Happy Exams People

To those taking this Electronic Marketing exam and any other university exams , I wish all of you the best of luck doing the exam. May you don't stuff up during the exams, and hope that your common sense works so that you can wing the exam.

Eat a hearty breakfast, don't sleep too late, and revise carefully.

As a food for thought, during these periods, you might notice advertisements that are 'exam based' . Like suddenly those "Red Bull Gives you Wings for Exams" advertising sounds more appealing than what it was months ago.

International Marketing - Or How an Instant Noodle Becomes So Famous Here

Recently I stumbled into an advertisement for an instant noodle brand when I was walking near the student lounge in Monash just the other day. Indomie - is the brand that I looked at. The advertisement, was showing a package of the instant noodle with exotic looking spices in the back and the heading "Why is Indomie so Good? Because it Uses Exotic Indonesian Spices" or something along that line.

The best meal you can get for less than 20 cents

A part of me giggled deep down inside because to the best knowledge of me, Indomie uses a lot of MSG - not necessarily a bad thing, but it makes the noodle so damn tasty. But what I'm just amazed is that how does an Indonesian brand became so famous all the way down here in Australia? I went down to Coles a few times and saw the noodles being sold there in sets of 5, as well as supermakets such as Woolsworths, and even 7/11.

Returning back to marketing 101, I think that when the marketers targeted the Australian market, they had an idea of the Indonesian student population in Melbourne that needed a quick, cheap and filling meal solution as well as giving them a taste home. I remember hearing stories of how my friend who came here were given usually a box or two of Indomie to eat.

But of course there are other brands that falls into this category, one that is brought down from their home countries into another country and received such familiarity. What I'm amazed is just that they can afford to have a billboard advertising in Australia, so that means that they have a large distribution center or even a local manufacturing of Indomie.

I guess the virtue to be taken out of this post is that in marketing a product to a new market, marketers should always embrace the value of home. Whenever I eat a packet of Indomie, I'm always reminded of those times where I am sitting in a stall next to a busy street in Jakarta, eating a warm indomie with a cold glass of iced tea. I guess my future career of marketing in Indonesia could be fruitful after all.

i Takeaway - The Takeaway of the Future

Recently I've stumbled upon this new iphone application, its called itakeaway.



The application is really simple, register your information and then you can order takeaway food from a registered merchant in the application.

The application can also list up your list of favorite foods, integrate google map to locate the closest restaurant to your place as well as securely linking your transaction to debit and credit cards. All this in the convenience of your palms. It is also the first iphone application that does so in the future.

The biggest problem with iphone application is, even though iphone has such a large penetration rate, it is not yet the premier telephone for people, in the sense that the large success rate of applications such as these is that it relies on the number of people connected on iphone.

While this application has recently launched in the Melbourne food and wine festival, engaging the correct target audience. It does fit a lot of gaps according to the chief inventor Tony Peter.

With the iTakeaway, it gives restaurants more place to advertise their products and services also giving them more penetration, awareness as well as coverage.

For me though, it will give me more reason to be lazier in take aways so I guess it's a win for me!

You're Flipping Me!

Quite recently, Big M announced their winning flavor of their competition to bring back old favorite flavors.

Out of a selection of a number of flavors, customers needs to choose one that they like the most and then Big M will bring back those flavors.

After some period of the competition, Big M finally announced 'Egg Flip' flavour to be the relaunched to the market for a limited time period.



For one, I have fallen victim to this marketing campaign, having no idea what Egg Flip means, thinking that its a strange hybrid of egg nog and milk, I decided to give this flavor a taste and surprisingly they're pretty good.

Big M uses advertising to create interest and uses retailers such as Coles and 7-11 specials on Egg flip flavor for customers to try it out (the first time I came to Coles to get it, it was sold out!)

They even have a Facebook fan page!



Quite a number of companies have been using competition as a way to involve themselves with customers and to give them a say on the company. One of the more recent competition was the Smith's flavor contest - where customers are given a chance to create a Smith's flavored chips and then the winner will be made into an actual product.



I personally think competition is a great idea, it involves the customers, and companies that are using it needs to manage so that customers know about it, as well as getting the idea across to generate interest.

Nintendo DS dating simulation game Company Takes Marketing into a whole different level

In my second installation of 'wtf Japan', I'm going to talk about how a company takes marketing into a new level of...weirdness.

Love Plus is a Nintendo DS love simulation game, you get to control the main character and strives to obtain one of the 3 main female characters as your girlfriend. This game has been a huge hit in Japan and even outside of Japan (to those who understand Japanese anyway, since the game is not translated).

In one of the scenes in the game, you take one of the girls to a hot springs resort to spend your weekend there. Konami, the creator of the game decides to contact the resort (its an actual resort) to provide a special package so that the players can bring their ds and spend their weekend there with their character.

The room is designed just like the one in the game, with all the entertainments in the game. Konami also promises that they will give special character sprites for the game as well as a slew of contents.

Now ignore the oh-my-god-wtf-you're-taking-your-ds-and-dating-it! comment and lets take a look at it from a marketing perspective.

Konami has identified that they have a core group of loyal customers and decided to give special treatment to them. Ensuring that those customers remain loyal and would just scoop out whatever crap that Konami decides to spout with their Love Plus game.

What is this, I don't even D:

I'd say its a brilliant marketing strategy, although personally, those people need to get a girlfriend.

Oh and the price? Only 39,800Yen (roughly 500 AUD)

Blackle?

Recently I came across this website called blackle.

http://blackle.com

It is essentially Google with a black screen. The theory is that by making the computer use black light instead of white light, it will reduce the energy usage of the computer by a certain amount.

Now back to our normal web activities, what web page do we most often used. Why hello there Facebook.

Facebook's default page is blue banner on top, and the rest is white. White is used because its a neutral color so that colors can just blend in easily.

Just to spark a thought, what if Facebook has an option to make its page black instead of white (or a darker shade of white) in order to conserve energy, would it be accepted well by the users?Knowing that most consumers lately are getting bombarded by 'Green' efforts by companies.

I know as a marketing student that it would be bad for companies using Facebook because black doesn't really allow products to be advertised on Facebook. But as a consumer, what do you think?

Mentos Cola - an Explosive Paradox?

When you were a bit younger (or bored) have you heard the joke about mixing Cola and Mentos to produce a hillarious explosion. I don't want to go to details of how that is possible - other than it is apparently possible. There are tons of youtube experiments an

d even TV shows like Mythbusters has proven how hillarious the explosion is.

The good marketing people in Mentos discovered a use for the association between Mentos and cola and they have released a new product based on these two things.

Say hello to Mentos Cola. The explosive cola hit.

I am not going to comment about how the product is going to be succesful or not or how they are using the explosive association to draw the connection to the brand to create a brand awareness. I don't want to put that in my mouth for fear of my gut exploding.

From hillarious experiment to a new product launch. Comment.