There is nothing much skiers can do while they are sitting on the lift. Although some chat with other skiers sitting next to them or make/receive a few phone calls, others keep quiet and desperately search for something to kill their ten-minute boredom.
I have met an interesting OOH (Out-Of-Home) advertising at Yongpyong, a Korean ski resort. The marketers of the Tiguan at the Volkswagen made its back side using paper and then attached it to the lift. Most skiers including me who take this lift cannot help but look at the rear side of this car for over ten minutes until they get off the lift and hit the slope. Cutting/painting papers like a car may not cost much but doing so seems to work; I now become very familiar with this car, at least, its back side!
More importantly, I find this advertisement interesting and infer that the brand, Volkswagen, might be interesting as well. This way of thought is well established in a classic paper in which the attitude toward the advertisement (Aad) plays a key role in shaping the attitude toward the brand.
This article presents the results of a study designed to obtain a better understanding of the effects of using valenced visual information in advertising. In the study, subjects saw advertisements for hypothetical products that contained affect-laden photographs with different valences (Picture Type Manipulation). The results indicate that the affect-laden photographs had an effect on both attitude toward the advertisement (Aad) and brand attitudes; however, no differences were found in the product attribute beliefs that were formed. Photographs that were evaluated positively created more favorable attitudes toward the advertisements and brand attitudes, whereas the reverse was true for photographs that were evaluated negatively. The results of an analysis of covariance indicate that the inclusion of both the predicted attitude from structured scales (ΣΣbi,ei) and elicited beliefs did not eliminate all the reliable Picture Type effects on brand attitudes; however, the inclusion of Aad did eliminate these effects. In addition, Aad was found to affect brand attitudes for advertisements that contain only copy, and evidence is presented that Aad and brand attitudes are separate hypothetical constructs. Finally, a Dual Component model is presented to explain the effects of visual and verbal information in advertisements.
I have long believed that marketing is a unique business discipline because it cannot be translated into Chinese. Different from Marketing, other business disciplines have their own Chinese names: Accounting is 會計, Finance is 財務, Manufacturing is 生產, OB/HRM is 組織/人事, and Strategy is 戰略.
Interestingly, however, marketing department at the Window of the world (世界之窗) in Shenzhen, China, was written in market (市場) department. I wish Chinese marketers either accept the English name of marketing or invent a new name of it in Chinese because marketing, the activity through which people understand a given market or create a new market, clearly differs from market.
At the Dong-A Business Form, Richard D’Avneni, Bakala Professor of Strategy at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth University, gave an interesting talk about Hypercompetition, which is the term that he coined about 20 years ago arguing that there is no sustainable competitive advantage. In this talk, he emphasized the dynamics of market by telling us that Sears or the retailer with 90-year successful business history cannot help but leave the industry within only 15 years. Thus, he made a persuasive argument that well-known strategy/marketing tools such as SWOT analysis do not work anymore.
According to him, firms use the SWOT-based strategy for multiple times and, therefore, “learning” takes place. Imagine a firm uses the SWOT analysis and then selects a specific strategy based on some combination of Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threat. In this case, the firm is highly likely to win over its competitors. However, those losing competitors learn what strategy the winning firm will select in the next round (e.g., when launching different products or when entering different markets) and they are able to respond to the same strategy smartly. This suggests that a single-shot SWOT-based strategy works but it does not work in the multiple contexts.
Then, what is an alternative tool that marketers could use when they want to conduct 3C analysis (understand consumers, companies, and competitors)?
Hyundai released i30 in Europe. So far, most of its marketing messages focus on how it looks (design) and what special features it has (convenience). However, I came up with a different thought after watching a youtube video that one of my German friends recommended me to watch. In the video, Martin Winterkorn, the Chairman of the Volkswagen AG, studied the Hyundai i30 personally at the Motorshow in Frankfurt IAA 2011.
Between 1:30 and 2:00 minutes, he tilted up and down i30’s steering wheel and then said,
“There is no noise. BMW can’t do it. We can’t do it”
I am personally surprised that BMW cars make noises while Hyundai do not. Interestingly, some BMW drivers already posted this issue on a website to look for a solution (e.g., Creaking noise when tilting steering wheel). Hyundai marketers should go beyond traditional issues such as look & feel, convenience, or gas mileage to raise a new issue (e.g., noise of tilting steering wheel or, more broadly speaking, user experience) and differentiate their cars.
Designers don’t just put cosmetics on the skin of a product!” During my interview with a graduate student at Ontario College of Art and Design in 2009, he argued that designers play a key role in developing a new product….
… The primary reason that marketing researchers often limit the role of designers is that they pay far too much attention to the “outcome” of designers’ activities. Many designers who research users, develop and evaluate concepts, and work with business strategists find it difficult to communicate with marketers, since marketers shed little light on the “process” of designers’ activities. …
In actual practice, designers often set the marketing input aside and start a project by looking at advertisements and websites for their client’s and their competitors’ products. They collect images and stories concerning the uniqueness of each product and make fleeting trips to the products’ point of purchase, taking pictures and playing with the products. If the budget allows, they purchase a sample of products for later disassembly and destruction in the studio. Ideas for new features often stem from the designer’s personal experience — including his cultural and social background — and their project research into nature, art, fashion, architecture, entertainment, and other products. …
… At the end of the day, marketing is often presented with three to five realistic finished rendered concepts from which they have to select one for detailing. Often flash will out compete content, since no objective metrics have been presented, so it is little wonder that design is still seen as art rather than as being business driven.
We often meet a product with a unique form and find it difficult to guess how it works. Examples include a donut-looking tape by 3M, a burger/fries/coke-looking USB key by Burger King, or a chocolate-looking mirror by Meiji, a Japanese chocolate manufacturer. One of my Japanese friends even pointed me a website in which a designer keeps posting his/her design prototypes (Prototype 1000).
I wonder whether consumers like a product more when its form and function are inconsistent than when they are consistent.
Marketers struggle with how best to position innovative products that are incongruent with consumer expectations. Compounding the issue, many incongruent products are the result of innovative changes in product form intended to increase hedonic appeal. Crossing various product categories with various positioning tactics in a single meta-analytic framework, the authors find that positioning plays an important role in how consumers evaluate incongruent form. The results demonstrate that when a product is positioned on functional dimensions, consumers show more preferential evaluations for moderately incongruent form than for congruent form. However, when a product is positioned on experiential dimensions, consumers show more preferential evaluations for congruent form than for moderately incongruent form. Importantly, an increase in perceived hedonic benefits mediates the former, whereas a decrease in perceived utilitarian benefits mediates the latter. The mediation effects are consistent with the view that consumers must first understand a product’s functionality before engaging in hedonic consumption.
