"The Days of Dumb Advertising Are Over."

For many consumers, smartphone and tablet become part of life today. They spend a lot of time on these mobile tools for checking email, browsing websites, and utilizing apps. Perceived by brands, more and more consumers spend their money through the apps on their mobile devices. Therefore, we may think if there will be any influence on digital marketing industry. This topic was discussed in the article, "Will mobile kill digital advertising?", from CNN Tech on Spe 24, 2012. http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/24/tech/mobile/keen-mobile-advertising/

According to this article, mobile will not destroy digital marketing but impacts it absolutely. Randall Rothenberg, the President and CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAM), said, "The days of dumb advertising are over." The commercial messages must be interesting enough to attract engaged consumers' attention. Therefore, advertising messages are packaged in apps and the communications are created by interactive manners. Mostly, brands deliver their marketing messages in 3 ways by apps: 1) advantages, offering discounts or promotions to consumers; 2) usages, providing convenience and useful information; 3) entertainments, bringing fun.

However, I prefer not to say mobile impacts digital marketing. I would like to say digital marketing works in a better format today. Because the screen becomes smaller, it is difficult for impatient consumers to check all the information thoroughly. They download useful apps, which are actually a kind of "saved webpages" but only listing the most important information, what is it (creating brand image) and how to get it (facilitate the transaction). When consumers love the apps, they will be fond of the brands. The apps decrease consumers "defensive mechanism", which is the most tough barrier traditional media always want to avoid. The other good thing for marketers is that consumers cannot compare the offers easily since most of the apps are offered by specific brands, excluding the accessibility to other competitors.  

Recently, I am following 3 fine chocolate brands to see how they promote their products through digital marketing. They are Lindt, Godiva and Mast brothers, and they are defined as larger, medium and smaller corporations in turns by their annual sales. Not surprisingly, they are all very active on their own social media. However, Lindt and Godiva keep launching their apps for different holidays and seasonal campaigns to fulfill consumers' needs of advantages (special offers), usages (store locators) and entertainments (Lindt Bear). On the contrary, Mast Brothers, the smallest seller among them, does not have any app. This phenomenon can be a downside for consumers' alternatives. Because some small brands may not be able to afford the cost to launch and manage apps, strong brands will be stronger in mobile market. Another question we can think about is, even some small brands can have their own apps, are consumers willing to download an app from a nameless brand on their mobile devices, which have limited space? 

Image source: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/say-it-with-the-lindt-bear/id481185526?mt=8

Image source: http://www.instant.ly/blog/2013/04/for-the-love-of-chocolate-mobile-marketing-and-godiva/

   

What Are The Triggers Motivating You To Act?

One of my Professors, Joanne Tombrakos, teaching Digital Marketing awesomely in NYU, shared a personality assessment with us. The test is the first science-based personality assessment and it was created by Sally Hogshead. If you are interested in it, you can get more information through its website: http://www.howtofascinate.com/ and Hogshead's lecture: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG0WiP5ux1Q.

After testing, I got a report about my "triggers". What do "triggers" mean? Well, in my understanding, they are innate drives influencing your personality. All your behaviors are affected by these triggers. So let's say if you see you as a brand, then these triggers are important essentials forming your brand image. 

My primary trigger is "Trust" and the second trigger is "Prestige"; on the contrary, my dormant trigger is "Rebellion". Therefore, according to the analysis, I fall in the Diplomat cell. I am a person who is ambitious, detail-oriented, reliable, stable and uncompromising. Like some other personality tests, most of the descriptions from this test are positive. (Who would be happy to accept negative comments?) So the result interests me in some introspection, which means that I would like to explore more about myself. Then I can see if how I understand myself is similar as the evaluation from the test. 

I would like to give 3 characteristics to describe who I am by the examples from my previous work experience. 

First, I don't talk a lot and I usually like to think thoroughly before I talk. Working as a sales director in a small company, I was in charge of the annual local and international sales. Therefore, every decision I made affected customers' attitude toward our company and all the policies I set influenced my co-workers' actions on their duties. I always thought that a leader should not talk too much since that sometimes would confuse others and even easily made wrong statements.

