Monday, October 31, 2011

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Google Invests in HubSpot

http://www.daytrender.com/magazine/read/google-invests-in-hubspot_1264.html

(well, just thought of posting this here, in case another soul like mine hasnt found out, until I tripped on the article.)

O, it's Intel

Most unique ad I've ever seen (original title from source link)   This video shows a glimpse but speaks a lot of how much our world has changed at our fingertips; how difficult things could be easy; how powerful human minds are; how fast and never-ending all these secular, terrestrial changes take place; and how i've just been at the receiving end.  =(

(",) Good thing... that freedom of receiving can always take me in. They tag me "prospect", "client", "buyer", or "opportunity". Hmmm.... i like it here.

Beautiful Coca Cola Commercial Full Version

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Creative CM by XL Company

The success viral marketing compaign of cellphone card provider company"XL" has come from its CM series in beggar version. The company's purpose was to campaign its slogan as the cheapest cellphone card service provider. So... the creative concept in this CM has been realized by a beggar who can always be able to use XL card because of its the cheapest call and sms services for 24 hours. This CM easily reach Indonesian customers with characteristics : used prepaid card service and tend to vary cellphone card depends on its benefit offered. The true impact that I knew was many employees in my previous company changed their cellphone card or bought additional cellphone to enjoy XL benefit. What incredible !!

Here are the series of ProXL CMs :





What is HubSpot?

Nokia's Windows Phone unveiled!

Nokia's First Windows Phone Ad

Nokia finally launched its Windows phone. With a former Microsoft executive placed as its CEO, Nokia is positioned to embrace Windows Mobile. With Android and iOs currently being the de-facto standard smartphone operating systems, Nokia's move is going to diversify the mobile landscape.

Nokia's first Windows phone ad campaign:

Friday, October 28, 2011

Old Spice

I had to research a bit to find a viral campaign I even remembered -- apparently I miss out on a lot of internet memes! But here's one that I definitely enjoyed.




It's true, whatever man I get, he'll never be like the Old Spice Guy. And he's not on a horse.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Showing pinkle finger !!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Fj5CcYWPMI
This CM is very old one in 1980s. This company advertised quit smoking aids.

The initial 5 person said " I quited smorking thanks to this goods" with showing us it by their hand. But the last guy showed us his pinkle finger and said "I was forced to quit my company because of this( which means finger)". In Japan, showing pinkle finger means " I commited love affair(have a sexial relationship with women except wife!"

This CM became the viral all over Japan and this company made a huge profit. However PTA(parents and teacher association) protested against this company that this CM is very harmful for kids. In my case, at that time I was elementary school student, so I asked my parents the meaning of his action, but they didn't say that. This CM made a lot of aurgument about CM among us.

Thai viral CM : Silence of Love

My classmate posted interesting and funny CM. I like e-Marketing topic in this week. Now it's my turn, I'd like to introduce you all about the most touching CM in Thailand. This CM is belong to Thai Insurance, with the slogan "Don't forget to take care who cared you" . Many people cried and forward the CM to their friends, family, someone that they love. view count in Youtube reached a million within two weeks. It was very popular.

Actually there are a lot of touching CM from this company presenting different kind of love, but I want to post the latest one which is about impressive love between father and daughter. Let's see :

Silence of Love
by Thai Insurance



This CM is very successful in term of making people know "Thai Insurance" However, there are problems about Sale and services management in for this company. I don't know about their profit but for my individual opinion, I won't do insurance with them. Only enjoy watching their CM is enough.

If you interesting in other touching CM from Thai Insurance. You can watch it in my blog here :
http://www.thaitoyou.blogspot.com/

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Suntory Boss

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFNLQb2U_3s&feature=related

Boss is a canned coffee.

In this CM, the man with glasses criticizes the weak Japanese diplomacy and talks big, 'If I'm in that position, I say what I want to say'. Then Bill Clinton suddenly apears in front of him.

It shows extremely nurvous situation that coffee is needed.

It was shown more than ten years ago and there are another versions; sumo wrestlers version, K-1 fighters version, and so on. Many Japanese really liked it.

