dahinten-->

German student living in Amsterdam. www.eject-records.de

[brightmarketing-blog]

The title is a reference to one of my favorite movie scenes from The Wolf of Wall Street.

Is a sales person born or made, that’s the question. In orderto answer that properly we first have to define what a sales person is. And todo that it may be wise to start off by looking at some...

[dahintenfabian]

Nice starting point, I thought of this example as well when I wrote this blog post. I agree with you that a sales person can be trained, though I think that people like the “Wolf of Wallstreet” have smth which some people lack. Therefore I think that anyone who wants to reach the top of sales needs charisma and maybe some other charateristics in order to become the best. Furthermore the question arises whether sales persons like the wolf of wallstreet, who was a brilliant salesperson, can reach the top while being ethically...

[mcampman]

As the curtain falls...

Time to wrap it up~!

I feel like I gained a lot of things from attending a Marketing and Sales Management class in uni the past two months.

This includes the awareness of how easily I am influenced, and subsequently how little this newfound insight seems to change anything about that.

When people are good at what they do, be it sales or marketing, they really have the ability to draw you in. I can tell just from thinking back of the three guest lectures I attended the past 2 weeks.

Each of the lecturers was capable of not only marketing and or selling their product, but themselves, above anything. (Heck.. yesterday’s lecturer never even mentioned what her exact background was, nor the name of the company she represented, but by the time she finished talking, we were curious enough to ask her about it in stead. She managed to get us interested in her, even after she went overtime by an hour…. I’d say that’s a job very well done.)

Is marketing something I see myself doing in the future? I’m not quite sure, but it’s a door I plan to keep open for the time being. I ended up enjoying this course a lot more than I’d anticipated. :D

That’s it for now, Happy Easter!

~ Mirjam

[dahintenfabian]

Nice last blog post Mirjam! Totally agree with you. The awareness of how easily we are influenced by something or someone is something I learned through this course as well. I am not sure though if I am happy that I gained this awareness. It makes me feel more stupid than I thought I was :D

[dahintenfabian]

Goodbuy.

This is is going to be the last blog post, at least for some time. This is why I am saying goodbye today as well as giving my general opinion about marketing and the subject in general. 

The last few weeks I was able to gain some basic knowledge about marketing and I have to say that I am now able to see some connections where I did’nt see any before. This is great, especially because I now know that I will not work in this industry in the future. All the concepts, all the strategies and theories make sense and one can see how all the businesses are using them, BUT for me marketing is still not more then advertising, promoting and eventually selling a product. It’s about money, it’s about profit. Furthermore I became aware how much is done and how much is actually calculated to manipulate us and to aggressively portrait the product one should buy. And that’s what I dislike. It’s aggressive and competition is happening all the time.

It’s again: all about profit and money.

I think that’s the main part of marketing. But as with everything, there is another side as well. One interesting thing about marketing is how one can get attention and especially how this attention could be used in a good way. I personally think that there should be more money spend for promoting charities or NGOs which cannot afford promoting “their product”, which is helping people in need. All the big companies spend millions on their marketing departments and are able to do so.

It’s a circle, we should brake through, somehow..

[dahintenfabian]

A good salesperson. Trained or born?

What is a good salesperson? Well... The successfulness of a salesperson can easily be measured by the amount of sells he or she is able to make during a given period. But in order to do that: do you have to be naturally talented or could someone teach you to do so? The answer is: there is no black or white. It has to be a mixture of both.

As the presidential elections in America will take place next year I would like to take that as an example. During the elections the candidates do nothing less then selling themlselves. Millions of Dollars are spend to promote and eventually to sale the product: the potential new president of the United States of America. 

(Source: http://www.noz.de/deutschland-welt/politik/artikel/464647/wahlkampf-in-den-usa-das-kleinvieh-und-der-mist)

Parts of these millions will flow into consultants which are experts of their fields. Every step the candidates take is closely supervised and furthermore advised by someone. Thus the salesperson (potential president) recieves training. But on the other hand some sort of extra drive is needed. Becoming the most powerful man on earth for the following four years is probably one of them, but during the campaigns the candidates are exposed to an unbelievable huge amount of stress not every person could stand. This part is probably inborn. 

However, in my opinion it’s not about training or natural talent. For me the most important feature what a good salesperson need is conviction. Conviction of the product they’re selling. And I’m not talking about conviction in sense of: “I’m convicted that this product will work, please buy it.” No, it has to be a deep, deep belief inside someone and I am sure everyone could become a good seller.

[simonevdn-blog]

(Picture retrieved from Toothpastefordinner.com)

Today I’ll be talking about the grey market. Not white, not black, but grey. I wasn’t entirely familiar with the term, so to prevent any confusion let me explain it first. A greymarket product is basically something that is sold in a way,...

