Facebook open up Messenger to marketers

Facebook open up Messenger to marketers

By Vergil DAI

Over last few years, Facebook is trying to make it easier to get in touch with people over Messenger. Also Facebook has made no secret of its plans to open up Messenger to marketers. Recently, Facebook succeeded in providing a more convenient way to start chatting. Facebook unveiled three new features for its Messenger App including Messenger Codes, Messenger Usernames and Messenger Links.

For individuals, it means a more convenient way to find and chat with their friends. As Mark Zuckerberg said Messenger Codes contribute to “no more misspelled names or mistyped phone numbers”. Also it people will no longer have to ask for someone’s mobile number or add somebody as a friend before starting a chat.

The larger impact was on brands. Messenger Codes offers a new method of social media marketing. Tuten and Soloman (2015) identified nine social media marketing activities: voting features, syndicated content, and 3rd party social networking sites, blogs, user-generated content, RSS Feeds, Co-Hosted Online Communities, Micro-blogging and word of mouse. Now, this theory may need to add a new activity, which is direct conversation. Messenger Codes allow brands to display codes that can then be scanned by users in order to start up an instant conversation via the one-on-one messenger platform. With the use of the instant and direct conversation, brands could deal with customers’ queries and provide customer services. “It will provide an extra touchpoint to connect with consumers before buying a product and can have a positive impact on brand perception and loyalty,” says Emmanuel Arendarczyk, managing director UK and France at digital marketing agency NetBooster. Meanwhile Messenger Codes have huge impact on live marketing campaign and product package. Because Messenger Codes is a more convenient way for customers to communicate with brands, brands will be likely to include a code image in their live marketing campaigns. Also, some brands may also make adjustment of the package of their products especially for electronic products, as subsidiary of instruction book.

But Messenger Codes can also lead to negative impacts. Because direct conversation service is totally new, companies may not have enough employees and trainings to deal with consumer queries well. If they fail to understand complex consumer queries, it can lead to bad brand image.

Because social media is commonly used nowadays, proper social media marketing tend to be more and more important. Facebook’s Messenger platform now has more than 900 million active monthly users, and the number will be larger for Facebook and Twitter. Forbes (2013) conducted a survey on of recommendations and purchases, and the result shows that approximately 42% consumers purchased the item based on a recommendation of someone that they said they did not know very well. It means social media do Influence consumer buying behavior. Funk (2013) also figure out the major benefit for social media marketing is effective and efficient communication between brands and consumers.

Actually, China can be regard as the pioneer of social media marketing. The new tool in Facebook Messenger has already been used in Chinese social media WeChat three years ago. In China, even some small business such as restaurant and small shop make use of the QR code. With the use of Wechat QR code, consumers can have direct conversation with shops to answer questions or even make order and payment.

From what has been discussed above, it is essential for big brands to make use of Facebook Messenger new features, as a part of their social media marketing campaign. Meanwhile social media platform companies could learn from each other in order to provide a more convenient platform for marketers.

https://www.marketingweek.com/2016/04/07/facebook-opens-up-messenger-to-brands-as-it-launches-new-scannable-messenger-codes/

https://www.marketingweek.com/2016/04/13/what-brands-should-know-before-exploring-facebooksnewfeatures/

Tuten, T. L., & Solomon, M. R. (2015). Social media marketing (2nd ed.). London: SAGE Publications.

Forbes, L.P., (2013). Does Social Media Influence Consumer Buying Behavior? An Investigation Of Recommendations And Purchases. Journal of Business & Economics Research (Online), 11(2), pp. 107.

Funk, T. (2013). Advanced social media marketing (2013th ed.). DE: Apress.

Adidas UK’s new experiential marketing campaign

Adidas UK’s new experiential marketing campaign

By Vergil DAI

It is widely acknowledged that Adidas used to be a company mainly focus on traditional marketing. Schmitt (1999) state that traditional marketing regard consumers as rational decision makers who care about the quality and benefits of products. Therefore Adidas tried their best to produce comfortable, fashion and high quality products in last decades.