Hubspot --- You Ought To Know



Since we have Hubspot (Inbound Marketing) as next week's case assignment and we are into viral campaigns, I guess it's only fitting that we watch this video. It also helped that they used a good angst-filled song. Since some classmates are still young, I hope you know Alanis Morissette. If you dont, well You Ought To Know :p

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

NIke Cosplay CM

This is NIKE campaign CM which generate the big biral effect. This CM recorded in Akihabara city actually, and Many people who watch this CM recording took the picture and movie with own sell phone. Then there are many kind of picture and movie about this CM on web. This CM is made by new Bland team "NIKEiD" which provide the user customize shoes service in NIKE. They success to activate customers creative mind not only shoes but also picture and movie on web.

Angry Birds goes viral in many ways

I struggled trying to find an entertaining Finnish viral campaign with considerable results, but couldn't find one. Here's are examples of foreign viral campaigns for a Finnish product with worldwide popularity: Angry Birds.

Probably some of you have seen this British viral video portraying a live version of Angry Birds - launched by T-mobile.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jzIBZQkj6SY#!

Angry Birds inspired this Israeli skit, which seems to make fun of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. An effective unsolicited ad to say the least.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMltvlqEM54

Last month, Angry Birds went live in another way - a voice-controlled version of the game was made playable to F1 audience in Singapore.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDqwQ2uyPvg

The Finnish airline Finnair was smart enough to harness Angry Birds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POwyBCzXRCk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkE14-g4hD0

Simple and stupid sells, so does Angry Birds.

Viral Video in Pakistan created value for the company

Here, i am going to share one of the most popular and a viral advisement in Pakistan. As you guys do not understand the language so i would like to know you views after watching it.


Also, this add won the "Best Advertising Campaign of the Year 2010-2011" and the award was given by Pakistan Advertising Society (PAS).

The PAS was formed to promote the value of advertising and to ensure that the recipients realize the importance advertising has in economic development and to spread how imperative it is for the consumer to have options to choose from.

Monday, October 24, 2011

Angry Whopper teacher and Blackberry


After you watch this video clip, how do you feel?

The video clip showed the teacher destroying a student's blackberry phone because she is very angry when the student kept texting and picked up a call during her lecture. This video clip is very widespread and criticize among people in social network like Facebook (including me). There is 1.6 million views for this video on youtube; that is a large number!

However, two weeks later after this famous video clip was published, there is another video released which disclose the fake situation of the first clip. It is actually a hoax viral internet marketing for Burger King as part of its 'Angry Whopper' campaign that they want to portray the 'angry' to their customer. Although, this campaign is very successful in term of the people paying attention to them, but it turn out that some people even have a negative image of this aggressive fake situation. This is may be because normally Thai people are not really associated with aggressiveness so they turn out to be resist to their action.

However, I think this campaign is somehow has a good insight about their customer. At that time, Blackberry this very pervasive among the Thai people. The video clip is very attractive to them because they also did the same behavior in class (texting). But the aggressive action of the teacher turn to be very surprising for them.



Who wear a wig?

I really pay attention to this industory!

Who wear a wig?
http://youtu.be/wcHunrTp22c

If you want to get answer, check below.
http://youtu.be/VGD2uaS-TOg

Marketing research + Customer communication

Viral video to come, but first I thought I'd talk about a case which exemplifies a lot of what NOT to do when marketing.

I don't know how many of you have ever used delicious.com; it's a site that lets you bookmark pages and share your bookmarks with people. It was the most widely used site, run by yahoo, and, of course, it was free.

But as we learned, "free" is not a business model, and early this year Yahoo decided to sell delicious to AVOS (the founders of youtube). Delicious users, who had been worried that all of their bookmarks would be lost, rejoiced that the service would continue.

The only problem was that AVOS did not actually know anything about the Delicious userbase. When they took control of the site, they changed nearly every aspect of it. They wanted to make it more "social," but their vision for the site clashed with what current users loved. Many important features were removed; other aspects that AVOS thought would improve functionality and usability only turned off the existing user base. Some users were so upset, they fled to competing sites (such as pinboard.in, which actually charges a one-time subscription fee to use the site).

The AVOS team has slowly worked to restore the features user wanted, and they're making an effort to listen to the users though their forums. Unfortunately, they've lost a lot of the goodwill and trust the company had before. Maybe they don't need the users that fled -- maybe the new design will attract a new type of userbase. But it's fairly obvious that when they decided to take over the site, they did not actually understand why customers valued it.

Further reading:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/240873/delicious_relaunch_riddled_with_bugs.html
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/avos-delicious-disaster-lessons-from-a-complete-failure/705

Fave Viral Campaign II

Since I'm on Blogger now, why not go on a roll. Here's one from my country (the Philippines).  I honestly think, and this is just my opinion, company insiders were filming this and had it posted in youtube (I mean, the cameraman seem to be waiting for something to happen which is not normal in a flight...also, i think he was reserved to sit in a seat where the angle would be great for filming).