[dahintenfabian]

Unfortunately I had to find out the hard way.. I bought very cheap DVDs on a 2nd hand market (1 Euro each!!!) but eventually only one DVD worked. Now I know why.. haha Good introduction of your post, providing us with the definition of the grey market, which I didnt know before either. You’ve chosen a topic probably everyone made his/ her own experiences with. Well done!

[carlijnoffereins]

Chocolate, candy, alcoholics, cigarettes, or maybe your secret guiltypleasure; these are all examples of tempting products. Of course these examples are subjective, one person could be very tempted by his PlayStation (controller), and the next person finds his or her pleasure in food. Some...

[dahintenfabian]

Haha I really love this innovative product. I am one of this persons drinking far too much coke and consuming far too much nutella. This would probably really help out. Very good how you link this funny and useful idea to scientific research. I’m sure our research lecturer would be proud of you (;

[serenamdania]

Screenshot of Skempi’s Facebook Page, visit at: https://www.facebook.com/skempimusic

Skempi? What is Skempi? This fun word that even has a uniquesound when spoken aloud. Well I am glad to be the one to introduce it to you. Skempi is an online music streaming service focusing exclusively on...

[dahintenfabian]

Never heard of Skempi before! I am personally no fan of caribbean music but if you are Skempi sounds as a must have. As we all know there are online music streaming platforms already, but I think they often lack on individuality. You have apparently everything, but this one unknown song from this specific artist they often dont have. If you are in to caribbean music, I’m sure you’ll find everything

[dahintenfabian]

Who’s bad?

 I think we are not really aware of how many advertisements and especially how many bad ones are overwhelming us and how our subconscious is storing all this, excuse my expression, bullshit. 

Your laptop, tv, radio, phone, prints (...) is full of information and is either trying to remind, inform or persuade you. Reminding you that this or that discount only lasts till next week, so you better hurry up to buy all the important stuff you really need. Informing you that the new collection is out, which you really, really have to have or eventually trying to persuade you... This is the first step in creating ads. You choose the message objective. After that you will create a message strategy as well as a creative strategy and finally choose a source for your message.

All the marketers nowadays probably see themselves as creative geniuses and the ads are indeed very creative, but lack in ethics and are not informative at all. Well.. I could go on and on telling you how much I hate ads, but what I really wanted to show you is a perfect example for a bad advertisement. Please look at the following picture and imagine yourself looking in the mirror.

“Look like a million bucks? Imagine how you would look in one of these...” - this one is you would find on the mens toilet. And the female counterpart: “Bad hairday? Buy one of these VW cars and you can still look like a million bucks.”

Haha, I don’t know what you think but this is simply SOOO BAD.

Well.. what should I say.. A bit discriminatory at first.. Males look like million bucks, get a VW and look even better. Females have a bad hairday and should therefore get a VW as well. Furthermore I think the guys creating this advertisement forgot something else: It is a fuckin VW - you would never look like a million bucks in a VW. 

So back to the steps in creating ads:

1 - What’s the objective of this ad? Informing you that you have a bad hairday? At first the objective probably was to indeed inform potential buyers that there is this new car out, but this information is spread very badly, well in a mirror. 

2 - The strategy developed for this message? I think they simply didn’t have one. Put some stupid sayings on a mirror and let’s hope that somebody still buys our product. That probably was the strategy.

3 - Creativeness? Well... No. The answer is no.

4 - Message source? A mirror.

Well VW... There’s nothing more to do than applauding you for this awesome ad. Thank you for enriching my life.

[dahintenfabian]

What would you do if you could take a drug to enable 100% of your brain’s potential?

Today’s topic is ‘grey market’. According to Investopia.com the definition of grey markets is ‘a market where a product is bought and sold outside of the manufacturer's authorized trading channels.’

The difference to black market is, that only legal products are traded, though unofficial, unauthorised, or unintended by the original manufacturer.

I don’t know if you have seen the movie ‘Limitless’, starring the ridiculously good-looking Bradley Cooper (Love you Brad!), but if you haven’t you should as soon as possible! It’s about a broke book author who is not able to finish his book till his brother-in-law offers him a drug, which apparently enables you to use 100% of your brain’s potential. He starts taking it and his life changes from one day to the other. He finishes his book in four days and becomes rich by smartly trading stocks, within a few weeks.

(Source: youtube.com) Now you’re probably screaming: ‘I WANT THIS DRUG, TOO!‘, cause that’s what I was screaming when I saw this movie for the first time. The truth is: a similiar drug is available on the grey market.

