How does Apple make sure that users don’t go buy the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 which launches a month before their brand new iPhone 7 and 7 Plus? Very simple actually, one of their employees “leaks” some slightly important information about their new phone around the same time that Samsung announces their new phone. Now instead of everyone talking about the new cool phone Samsung just launched, they have taken part of that audience away and made them talk about something the new Apple phone might have.

Although this can be a smart strategy if used correctly, it can also backfire. For one, that wow factor when the phone is revealed is no longer there. The unveiling events used to be a very big deal for not only phones but technology in general but when almost all details about the new tech are already known before the launch, is it really that big of a deal? Apple revealed the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus on September 16, 2016. At the time the stock price was $115.12, up from $102.65 a few days prior. Rather than jumping even more after the announcement, the price had dropped to $111.64 within 10 days. When you compare this to the launch of the iPhone 5 in 2012, within a week of the announcement of the new phone shares had jumped from $95.26 to $100.04.

Source: Yahoo Finance

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Now with Facebook’s current algorithm, you don’t see the most current posts. In fact you may never see the post that was put up only 10 minutes before you can online by your old friend or that business you shop at only once a year during their sale. Instead you’ll see a post that is a day old and already has 50 likes or more importantly an advertisement from a business. Wondering how much of what a business posts you actually see? Well the best way to look at this is through organic reach, this number is usually measured in a percentage. Organic reach is what percent of people that like a page will actually see what the page has posted.

• In early 2012 the organic reach was 16% (a number provided by Facebook itself on April 23, 2012)
• By March 2014 this number had dropped nearly 10% to an astoundingly low 6.51%
• According to a study conducted one year late, by March 2015 these numbers had dropped even further. If your page had under a million likes your average organic reach became 2.6% and if you have over a million likes then you drop even lower to 2.27%

Although numbers for 2016 are not out yet as it is still fairly early in the year, some people are expecting numbers could go as low as 1%! Facebook has many reasons why organic reach is at an all-time low and I’m sure many of them are actually true but the biggest reason that they are not flat out admitting is the money. By making sure pages cannot reach their fans through organic reach they must use paid reach/advertising. All of a sudden you’re spending a lot of money to reach that remaining nearly 98%. Now Instagram claims that they will be (for the time being) only reorganizing the order of posts but all recent posts will be visible. Eventually we will see a full algorithm like Facebook being implemented (especially since Facebook owns Instagram).

Twitter has also decided to begin altering their current News Feed to follow a similar format. Yes it will help bring more popular and sometimes more relevant information to you first as all three of these companies claim but what about those not so popular posts that could potentially be relevant. Relevance is no longer up to you, in fact it isn’t up to any human at all. It is completely up to an algorithm, a piece of code, a set of rules to decide what is important and what is not. I’m not really sure how I feel about that but I know no business whether it is large, small or not for profit is going to be happy with all these changes coming. Well maybe the big businesses will be a little bit because their marketing budgets are going to be significantly larger than a small business.

Source: Instagram; Adweek; Forbes; Facebook

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Christmas products on sale nearly 2 months in advance.

Yes Halloween was on October 31st and Christmas is the next big Hallmark holiday where all these stores can make big money but will delaying an extra 12 days really make that big of a difference? In fact I feel to most people are now starting to actually be offended by this and from a Marketing standpoint this is having a negative impact. Now if you’re a Church and would like to begin to celebrate Jesus’ birthday 12 days early that’s completely understandable or if you’re a religious christian person doing the same that still makes sense but if you are a store just trying to extort the commercial value of Christmas you’re actually not benefitting anyone.

It is actually beneficial from a Marketing standpoint to as a company come out and say we will respect what Remembrance Day stands for and leave our seasonal shelves empty for 12 days rather than putting up Christmas Decorations and items for sale. Even better is what some stores are doing is rather than leaving those shelves empty they are putting up pictures related to Remembrance Day or some sort of displays to honour what the day commemorates.

Some companies that have started shifting gear to Christmas completely in terms of advertising, in stores displays and sales are seeing a lot of backlash from customers which is never a good thing. Tweets have received replies calling the companies out, Facebook posts have been bashed in the comments and even TV commercials are receiving backlash on Social Media. Simply put the small period between Halloween and Remembrance Day should be only about honouring our vets and not skipping onto Christmas early. I would recommend even holding off until November 15th before putting up anything Christmas related just to be on the safe side but you must wait until November 12th unless you want to experience negative backlash.

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Owners of a Samsung flagship phone (Galaxy S6, S6 edge, S6 edge+, or Note 5) can trade theirs in for the newly launched OnePlus 2, and we’ll donate your old smartphone to Hope Phones!

