Ray in Academia

A Great and busy week here at NAIT! Student elections start today, have a look at the Nugget to read your representatives bios and vote!

I saw yesterday Research In Motion (RIM) dropped the price of their playbook to $249.00. Last month it was HP that dropped the price of their IPad competitor to $99 and $150. I’m wondering how much longer it will be before Motorola (Now owned by Google) dropped the price on their Xoom, after all it seems to me that Google can really use their Tablet as a loss leader and make up the revenue through Internet advertising. With that in mind you might want to hold off on asking Santa for a new Nintendo this year, the Tablets seem way more function and a lot of the games are free!

One of my favourite quotes comes from a speech given by Theodore Roosevelt in France called, “Citizenship in a Republic“. In his speech, from 1910, Roosevelt speaks about some countries we still recognize today.

Under other forms of government, under the rule of one man or very few men, the quality of the leaders is all-important. If, under such governments, the quality of the rulers is high enough, then the nations for generations lead a brilliant career, and add substantially to the sum of world achievement, no matter how low the quality of average citizen.

But his speech is more about the opportunities, responsibilities and challenges of living in a democratic republic, which we can often forget…

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

What inspires you? Don’t let the critics hold you back.

Steve Jobs responds to a critic: (Link)

Follow me closely on this one …

In marketing it is understood that value is created through the use of what we call the 4 P’s; Product, Price, Place, Promotion. Promotion refers to communication, after all what good is it to create a better “mouse trap” but no one who needs a mouse trap ever hears about the new trap. Typically we think of communication in the form of T.V. Advertising, Personal Selling by a sales rep, Direct Mail, and even Public Relations, however we are seeing new forms of non traditional communications such as; Social Media, Public Art, Websites and Mobile Phones. Giving consideration to what “medium” or “form” of communication will be most convient and pleasant for our target market is important I have been giving additional consideration to the intent of the message.

 BJ Fogg from Stanford University has suggested that we need to see a convergence of three things for a behaviour to occur motivation, ability and a trigger (http://behaviormodel.org/), “When a behavior does not occur, at least one of those three elements is missing.” 

With this in mind I suggest we can further define each of our communication forms further by defining its intended function. Further, ability is simply being able to do the thing so I will exclude it as something we can not change as a result of communication. Which leaves us with Motivation and Trigger.

BJ Fogg’s research in behaviour would imply that we should be able to group our communication messages as either to motivate or to trigger. If indeed this is the case (and it certainly makes sense to me) an understanding of Dr. Fogg’s work in behaviour is certainly worth a marketers time.

Every year millions of people tune into the Superbowl. Some watch it for the love of the game, others (like me) watch it just to see the commercials. I think the Superbowl has created competition among big brand names over the years. Every year millions of people become critiques. Some may actually be qualified to test the overall effectiveness of the commercials and some may be simple lovers-of-advertising like me. But on this day, everybody has a thought to add.

Thus being said, here are my two (American) cents about my favourite commercial for the 2011 Superbowl.

I prefer commercials that touch my heart. This is exactly what this commercial did for me. I may not fit their target market but the commercial itself was powerful enough that I wanted to spread the word about it. It touched me on a human level about the struggles that the city of Detroit has been through. Despite these troubles and hard times they always had a heart of steel, it was delicate, useful while at the same time being tough and strong.

The city of Detroit is often forgotten because it has been destroyed on so many levels, but the commercial showed the viewers that so many wonderful things have come from the city of Detroit. This commercial not only tries and sells a Chrysler vehicle but it tries to sell the city. Maybe I’m biased to the commercial because Eminem is in it and I think he might be one of the sexiest men on earth. (Don’t judge me!) Even Eminem himself came from the city of Detroit and look at his stardom and his influence in the music industry.

Chrysler’s target for the 200 was to create a vehicle that screamed luxury but the key aspect would be it’s affordability. It wants to cater to the needs of those roughly in the ages of 25-35. I also feel like they are catering more to the male than female demographic.

On the Forrester Research they offer a Social Technographics tool.

I entered in: age range of 25-34, United States, male. These are the results I got.

The majority of their target market are Spectators. Spectators are categorized by the following characteristics:

• read blogs
• watch video from other users
• listen to podcasts
• read online forums
• read customer ratings/reviews

For Chrysler, the best way to tap into the thoughts of their target market for the Chrysler 200 is to watch what is being said about this vehicle online. They should be monitoring blogs, monitoring videos, monitors ratings and reviews. After gathering that information they can see what consumers are saying. If positive things are being said about this vehicle then they have a high chance of capturing the loyalty of this target market. They need to keep a constant eye open on what is being said about this vehicle.