- M O D A F I N I L -

A drug usually used in the treatment of sleep disorder, or Narcolepsy, ‘it has also been used by armed forces across the world as an alternative means of staying awake during long missions’, says Eliza Sankar-Gorton, author for the Huffington post. Apparently the movie was based on the effects of taking Modafinil. Since I am a student this drug sounded very tempting. I was interested if it’s indeed possible to get such drugs and what effects they really have. I asked around and eventually someone offered me Ritalin, apparently a drug with similiar effects. But when I read trough the patient information leaflet I found thousands of possible side-effects, for example schizophrenia and eventually decided not to take it. Friends who took Ritalin before told me though, that they’ve been indeed able to work longer, more effective and more concentrated as well. This experience brings me to my conclusion. The grey market may sound not as dangerous as the black market and the things you could get at a grey market may be legal if you purchase them on another way, but one should always be careful and think of long-term consequences. Writing a 10 without great effort sounds tempting, though it could be considered as cheating I think. If Modafinil or Retalin would be harmless for everyone, there wouldn’t be restrictions and other legal issues.

What do you think? Have you ever taken such drugs?

[dahintenfabian]

product innovations

The ability to think and create differentiates us humans from all other living creatures on mother earth. There have been life changing innovations like the car, plane, telephone, lightbulb, smartphone.. you name them. But for today`s blog post I've chosen 3 rather funny and less important innovations, which nervertheless can be quite helpful in everydays life.

1. The Pizza-Scissors

(Source: http://www.funtoxin.com/2011/08/07/15-creative-and-innovative-products)

Not much to explain I think. Great tool which will definitely makes your life easier.

2. Message-Toaster

(Source: http://www.designswan.com/archives/10-creative-and-innovative-product-design.html#p5)

Wonna leave a message for your kids or your partner in the morning, but don't wonna waste paper or ink? Easy: toast it! This innovation definitely get's a space for next christmas' wich list.

3. Luggage-Scooter

(Source: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004IU0OZY/ref=as_li_tf_til?tag=desswa-20&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=B004IU0OZY&adid=0Y2YKR33GE0M458YRAPA&)

This long, never ending corridors on airports. You waste so much time to get to your terminal! Or even worse: you have to get a connection flight, but you have too little time. This gadget helps out. From Heathrow terminal 1 to 5 even quicker than the tube. Awesome!

[dahintenfabian]

social media & market research

I think facebook is the best example for how we are getting manipulated and how accurate, how detailed market research is nowadays. I think we all know the concept: you're liking a page on facebook. Could be a firm, product, musician, TV series, etc... Facebook saves this information and immediately starts working with it (starts it's market research). 

When I moved to Amsterdam, I didn't have a piano (I'm playing since a few years) so my girlfriend started looking online for cheap, used pianos. She did that mainly through facebook and liked some pages, entered some groups etc. The appearance of her facebook news feed changed immediately. She's not a musician but suddenly facebook was full of advertisements for music stores in and around Amsterdam, online deals for used pianos, offerings of music schools in Holland, recommendations of concerts and so on...

Facebook has access to everything. Sounds exaggerated, but it's not. Everything we like, share, look at and furthermore what our friends/family likes, shares and looks at is saved on a server somewhere. 

I don't want to sound like a conspirator, but I think Mark Zuckerberg knows more about me and my preferences than my mom. 

So everyone is talking about privacy settings, data protection and similiar. But don't we like in a way that facebook is using our personal data, showing us what we like, what we want & what we need?

I personally love electronic music and Amsterdam is the place to be for that genre. It's so much going on here every single day that one can't keep overview of all the great events. Facebook helps me out with that. Everytime I'm attending an event on facebook it shows me similiar events and DJ's. I've found wonderful, unknown, small festivals and great artists on that way. Of course personal data are a sensitive topic and regulations are important. But at the same time we're living in the 21st century and no one is forced (yet) to join social networks like facebook. Either you use it with all it's advantages & setbacks, or you don't. 

[damenlaurien-blog-blog-blog]

[dahintenfabian]

In the case of McDonalds one can see that adaption in specific cases is mandatory in order to be globally successful. I remember myself as a 12 year old boy walking into a McDonalds restaurant in Cebu City, Philippines. I was super hungry and looked forward to have my Chicken McNuggets as usual in Germany. But everything they offered was the BicMac, rice and grilled vegetables. At that moment I thought that McDonalds offers the same meals all over the world and (as a German consumer) I was disappointed that they did not have the Chicken McNuggets. From my point of view today I do understand their adaption to the Asian market.