To make things even better “only 50” people are eligible to win this contest. Now in theory this was a very good idea but OnePlus ignored one very important fact, dollar value. The cheapest model of the four is the Galaxy S6 32GB which sells for $749 CAD off-contract, the most expensive model is the Galaxy S6 edge+ which sells for $1049 CAD off-contract. The OnePlus 2 on the other hand is $479 for the 64GB model that is being offered in the contest. If the trade was of equal value people might even be willing to think about it but people could potentially be losing almost $600 in value by taking part in this “contest.” Maybe a donate/trade in your Samsung flagship phone and get two OnePlus 2s might be a better contest.

So not only did they botch the launch of their much anticipated phone (in my opinion the OnePlus 2 is a terrible follow up and potentially even a downgrade to the OnePlus 1, in fact many tech analysts have said the same) but they then followed up with a terrible marketing campaign. This is actually worse than the Conservative party Justin Trudeau Ad.

Source: OnePlus;

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Did BC Hydro do their job to the fullest or did they mess up big time? If I ignore the first few hours where they were absolutely terrible I would give them a 9/10, pretty impressive. However the fact still remains, in the first few hours where thousands started losing power, the BC Hydro website crashed and people were left without any information at all. From roughly noon, when their website went down, to roughly 5pm, when their Twitter account became extremely active, they were not doing so well on the customer service front. At some point BC Hydro realized that people were getting angry and that their website wasn’t coming back online anytime soon. They became very active with their Twitter account and started providing as detailed information as they possibly could. Now this might not be very reassuring for someone that was sitting without power but it was at least reassuring to know that BC Hydro was doing everything they could.

At 10pm when they posted a PDF with estimates of when power would be back, people at least had a timeline to look forward to. The only problem was that they couldn’t live up to many of these estimates and have had to push them back multiple times. Their twitter account since yesterday has remained extremely active since 5pm, providing every update possible. They have in fact even setup a temporary page on their website to keep customers updated.

We estimate that 530,000 customers lost power at some point during Saturday’s windstorm – one of the biggest single-day storm events we’ve ever experienced. We’ve restored power to more than 350,000 customers in 24 hours.

We have more than 400 people working on restoring power including over 250 power line workers. We have brought in crews from all over B.C. to help including crews from Prince George, Kamloops, Smithers, Terrace, Vernon, and Vancouver Island.

That is what their website currently says along with providing the latest PDF file of estimates of repairs. People that are sitting without power still might not care about all this and just want their power back but by keeping everyone as informed as possible BC Hydro has done a great job avoiding a PR disaster. Their will still be people that complain but there is no way to avoid those people. In fact many people are complimenting them for their updates and thanking the hard working crews.

Update: August 30th 11:15pm, at the latest count according to their Twitter account, 90,000 customers remained without power.

Update 2: August 31st 9:00pm, 24,000 customers still without power. These are the areas that suffered the most damage. Just under 50% of the customers are from Surrey. The BC Hydro website is now fully back online.

Update 3: September 2nd 4:35am, “We estimate that 710,000 – nearly 50% of our 1.4 million customers on Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland – lost power due to Saturday’s windstorm. The storm is believed to be the single largest outage event in BC Hydro’s history.” Power has been restored to all but 100 people.

Source: BC Hydro; BC Hydro

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Now that you’ve seen the commercial you’re probably not at all convinced to not vote for Justin Trudeau, which is the main objective of this commercial. The conservatives have been airing this on every platform possible and the interesting part is, it is completely backfiring on them. This commercial is bad for the conservatives for the short and long term. It seems as if they hired somebody on a low budget and that person didn’t even think about the future election. If you go on YouTube and search for this video, you’ll find many copies and mocks of this video. Just read the comments section and you’ll see how people are reacting. I’ve talked to quite a few people about this commercial and the funny thing is they have all said basically the same thing as the comments. In fact some people that were undecided voters now want to vote Liberal just to spite Harper, the Conservatives and this commercial. just look at the comment that sums all up:

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Translink has a terrible brand image in the Greater Vancouver area and they have done very little to try and repair that. On top of that the attempts they have made to repair this brand image have actually made it worse. The residents of Metro Vancouver simply do not trust Translink with anything. The entire no side campaign was more of a target at why we cannot trust Translink with our money rather than why we don’t need this tax. One of the most important aspects of Marketing is brand image, if your prospective customers (or in this case voters) don’t like your company or the way it operates they will always choose against you. In this case many people don’t like Translink so they voted against giving them an additional $250 million a year for 10 years.

