Latest Event Updates
One Plus, you still manage to amaze me.
When One Plus started, it had difficulty making promotions that would be generally liked.
During its first year, the One phone came out and many, like myself jumped to get the Flagship Killer.
Ever since their start, their messaging has been the over confident “Never Settle” slogan, which rubs some people the wrong way. As a company, saying that you will never settle, is like putting a red shirt in front of a bull and telling him not to attack you. You are just provoking him and that was One Plus’ purpose; to disrupt the smartphone industry.
Today I saw their newest tactic to enrage/amaze the public.
They released their One Plus cover for iPhone 6 and 6+, their signature Sandstone cover.
Whoever had this idea is a hilarious person. He/She though of a way to troll iPhone customers and to spread the word about their company, and to put additional cash in their piggy-bank.
This is ingenious. I would laugh so hard if a friend of mine had this cover on his iPhone.
But, let’s get down to earth. Even though I love the idea, it will be difficult to invite people to buy the cover. A big reason why we buy iPhones is that we want to show others that we have an iPhone. It is the same with the One Plus One. I get this jolt of excitement whenever someone sees my Sandstone cover and asks “What brand of phone is that?”
So, I’d like to be one of the first to tip off my hat to One Plus and I hope this campaign will yield a positive result.
Presenting Confidently: Part 3
This is Part 3 of “Presenting confidently”, “Presentation Tips and Tricks” and “Presenting for Beginners”
11. Rest – Don’t spend the day before the presentation working on the final details. Be done several days before, or do the work at 6am the day before, rather than staying up until 3am and then going to the presentation 6 hours later. This destroys you physically and mentally. An important presentation drains your strength insanely fast on the day of the presentation, so if you are already tired, it will be difficult.
12. Have a timer – I thought of that in my first year at university. The tutors usually timed our presentations, and they sometimes told us when there was a minute or two left. This becomes especially difficult when you are in a group. Here is an example – You are in a team of five and you have 10 min. to present. So you divide it into 2 minutes each. But during the presentation the first and second team members talk for 3 min. each, so what is left for the fifth member? You can practice it numerous times, but during the presentations people act differently, some will speed up, some will need 30 seconds to remember a word. By having a clock each person will know they have two minutes and they will manage their own time. It makes the whole presentations much smoother, instead of starting to panic when the tutor says that you have 1 minute left. What I do, as shown in the picture – I open the stopwatch app on my tablet and put it so that my whole team can see it. Remember to look at it for a second, just to make sure how much time you have left.
13. ACT LIKE A PROFESSIONAL – Don’t put your hands in your pockets, don’t cross your hands and feet, don’t chew, play with your pen, don’t make any unnecessary sounds, don’t nod off, don’t lean, dress appropriately and have clean clothes, wash your face, teeth, don’t pick your nose, turn off your phone, or set it to airplane mode, don’t talk while someone else is talking, don’t yell or speak too quietly, be polite, shake hands, if you are in an argument try to be civil.
14. Look at the professionals – Sometimes you need a role model that you can follow. For that I would recommend TED Talks. Scientists, professionals, writers have to present on a certain topic for a set amount of time. Just keep in mind that no matter how much you watch you won’t become better at presenting, the idea is to be able to visualise how a confident presenter looks and acts like. One of my favourite presentations is by the writer of “Eat, Pray, Love” Elizabeth Gilbert (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86x-u-tz0MA). She has a natural talk with an audience of 100+ and the whole presentation seems like a conversation rather than a formal professional demonstration. I am sure there are even better examples, but just take a look at 2-3 Talks and look at how they act, how they talk.
I hope something here helped you even a bit. Do you have your own Tips and Tricks, I would love to hear your thoughts.
Presenting Confidently: Part 2
This is Part 2 of “Presenting Confidently”, “Presentation Tips and Tricks” and “Presentation for Beginners”.
6. SMILE – the simplest advice ever. A small smile can at least make you seem that you are confident. The end result – you seem more open, the listener will be more inclined to listen to you and the overall experience for you and the audience will be improved. Smiling of course cannot be used in certain situations, but I am sure you know when it will be appropriate.
7. Don’t read – If you read, while presenting, you probably don’t know what you are supposed to talk about, you don’t understand it, or you don’t know the language well enough. Reading is the counterpart of smiling (advice 6). You seem uncertain, the audience will stop listening to you, and you will look unprofessional. But if you do steps 1 and 4 you won’t need to read. Looking at the slides/notes for a key word is fine, but if you don’t immediately continue to look at your audience you will lose them.