I think the uniqueness, creativity, heart and soul that went into this commercial is a great first step. If this commercial generates great buzz, then word of mouth will spread. Once this spreads, they have a high chance of capturing the attention of the Spectators. The intention of this commercial was not to generate sales as quickly as possible. The return on investment Chrysler can get from this is by capturing the attention of millions. By creating positive buzz about this commercial they can inform their target audience about this new vehicle.

Spectators can be the most influenced by the words of others because they spend much of their time online reading rather than contributing. If Chrysler is able to monitor, listen, and watch for the things being said about this vehicle and the company overall then it can have a positive influence on its intended audience for the Chrysler 200.

Follow Andrea on Twitter: @caughtintheflow

Andrea’s Blogs can be found at: http://caughtintheflow.wordpress.com/

So I began my MIS (Management Information Systems) classes this semester with a couple of videos. The first is called “A Vision of Students Today” (Link). My understanding is that it was created by a number of students at Kansas State University and their Instructor Michael Wesch. It was a really nice way to begin a discussion on how I can make our classes more engaging. 

After that brief discussion we watched a second video, “Changing Education Paradigms” which was actually animated by RSA Animate and narrated by Sir Ken Robinson (Link). Again we had a very interesting discussion, this time about Divergent Thinking. After the brief discussion we did a little exercise, “how many uses for a brink can you think of, and don’t limit yourself in any way”. The results were very widespread in terms of the total number of uses each student came up with.

It was an interesting to me to tie together the idea of “the jobs of tomorrow likely don’t exist today” from the first video (think of Facebook, Google, Adwords, Groupon, and other tech companies). With the idea of divergent thinking from the second video. To conclude that we have to think of the tools we are learning about in class, understand how they can be used, but not limit ourselves to just their traditional uses because the use you suggested for your brick might be the job of tomorrow. And with that thought let MIS (Managment Information Systems) be your brick and let’s spend this semester discussing some of its uses.

So let me ask you the reader, “How many uses can you think of for a brick?”

Have you seen the new site qwiki (www.qwiki.com)? I actually think it is quite an interesting evolution of wiki’s in general. Have a look and let me know what you think..  Do you think showing this in a classroom environment can contribute to the subject? What about for Auditory Learners?

What will a marketing budget of half a Billion dollars buy you?

Get ready for the Xbox Kinect product launch starting next week. (Link)

I’m taking a class here at NAIT, “Best practices in eLearning”. Within this class there is a link to a YouTube video, “A Vision of Students Today” (link).

The video and the course has me thinking and now I’m looking for your feedback.

What is the most important skill a college (or university) professor can develop before becoming a professor? Or what is the most important skill a professor should have?

Have you seen Melinda Gates Ted video “What nonprofits can learn from Coca-Cola” ? If not have a look, nice job! (link) I found it thought provoking when she was speaking of how Coca-Cola uses aspirational marking to sell their products and how more nonprofits should consider the same strategy, more about the “gain” rather than the “pain” motive.

I read an article on salesstar.com about the pain vs. gain motivation for sales (link). In the blog posting they  say buyers are three times more motivated to avoid pain rather than to gain something. I can see this happening in business to business purchases, where conservative buyers are often rewarded with long (perhaps uninspiring) careers. But what about the Business to Consumer side? Personally I’m a glass is half full type of guy. In other words I presume most of my consumer purchases are made in regards to some gain. There are some to avoid pain, usually these are the unsought products like my insurance payment, utility bill, or other household bills, but the majority of my consumer purchases I perceive I make for the gain.

How about you? 

On a side-note, I seem to recall a story about a Sherpa carrying a heavy pack up the side of the mountain, following some tourists up the side of a mountain and their Sherpa’s. This fellow laboured under his heavy backpack which was more of a woven vase then a backpack. In bare feet he climbed behind the expedition and as he did so the climbers began to speculate what might be in the backpack. Something of great value no doubt for someone to labour so long and hard carrying it up a mountain. When they reached the summit after taking in the awe inspiring remarkable view the climbers attention turned back to this local climber and his wares. The climber opened his backpack which he had so rock-steadily carried up the mountain. Within the bag was cans of Coke!? immediately the tourists said Coke must be evil for making this poor man labour up the mountain to sell cokes to the tourists at the summit. I think this video hints at how Coke provides opportunities for locals in developing countries to become micro entrepreneurs. 

Things are not always what they first appear to be…