Whether it worked or not is up for debate but I found it amusing. I didnt exactly book a flight right away when i first saw this but when I hopped in one of their planes in a recent vacation, I was kinda half-expecting for them to do their thing. sadly though, it didnt happen. This has become a trademark activity for them because they did it in the stock exchange as well on their first day of trading (saw it in youtube as well).





Fave Viral Campaign

Here's one of my fave viral "campaign"--- Cheers Beer (<===pls click the link). I saw it first in Facebook a few years back and then I got it in a group mailing list as well. Now, Im not sure if someone outside of the company posted this or Cheers posted it themselves but nonetheless, I think its doing the company a good campaign vehicle.

The over-the-top reaction (and acting) to the smallest of things (which was ofcourse by design to communicate the point) make it really funny---and yet it hits you in the heart because indeed, every little good thing in life deserves a celebration (i consider a simple smile a celebration in itself). so Cheers!

Ok, I think I need to grab a beer now (at 3:30PM)...but Im going for Yebisu though :) Lastly, sorry Thai friends if I robbed you of the opportunity but I just like this commercial very much.




Note on Low-Tech Marketing Math

I just did a Google search for "Note on Low Tech Marketing Math", and although the full PDF needs to be paid for through the Harvard site, the revised version of this article has been included in this Google Book result online for FREE.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Green e-commerce and attracting online consumers

I saw this interesting article that seemed to be a fusion of two trends: growth of online commerce and the importance of green business.

(in Japanese)
http://www.dreamnews.jp/?action_press=1&pid=0000023134

Basically, a company gives a green certificate for the purchase of a 'green license' meant to improve the image of the licensee. The company then uses part of the license fees to fund environmental activities. This seems to be a very easy way for small online businesses to take part in CSR and improve their image in the eyes of consumers.
It looks like a marketing plan is a tedious work of a geek. The details inside this plan could be highly densed with situational analysis, financial study, market profile, network profile, forecast, performance and budget implementation plans, etc. etc. Taihen. I wonder how a simple brained business starter can afford to launch his venture not knowing how to draw this plan. And more wonders at how mere high-school grad chinese traders had conquered large businesses in our country not even knowing how to speak our language or that of English.


What if I did  not take this MBA program, where will my future business go? Gosh, business is so technical. =( 


Is it really? Or, the schools are just making it so....    

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Digital River in an Ocean of Opportunity

After listening to Brent Mori, my long held belief of how different the japanese market was again reaffirmed. While there is an ocean of opportunity in japan, it seems getting to the sweet spot is like swimming in a pool of sharks. i think the bottomline is and will always be understanding how the japanese market works. and while a lot of literature of success and failure in japan have been chronicled, getting to that right spot remains a gargantuan task. for one, i think there are different behavioral dynamics on a per product basis.

i was also fascinated by how competition in the market works. i never would have thought that yamada denki or yodobashi camera can actually be competitors of DR (5 forces clealry in play here---very Porterish but its true). at the end of the day, we have to pay attention to these guys because we are after the same slice of the market.

Harry Potter Ebook To A New Digital Generation

Today, I just read about a plan of JK Rowling to sell Harry Potter Ebook on a website "Pottermore" in October. Her plan has a purpose to give easiness for Harry Potter fan to read the story wherever they are. By Pottermore, JK Rowling will also try to build a loyalty of Harry Potter fans by adding their comments, drawings and any other contents in its website.

Here is JK Rowling announcement in Youtube when releasing "Pottermore" :


fff

A unique point of marketing strategy in Pottermore website is only selling ebook without providing an electronic sales service for physical book. Nevertheless, in this site, the readers will also find links to publishers websites.

By the marketing strategy, in my perspective, I found values as follow :
1. Fast (the reader no need long-await-time to get it)
2. Satisfaction of Harry Potter fans ( For those who can not obtain a physical book)
3. Easiness ( It can be access anywhere with internet connection )
4. Sales scope ( ebook is sold cheaper than physical book)

Although ebook as one of new digital generations give higher values than physical book, the reader have diversely satisfaction. As for me, somehow, having physicals books always be the the top of my satisfaction.

