from dippy drinking bird to geocation and everything in between!

Another semester down, and it has come to everyone's favourite time of the year...exams! I cannot believe how fast this semester has gone, from our first lecture featuring the infamous drippy drinking bird, to hearing about Wag's Geocation adventures, to learning the sneaky unethical tactics of e-marketers, MKF 3881 has been both fun and very practical. 

It is overwhelming how many resources are now available for marketers to take advantage of (and the list is growing), and shows how important it is to stay ahead of all the new technologies. As has been a theme throughout my blog posts, it is by using these resources and tools differently to competitors which will get your brand noticed, and your consumers engaged. There is no excuse to not exploring new marketing tactics as there is so much information out there, all you have to do is look for it!

Thanks to Wags for making the lectures worth waking up for :)

Lynx personalises teenage boy's fantasies

A new campaign by Lynx and their new creative agency 'Droga5' capitalises on the theory that the world will end in 2012. For this blogs purpose, I went to sus out the campaign at  http://www.lynxfastlife.com/. The only click-able button was a big blue connect to facebook page which came up with the 'Lynx 2012' facebook application which asked if it could use my fb info and photos. I was a bit weary, especially as I am clearly not the  target market, but decided to do it anyway. This is one of the screen shots of my personalised video...clearly directed towards young males, as much as i'd love my life's last moments to consist of girls who can't even spell symbol holding  up signs about how awesome I am.

In all seriousness, I think this is a good use of personalised e-marketing and social media, driven by other traditional media. I think Lynx understands their target market and is not afraid to take risks which has contributed to the high brand loyalty of their consumers over the years.

More information about this campaign is available here: http://www.bandt.com.au/news/breaking-campaign--lynx-flirts-with-doomsday

impulse...sometimes followed by regret

You would think a third year marketing student like myself would be fully aware to the behind the scenes of the marketing world and attempt to avoid all see-through marketing activities. However, this is not the case at all. I am simply a marketer's dream. I unconsciously switch from a marketer to a consumer in seconds, ready to buy something just to get the freebie, spend more to get the discount, enter the competition i know i won't win, and sign up to every VIP mailing list. After our lecture on spam last week, it clicked when i realised how many daily emails i was recieving. Even though i willingly gave my details to these companies, i still  felt like i was being spammed.  I decided to unsubscribe from the ones which were not giving me any value (some obviously breaching the unsubscribe functionality which i now have negative feelings towards their brands). My favourite one is DECJUBA as they inform me of their sales in a brief, relevant message and are not predictable in when they send these messages. They make me feel like a VIP, not just a target for their selling objective.

I think there is a fine line between keeping your brand in consumers minds and just annoying them until they one by one unsubscribe from your emails. Regular direct emails are more personal than social media, and generally annoy people more, than say a status from a group they liked on facebook, when they are not relevant. Consumers give marketers their details with an implied psychological contract that they don't abuse the privilige. If messages contain no value to the consumer, they should not have been sent at all. There is a high risk of negative brand associations if marketers are not respectful to the people on their mailing lists.

Are there any brands which you once loved, signing up to their mailing lists, which have abused your trust by sending you junk without value? How did it make you feel towards the brand?

MMSS ball photos are up!

6 blogs down...4 to go... So I'm sure many of you went to the Monash Marketing Students Society (MMSS) marketing ball a couple of weeks ago and if you didn't you should be ashamed of yourselves!. It was an amazing evening (of what i remember) and I have the privilege of being close friends with the star who organised the whole thing, Steph Gallagher, Well done Stephanie :) So to get to my e-marketing issue...on the night the Monash Photography Club was taking photos which you could purchase, I posed like an idiot for them then got distracted by an awesomely good song and the enticement of the dfloor, forgetting to go back until the next morning when I was feeling just a bit seedy. Tonight I was excited when I saw someone had posted their ball photos on fb :) I went and found some of me, some good...some not so good. I ruined an entire photo by being the only one in it who closed my eyes (Im the giant in the black dress)! So the moral of the blog is if the internet did not exist, I would have probably forgotten about the photos once again and they would have lost business to a drunk, distracted customer. Because of their online presence and e-commerce, this customer has been regained :) I also like how they are using social networks to promote the club, by allowing you to share your photos on fb and twitter! feel free to share stories and photos from your night if you went :) or any general comments would be lovely!

sorry guys.....

my journey from amateur to pro blogger.

As wags delightfully pointed out to us this morning, we have 2 weeks left to complete our 10 blogposts. At the beginning of the semester, my naive self  did not realise how intense and time consuming keeping up a blog could be. Finding the time to stop, and really think about something that I thought was worth sharing has been harder then I thought. At the start, every time I went to write a blog i would try to perfect the blogpost, editing it multiple times. Now my posts are shorter and sharper and these are the ones that have engaged more people. Writing a blog has also made me more aware in general, always looking for my next post. So in conclusion, I am actually really appreciative that i was forced to blog! Expressing my opinion has been hard enough, imagine having to express brand values through a blog and having to be fully accountable, hopefully that will be my next challenge!