promises

Am I totally wrong being against the practice of producers of putting advertizing of products which are not included in the catalog?

My perspective is the following:
- We put advertizing with the product which is not included in the assortment of a company.
- The customer sees it, wants it, asks it.
- We can't provide the customer with the desired product.
- The client needs to search another way to get the product.
- The client is disappointed by the company.

i like it

We have a bonus collecting system called Mnogo.ru. If you buy with their partners, you receive virtual bonuses you can convert to gifts (provided by partners). The more you collect the more you can get. I use this occasionaly collecting bonuses for buying books with boffo.ru and paying for mobile services and transform them into aeroflot miles to get free ticket.

So, Mnogo.ru has a promotional quizes. You can pass it, receive 20-50 bonuses (the prizes cost more - 800 bonuses for DVD, 1050 bonuses for a jar of coffee)and if you pass it successfully, you can try to get a prize from a partner. So, typical staff - answering simple questionary, you get your bonuses and think for a couple of times about Mnogo.ru itself and its partner.

But let's look deeply. The questions are posted in a way you can easily get an answer (with a link provided to a site you can check info). And that is a great trick - if you can easily increase your chances for grand-prix, you most probably will go for it and check. And get more information about the company.

E.g. What is the price for a model XXX (link to a model)? Of course, you will realize that the price is low and will have more incentives to buy the product.

Or: what is the color of a t-shirt XXX (item nr) at a website (link). You will go, see a t-shirt and may be continue browsing the catalog.

And all it for 2.5% of a DVD!!!

I like it!

visualization

It is very hard to sell a service idea. It is easily to sell the thing behind the idea.

Compare:

Our program includes a consulting service to optimize your business.

to:

During our program after carefull analysis you will receive the recommendation pack and visual communication templates kit (website to be customized, presentation and information letter template) which can increase your communication level and sales ability if you use this.

And to:

You will have a website* for free and a draft of your sales presentation. It will increase your rewvenue and will cost nothing.

* we haven't mention that a website will be slightly customized (colors, fonts, size, logo) from universal template and will cost little to the provider company.

That's why educational programs sell books and CDs with information. That's why hospital has VIP rooms. Extra profit for visualization. People want to pay more for what they can see and touch. Much more than this costs.

motivation

It is very trendy to speak about non-money motivation for manager. Something like managers value better groth possibilities, recognition etc.

All mentioned above makes a real difference between a good hr program and a not-so-good one. With one thing to be said - money motivation should be good enough. There's no sense of promoting non-money motivation if a manager can think about fitting his/her expenses into budget.

marketing essence

Marketing essence from Seth Godin:

Make big promises; overdeliver.

Mistakes:
- Making too big promises - unrealistic.
- Making not enough promises - not attractive.
- Deliver less than promised.

self promotion

Seth Godin's post about different approaches of self promotion: me-centric vs. client/customer/audience centric.

I published a book so I need you to read it
vs.
There’s something you need to read, so I wrote about it.

wants vs stopper

I have just read Wad's wonderful sketch (in Russian) about wants and their limitations. He formulated a simple process of getting from wants to consumption.

1. Space-hold.
2. External irritant activates The Want part, showing assosications with pleasant emotions.
3. The Want starts working, but the rational part knows that pleasant emotions should be paid, the Stopper activates.
4. To get the Want to win over the Stopper, the irritant needs to show the idea of acessibility.
5. There's no reason to retrain the consumption.

Therefore, if the irritant (the producer or distributor) wants to increase demand, he needs to show the consumer, that it is possible to acquire the good or service. And vice-versa - if you want to resist the temptation of consuming something, just create the idea of full impossibility to get.

Nice thoughts.

let's get it started

After another thoughtful weekend of packing my stuff, thinking out my future, watching several episodes of Sex and the City and having two big tomato salads with cheese and Greek yogurt and wild berries’ ice-cream (3% fat only!) I suddenly become inspired to start writing marketing plan report for one of asignaturas in my Spanish MBA.

Several hours of squeezing my way through papers Mauricio printed out for me (this guy has his brains tuned perfectly for music industry!), I’ve got the first impression of this report to be. The bees-thoughts found their way to bee-hive.

The report is about analyzing current situation for record labels faced the challenge from digital music distribution – all the talks about DRM (digital rights management), Steve Jobs and iPods. Reading through Sean Carton’s “will the Digital Music Industry Survive” I again got the mental itching for professional weblogs. From September great time starts for me – 4 months of electives in iMBA. Good food for brains.

To have a right mood for making report on music industry challenge, I decided to play one of the playlists Mauricio gave me. Since all my stuff is packed and moved to my friend’s apartment, the only available was in my computer’s music directory. Ironically, the one I wanted to listen – Cicada – was protected with DRM and I didn’t get the legal copy yet. So, now I’m with Hot Chips and their album “The Warning” (ripped from CD, by the way) thinking out the industry’s situation.

The only negative consequence of the making report (not counting spending my time and decision on making another weblog) is that now I terribly want iPod. Networking externalities are working. And I’m not involved in the network. Yet.