Checkmate

I randomly came across this picture of two billboards online the other day and i absolutely fell in love with it. As a student who is interested in going into the field of advertising i thought this was one of the most creative and funny billboards i have seen. I just felt that this was a really innovative and smart ad on BMWs part and they really got a lot of bang for their buck on this one, especially cause this picture is floating all around the internet. Anyway i just felt like sharing this awesome billboard with everyone.

Cherry Chocolate Rain

Viral Marketing

A huge part of online marketing nowadays is viral marketing. Every good marketer know the value of a successful viral marketing campaign. If an online video becomes popular not only does it reach up to millions of people, but it does so at very low cost to the company. Basically the only thing that the company has to pay for is production of the video, rather than the traditional production and placement costs.
Another key feature of a viral marketing campaign is that viewers actually want to watch the video as opposed to "having to" watch commercials during tv shows. The users are engaged and entertained by an effective video and will usually sit through the whole thing, even if its several minutes long.
One of my favorite viral videos of all time is "Cherry Chocolate Rain" by Tay Zonday. Tay Zonday first came out with an extremely popular youtube video of him singing "Chocolate Rain." This video had millions of views and virtually everyone has heard it. Dr. Pepper saw an opportunity to use his popularity to promote their product and came out with a spoof of his "Chocolate Rain" rendition called "Cherry Chocolate Rain." This was to promote Dr. Pepper's new Diet Cherry Chocolate Dr. Pepper.
The song enlisted the help of famous rappers and had Tay Zonday singing about the new beverage with a little bit of his old song mixed in with a new eye catching music video. There is no way this campaign could not be considered a success as to the fact that there are over seven million views of it on youtube.

Case 4: Pricing Strategies

Case 4: Pricing Strategies

One of my favorite companies, that I check several times a day, is steepandcheap.com. It is very similar to Woot.com except that it focuses on outdoor athletic apparel, such as climbing gear, snowboards, tents, and the like. Just like Woot.com, there is only one product offered at a time at a severely discounted rate, but unlike woot.com these products change every 20-45 minutes. Whenever I am in the market for something that I think will appear on steepandcheap.com I check the website at least 20 times a day.
. The company is an affiliate-based company that is entirely centered around its pricing strategy, even having cheap in its name. Affiliate marketing is where websites share traffic and revenue and the merchants selling their goods on the site pay commissions to the site. For example steepandcheap.com displays and sells a tent at a discounted rate for a company that has a surplus of tents. The company makes their profit and pays part of it to steepandcheap.com.
SteepandCheap.com has a very straightforward fixed pricing strategy. They primarily use a promotional strategy by offering a product at a very discounted rate for a limited time. There is always a limited number of the product so if it is a popular item or good deal you risk missing out on it if you don’t act fast, and there is a short time limit on the deal even if the item doesn’t sell out. This, along with the discounted price, forces people to hastily buy the product.
Generally the products are between 40-70% off retail price but that can very. As a rule of thumb, the larger the item the larger the discount on that item. Most inexpensive products will be about 30-50% off while more expensive ones will be on the higher side. Also the percent off is on the suggested retail price so in reality you are not saving as much as it says you are. You can find all of these items elsewhere way below suggested retail price but steepandcheap.com pretty much has the best prices around. As an example, earlier this week I bought a climbing harness from steepandcheap.com. It came out to around $38 with shipping and handling. It said that the regular price was around $100. I looked around online and I found the same harness on several different websites for as low as $53 with shipping and handling. While you are not saving as much as you would like to think, steepandcheap.com does have some of the best prices around.
One feature that makes it easy to assess the effectiveness of the steepandcheap.com is that it tells you how many of each item is being offered and how many have been sold. Some items are very popular and sell out quickly, but some will only sell 5 out of 45 being offered. Either way it is extremely successful. Even with the least sold items, which tend to be the bigger ones, there will be five or six sold in a half hour. At this point in time there are 5,462 people on the site, a microweight crew shirt being sold with six minutes left in the deal. So far 75 out of 115 of these shirts have been sold and the deal has only been on for 14 minutes. Overall I think steepandcheap.com has a very effective pricing strategy that will continue to be successful.