Other Source : http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/891101-264/j.k._rowling_to_sell_harry.csp

Value proposition

Considering value proposition means to live in an entirely different world for me, who has worked in Human Resources Department and always looking at inside of our company from inside. Now I’d like to consider value proposition of my company.

My company, Daiwa House, mainly provides high-end individual houses. Its values are, I think, security, safety, comfort and status.

Watching my company’s TV advertisement, it tends to feature a fun or comedy.
http://www.daiwahouse.co.jp/ad/cm/herosono4.html (Sorry, only Japanese)
Most of my friends outside my company say,” It’s very funny. I like it”.

However, is it right thing to do? Does it contribute our marketing?
Or, is it art?

Digital River in Japan

From what Mr.Brent Mori had presented in class plus my addition researches, I think one problem with Digital River is the localization. From what I know, Japanese people are very conservative; only a few percent can speak English. Therefore, when provided the solution for their client's customer, Digital River should also thinking about the cultural difference as well. The website of Digital River's client that Mr.Mori showed us in class, I think they are not very localize. And also from what Noi and Amina had said, Digital River didn't provided their website in Japanese either.

I also looked through some of the main competitors of Digital River in Japan included asknet and Synnex. I found one (very old) news release about asknet, "asknet Deploys Japanese eCommerce Solution for InterVideo". asknet working together with its client, InterVideo to find the solution for Japan market; they're emphasize on localization.

"Japan is one of the largest eCommerce markets in the world," said Chris
 Grell, Director of Business Development.  "Together with asknet, we have  localized our existing eCommerce solution.  This gives us the opportunity to  substantially increase our online sales to the Japanese market.."
"Since only around three to five percent of the population speaks English,  it is important to provide the order process in our native language," explains  Shunsuke Tanaka, President of InterVideo Japan, Inc. "To achieve broad  acceptance in the Japanese market, it is very important to adapt the eCommerce  solution to the preferences and cultural differences of the Japanese online  consumer."
Source:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/asknet-deploys-japanese-ecommerce-solution-for-intervideo-72209892.html

For Synnex, one of the founder is Japanese so its somehow quite obvious that it will under the Japanese culture and people. Therefore, provided a good solution. Their website is also in Japanese, http://www.synnex.co.jp/.



Digital River (Lecture Information and Discussion)

Digital River (Lecture Information and Discussion)


Competitors:
Major:
RAKUTEN, IBM WebSphere
Others:
ASKNET, SYNNEX, CENTERBRIDGE, FUJITSU NEC...

Questions to be targeted:

How to create a research plan for marketing?

What are the advantages and disadvantages to do business in Japan?

Should Digital River go for partnership?

Next Year Plan:

Digital river going to provide Cash on delivery service in next year

Major Affiliations of Digital River:
SOFTONIC, download.com, etc.


As already mentioned by Noi that we don't find any Japanese version of the site so i would like to point out some visual aspects related the existing web site which i found as an example see the below image:



How many engineers DRIV has?

In the last specail class, Brent Mori compared with profits between DRIV and Rakuten.
He mentioned that Rakuten's profit was better than DRIV.

I considered the business of both of the companies.

I think that DRIV needs more engineers than Rakuten.
I want to ask DRIV how many engineers DRIV has?
How DRIV develops its web contents or something?

Digital River

I was impressed with lecture of Brent Mori and I’m honored to have him as a graduate of IUJ. I think that Digital River’s differentiation from big competitor like Rakuten is very clear. It's business model which their profit comes from fee proportional to the customer’s sales revenue is also very good theoretically. But it's business faces some difficulties in Japan. I also have seen the Degital River's HP or some article about it, but I could not find its shortcomings. I felt need to examine Digital River’s business in detail such as pricing policy etc. and competetors.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

About Digital River

I googled for Digital River and I found their website easily. But the big surprise for me is I can't find their site in Japanese. What I understand from the class is, they have a branch opened in Japan for a while. In my opinion, Japanese people not much fluent in English, so I expected to see Japanese website for any foreign company that do business here. Or, may be they have one, but I can't find it. I don't know.


I look through their website, and found Digital River's product which is all about e-commerce and e-marketing. As talked in the class, Japan e-market is number one in this world. I think Digital River come to the right place to do investment. However, the challenging is how to do a good marketing in Japan. I think I'll gain a lot of marketing knowledge from this final project.


Here is the Digital River site that I found, if anyone know URL of Japanese version website, please let me know.
www.digitalriver.com

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Marketing Strategy: knowing how to target the right customers

DreamWorks has recently started marketing through facebook games.

