New York Is Getting A Facelift

The yellow taxi cab is an icon in New York City.  You see them all over the place, breaking the laws of Physics and going faster than any posted speed limit I’ve ever seen.  It is very convenient to stick your hand out and grab a cab, especially if it’s not such a nice day and you need to get somewhere in a hurry.

Nissan is starting an advertising campaign to celebrate what the fleet of taxi’s will look like in 2013.  The promotion started Monday and features the “Nissan NV200 van, which in May won the Taxi of Tomorrow competition sponsored by New York City.” (Elliott)  The campaign is being produced by TBWA/Chiat/Day Los Angeles, the longtime creative agency for Nissan North America.   The campaign includes billboards, events, social media, promotions and signs, many of which will be placed atop existing taxicabs. 

 The campaign has two goals. One is to encourage visits to the NV200 taxi that will be on display at the 2012 New York International Auto Show, to be held at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center from April 6 to 15. 

The other goal of the campaign is to connect in the minds of consumers the selection of the Nissan van with what has been the theme of the Nissan campaign since August 2010, “Innovation for all.” (Elliott)  A couple of ads in the taxi campaign explicitly link the contest to the Nissan brand theme. “Innovation for NYC,” one headline reads. Another ad asserts that the cab “goes to the corner of innovative and cool.” 

Other ads are lower key and humorous. “All hail,” one headline declares. Another confides: “Kept it yellow. Changed everything else. Nissan taxi of tomorrow. Coming 2013.” A third ad calls the NV200 “Taxi 2.0.” An element of the campaign that may draw attention is a billboard with an oversize sliding door, evoking the doors of the van. “The future of the auto industry?” the headline asks. “We can take you there.” 

 

And there are plans to give away to passers-by near the Javits Center foam fingers that can be used to hail cabs rather than root for sports teams. There will also be giveaways of gift cards worth $15 to apply toward cab rides.

Of course Nissan is trying to promote their other models to the general public but the power of advertising is still strong in America.  People pay attention to what is going on in NYC and Nissan knows that.  Get their attention with a promotion that involves the big city and then say, “Oh yeah, by the way, we also offer there other great models that aren’t yellow.” 

I look forward to seeing these new taxi’s in use, I will be on the lookout for them and will surely hail the first one I see in the coming year, that is of course if the world doesn’t end on December 21^st 2012 let’s not forget about that. 

     

Elliott, Stuart. "Nissan Promotes Next New York Taxi as a Sign of Its Innovation." New York Times.com. N.p., 22/03/2012. Web. 31 Mar 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/business/media/nissan-promotes-nv200-as-new-yorks-taxi-of-tomorrow.html?_r=1>.

Printed Advertising Not Dead Yet

If anybody was to ask what I thought was the best country in the world to live in, I would absolutely say America.  I love traveling and being part of the culture in other places, but when it’s time to come home, I prefer to rest my head in the land of the red, white, and blue. 

Sometimes we forget that people in other countries live differently than we do.  What works for us may not work for them.  Even when it comes to advertising, things are not the same around this great big world.  I recently read an article on the Southern library site that talked about how print advertising is still thriving in India. But, over here in the good old U.S.A the Internet is about to overtake print advertising.  The article states that “print newspaper advertisements have declined from 60 billion in the late '90s to 20 billion in 2011” (indiantelevision.com).  That is a huge drop, no wonder newspapers are going out of business.  Personally, I love newspapers.  I like my local paper but national papers are great too.  I have to admit, I look at them online too but it just doesn’t replace good old paper and ink.

There isn’t a big secret why print is still thriving in eastern countries, it just is.  Maybe things will change in the future but for now, advertising is alive and well just east of Europe.  “For newspapers to survive, they will have to be more innovative and will have to diversify into other portfolios." (indiantelevision.com)  I think that will be the statement for the entire world in the next few years.  I believe that printed advertising will slow down some more here in America, but it will never go away.  Eventually, things will even out all over the world.  Don’t you think that if print advertising becomes so scarce that its effectiveness will increase?  It will be uncommon enough for everyone to take notice.   

Maybe that’s where I come in, wait for print advertising to almost be dead and swoop in with a successful print campaign that goes down in history!  Only time will tell, until then, anyone have an extra copy of the “Hindustan Times” laying around?....anyone?

Source Citation

"Print thrives in India amid digital growth." Indiantelevision.com 15 Mar. 2012. Communications and Mass Media Collection. Web. 27 Mar. 2012.

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The Power of Reviews

 

Today’s connected world seems to get smaller every day.  News travels at the speed of light and every aspect of media has the potential to go viral in the blink of an eye.  This is an exciting time to be alive and I feel lucky to be technologically savvy enough to take part in all of our modern offerings.