Case 3: NetFlix

In this day and age every major business that wants to have a shot at being competitive somehow incorporates the Internet into its business model. There are different levels of Internet use, ranging from basic activities such as e-mail communication and online purchasing, known as the activity level, to the Pure Play level, where the entire business is online. Either way, in order for a company to be successful they need to use the Internet.
One company that uses the pure play web business model very effectively is NetFlix. NetFlix is a movie rental company that offers DVD rentals through the mail and online streaming of movies. Customers pay a flat monthly rate and when they are done watching a DVD they mail it back and get another one. This model has proven to be extremely effective with NetFlix having over 100,000 movies available and over 10 million subscribers. On February 25, 2007 NetFlix announced that it had delivered over one billion DVDs, and NetFlix claims to spend about $300 million per year on postage.
Even though there is an actually tangible product that customers receive, NetFlix is considered to have a pure play business model because their company exists on the Internet only. They have no stores or outlets that someone can visit to exchange DVDs or ask a question. All of their business transactions are done entirely online and that makes them a Pure Play company.
A pure play company has to operate a lot differently than a traditional company in order to make a profit. No longer can people see you store, come in, and buy your product. These companies are forced to come up with creative ideas and business models in order to make their business a success. NetFlix’s primary business model is the subscription model, where customers pay for the content services that are offered. Prices range from $4.99 a month, which entails you to two movies per month, to $47.99 which allows you to have eight movies out at a time and exchange them an unlimited number of times. The most popular plan they have is their three DVDs out at a time with unlimited exchanges for $16.99 per month. Most of these also come with unlimited streaming videos online.
It is obvious that NetFlix’s subscription model is very effective and generates a large amount of their revenue, but that is not their sole source of revenue. NetFlix does dabble into the Advertising business model by allowing movies to be advertised on their website. They also put ads on the actual packaging that they mail the DVDs in. While advertising is not their primary model, it does generate a good amount of revenue.
In the past NetFlix also tried the merchant model by allowing users to purchase used DVDs. Apparently this wasn’t very successful and was disallowed in November of 2008. In addition, while NetFlix clearly does not have a community business model, it does have some aspects of one. Users are allowed to rate and review movies and share their opinions with other users.
NetFlix is a leader in the movie rental industry, but does face a lot of competition and must continually improve. A way to keep track of a company is to set up performance metrics in order to measure how successful your company is in meeting its shareholders, employee’s, and customer’s needs. While financial metrics are easy to establish and track and are very useful it is important to keep in mind that some are focused on customer satisfaction.
The first things that NetFlix can easily measure are their number of subscriptions, number of actual deliveries made, market share, and total revenue. These are all easily traceable and provide good information about where the company stands and how it is growing/not growing
Some other performance metrics that would be valuable to NetFlix would be ones that track customer satisfaction. An easy way to do this would be to measure delivery time on DVDs. Another metric could be how long people have to wait for popular new releases. Also NetFlix could see if people are searching for movies that they do not offer.
By using these performance metrics NetFlix will be able to track their progress and improve their business model in order to meet all of their customer’s needs.