"It's a pretty exciting and very fast way to connect with our audience at a very significant level," Ms. Globe said. "It's unlike a TV spot, which does have tremendous value to hit a lot folks at one time, but then it's gone. With a social opportunity like Zynga, you really have the chance to be there a little bit longer with your fans." (Full Text)


It stands out that in the current environment, marketing just through television or movie theatre spots doesn't work even for a company in the movie business.

Of course, Globe also points out that you have to know your audience. DreamWorks deals primarily in animated movies, and they need to find ways to attract not only children, but also the parents of children. Facebook, youtube, and blogs are a way of doing that. Marketing strategy only works as long as you know who you are selling to.

Thanks Mr. John Eyles

I am really happy to write this blog after participating Mr. John Eyles lecture about "The Mobile Learning Revolution". His total presentation was very interesting and when he focused on the “B.B.C Janala” a mobile phone operated English teaching program in Bangladesh, my interest reached at its maximum. I am really happy to see such a great person who is directly related with such a program.

Bangladesh is a country of 150 million people and now a day almost every family is using a mobile phone. So it is powerful tool to communicate with people and B.B.C is using it for teaching English. BBC Janala (“Window”) is offering over 250 audio and SMS lessons to the growing 50.4 million mobile users in Bangladesh.

To make the lessons affordable, the BBC has teamed up with all six of Bangladesh’s mobile operators who have agreed to cut the cost of calls to the service by up to 75%. Each lesson is a three-minute phone call, costing about 3 taka (4 YEN)

Therefore this kind of program will be successful among other developing countries as well. I like to show my respect to Mr. John Eyles for his noble activities in Bangladesh and to Professor Philip Sugai for introducing him with us.

3D interactive marketing and commerce system can strengthen local jewelry manufacturers

The rapid development of Information Technology (IT) and advanced computer aided design make it possible for Hong Kong jewelry manufacturers to upgrade their marketing capability from traditional face to face bargaining to web-enabled real time advanced 3D interactive marketing and commerce. The objective of this project is to develop a 3D real time Internet based Business-to-Business marketing model customized for Hong Kong small and medium sized jewelry manufacturing enterprises.
The system involves 3D computer aided design technology which allows real time rotation of the design for better viewing from any angle; standardized jewelry design templates including textures, colors, and various types of gems and settings. All of these are designed based on Internet technology. Buyers can customize their favor design and place order at any time anywhere.

Therefore, this web-enabled 3D interactive marketing and commerce system can strengthen local jewelry manufacturers' competitiveness by lowering the cost of new product development and increase the market accessibility via World Wide Web.


Marketing Strategy Vs. Marketing Plan

When I looked through the course syllabus and found that this coming Monday's topic is about 'The Marketing Plan and Marketing Strategy, I wonder what is the difference between those two. After I did some researches, I'm now get some ideas about the difference so I would like to share them to all the classmates. This is the short summary. Hope that you guys will get to read this before going to class.

A marketing strategy defines objectives and describes the way the company going to satisfy customers in their chosen markets. It is shaped by the overall business goals. The marketing strategy is essentially a document that company use to judge the appropriateness and effectiveness of the specific marketing plans. In another word, marketing strategy is a summary of company's products and position in relation to the competitor. While the sales and marketing plan are the specific actions company going to use to achieve the goal of their marketing strategy.

Marketing strategy is usually written out in a marketing plan. So the company need to have a marketing strategy before they can write a marketing plan. Marketing plan may includes detail about business' unique selling proposition, pricing strategy, sales and distribution, and advertising and promotions plan. Marketing strategy is the long term goal, for a number of years, but the detail of marketing plan need to be updated every year.

sources:
http://sbinfocanada.about.com/cs/marketing/a/marketingplan.htm
http://www.is4profit.com/business-advice/sales-marketing/marketing-strategy.html


Sarintorn Puangyoykeaw (Tarn)

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Learning more about m-Learning by John Eyles

I got a surprise on the presentation by John Eyles last Friday. How I didn't know that before I came to Japan, a m-learning model for teaching English purpose has been improved in my country, Indonesia. The biggest subscriber at about more than 100.000 people can be reached only less than 1 year. It's an incredible fact.