But Adidas promotion was no longer just about ‘showing off product’. Adidas UK’s head of brand marketing Barry Moore says the brand is moving to a more “responsible and spontaneous” marketing model to reintroduce itself to the new generation. It can be regard as the movement to experiential marketing. Experiential marketers recognize the emotional factors that influence human beings’ decision making, and focus on providing achieving pleasurable experience to customers (Schmitt, 1999).

As a response to Adidas’s new vision, which is reintroduce the brand to the next generation, Adidas started a new experiential marketing campaign in London on 18^th February. Adidas built the X-shaped training space at Victoria Park to host ‘The X’ pop up, which aim to provide free fitness training experiences to young women during the park’s darker winter period. As the Adidas UK’s head of brand marketing said, Adidas is trying to make larger social impact and build relationship with consumers.

Smilansky (2009) figure out several benefits of experiential marketing which may be reasons of this new marketing campaign, including brand advocacy, bring brand personality to life, clear differentiation, emotional connection with target market. In this case, Adidas link their brand personality to heathy lifestyle and sport. By creating an interactive brand experience of free fitness training, Adidas can not only promote their brand personality to their target market (new generation), but also build customer loyalty and attract new customers.

 ‘The X’ is part of a wider investment in experiential pop-ups for its new city-based marketing structure, mainly focus on six global cities including LA, New York, London, Paris, Shanghai and Tokyo. The experiential marketing campaign in London is a start, Adidas will also set ‘The X’ pop up at other cities in the future.

As a reflection of this case, it shows that improving quality and decreasing the price of products is not enough for attracting customers and build long-term customer relationship in 21^st century. Experience has become the new key for success of marketing.

https://www.marketingweek.com/2016/03/29/adidas-uk-marketing-boss-on-how-the-x-can-help-reintroduce-the-brand-to-the-next-generation/

Smilansky, S. (2009). Experiential marketing: A practical guide to interactive brand experiences (1st ed.). London: Kogan Page.

Schmitt, B. (1999). Experiential marketing. Journal of Marketing Management, 15(1), 53-67. doi:10.1362/026725799784870496

Reflection on Live Event

Reflection on Live Event

By Vergil DAI

The event management students in the University of Huddersfield has organized variety of fundraising events during February and March. As an event management student, I also organized an event named ‘Brain Crash’ with teammates. Meanwhile, I participants in a large amount of events that completed by other groups. In order to improve the performance of future events, I will compare the brand experience in some of the events that I attended.

Brakus (2009) define brand experience as the subjective, internal and behavioral consumer responses towards the experience of interacting with brands. In this case, brand experience means the experience of an event in before the event period, during the event period and after the event period. Also can be regard as promise, deliver and delight.

As for the brand experience before the event, ‘Creative Arts Fair’ did a good job. They gave out paper crane, paper butterflies and paper heart when they promote in student union. These can give people an intuitionistic feeling of the event. Also free gifts can build a good brand image and attract people to attend the event. Meanwhile ‘Health and Wellbeing Event’ made the good use of their fliers to provide special event experience before the event. The group used the reverse side of flyers to be a healthy one week plan sheet. People could tick in the table when they complete the tasks, and they can share the result and exchange ideas with others. 

As for brand experience during the event, four dimensions theory is helpful to analyze, which include sensory, affective, behavioral and affective. ‘Faceless’ can be a good example provide nice sensory experience. It was an event full of color and light. Participants can make their own masks with luminescent pigments. Then they can move to another dark room with UV light to dance and make Light painting photography. This event bring a strong and memorable experience of sight sense. 

‘Battle of Bands Huddersfield’ is an event that create affective brand experience. Because ‘Battle of Bands Huddersfield’ co-operated with a local bar and several bands. The hot music and alcohol bring participants strong emotion of excited and high. 

‘Brain Crash’ did well in create behavioral and intellectual experience. There were many types of interactive intelligent toys in the event. People can pick which they like to play with. ‘Brain Crash’ also include two competition at the central stage of Sudoku and Rubik Cube during the event. Participants can take part in the competition to win the prize. Meantime with the help from volunteers and videos on IPads on the table, clients can learn how to solve the games and a little history of the game.

As for brand experience after the event, ‘HudDance’ can be the best example. ‘HudDance’ keep post news, videos, pictures on Facebook after the event for a long period of time as delight process. It can make customers to feel highly involved in the event experience. As a result they will be more possible to come to the event again.