Content Removed

Have you seen that adorable clip on YouTube of that cute little girl singing Winter Wonderland? No you haven’t because earlier this month Warner Brothers, who have copyrighted the song, and forced the video to be pulled. Many people feel that this video, along with thousands of other similar ones, is not actually copyright infringement and there is some degree of outrage from YouTube users.
The Internet is still a relatively new medium and as it grows and expands new legal and ethical issues are brought up daily. Never before has everyone been so connected and information sharing has never been easier. This information sharing includes passing along interesting things you find on the Internet as well as videos, songs, and any type of electronic media you create yourself. The most prevalent issue today is what is considered fair use of copyrighted material and what is considered infringement.
There are clearly some cases that are one way or another but the problem occurs when someone posts a video of their daughter singing a song that they want to share with their friends and family. There are thousands of similar posts each day and as the Internet and the way people use it is evolving so must the laws regulating the Internet. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an organization that recognizes this. The EFF is an international non-profit advocacy and legal organization based in the United States with the stated purpose of being dedicated to preserving the right to freedom of speech, such as protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, in the context of today's digital age. The organization is considered the front line of defense when the freedoms of the networked world come under attack.
Earlier this month the EFF heard about the forced removal of Julie Weybret’s, the girl who had her Winter Wonderland clip removed, YouTube post. The EFF decided that YouTube and Warner Brothers have crossed the line when it comes to content issues and disagreements. YouTube has a ContentID feature available for copyright holders. This allows the holders to search and flag for deletion any videos that they feel are violating their copyright. The EFF feels that many of these videos are actually complying with Fair Use regulations and that the copyright holders are overstepping their boundaries.



This system, while it does give users opportunities to dispute the removal of their content, is clearly giving the advantage to the major corporations. The average YouTube user knows little to nothing about copyright laws while the copyright holders have teams of lawyers who are experts in the area. If a user is told their video is in violation they will both be intimidated to stand up against a large company and will believe that they are actually in violation. The EFF was clearly enraged with the situation and earlier this month they released this statement:

"These systems are still primitive and unable to distinguish a transformative remix from copyright infringement. So unless they leave lots of breathing room for remixed content, these filters end up sideswiping lots of fair uses. And that's exactly what has happened these past few weeks. And while today it's Warner Music, as more copyright owners start using the Content ID tool, it'll only get worse. Soon it may be off limits to remix anything with snippets of our shared mass media culture - music, TV, movies, jingles, commercials. That would be a sad irony - copyright being used to stifle an exciting new wellspring of creativity, rather than encourage it."

The EFF realizes that if this is allowed to continue it could lead to vast amounts of regulation. With that said the EFF is trying to get the word out that they want to stand up for anyone who feels their rights have been violated. They feel that the ContentID tool YouTube uses doesn’t separate copyright infringement from fair use and they hope to change the system so it’s in favor of YouTube users. The EFF plans to sue YouTube in order to change its copyright monitoring system and in hopes that they will keep alive the amateur videos on the Internet that we all love.

Case 1: Nike vs. Puma

In this day and age, the way companies do business is rapidly changing, due mostly to the continued growth of the Internet. Consumers are able to go online and compare prices and products instantly and are no longer willing to settle for anything less than exactly what they want. Many companies, including Nike and Puma, are taking a new approach to their sales and online experience. Both of these companies have recently updated their websites to include mass customization sections, where everybody can get exactly what they want.
Mass customization is using flexible computer-aided manufacturing systems to produce custom output. Those systems combine the low unit costs of mass production processes with the flexibility of individual customization. Mass customization is considered the new frontier of manufacturing and service industries and can provide a strategic and economic advantage for a company that uses it correctly. Nike and Puma have realized this and have gotten a head start on the competition with their new additions to their websites, NikeID and Puma Mongolian BBQ.


Both companies do offer mass customization they go about it in very different ways. The Puma Mongolian BBQ is trying to reach a more hip crowd with its "everyone has a different taste" philosophy. On the Mongolian BBQ website it explains that the Mongolian BBQ started long ago with Genghis Khan’s Mongolian army, where each soldier would gather their own ingredients and make their own personalized meal, using their shields as pans. They claim to understand that everyone, like the Mongolian soldiers, has different tastes, so they have plenty of precut materials so everyone can make their ideal shoe.
While this is essentially the mass customization idea, it is presented in a more fun and stylish way then just logging on and picking exactly what you want. At the same there can also be some downsides to this, such as it immediately excludes some potential markets. Many people who log on will view this campaign as weird and will think things like the crazy chef are just too far out there, rather than funny and entertaining. Another major flaw in Puma’s Mongolian BBQ is the lack of options. Once you choose a shoe to customize there are plenty of different color combinations and options, but they only offer three shoes to customize. If a person is looking for a new pair of shoes but does not want one of their classic 70s and 80s athletic shoes then they are out of luck.
The Mongolian BBQ does have some very good attributes as well. It is extremely user friendly. You are initially presented with a choice of what type of shoe you want to begin with. Next you have the option of looking at pre-designed shoes and using one of them as a template, or starting from scratch. Finally you get to choose exactly what colors and patterns you want on your shoe, customizing everything from the sole to the inner lining. There are plenty of options for colors and patterns, but they generally shy away from solid colors and try to make the shoe appear trendy. The Mongolian BBQ seems like it is really targeting young, urban, people who like to appear trendy.