8. Hands and feet – That one is difficult to do. You can of course move about, but you shouldn’t do any sudden movements. Gestures help the overall presentation, but as soon as it starts looking like you are chopping wood or throwing your hands everywhere, the audience will start looking at your hands instead of at you and listening to what you have to say. The same thing goes about your feet, move front to back or side to side, go somewhere if necessary, but do it in a calm pace. If you start moving fast you will lose the eye contact with the audience and they will try to keep up with your movements rather than listening.
9. Get some feedback – This is immensely valuable. If someone cannot tell you how you presented, try to record the presentation, this way you can show it to someone that is good at presenting and they can give you some advice.
10. Stand tall –This one is easy. Just stand straight. Result – you will look a lot more confident. I have that problem and I am 1,89 so I looked nervous and depressed every time I had to present. Stand straight, no matter your height and you will look a lot more confident.
Part 3: https://letstalkaboutmarketing.wordpress.com/2014/10/02/presenting-confidently-part-3/
The One Plus phenomenon
This year a phone came out that made quite a change in the phone industry. I am talking about the “One” by One Plus. “One” is their first phone, and it received that unpleasant nickname “Flagship killer”. Usually in the mobile phone industry when a phone is given this nickname, it means that the phone is actually very far from the flagship phones. I would like to postulate that in this case, the “One” has earned the nickname. After a fast Google search you will see that in terms of specs the “One” is a direct competitor to the latest Apple, Samsung and HTC phones. But the important thing is, does it have anything better? The answer is yes. The “One” runs Cyanogenmod, Android’s better looking and more interesting brother and the iOS’ nemesis. Cyanogenmod is based on Android, but it has been improved in terms of features and customization. And in terms of customization they have done the absolute max, which of course is the opposite the iOS which makes sure that your phone is absolutely the same the day you bought it and 5 years later. I love tweaking my phone, changing as much as possible, so that you can always say which one is mine.
The other big thing about this phone is that the 64gig version is 350$, which is a pretty awesome deal.
Now you are thinking, “why haven’t I seen a commercial about this phone, and why doesn’t my local tech store sell it”. Well here is the tricky part, the company doesn’t advertise itself and because of its limited production capacity they don’t sell through vendors. In order to get one you must have an invite. These invites are given out to those people that follow the company on social media and their forum. I was lucky enough to get an invite after a day of joining the forum and I am now waiting for it to be delivered. So why don’t they advertise themselves? Because they believe in the current power of word-of-mouth. In any case they are not targeting the mainstream consumer, but the tech savvy people that will know how to use the phone to its maximum potential. So, what do these tech savvy people do? Well they are online and with their techy friends. And what is the best part of this promotional plan? No need for an over bloated price tag, making it to some degree more likely people are going to buy it.
I believe One Plus have done a great job in terms of promotion, hardware, software and pricing. I don’t know what else they could have done better, for such a young company.
The topic will be continued in “New business – Low prices”
Did you know about this company? Do you think One Plus could have done something better?
Me,Me,Me,Me (The self-absorbed consumer)
Today it looks like there is a particular consumer profile, which is not explored enough. I call them the self-absorbed consumer. They grew up with the smartphone, internet and social media. They are part of the Millennials and are an interesting type of customer. This particular generation wants to be the centre of attention. Everyone has to acknowledge and respect them. Because of that generation, we have the term “selfie”. Today most people in first world countries have a phone with a camera, which allowed people to take pictures of themselves at any time and place. Here is how much things have changed: if I open the photo album of my parents for example I will see numerous pictures of the places they have visited. They’d have a couple of pictures of themselves, just to show that they were at that particular place. Millennials are a bit different. Open the photo album of a 15 year old and what is the one thing you will see in 99% of the photos? The person that made the pictures. They don’t want someone else to get all the attention. I apologise if it sounds like I am trying to offend them, I am just postulating that they try to get a lot more attention, than previous generations.
So what have marketers done to target that particular consumer? Cancer Research (UK) made a great social media campaign called the “No make-up selfie” which allowed the charity to earn more than 8 million pounds. Why was it so successful? The task was for girls to take pictures of themselves without makeup. That’s it. It’s amazing how simple it is. So I’d recommend companies that target 10-20 year old to try and do something like that. “Do you want to win some Pringles? Take pictures of yourself enjoying them”. Simple, right? I think that this trend will be long lasting, so the faster companies understand this particular trend the faster they can monetise on this opportunity.
This trend will be further discussed in “Millennial trends = Money”
What do YOU think, should academics research further into this trend ?