The major part of the event is experience. Therefore providing a good brand experience through all of the period in the event is very important. Marketers need to learn to understand what customers want from the experience, and use proper methodology to improve the brand experience.

• Brakus, J. J., Schmitt, B. H., & Zarantonello, L. (2009). Brand experience: What is it? how is it measured? does it affect loyalty? Journal of Marketing, 73(3), 52-68.

McDonald’s Monopoly Game 2016

McDonald’s Monopoly Game 2016

By Vergil DAI

The McDonald's Monopoly game 2016 has started from 16th March and will continue to 26th April. The McDonald's Monopoly game is a very important annual sales promotion for McDonald’s, which first ran in 1987. It is based on the co-operation between McDonald's and Hasbro. As the name of the sales promotion, the theme is board game Monopoly, which has worldwide popularity.

       This year the McDonald's Monopoly game offer three ways to win prizes. Instant win stickers is to get free goods instantly. Collect to win prizes need customers to collect and complete property sets to win expensive prizes like car and cash. The code on the back of online game sticker provide customers a chance to win cash prizes from £5 to £1,000.

       This sales promotion event make use of variety marketing methodology especially for consumer learning and memory. McDonald’s Monopoly game is kind of combination of Classical Conditioning and Instrumental Conditioning Learning. When customers purchase goods in McDonald’s, they can get stickers to participant in the McDonald’s Monopoly game. Just like the toys in happy-meals that made “eating out fun” associated with McDonald’s food, McDonald’s Monopoly game offers customers a different way to “enjoy” their consumption. Also it is suitable to attract multiple target market. Meanwhile the three ways to win prizes in 2016 McDonald’s Monopoly game can be analyzed by reinforcement theory. Instant win stickers can be variable-interval reinforcement. Collect to win prizes can be fixed-ratio reinforcement. Online game sticker can be variable-ratio reinforcement.

       Because the McDonald's Monopoly game is also an annual sales promotion, it is in elaborative rehearsal process in memory system, which is process that transfer short-term memory into long-term memory (Soloman, 2011).

       All in all, the McDonald's Monopoly game is very successful to attract customers. People are eager to make a large number of consumption to win more prizes. The slogan of this sales promotion is “Who will be the winner today”? Obviously, the answer is McDonald’s.

https://monopoly.mcdonalds.co.uk/how-to-play

https://monopoly.mcdonalds.co.uk/rules

Chinese New Year has become a new chance for marketing

Chinese New Year has become a new chance for marketing

By Vergil Dai

Spring Festival is a traditional celebration of the Chinese New Year. There are many things for Chinese people to do during the Spring Festival including: Pasting Spring Festival couplets, having reunion dinner, watching TV gala, setting off fireworks, visiting relatives, eating dumplings and Sending red packets.

Nowadays, some new practices to celebrate Chinese New Year has taken place. Meanwhile Chinese New Year also become a time for consumption like Black Friday. As a result, no matter in China or out of China, companies try to make use of this opportunity for marketing.

This year is the year of monkey. Some luxury fashion brands made red versions of classic items or popping monkeys on to their products. For example, Prada’s Chinese new year-themed handbags and Louis Vuitton’s new monkey-themed Vuittonite jewellery rang (Lau, 2016).

Sending red packets is a well-observed custom at Chinese New Year. Red packets are money wrapped in red paper given as New Year gifts (Wu, 2016). It used to be only for kids. But from 2013, red packets has been apply to Chinese social media (QQ, WeChat) and Chinese network payment platform (Alipay). People can easily send red packets money to their friends or relatives with blessings. People also can send specific amount of red packets to the group chat, members could try to catch as soon as possible. Because it is convenient and real-time, so network red packets become more and more popular. This year, it is widely used as a marketing approach. Many Chinese big companies start to send red packets from the Chinese New Year eve. Although the amount of money in each red packet is limited, but everyone have high opportunity to catch the red packets through the social media and payment platform. The total amount of red packets send through Wechatwas around 32.1 billion from Feb. 7^th to Feb. 12^th according to China News (Zhang, 2016). If someone get the red packets from companies, they will also get the blessing text. As a result, it can be a promotion of the brand and build a good brand image.