Second, I keep all the promises as I can. I used to over-work (even at home) just to satisfy my clients' requests to make sure they would receive their orders on time. So even I have left my previous company, most of my previous customers still keep very good relationship with me. I would feel bad if I did not finish what I had promised. There was one time, one of my subordinates said she would quit. She did not explain why but I knew Taiwanese employees did not always say what they really thought about. So I checked if there had been something wrong. Then I found I had promised to raise her salary for 12% and I had informed the accounting department to do that, but the accounting people just forgot it. So I asked the girl if that was the main reason she wanted to leave and she said partly it was. (Though I did not believe it was "partly", it should be "totally".) I felt very embarrassed and reimbursed her what she should get and gave her a vacation for week with salary. She finally decided not to quit and stayed 2 years more until I left.

Third, I am a cautious person and I tare care over the details. I do not say yes or no when somebody has a request, I tend to say "I am going to check it but I think it will / will not be fine." Then I will try to collect required information before making the decision. I have very good memory, but I understand that not everyone does. Therefore I was very cautious at partnering with other companies. In the beginning of cooperation, people were often very polite and did not speak out what they really wanted. I would like to list all the agreements and send a copy to them after the important meetings. Sometimes I met some clients did not like this serious way, then I would send an email to say "thank you" but simply attache all the points we had agreed. All I did was try to avoid any issues in the future and this would help create longer partnership.

However, I feel my personality have changed a little bit after coming the States. For example, I found that most Americans like to express what they think directly, or I should say Americans like to talk and think at the same time. This is totally different from what it is in Taiwan. In Taiwan, if you say something wrong without consideration, people will think you are very rude. Sometimes we would think our idea is not good and others would think it is stupid. But here, everyone's opinion is respected and no one's idea is stupid. I actually like this culture more, since a creative idea often looks rough in the beginning when it is proposed but then proved excellent after more open talks. So this is the part I am working on to change - talk more as I can and do not eliminate any idea in mind even I do not believe others will really like it.    

Above all, I feel this test describes my personality accurately (well, I think it achieves 85%). Even it is not always the case, you can have the chance to explore yourself more. So why don't you also take the test and see how it will talk about you?

PS. By the way, if you are also interested in reading my Professor's articles, here is the link for the great blog!  http://onewomanseye.blogspot.com/ 

Throw Away The Paper Prescription

A wonderful thing today is that there are millions of apps we can use for a variety of purposes. However, just few of them are really favored and deemed useful tools. In my observations, except the entertainment apps, a popular app usually helps people fix their problems in daily life and save their time.

It is painful to refill the drugs usually taken, especially when you help your elder family do that. You need to find out the prescription, which is often left somewhere in the house, just you never know. Besides, you are often confused at the prescription.

Therefore, the app from Walgreens helps solve this problem, you can scan the barcode on the prescription bottle to make sure to get the right medicine refilled. By its store locator, you can search for the Walgreens stores near your house and set one of them as your preferred store. Sometimes you may forget to refill the medicine, you will also be reminded.

If that's the only function for this app, then it would be one of numerous apps usually ignored. Most Walgreens stores provide photo print service, so you can edit your photos through other apps in your smartphone and go to print them in Walgreens. (Please ignore my stupid head in the sample pic.)





















Walgreens does not only hope you can consume in their pharmacy and photo departments, but also hope you can buy some other products in their stores. Keeping consumers updated about the weekly sales is an important action to make customers to stay longer and earn more profits. Customers also can find out the products they want by looking up the store map.

The design of its interface is simple. According to my test, I also feel the app is easy to operate. Simplicity is very important for app users. People download apps to make things easier, not more complicated. Customer loyalty program is also built in, so you can remove the small card attached to your keys. (Well, even though you may still need to carry several other funny small cards to other brands. At least, you can reduce one.)





















We can see most users left very positive feedback on this app. However, Walgreens needs to be aware of their updating problem, which becomes the major reason for people uninstalled the app. The last thing I found interesting is that only 10% of rating users left negative reviews on the score section, but there are about 50% of the reviews are negative in the writing section. Or we can say the satisfied people, about 82% of rating users, tend to just score the app but the unsatisfied people are more likely to write down their comments. This phenomenon proves a saying again, "a good reputation sits still; a bad one runs about."

If you are interested in getting this app, following is the link for Android system:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.usablenet.mobile.walgreen&hl=en

You may also want to visit the Walgreens' website:
http://www.walgreens.com/

7-Eleven Becomes A Necessity In Taiwanese People's Life

If you walk in Taipei City at midnight and ask a Taiwanese where to buy some food, the first answer may be night market and the second answer I bet it would be 7-Eleven. 

