My last post concerned the versatility of a logo and its ability to apply to different forms of marketing.  However a logo can't be too flexible. For it might not represent it's product well enough to create a recognizable image.  Unilever is a huge company making many different types of toiletry products, but their company is known more so by its underlings like Dove and Axe.  These smaller brand names make up different variations of the same thing.  The shampoo formula in a Dove product might be nearly identical to the formula in the Axe product.  However the actual company. Unilever, could charge more or less for each version, and have completely different target markets.  This brings to my point. Sometimes it's better to have a parent company controlling your brand and create a whole other name to go for another market. In the case of "Salt Life", It might have been better to create whole new line dubbed "Snow Life", and trademark both under a semi unknown new name.  This way the same company can hit two markets with less risk of disgracing the the whole company's name, if one of the brands fails the original can stay intact.  This is a much better business model than keeping the whole of all products under one brand, and trying to create a versatile logo that applies to all products.  

Today my blog post will touch on the versatility of a company's logo.  There have been many successful brand logos through out history.  However all but a few can fall under the category of versital.  By versital, I mean a logos abilities to be placed in positions the product it represents would never be.  These days, clothing is an incredible resource of marketing for a company to utilize.  For clothing company's it's amazing, for every product you sell, you also create a walking advertisment.  Take "Salt Life", this company has been wildly successful in selling the salt life brand to beach goers every summer.  This is unfortunately a very seasonal venture for the company in some areas.  To combat this, salt life has been releasing winter clothing for people to use in a more seasonal manner, even introducing some camouflage wear targeting hunters.  This branch of the salt life line has been profitable but not at the level of their beach wear.  The logo "salt life" is just not versital enough to be used in another setting and in reality the logo doesn't even make sense.  I cannot blame the company for trying, but why not just use the marketing power of the brand thar already exists to push a new brand owned by the same company that's just developed for the rest of the seasons.  When designing a company logo, I feel this problem can be completely diverted by making the logo distinctive and representative of the product, but loose and versatile enough to market the product in other applications.  Let's take three successful logo examples and compare.  We'll start with facebook.  Probably as simple of a logo as any, it doesn't look quite right anywhere but the Facebook website.  Would anyone want to wear a tee shirt with the facebook logo on it? How about a hat.....on second thought it probably wouldn't fit, or look appealing to any Facebook user.  This doesn't mean Facebook has a bad logo, it just means that Facebook is limited in its ability to market it's name in comparison to other companys.  For instance, Coke Cola. Coke is the 4th most valuable brand in the world and has a slightly more versatile logo than facebook.  Though still not incredibly appealing, Coke is to this day placed on tee shirts and hats, and in the past it was used on coolers and lunchboxes because the logo was designed in a way that made it appealing in other areas besides coke bottles.  This type of marketing has led to Coke being one of the most widely consumed drinks in the world.  Success like Cokes can only be compared to Forbes number one most valuable brand, Apple.  Apple has a logo that is recognizable almost anywhere.  Its a simple chrome apple with a single bite taken out of it. Every apple device ships with a sticker of this apple for the consumer to place wherever they wish.  Lots of people place it on their car, bycycle or backpack, giving apple marketing from the people using its product just like Salt Life.  Now, not many people will be willing to walk around with a hat or tee shirt that has a big chrome apple on it.  However the company's slogan," think differently" is just as easily placed on a tee shirt as coke cola is. The apple brand is flexible enough to be put on something other than a computer, think about other computer companies.  Would you wear a shirt with windows 10 written on it?  Probably not.  How about a hat that said IBM?  Apple and Coke do something that is very important for a company to do in regards to marketing.  They create an attitude and environment for their products that causes their customers to be drawn in with an undying sence of brand loyalty.

Blog post 8

My first blog post spoke of Apple's marketing campaign that uses product disposability in order to generate sales.  This business model spews over into many other markets.  One market being automotive manufacturing.  Volkswagen for example, has a car with a turbocharger and a supercharger installed on the same engine.  Volkswagen touts this as a selling point. An extremely efficient and modern engine that's ahead of its class.  This might be ok if the customer has deep pockets.  However the average person buying a new car probably wants it to be very reliable and cheap to fix when it breaks down.  An engine with two forced induction methods is an extremely delicate setup.  The car might get 40mpg right off the lot, but after hard use, its complicated parts can come out of adjustment and destroy the engines efficiency, requiring precise mechanical adjustment. Often only available at a dealer.  It's no coincidence that the same type of people willing to shell out big bucks at the Apple Store every year will do the same when their Volkswagen hits above 50,000 miles on the odometer.  It's a marketing strategy both companies and many more share.  Trick your customer into buying a complicated and expensive product with the false insight that the product is better because of its complexity.  The product shows its age quicker and the customer buys a new one quicker.  An added bonus is the companies ability to charge a high amount to service the product with the products complexity preventing third party servicing.  With Apple, your buying the logo, with Volkswagen, it's the same story.  

Movie ads

Working at the movies,  I see a lot of different types of marketing.  Probably the biggest place to see marketing at the theater is on the big screen itself.  If a movie is scheduled to start at 7:00, then this really means that the movie starts at 7:20, because we put 20 minuets of previews after the scheduled time in order to attract more customers for our ads.  Not so long ago, these 20 minuets were filled with 90% movie previews and maybe one or two ads for local businesses.  This has greatly changed, now on average, the customer will see no local ads and about ten minuets of previews.  The rest is what you would equate to television commercials.  Now, you can see an ad for anything from toothpaste to Fedex.  Bigger companies have realized the opportunity that sits on the screen of every hometown theater, and boy are they cashing in.  It's actually given customers a little more to watch.  Theater commercials are often more humorous than ones shown on tv.  They can also be longer and can correspond directly with the type of audience that's viewing the movie.  If it's an R rated movie, then theoretically, you can show R rated commercials.  It's also more efficient for the company being advertised.  People tend to pay attention to the theater ads more than the ones on television.  Society can literally fast forward through ads with a DVR.  Movie ads however work out for everyone, the theatre makes money, the company gets advertisement, and the customer enjoys it. Everybody wins!