Businesses live and die by reputation and brand improvements.  We no longer need to wait for a printed publication to show us statistics about a new gadget or improvement on the market.  Today we have something called TPR’s or third party reviews that could be read and posted the same day a new product hits the streets.  What does this mean for an upcoming company?  It could be great if the reviews are good but if they are bad it could cause fear and its stockholders could pull out and cause financial disaster.  I’m not talking about a silly comment left on some random website I’m talking about professional reviews that are made from third party sources independent from the manufacturer, such as “Consumer Reports” and “Wall Street Journal”  Investors do pay attention to these reviews to update their expectations about product sales potential. 

Product reviews do affect the value of a firm.  I read an article about a study being done on this subject I found on our school database, the article was written by Yubo Chen, Yong Liu, & Jurui Zhang and was called “When Do Third-Party Product Reviews Affect Firm Value and What Can Firms Do?”  They have found that these TPR’s have been proven to be a valuable source of information for consumers and firms in assessing the quality of a product. 

The article talks about how competition on a global scale has increasingly made innovation and new product development the cornerstone of firm growth.  As new product lines are introduced from companies like “Apple”, the introduction and success of those new products is a critical factor in the financial valuation of the firm.  If a new product is introduced and falls flat in the first week it could affect stock prices.  These TPR’s have a lot of power in their hands.  They have the power to predict the future of a product and the investors are listening.

This is something new that the business world never had to deal with before.  How are they going to handle a bump in the road, do they have a marketing strategy ready to go if they need to get it out there quickly?  Will a big marketing push help the situation?  I guess that could be looked at from different points of view. If a firm gets a less than flattering review on a new product or service it may be inclined to increase its marketing campaign.  This will in turn attract more people to want to invest but may increase the amount of hits that the TPR’s sites get.  Is this helpful of harmful?  I don’t know the answer but I do know that companies need to offer quality goods and services if they want to be part of our future.  

 As the Internet becomes more and more a part of our society we will use it to help guide our purchases.  Word of mouth is a good marketing tool also but it all starts with a well made product or service.  We’ll keep these companies on their toes, keep reading reviews before you buy or invest.  





 Chen Y, Liu Y, Zhang J. When Do Third-Party Product Reviews Affect Firm Value and What Can Firms Do?? The Case of Media Critics and Professional Movie Reviews. Journal Of Marketing [serial online]. March 2012;76(2):116-134. Available from: Communication & Mass Media Complete, Ipswich, MA. Accessed March 9, 2012.

The Year of the Winner!

    There is no doubt that social media has forever changed the way we share and view information with other people.  Scholarly people are predicting that 2012 will be the year that separates the winners from the losers, I’m not talking about your friends of course, I’m talking about the social sites that we all use.  David Catalano, president and co-founder of Modea Corp., a digital advertisement agency in Virginia says that “Facebook is like scrapbooking for your life.”  Users establish virtual identities on sites like Google+ and Facebook.  What you choose to post on your page either in the form of a comment or of a certain “like” is really a form of advertising yourself to your community.

    Changes in these platforms are making it easier for the user to express what they really feel about a brand, service, etc.  Marketers will be able to target consumers better because of the more in depth categorizing system.

    I was reading an article written by Danielle Monroe called Google+ vs. Facebook and it talks about the future of advertising and how it ties in to social sites like Google+ and Facebook.  In her article she talks about what kind of pressure is being put on brands to produce content that people want.  Google+ is planning to modernize the way users search for content.  It will show search results according to the brands that have the most followers.  But are users ready for a social site that is also a search engine? 

     When you compare Facebook and Google+ you might find some important differences that will help up predict the future of these two sites.  Facebook puts the users experience up front as the most important aspect of the site, advertising and making money is secondary to a good experience.  I like this business plan, it still makes more money then I’ll ever see in a lifetime but it is set up to give me a good experience without pushing the advertising on me.  With the new “verbs” it will help marketers gather more information without actually asking for it, it will be information we supply ourselves without even realizing what we are doing, but in a good way, not underhanded or misleading. 

     Google+ seems to be trying to make money as their first priority; the user experience is secondary which might just get them a “thumbs down” and a much smaller “piece of the social pie” so to speak.  Well, I’m looking forward to seeing how social networking changes in the next year.  People are not going to put up with a platform that is annoying, confusing, or overcrowded. 

     I think the U.S. government should have a social site.  They should get our opinions on running the country.  Election Day is not enough, we should be friends with our elected officials and we should know what they are up to.  Nice idea but it will never happen; too many people would just scream and make stupid comments.   

     Anyway, sites need to stay relevant to their audiences and marketers need to know how to market to their intended customers.  So developers beware!  If people start leaving, many will follow and it’s a BIG Internet so do your best to hold onto your subscribers, you need them…or should I say us.      

MONROE, DANIELLE. "Google+ Vs. Facebook." Econtent 34.10 (2011): 8-9. Education Research Complete. Web. 3 Mar. 2012.