Back To School Advertising

OK we all know we are in a terrible economic times right now but we have to send our kids back to school. This is a right of passage for every kid in America in August/September  time frame. Now of course as Americans we don’t want to have our children go back to school wearing an outfit they had from last year. This is the time of year to go out and buy our children a whole new wardrobe for the new school year. It’s kind of funny when you think about it but that’s what these ads are telling us to do when they are showing us all the stuff for the back to school ads. They totally want you to believe that your child will not be able to go back to school and learn if you don’t have them outfitted in all new clothes and all new supplies. They focus on making you believe that the only thing for you to do is to rush out and spend all your money on new stuff for your children.

Then they throw in the whole tax free weekend thing that makes you believe you are getting this great deal so you have to spend more so that you can save more. I mean really exactly how much do you save on tax free weekend. Is it enough to make it worth your while to go out and fight the crowd of other crazy people out there trying to do the same thing. Would it not be better if you are having a hard time making ends meet to try out the resale shops, thrift shops, and garage sales. See they don’t do any of this, they don’t talk about this stuff. The advertiser’s don’t care if you have the money or not they don’t care if you have to put this on credit cards or what they just want you to come and spend money with who ever they are advertising for.

So what type of advertising would make me want to come in and buy a product from a company? I would chose to spend my money with a company that stands for the same thing that I do. I would also look for the best product for the best price. Like for example Ross’ stores are one of my favorite places to shop because you can find name brand products in there at much lower prices than you would find at Dillards, JC Penny, or any other name department store. The same for Dillard’s Outlet Store you can go there and purchase things at 75% off the only difference is it is last years clothes. Who cares and who really notices if it’s last years stuff or not.

Advertising

What is advertising it is impersonal, one way mass communication about a product or organization that is paid for by a marketer. Or more simply put this is the form of psycology that is used to convince us to buy something that we really don’t need. It can make us overeat and overspend. Take for example a Wendy’s add they show these great big beautiful hamburgers that make you start drooling. Even if you have just eaten you can start drooling. Now ask yourself do you really need that 1200 calorie hamburger or would you do just as well by eating a salad? Or take for example a brand new Lexus car they want you to believe that you can’t live without although that Nissan Sentra sitting in your driveway runds just fine and gets you were you need to be. What is the pschcology of all of this. They know how to make a product look good and how to make you believe you absolutely can’t live without their product. That’s why we as consumers have to be smarter than the advertising. If we don’t need a particular item then we should know that we don’t need to spend our money on it.

Baby Boomers

Baby boomers one of the biggest and most influential purchasing groups in America. These are the people who were born between 1946-1964. I for one just made it into this elite group. We were the largest generation and now that we are all reaching our mid-years and have hopefully reached monetary success. This gives us some of the biggest influence ever as far as what companies do well and what companies don’t. A great example of this was the advent of the IPod. It was manufactured and marketed by Apple to the teenagers. Thinking they would like to have portable music available at their fingers tips in a small package. Well teenagers of course started buying Ipods and getting them for presents but an odd thing happened the adults started seeing the advantage of this product also. The Apple Ipod became so big and drove the Mp3 market that even our new vehicles now have connections for an MP3 player. I personally wouldn’t purchase a car today if it didn’t have a connection for my IPod. This is just one prime example of what effect baby boomers have had on our economy and will continue to have.

There is another side of this also. The Baby Boomers all have children and grandchildren now and we want them to have only the best. Most of us will go out and purchase our little darlings whatever it is that they want. I know for me I have a three year old granddaughter that I will buy the silliest things for. On her first birthday I bought her a pink princess TV so she could watch her Baby Einstien DVD in her bed. Sometimes I stop myself and ask where this all stops buy the marketing people thrive on this. They know that we want our kids to have the latest and the greatest and that’s how they write their marketing.

North American Free Trade Act

What exactly is North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA)? This is an agreement made between America, Canada, and Mexico. This agreement lifted all non-tariff barriers on agricultural trade between Mexico and America and was written to eliminate many more tariffs over the ensuing 5 to 15 years beginning in 1994. Of course our governemnt hyped that this would be the best thing to come about in a long time. How it would make products cheaper for us and easier to obtain.  In my opinion this has not come about it appears to me that it has cost people their jobs and made it harder for Americans to find employment. Too many companies find that it’s cheaper to take their manufacturing plants to Mexico and use Mexican labor that is much cheaper and doesn’t have labor unions that watch out for the workers rights.

I for one can’t see where NAFTA has helped our economy. Grant it I’m not the most informed person on America’s economy but I do keep up with what is going on in my world. I would like to see us go back to where we once were with American’s are making good products and making a good wage.

Cold Calling

First I guess I should explain what cold calling is before I complain about it. Cold calling is when a company obtains your phone number either through purchasing a phone list, you filling out a form for a “contest”, or even when you check out at a local store they ask you for your phone number then they call you at the most inconvenient times about their products. If you are email savvy think “spam”.  What makes cold calling so much worse than spam is with spam all you have to do is hit the delete button with cold calling so many times you have to be rude to just get them off the phone.

