Fails in Marketing 2

Now we are going to give some more examples of companies which have had some trouble in some countries with their marketing campaign. The problems explained today are related to transport.

Today´s first example is about cars. Nissan, a car seller and manufacturer company has named one of their last vehicle "Nissan Moco". Unfortunately for the company this product does not sell well in spanish-speaking markets, especially the green model. The reason fot this is that "moco" is the spanish word for snot, this might sound stupid but its true. People don´t loke to drive snots.

Secondly, an airline company called itself EMU after the australian bird. Australians did not want to use the airline. Probably the people who decided the name of the company should have made some research before. People don´t have to know this beacuse it is not general culture but most australians know that emus can not fly. For them its like calling "Kamikaze" the company

3x2

It is very usual to see in many food stores (local shops, supermarkets...) promotions such as buy two get another one for free. Of course this atracts costumers, but that is not the only point of it. Lets say you are doing your weekly shopping and when you buy cookies you find out there is
a 3x2, great! Each week you keep purchasing the same cookies and taking advantage on the discount, by doing this your are generating a need of 3 packs of cookies per week. The problem is that ,eventually, the discount will finish and you will still have the generated need of 3 packs instead of two, so you will have to buy 3 packs and pay all of them.

Black Friday

Black Friday is an american tradition which started on the 70s, it takes place the weekend after thanksgiving. It is called Black Friday because the companies pass from negative results (red numbers) to positive (black numbers). During this weekend companies offer a great amount of  big discounts. By doing this they encourage people to make their christmas shopping. Though there is one month left for christmas, in these times of crisis people are more price sensitive and take advantage of the discounts. That is the reason why Black Friday is so profitable and specially these days.

Fails in marketing

Some companies have very successful products in the country they belong to, but when they export the product to another country these products ae not very popular for different reasons.
For example, an American golf ball manufacturer launched their products in Japan packed in boxes of four. The company had to change the pack size because in Japan the number 4 is pronounced as death and it is related to bad luck.
A bread seller company named its product Bimbo, sellings were good in Spain but this brand would have problems if selling in english speaking countries. For those of you who are not native english speakers, the word bimbo is used to refer to an atractive but unintelligent women in a derogatory way.

Publicity

In order to increase sales, companies have to create brand awareness, and the most common way of doing this is by publicity, specially on television. A very populat tv show called Top Chef is sponsored by an electronic cooking devices company seller which´s name is mentioned a big number of times during the show. Also sometimes there is a brief pause on the show to make pubicity of one of the products (an oven for example). By doing these things customers became aware of the existance of the product. Having this brand sponsoring such a popular show and very famous chefs making publicity of the product also makes it look as a very high quality product. This increases the attention of potential buyers.

Brand image

This afternoon I was watching television when I saw a commercial of a dietetic cereal bar which a pretty thin girl was happily eating. Then I thought: "Why would a girl like her eat dietetic bars?" The answer is easy: brand image, this is the impression the brand tries to cause on your mind. If you eat this product you will get a nice body. Thats is why this kind of advertisements are not starred by fat people ( the product´s main consumers). Think about it, this kind of advertisements are very common, there is one in which a man uses a deodorant and women literally fall to his feet. I´m sure there plenty of these in your countries and in my opinion brand image is like a little lie, so be aware of it!!

Madrid Games Week

This weekend Madrid is holding a very important event in the gaming world, the Madrid Games Week. During a few days the city of Madrid enables a space to hold this event, which is expected to be attended by thousands of visitors. Many important comapnies are taking part on this event, such as Sony and Nintendo,  these companies are going to make several presentations on their future projects and the videogames they will be launching soon. We could say this event has two objectives: a general one and an individual one. Lets esxpalin this: if being entertained is a need, this event tries to make videogames a want, and individually each company tries to make it´s videogames a demand by letting people try games for free in this event.