 No one likes ads.  Or well, I thought I didn't.  I actually considered myself  at one time to be an individual that was immune to commercial offers and recommendations.  This however has changed with the crafty advent of Youtube ads.  I don't know what it is, but I can watch TV all day and won't notice a single ad that plays, much less be interested.  YouTube however shows me multiple ads worth watching every time I go on.  After giving it some thought, I see some differences that explain YouTube's effectiveness.  With YouTube, you get an ad of some sort every time you click on a video, this leads to more frequent ads and thus there is more likely one that I will want to watch, the ads are also controlled by what you have been searching with Google.  This is probably the most prominate reason for my interest.  If I've been looking up woodworking all day, then YouTube is going to show me an ad for Delta power saws.  Cable TV can't do that.  There is also the aspect to YouTube knowing your age.  If I have a Youtube account, then YouTube knows if I'm old enough or not for some more mature, comedic ads that would never make it to television.  I've seen some ads that made me literally laugh out loud, but then again I would sit and think wow, they're pushing it with that one. It's interesting as well, that when watching a movie trailer with YouTube, your prompted and often successfully lured into watching a full second one before you watch the one you wanted.  You get twice the trailer for just the one click.  Seeing all this it's got me thinking, does YouTube exist for the videos or for the ads.  Yep, that ones a no brainer.  Looking at YouTube from a marketing standpoint and its a gold mine. No wonder Google's so rich.  

Blog Post 3

Keeping with the subject of my last post, internet marketing, this post discusses the actual terminology associated with this kind of advertising.  One word for it is "click bait".  Scroll through Facebook for fifteen seconds and you'll see three or four different articles with "click bait" titles.  The title will read something like this, "Most people would throw these old tires away, but what this farmer does with them is amazing!!!".  This article begs you to tap or click on it, promising a wealth of information about repurposing old tires.  However, why didn't the title state just that? "How to repurpose old tires", it's more direct and less dramatic.  The reason for this dramatic title goes back to the term mentioned at the beginning of this post, "click bait".  The author of this article probably doesn't care what the article actually says, because the article doesn't exist for you to read. It exists for the ad that will be displayed below it.  This example I'm using isn't made up either, I've actually seen a very similar post about repurposing old tires, the actual content of the article however was very thrown together and un useful.  One of the "repurposing ideas" suggested making a sort of chair to have in your living room.  Making a chair out of tires is not a very researched endeavor.  Tires smell, and they will give off a black stain if brushed against clothing. Imagine inviting a girl into your home and prompting her to sit on a throne of goodyears.  Have fun buying her new pants and never seeing her again.  If the author of the article knows this, he probably doesn't care.  You clicked on the ad, and his job is done.  Who cares if the article even loads as long as the ad loads and you see it first.  You will get this experience with nearly everything you use on the Internet.  Even articles that are legitimate will carry multiple ads at every possible place on the page. This is the way the Internet works, and in reality, the way any media platform works, ads pay the bills, and the product is what ever gets the customer to see it.  

Marketing Entry

Marketing is everywhere.  Want to have an atmosphere free of advertisements? Go to sleep. Companies have to get their name out and promote their products whilst also having to generate a positive and inviting ad that isn't too pushy with the patron.  Most businesses in this day and age are going into developed markets where brand and company perception is everything. Take the soft drink industry.  Coke and Pepsi are both strong leaders and any company wishing to enter their market must do so by creating an extremely positive perception of their company and product.  There isn't much physical innovation to be made in the soft drink industry, so any company wishing to compete with Coke and Pepsi must do so with innovations in brand advertising and customer perception. Both tasks would be extremely daunting considering both Coke and Pepsi have high brand loyalty.  Thus, a company entering this market or similar markets would need to create brand loyalty without over advertising to the customer.  This brings me to the point of this blog.  Remember the IOS/Droid game "Candy Crush"? Very popular game with lots of people playing.  I can remember seeing random ads for this game on my phone and the whole internet in general.  This subtle advertising,(and clever coding of an addicting game) propelled this game past the thousands of other games on the app stores and made the developers tons of money through in app purchases and advertising in the game itself.  However with the success of the game, came more marketing. The developers wanted this game on every mobile device eligible to download it.  The game became aggressively marketed at every available outlet.  Soon every app that displayed third party advertisements had a candy crush ad.  It got to the point where the ads were so well known that they didn't even say "candy crush", they just had the same background with the word "click here" on the ad.  This pushy and in your face advertising turned a lot of people away from the game and, for the people who had already downloaded it, gave them an offer for a product they already had at every corner of the Internet.  For me personally, it turned an indifferent product for me into a product I despised seeing because I seen it every time I got on Facebook, ifunny, or used any internet connected app.  I became sick of the game without even playing it.  Fast forward to now, it's still a relevant game, but it's not what it used to be and for the most part it's because of the aggressive advertising.  How does this relate to someone in the soda industry as mentioned before? The lesson learned with this game actually applies to anyone entering an industry with a lot of competitors.  It's essential  to differentiate your product from other competitors, especially at start up.  But taking it too far kills brand loyalty and stops the creation of new customers.  If you see an ad for "Wonder Cola" around every corner you will eventually try it.  However after you do and everyone else does, they're gonna have an impression of your product and whether it's a good impression or not, perception will decline if advertising is taken to the level seen with "Candy Crush".