Gaming and Movie Advertsing
This is a topic that fascinates me. There is a product with a video footage that goes from 2 years to 30+ hours. In the case of a commercial for a car there can be so many different topics, happy family, enjoying just driving the car, feeling safe, whereas the commercials for movies and games are based on something already created. You can’t say Titanic is a wonderful comedy, or Saw is a romantic drama. Of course I am exaggerating but nevertheless, creating an unrealistic expectation can destroy the opinion towards the product which will probably lead to poor earnings when the movie/game comes out.
I will start off with games. Advertising for this industry is interesting, because they have to show off the best parts of the game, which should attract consumers interested in playing that genre. The video already exists, so they have to put the best parts in a trailer. Typically there is a normal trailer released months before the release date and launch trailer. The idea is to get people hyped and then remind/excited for the launch. World of Warcraft used this strategy and succeeded in making billions (http://www.businessinsider.com/here-are-the-top-10-highest-grossing-video-games-of-all-time-2012-6?op=1). The launch trailer showed off some key features the game has – one is the open world with numerous locations and characters that interact with each other, another are the fight sequences, which of course are necessary because the game targets males, which are thirsty for adventures and challenges. The trailer delivers a simple message – come to our new virtual world filled with adventures. A 3 minute trailer delivers a message based on a game that has no limit to how much it can be played.
The two trailers mentioned are only the surface of a very deep structure. Most Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) have such vast worlds that 1 or 2 trailers display way too little to the consumer. Since the existence of Youtube, it has been easy for companies to upload numerous trailers with information about the game. For example Star Wars: The Old Republic provided trailers for all the playable characters, explored some parts of their new world and developer diaries talked about how they did some aspects of the game. Basically the consumer will see the first trailer and become curious, go to a social media, or the website of the company developing the company and receive a lot of knowledge for something they will actually experience months later. In my opinion this is a great strategy, because it tries to get the consumer as close as possible to the product without actually “touching it”.
Of course there are also gaming conventions and press conferences which let a small amount of people try out 10-15 minutes of the game and later these people tell everyone around them about the game, creating a semi-pyramid scheme letting people advertise the game for free. Other games that use those great strategies which I love are Assassin’s Creed and Mass Effect. For a while the Assassin games delivered videos with a lot of specific information, such as the weapons that can be used, actions you can take and playtroughs which give the prospect consumer a sense of what they can expect. Mass Effect will always be one of my favorites because of the sense of adventure they ensue. A game that has led me through tropical forests and frozen planets exploring and searching for a way to save me, humanity and organic life itself. The trailers have always created a sense of epicness which did not let me down even after 30 hours of playing. The second Mass Effect is my favorite, because my expectations were very high after watching the launch trailer, but my expectations were met tenfold (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2O-0-fQOOs). Some may make jokes about people that play games, but for me, after finishing the game with my heart beating like it’s going to explode, drenched in sweat, filled with sense of accomplishment and sadness that it is all over and feeling like I have done something great, which puts a smile on my face and makes me optimistic that tomorrow will be an even more epic day, you cannot tell me that the marketers in charge of this project have not done their job well. Of course the grand prize has to go to the developers, but the marketer is the one that showed me a first look and made me want more.
For me as a student and willing to work in marketing such a success intrigues me.
Movie trailers
The movie industry has a more simplistic tactic, but a higher pressure to make the best commercial. The typical concept is a teaser which lasts few seconds and doesn’t really show anything specific about the movie, with the purpose of making people wonder what they saw, and a normal trailer that will air for months, generating buzz in the target audience. Now day’s people working on movie advertising are lost, it seems like they see the whole movie and then decide to take the best parts about it and put them in a trailer. For me that’s moronic, I basically see how the whole story will pan out, who the villain is, what the big moments are and sometimes even how it will end. Some commercials like that are for movies like Battleship, The Wolverine, The Amazing Spider-Man, Grown Ups, Ted, the latest Fast and Furious, and I am sure you can think of many. The trailers basically told us what the story is, all plot twists and major fights, so by the time we get into the cinema we already know what is going to happen. I am sure people remember The Wolverine (2013) and in the trailer they showed all plot twists, even who the mastermind is, which made the whole movie boring. That’s the same as reading the Red Riding Hood to a child, but first telling them about the wolf eating the grandmother and how the huntsman kills the beast. Is it going to enjoy the book….you probably know the answer.
Of course there are some that still know the art of showing just enough, but regrettably there are very few of those.
So I believe that the people working on advertising in the movie industry can learn from those in the gaming industry, and hopefully at some point they will.
Have you seen trailers that spoiled your movie/game experience? Let me know.