Is 7-Eleven important for Taiwanese people? Let's see some statistics. There are 4,861 7-Eleven stores in Taiwan, while only behind 14,884 stores in Japan, 6,726 stores in the US and 5,840 stores in Thailand. However, you would be surprised that a 7-Eleven store is shared by 4,800 people in Taiwan and the store density is NO.1 in the world, comparing to 8,510 people/store in Japan , 46,967 people/store in the US and 11,253 people/store in Thailand.

So why is 7-Eleven so important for Taiwanese people? Because Taiwanese people care about "convenience" and 7-Eleven seem so mighty in daily life. In addition to the basic function - supplying drinks and food, 7-Eleven allows people to pay miscellaneous bills such as credit card bills, electricity bills or telecom bills, and provides an on-line system for customers to purchase concert or ball game tickets in store. Besides, some 7-Eleven stores have built-in coffee shops with free WiFi and some others even have mini bakeries with fresh bread.

People in Taiwan have not only rational association but also emotional connection with 7-Eleven. Its characters, Open-Jiang and Lock-Jiang, usually attract consumers' attention. Besides, 7-Eleven usually launch campaigns encouraging customers to collect points to win the licensed gifts from famous characters, such as Paddington Bears, Hello Kitty, Rilakkuma, etc. Here is one thing, which is difficult for foreigners to imagine, many residents feel safe if they live near a 7-Eleven store. Taiwanese usually work over-time, so when they go home late they would feel safe because there is a store open for 24 hours in the street where they live. They know they are not alone and they are not worried about finding something to eat at midnight. If you lived in NYC in 2012, you should still remember that how NYC was really in a mess after Sandy's attack. The disconnected Subway and closed stores made Manhattan's nightmare. In average, there are over 15 hurricanes equal to Sandy visiting Taiwan every summer (I am not kidding). 7-Eleven is where you believe it will still be open even under severe rainstorm and floods.

Although many advantages of 7-Eleven are addressed here, disadvantages should not be ignored. Taking the first position in convenience stores in Taiwan, the number of 7-Eleven stores is larger than the sum of the other brands. 7-Eleven becomes a very strong channel affecting people's life, so we can assume a leading brand easily becomes arrogant. Last year, a popular local journal - Business Weekly - reported that some food in 7-Eleven containing bacteria and reminded customers to be careful. After one week, people could not buy this journal in any 7-Eleven store since enraged 7-Eleven stopped to sell it. Though the second convenience store brand - Family Mart - wisely promoted Business Weekly with free coffee at the same time, its influence were far behind 7-Eleven.

Anyway, 7-Eleven has constructed a special culture in Taiwan. Next time when you visit Taiwan, try to visit a 7-Eleven store. I promise that it is very different from those in Japan or in the US.   

                                                          http://www.7-11.com.tw

About The Johannes' Burg

I got the name "Johannes" from "Johannes Brahms", who was one of the most famous composer and pianist in Germany. A funny thing was that I actually did not understand his music a lot when I started to use this name. It is embarrassing to say that there was a time I kept looking for the first girl friend in my life and I found Johannes Brahms' love story with Clara Schumann, then I decided to have "Johannes" as my English name, though it was actually a German name. However, for English speakers, I believed that it was at least easier than my Taiwanese name to pronounce. lol

Now I major in Integrated Marketing in NYU. Before coming here, I had worked for 7 years. From 2005-2007, I enlisted in the Army to serve as a corporal and my duty was to train the rookies and teach them how to use firearms and chemical weapons. I learned rigid disciplines and I thought it was "management". Nevertheless, after finishing the military service, I was hired as a sales director by a manufacturer in Taiwan and I then realized what I learned in the Army did not fit the business culture. I loved the job since not only I was involved in the R&D process but also I was fully authorized to set the marketing policy. I founded the international sales department in my second year there and after 4 years it accounted for 30% of the revenue in 2012. I decided to take a rest and recharge myself after the success. Through my previous work experience, I saw many companies in Asia manufacturing excellent products but performing poor ideas in marketing. Therefore, I came to New York because Americans' are marketing experts and I believed that I could meet the best experts in NYU.

I always want to have my own blog. I mean a blog with passion and persistence. I am always too lazy to have a blog. Now it is a good chance for me to start it (because it is required as part of grades in the course Digital Marketing). I feel excited about what I am going to do. As a marketer, surely I would like to talk about some marketing ideas here, especially the difference between Taiwanese' ideas and Americans' ideas. Besides, I also want to share some of my travel experience since I love to travel and enjoy different cultures.

In the end, I want to say "welcome" and I will appreciate any of your feedback. : )

P.S. Let's celebrate the birth of my blog in a marketing way! : D