After the presentation, I've tried to explore more information about successfully m-learning marketing in Indonesia by these links :
http://www.urbanplanetmobile.com/ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H2Rzdaw-Yc

Surely, these information have given me a new prespective regarding my interest in development e-learning and m-learning, about how to create a good combination between marketing strategies and innovation in mobile techonologies, especially for implementation in developing countries.

Thank you to Mr.John Eyles for shared his precious knowledge and experiences to me and all IUJ students.

Marketing in drama from Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT)

This coming Monday, our e-marketing class will talk about marketing plan and strategy. This is very interesting topic for me. I have no background about marketing, so I searched for the meaning of marketing strategy and found a Thai-language blog talk about successive marketing in this advertising. From a lot of comment in Youtube, and public webboard, after watched this drama everyone feel that "I want to buy a ticket to Thailand right now"

"Hearing the Sunshine", is the name of mini drama produced by Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) The purpose is for promoting travelling place in Thailand. Actually TAT have produced the spot advertising for travelling every year. But it's not much interesting because it's all same theme, not attractive. This is the first time that they made a drama to reach target customer, and they got very good feedback.

I think drama and marketing is a good combination. Enjoy watching.

Below clip is a short version, the full version have 7 short stories. You can see it all from my blog here :
http://thaitoyou.blogspot.com/2011/06/hearing-sunshine-by-amezing-thailand.html

Friday, October 14, 2011

Taobao and the mobile future of emerging e-commerce markets

Next week's case study on Taobao and today's special lecture on mobile learning reminded me of the research project I conducted on Asian mobile commerce trends during my summer internship. Basically, all indicators are showing that in China and other developing markets, mobile is THE driver of e-commerce growth, and retail growth in general.

I found out that in the US, channels for both traditional retail and non-mobile e-commerce are generally well-developed, and consumers prefer to use these channels. However, in Asia, 69% of respondents (2011 Accenture survey) say they find mobile phone more convenient than other payment methods, while only 26% of European and US respondents agreed. Same thing for e.g. mobile coupons (83% vs. 52%), bank account balance inquiries (62% vs. 33%) and stock trading (31% vs. 4%). Clearly, as implied in today's lecture, developing countries seem to 'skip' building traditional channels and have new mobile technologies as growth drivers. Indeed, the number of mobile internet users in China is expected to grow to a whopping 957 million by 2015. M-commerce market is growing at an annual rate exceeding 400%.

Looking at these growth figures, one can but recognize the ingenuity of Taobao's strategy of giving the ultimate incentive - making it FREE of charge - to conducting e-commerce on its platforms, and ultimately drawing profits from advertising to all the consumers flocking to its site.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Marketing Strategy


imgres.jpg

A visual aid most often does the trick. This one caught my eyes and as if it spoke to me, marketing is an avenue and strategy a street. If I shall expand it there could be many streets to this avenue and perhaps, this too, is the essence of one having to immerse herself in the study of Marketing Strategy-- to choose not necessarily  the closest but the best strategy to get to the marketing goal.

A day before coming back to IUJ, I strolled in the so-called Lala Port Mall in Toyosu, Tokyo. After some purchases, I was offered a "point card" but I had to deliver a form to a nearby desk for confirmation. Here, the form was taken from me but the staff offered another card, with more benefits. Mostly said in Japanese, I thought this was an "upgraded point card". Well, I ended up facing a laptop, where I thought my photo would be taken. Instead, I was made to fill up an electronic form with so many inquiries that took more than 30  minutes of my time. The whole process made me weary, I only tried not to show my disappointment. Outrightly, having learned some customer care theories in IUJ, I knew they were doing me wrong as a customer.

For one, it was a credit card. I knew of it only after some time. The gift certificate was not handed to me readily, a card approval had to be awaited. Most of all, I was a foreigner, they should at least have had someone to talk to me in English since they would entertain non-japanese applicants. Everything was coordinated with someone on the phone to make sure I qualified the filling out of the form. Aghast, since i realized t'was a credit card, I knew I'd fail it being a mere foreign STUDENT. After a day, I received an email. I was not wrong. The card was denied.

Marketing in general is a dynamic way to connect mutual wants with customers. From what I learned so far, in all the strategies we try to design, the most important result is that customers are pleased. Or, sooooo pleased. This gives the business. THis sustains it. Thus, in connecting to them, it shall be vital they are left with a pleasant experience. And short to say, this was not how I ended up with that bank. 

To say the least, therefore, how customers get to be into their data bank was painstaking both for the staff and the yielding client. One example of marketing bereft of a well thought strategy.  =,(