NikeID is more my type of web site focusing on athletes and “customizing your performance.” Right off the bat it is obvious that while Nike is trying to be trendy, showing you some “cool” customized shoes, it is still the same athletic based Nike. Its customize your look section tells you to show your colors on the field and show your style on the street while the customize your performance section tells you enhance your athletic skill with the perfect fit.
Nike’s real competitive advantage here is its vast number of customizable items. Not only do they offer 153 different customizable pairs of shoes, it also offers customizable clothing and athletic gear. A person can go to NikeID and essentially get whatever they want in any color or design they want. Another great feature of NikeID is that it offers wide and narrow sizes and independent left and right sizes, so you can really get exactly what you need. There is a very good selection of colors, but it could be larger, and there are pretty much all-solid colors and no unique patters that are offered. I feel that Nike’s are generally viewed as performance shoes and the colors will most likely be customized to match a person’s team colors so this is all right. Another unique piece of customization is that you can add you personal id, name and number, to any pair of shoes you create.
The downsides to Nike’s customizable shoes is that if you don’t know exactly what you want it can get overwhelming. There are over 150 pairs of shoes that you can get and it can be intimidating trying to pick the right ones. The website is fairly user friendly, with plenty of pictures to help direct you where to go, in case you don’t know what Nike Air Pegasus, Nike Air Max, or Mike Shox Turbo are, but it is not quite as simple to use as the Puma Mongolian BBQ.
When I went onto the websites my choices were fairly limited with the Puma Mongolian BBQ so I decided to make a pair of casual shoes that I can wear walking around every day. My genius creating can be viewed here. While on the Nike site I had many more options and decided to go with a basketball shoe, seen above. Once you got down to it, both sites used extremely similar methods to allow you to make the perfect shoe. When you finally picked a shoe it was displayed for you on both sites and you could look at it from all angles. On NikeID you actually clicked the part of the shoe you wanted to change, while on Puma’s Mongolian BBQ all of the shoe parts were listed on the side and you clicked on the one you wanted to change. I found when actually designing the shoe both of them were very simple and easy to use, and they both had sections where I could show off my shoe and send it to my friends.
Despite the lack of options on the Puma Mongolian BBQ it had many web 2.0 characteristics. A large amount of the customized shoes are user generated and are available to view in the gallery. Anyone can pick a shoe they like that is there and purchase it, or they can use that shoe as a starting point and edit it to their liking. This allows for a lot of remixing of content and collaboration.
Another Web 2.0 characteristic that both companies share is that they are relatively open. Anybody, customer or competitor, can go onto NikeID, or Puma Mongolian BBQ and look at all the products they offer, the ways in which they are customizable, and the prices. At the same time both of these companies have very traditional business models, with an established hierarchy and thousands of employees.
Both companies are using modern technology efficiently to create a good customer experience but all in all Puma is creating a better customer experience. Puma is using all aspects of technology to create a unique user experience on their website. Unlike Nike, which is very businesslike and professional looking, despite the mass customization, Puma’s Mongolian BBQ is something that you won’t find anywhere else on the web. While it may not appeal to some targets, many will enjoy the interactive experience and like it better then a traditional business model.