[brightmarketing-blog]

[dahintenfabian]

Great example for that topic. Especially with the point about passive marketing. Interresting also that Amazon provides almost the same products in every country.. I think this shows how consumer behavior varies from product to product and in this case from service to service. Amazon users love the comfortable way of online shopping and fast delivery world-wide. In this case adaption of the service is not needed as for other services/ products.

[dahintenfabian]

CARRRRS vs. "cars".

Today: consumer behavior in a global context. To explain this I have chosen a product which is well known globally: the car.

On the first picture you can see a Ford pick-up, which is probably one of the most popular cars in the USA and is around $60.000. On the second picture you can see the so called "Tata nano" (made and sold only in India) which is about $1600.

It is basically the same product. It has 4 wheels and brings you from A to B. How is it possible that one car is around 40 times more expensive than the other? Why are people in the USA not even considering buying a car like the Tata nano? Well, why is this little, ugly car not even available on the US market?

The answer lies somewhere in consumer behavior. 

People in the US see great value in investing in an expensive car. Gas is cheap and the people have to travel rather far distances to reach their destination. They want to have a comfortable journey. Furthermore it is a status symbol. For Americans a car is more like a medium of transportation. I would say that some people may even define themselves through it.

In India this is differently. Firstly, of course, India is a developing country and many people in India cannot afford such an expensive car. But secondly, consumers in India don't see great value in it. For them it is simply a opportunity to get from one point to the other in a short amount of time. A small car with no big extras fits their needs perfectly, whereas the Ford would be inconvenient in the small, busy streets.

The Ford doesn't fit in the Indian market and it is the other way round with the Tato nano on the US market.

The consumers behave differently and companies which are selling their products world wide have to take this into consideration.

We are a global village, but there are - and will always be - different behaviors from culture to culture.

[serenamdania]

Did you watch the commercial above? Well, the first question that comes to my mind is why do they need to use a more than half naked woman to sell a burger? These two things just do not go hand in hand.

Clearly, In the last decade it has become overly common to use sex to sell a...

[dahintenfabian]

... remembering myself when my mom used to change the TV programm if this kind of commercial would have shown up. I totally agree on her point. Everyone is striving for gender equality nowadays and everyone is claiming to be "fair", "ethical" or is treating everyone equally. But in fact advertisements - one of the most powerful influences on society - are not trying to treat humans equal at all.

[dahintenfabian]

I am a green bag.

To begin with my first blog post, I have to say: I have no idea how to write or create a good blog post. I have never read any blogs and did not write any either.. This blog is set up for the subject Marketing & Sales, which I am following at the International Business School Amsterdam. I don't know if it's worth reading, but anyway let's give it a try.... The topic today: ethics in marketing. Quite a big one for the first entry ever I suppose, but also a very interesting one. At the beginning of this text I have posted a picture of a "green bag" of the clothing retailer "Primark". Primark is famous for it's unbeatable low prices for articles of clothing and for me a perfect example for unethical marketing. If one goes to the Primark website, prices like 2€ for a shirt or 10€ for a coat are not a rarity. A few clicks further and one can find many informations about how much care is taken about ethics. The headline says: "How can Primark offer the lowest prices on the high street?" good question! How can a company behave ethically on the one hand - which means for me having fair labour conditions,using  sustainable resources for products and a certain degree of transparency - and on the other hand offering a t-shirt for 1€ and 98 Cents? How can a seamstress be paid in a fair manner, if the end product is worth 2€? How much of these 2€ will actually go to the seamstresses in India, Bangladesh or China???

Interestingly Primark is promoting it's code of conduct, where one can read that the "workers' basic needs should be met". Fair enough. Anyone buying this product here in a western country, though, would probably not be satisfied with a working environment where the "basic needs" are met.

Primark already became popular for bad working conditions in factories of their suppliers. Recently seamstresses from Bangladesh sewed extra labels in shirts saying: "Forced to work exhausting hours" and "Degrading sweatshop conditions". On 24 April 2013 the "Rana Plaza", a factory of a Primark supplier in Bangladesh, collapsed. 1,129 people died, 2,515 were approximately injured.  At first Primark couldn't even remember that their subcontractors are producing in this building. Nice though, that it came back to their minds when the rescue teams found Primark labels in the ruins.

Back to my picture at the beginning of this post. Primark is promoting their 100% recycled bags. A smart marketing strategy I'd say.. Anyone who doesn't know about the backround of Primark probably thinks that this company is actually trying to be sustainable. They have recycled paper bags, no plastic bags. Great job. On this paper-bag, though, no one can read that human beings paid with their life to sewe this unbeatable cheap t-shirt. Of course not.

Greenwashing is the key word for this post. Refuse to buy clothes at companies such as Primark and you actually will be more sustainable in a way. Even though Primark offers this wonderful paper bags.