Product Substitution & Unexpected Usage
8.28.2007
The Dailymail reports of 'four tiny orphaned hedgehogs are snuggling up to the bristles of a cleaning brush - because they think it's their mother'.
It's easy to imagine such animals have poor eyesight, or that they mistakenly think it's their mother due to the texture.
Relating this to customers however, and in my branding experience, I wonder how this process, which seems to me wreaking of product substitution could be exploited marketing-wise.
How much of any product is potentially a substitute for other products? While we could never easily predict whether the products we create will be used for exactly the same purposes we intended for it, it's an interesting insight to know that a process of substitution has happened before in marketing history: Listerine, for instance is not initially a mouthwash but a surgical antiseptic.
As wikipedia furthers:
It wasn't a runaway success until the 1920s, when it was pitched as a solution for "chronic halitosis", the faux medical term that the Listerine advertising group created in 1921 to describe bad breath. By naming and thus creating a medical condition for which consumers now felt they needed a cure, Listerine created a market for their mouthwash. Until that time, bad breath was not conventionally considered a catastrophe, but Listerine's ad campaign changed that. As the advertising scholar James B. Twitchell writes, "Listerine did not make mouthwash as much as it made halitosis."As a marketer, having been busy ensuring current campaigns remain successful, I must admit I fail to seize this opportunity a lot of times: Do we have systems in place testing our current market for unexpected usage habits or metrics? While most companies will admit having an automated monitoring or reporting system in place for current project is a good thing (something most of us have), sometimes a simple pivot chart on raw data may reveal something new - precisely a gem that we just might miss.
Labels: Brand, Marketing, Metrics, Questions
posted by Jdavies @ 8/28/2007,
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In-Game Advertising
8.20.2007
I've recently posted about receiving advanced invitation to test a local version of the game Warrock.The game is in full play now and was launched about a month ago, much to the fanfare of the first-person shooting game fans. I knew back then that despite some balance issues in the beta version, the game will be a hit sooner or later in the Philippines.
What's interesting to me is looking at this picture from the launch of the game:
If you have that much people playing a single game and centered in one spot, while it is an opportunity itself to sponsor the event traditionally, that is, booth setups (I've heard Intel & BayanDSL sponsored the event) you must know that there is a bigger opportunity in-game.
Consider, for instance applying the scenario of Second Life by getting real-life products within the game world. I'm talking about labeled guns (Blast), free branded uniform mods for users (Oakley, Nike, Levi's), In-game Billboards in real-life maps (think o
f a post-apocalyptic EDSA)among other things. What brand managers should realize and in this case ABSi, is that there is an opportunity to gain revenue not just from the traditional channel of subscription but thru advertising as well. The opportunity is not just in-game per se, there's the opportunity to advertise prior to logging in with Warrock's weapon store.
Do I sense some enterprising modder ready to setup an in-game branding company? Talk to me. With a targeted base as this, captured and all in-game, let's see which local gaming company implements this first.
Labels: Advertising, Brand, Gaming
posted by Jdavies @ 8/20/2007,
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Digging for Brands
What is "digg" and what can companies get by being on the front page?
Here's a quick primer for the confused. In short, it is a digest of the best links in the Internet according to tastes of users of the site. Users rummage through a pile of links and "dig" up links that work for them - essentially a democratic vote. More votes, more diggs, and the site is unearthed. Your site gets digged, you're popular.
For one to get to the main page, one's website has to be uniquely interesting to millions of people at the right time, and believe me it's that hard to get to the top. So much so that it's a gem for SEO people if they can get a relevant link on digg and people talk about it.
What does it mean for your business online to be linked to and accessed by thousands of people at one time? Here's my quicklist:
- Sudden jump in your site's popularity, possible cross-linking
- Bloggers may talk about you & email their friends
- This may translate to some returns if you have content
- Free unsolicited comments for your brand manager
- 1000 new sign ups for that hour
- Website crash if your hosting company can't take the bandwidth
Getting dugg is just the same as having hundreds of people on your booth. Everyone likes to touch and see, but hey, how to convert that to money?
Labels: Brand, Marketing, Online Strategy
posted by Jdavies @ 8/20/2007,
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The Author
J.Davies
Jdavies lives in Quezon City, Philippines and has been blogging since 2002. A brand manager in a leading technology company and a freelance new media/web strategy consultant, he has refocused his blogging from personal, political & sociological observations, to marketing-related efforts and Internet trends that are relevant to his career and branding advocacies.
About This Blog
This blog is a depot of thoughts and observations on marketing trends which remain personally relevant to the Author as far as his marketing career is concerned. Having evolved from the personal blog of Jdavies, much of the earlier work contained herein are laced with personal speculation, political views, and similar advocacies. These posts are being kept for posterity's sake and for no other reason. No effort is being made to claim that the author will not contradict himself from his previous positions or that such advocacies are absolute.
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