I’m not hear to say whether I think this bad image is earned or not because that does not matter, what matters is they have a bad brand image and this needs to be fixed. The yes side of the campaign spent potentially millions of dollars trying to convince people of the benefits and why they should vote yes but all in vain because people were voting against Translink not against improvements to infrastructure. Many companies do not realize how important brand image really is but they should try to think about it from a consumer point of view. If you really hate a company are you going to buy their product if you have a choice? If you give consumers a choice and have a brand image like Translink’s the odds are not in your favour.

Yes I’m sure some of these people did vote no against the tax all together not Translink but if Translink had a better image the vote would have been a yes more likely. Translink needs to put in major work on improving their image. Doing things like firing the CEO that everyone hates for a failed compass card roll-out but keeping him as a consultant with full salary and hiring an interim CEO with the same pay really does not help with improving your image. Crown Corporations, companies like BC Ferries and Translink which are 100% owned by the government (basically Crown Corporations), and not for profit companies always come under extra scrutiny for these types of things and should try to be more careful where their image is concerned. Not for profit companies are very careful with their images but Crown Corporations are basically monopolies so they usually don’t care because if you want to take a bus from UBC to Metrotown Translink is your only option. It is only at times like this when they realize that they should have cared.

Update: A poll that took place the day after the results came in (July 3rd) indicates exactly what I have stated above. 76% of those who voted no did so because of their lack of faith in Translink. 62% said that the way Translink operates needs to be reformed. Two things stood out to me from this poll and slightly surprised me. 72% of yes voters said they did not trust Translink either but basically said the pros outweighed the cons and 53% of no voters also said they don’t trust the Mayors’ Council either. You can read more about the poll at the second source link below.

Source: BIV; BIV 2 (Update)

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Source: Android Authority 

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“Atlas means that Facebook can now use the data it amasses from its 1.3 billion users to serve targeted ads on other websites around the web, and track their success.” 

This may mean that Facebook may soon begin to show Ads all over the internet rather than just on Facebook.There are two other big features of “Atlas” however that may actually mean more for Marketers than advertising using Facebook outside of Facebook. Both these features center around tracking the results. The first feature is better mobile tracking, Atlas can track your ad and even connect it to your mobile app thus you will be able to better see conversion rates than before. This is a much further expansion of their website tracking pixel that is currently in place. The second feature is the big show stopper. Facebook may have just done the unthinkable, what has before today thought to be nearly impossible now may be possible. Tracking the results of your online campaign to directly see how many customers are shopping in store. Not online but offline. “ If a consumer gives their email address when purchasing an item instore, Facebook can share whether or not that person was targeted with an ad. Let’s say Reebok shares with Facebook a list of people who recently bought their new range of gym kit. Facebook can then provide the number of people who saw a targeted ad for the same items, and tell Reebok how many targeted users converted, both on and offline.” 

Atlas looks very exciting! Omnicon has already jumped on board and signed an agency-wide contract with Facebook. They may be the first but will for sure not be the last. Especially since Instagram Ads are coming and Atlas will be connected to Instagram as well. But don’t forget that users are beginning to get fed up with ads and that is leading to the success of platforms like Ello.

Source: Clever Marketing; Page Traffic Buzz

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Sponsored NHL and NBA jerseys are on there way and for sports fans this may make it one ad too many. We have no idea at the current time what these jerseys will actually look like and how many ads will be allowed on each teams jersey. It could be just like how European soccer teams have 1 logo on the front of their jersey or it could be the exact opposite where the players are covered head to toe in advertisements similar the the Spengler Cup. Hopefully it will be more like Europe rather than the Spengler Cup but if that is the situation we will notice that only the very large and powerful companies will be able to advertise and small to medium businesses will be left in the cold but that could be a good thing.
(Thomas Oswald/Keystone/AP) – Spengler Cup

In my opinion the more ads we throw at our customers, the better they will get at learning to ignore them. Even if I am watching a TV show without PVRing it, I still somehow manage to ignore the ads without even realizing it. I own a Manchester United shirt that has the AIG logo plastered in the middle but yet everyone recognizes it as the Manchester United Jersey and manages to ignore the fact the AIG logo is even there. If you take into account the fact that as a Marketing student I find ads to be interesting and something to learn for, you can only imagine what the rest of the world is doing. Our brains can be very selective to what they pay attention to and this applies to ads as well. Our brains have started to learn how to completely tune out ads and the more ads we throw at customers, the better I think people will get at ignoring all these ads. We also can’t forget that “anti-facebook” platforms like Ello that have no advertisements are becoming very popular (Ello receives about 40,000 requests per hour) because people are getting annoyed with ads.

Source: Sportsnet; Forbes

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