company’s failure can be listed in three main points, including the entry of the downloadable market, reluctance of changing HMV’s core strategy and strong wrong belief in customer’s existing behaviors.  Among those three reasons, I personally take “reluctance of changing HMV’s core strategy” as the main cause that incurred the end of HMV.

Unable to change the core Strategies


For a long time, HMV has positioned the company as a physical store that sold CDs instead of a pure music seller. Because of this reason, the company insistently followed their old pattern of tried and tested marketing. HMV neglected the changes of customer behavior and was too slow-paced in developing their on-line shopping tunnels for their consumers. Since the market customers was getting more used to doing everything through the Internet, the company was unable to compete with iTune and other digital on-line music shoppers, which ultimately made HMV become a loser in this market.  
















Salvageable?

   
No, I don’t think that HMV will be able to revive because of some reasons. The first reason that the digital music market in modern world has become far more competitive than it was. E music is everywhere on the Internet.  (Not to mention the illegal download tunnels). To reposition the company would be a time-consuming and highly cost job, which is also extremely risky for HMV based on its current condition. Second, it has never been an easy task to twist the conceptions of the customer for a bad brand name. Again, this is totally related with time and money. Without a proper brand strategy, the brand name can even become worse.

GoDaddy CEO Shoots Elephant


Here is another case about the power of social media that I would like to share here.

In 2011, GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons has been criticized for posting a picture about his killing an elephant on twitter. Afterward, he even claimed that shooting the elephant was not a crime but a way to keep the balance for the animals. After this incident, Bob Parsons was forced to leave the company he created and was replaced by new CEO Warren Adelman. 
Below is the video about the news that can bring you further information.


 

Sunday, February 10, 2013

My Favorite Brand

Nescafe Dolce Gusto


Machine: 99.99-199.99
Capsules: 9.49 (Per Carton)



To be honest , I am quite a Coffee Person.  Among the various brand in the coffee market, Nescafe Dolce Gusto is absolutely my favorite brand. Capsule coffee machine from Nescafe Dolce Gusto is not only a coffee machine but also a fun provider. There are so many coffee machine options in the market, but the features of Nescafe Dolce Gusto coffee machine has always become my favorite and irreplaceable.



Yummy drinks come in small packages!

Nescafe Dolce Gusto belongs to Nestle Company, which is a company well- known for their tasty coffee for decades.  As a food, being delicious is the basic criteria without any doubt, and Nescafe Dolce Gusto does a really good job in this. To cater different tastes of their customers, Nescafe Dolce Gusto offers many options for their customers, including latte macchiato, espresso, chococino and more. (around sixteen flavors)






Super Easy to Use

The machine is so easy to utilize. All the users need to do is to place a capsule into the machine and that’s it! With this machine, the user can self- adjust the thickness of the caffeine and the milk. The company also provides a coffee machine that can help the customers memorize the customized settings. 
Below is a demo film link of  Nescafe Dolce Gusto on Youtube

Decoration

Everything from Nescafe Dolce Gusto can be a part of the decoration for home. The Coffee Machines have been shaped into elegant and creative style. Some machines look like a penguin. The others might look like a ladybug. With Capsule Carousel, the user can exhibit the bright colors of capsules in home, which would definitely be a great decoration.










Environmental Problems

Since the machine is a capsule coffee machine, some capsules have to be thrown away each time use.  As for me, that is quite a big concern for the environment. Even though Nescafe Company has devoted to make the capsules with environment-friendly materials that would not be the best solution for it. I hope with more advanced technology, Nescafe can provide a better solution for it.