This case can be explained by the marketing theories. “Coppet defines rituals as core of the social identity of all communities (1992)”. Celebrating the Spring Festival and customs within are rituals of Chinese culture. Companies recognized the key ritual in Chinese New Year which is gift-giving. Therefore they find out variety of ways to sell more products or promote theirselves.

Reference:

Coppet Dd, (1992) Understanding Rituals. 1st ed.;London;: Routledge;

Zhang, M. (2016) Network Red packets during Spring Festival set a new high. ChinaNews. Available from:< http://www.chinanews.com/fortune/2016/02-16/7758373.shtml>.

Lau, S. (2016) Monkey business: how fashion is cashing in on Chinese new year. The guardian. Available from:< http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2016/feb/08/monkey-business-how-fashion-is-cashing-in-on-chinese-new-year>

Wu, A. (2016) Chinese Red Envelopes/Packets (Hongbao) - Amount, Symbols and How to Give. China highlights. Available from:< http://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/festivals/red-envelop.htm>

Companies' action during disaster relief

On the evening of 13 November 2015, a series of coordinated terrorist attacks occurred in Paris. Hundreds of people died or wounded in the Paris Attacks (BBC, 2015). It can be regard as the worst terrorist attack after 911.

After the attacks many large tech companies lent a helping hand during the disaster relief. Facebook activated its safety check feature which let users know whether their friends or family members are safe in Paris. More than 4 million people used the tool to let their friends and family know they were safe and 360 million users received notifications that their friends were okay. Twitter helped people find shelter with the hashtag #PorteOuverte and constant updates the information (Daily mail, 2015). Meanwhile Google, Skype, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, Uber and Airbnb offer free service to France (Time, 2015).

It is important for companies to take actions during disaster relief. Not only because of CSR, but also because they can reach good reputation and customer loyalty by satisfying customer’s emergency physiological and safety needs (Solomon, 2013). Also, Twitter gave customers a platform to meet self-actualization needs through helping other people.

References:

1.    BBC (2015) Paris attacks: What happened on the night [Internet] Available from: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34818994> [Accessed 17 November 2015]

2.    Wolff-Mann, E. (2015) These Companies Are Offering Free Services to Help After Paris Attacks. Time [Internet] Available from: <http://time.com/money/4114313/paris-attacks-companies-helping-free-services/> [Accessed 17 November 2015]

3.    Zolfagharifard, E. (2015) Facebook activates 'Safety Check' feature for people in Paris as Twitter users tweet #PorteOuverte to offer shelter to those affected by attacks. Daily mail [Internet] Available from: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3318085/Are-friends-safe-Facebook-rolls-Safety-Check-wake-Paris-attacks-Twitter-users-offer-shelter-affected.html [Accessed 17 November 2015]

4.    Solomon, M.R. 2013, Consumer behavior: buying, having, and being, 10th, Global edn, Pearson Education, Boston, Mass;London

Mirrors are helpful for sensory marketing

Mirrors are helpful for sensory marketing

                                                                                                       By Vergil Dai

Nowadays Sensory Marketing is widely be used to attract people’s attention and create special experience. Meanwhile mirrors are commonly used in daily life. But only a part of people understand the proper use of mirror can be helpful for house decorating and sensory marketing.

It is mainly based on the illusion effect of expanded space that caused by mirrors.

As for sensory marketing in small restaurant and store, the owner can placed a large mirrors as one of the walls. As a result it can make the space of store seems bigger than it really is. It can also make people to illustrate about there are double amount of customers in the space, which could be used for conformable psychology of consumer.

As for sensory marketing in large size such as exhibition or product launch, mirrors can be used not only for illusion effect of expanded space but also for other factors. Firstly, it can help the organizer to manage the light in the venue by using reflection of mirrors. Secondly, mirrors can create a feeling of elegance and modern which is suitable for some fashion event. Thirdly, the use of mirrors to replace the common materials like wood and metal will bring participants new felling and experience. By the way, using mirrors in product launch benefit to show the product comprehensively.

On the other hand, people need to pay attention to how to use mirrors properly. If there are too many mirrors, it will also make participants fell uncomfortable.