Recently a big push seems to be them obtaining your cell phone number and calling or texting your cell phone with information about their company. Don’t you need life insurance or maybe you need debt consolidation, or hey maybe you need a new cell phone even though you just bought one last week. I have come to the conclusion that if I don’t recognize the phone number on my caller ID I DO NOT ANSWER the phone. All my friends and family know to leave a message and I will call them right back but if I don’t recognize the number I will not answer it. If you do make the mistake of answering the phone most of them just will not take no for an answer. It’s really sad that when you say “no” they just want to come at you from a different direction. I for one would vote to outlaw cold calling. If I haven’t invited you to call me don’t call me. The federal government tried to address this problem with the do not call list but my number is on that list and I still get calls. If I want someone’s product I will research it and go buy it myself.

What Is the Purpose of Rebates

I would really like someone to explain to me what the purpose of rebates are? Sure I know what a rebate is as an example we could use Verizon just one of the many companies out there that likes to use rebates to lure people into purchasing their product. Here is how it works you go in you chose a phone you like they tell you the price if $100 after rebate. The sign that is posted even says $100 ”with rebate” written very small underneath. So you go in thinking you are going to pay $100 for the phone when in fact you are going to have to shell out $150 and then wait 6 to 8 weeks to get your $50 back through the rebate. To top that off they don’t send you a check any more now most of them send you a VISA cash card. Has anyone else but me had trouble getting those stupid things to work? They only seem to work in some places.

Why can’t they just give you off the $50 at the store and save you all the trouble and hassle? I can answer that, it totally has to do with them counting on most people not struggling to fill the paper out and get it mailed in by the deadline and then waiting for the rebate to come back to them. I think this is a really bad way for companies to make money of of the purchasing public. We accept this practice though so there is no way to change the practice. If we all decided not to buy product with rebates we would never again be able to purchase a new cell phone.

Mark Up Prices

I wander how many people think of mark up when they go in to make a purchase? We all know that everything we buy has a markup that’s how all companies make their profits. They wouldn’t be able to stay in business if they didn’t charge more for the product then what they paid. We also have to realize that part of the mark up price is the rent, electricity, payroll, and anything else that is a cost to run a business.

When a company purchases or makes a product to sale they have to figure out what the market will accept as well as what it would take to cover their costs and make a profit. There are some items that a company will take a loss on just to get people in the door. Then they will have other products that they will have marketed up by 100% or more. So how do you know what you are really paying for. That blanket that you are paying $100 for might have only cost Wal-Mart $10 to purchase. Of course with Wal-Mart’s power in the buying market it might even be less than that.

Mark up for a company is a balancing act. You have to be aware what your competitors are charging for either the same items or for similar items. If you can figure a way to get them in your door and convince them your product is worth more than your competitors than you are well ahead of the game.

Company Buyers

I have always wanted to be a company buyer. So many times I walk into a store and I wonder what the person or persons were thinking when they picked out the merchandise for the store. Take JC Penneys for example I went in there the other day to look for a dress and I had two options one to buy something designed for a junior or two something that was designed for my grandmother. It’s like they never thought about the women who aren’t a size 0 and wanting to show an abundance of skin or 70 years old and wanting to cover up every inch of skin with drab color.

Of course you might ask where marketing comes in with this skill set. Your buyers and your marketing team have to work together to achieve the main object of the company. If the company is marketed to sale to 15-22 year old you don’t want to have support hoses for sale. So marketing has to know what the target market of the company will be. On the other hand the buyer has to know what marketing is putting out there to ensure they are purchasing the right products for the right target group.  Another good example of this would be Forever 21. This store sells to a young target group of 12-25 years but I can still go in and find some products that I like and I am well past this demographic. Their marketing though is targeted all towards the younger demographic because that is where most of their sales come from.

Logistics

Why would logistics have any bearing on your marketing plan? Logistics have a huge effect on how a company does business and how well a company can do business. One company that has a terrific logistics plan is WalMart. Walmart has a distribution center in close proximity to every WalMart store. These regional centers run 24/7 an if you visit you would see constant moving. If a store is out of a product or running low on a product they just have to submit a request and the product can be there within hours. If other stores would take some lessons from WalMart they would be much more efficient. WalMart marketing plan can be easily put out there because they can back up what they preach. If they say they will have a product you can pretty much count on them having that product. It isn’t like when you go to Target and they have something on sale but when you look for the product they are out of it. Of course you can always get a rain check and make another trip on another day to pick up the product you wanted.

If I were planning a marketing strategy I would feel much more comfortable being able to tell the public that when I advertise a product I will have that product in stock no matter how many people came in to purchase it. So when you ask yourself what marketing has to do with logistics ask yourself which company would you go to the one that almost always has the product in stock or the company that sometimes has the product?

Product Life Cycle

There is a term in marketing called product life cycle. This term is a biological metaphor that traces the stages of a product’s acceptance from its introduction to its decline to death. An example of this would be the 35mm camera. When the 35mm camera first came out it was priced just out of reach of the average consumer. Then after a year or so the price was lowered and average everyday picture taker were trying to get a 35mm camera because the pictures were so much better than what had to be out there. A lot of the people I know who had a family were really excited to show off their camera. These cameras were big and bulky and still had film that had to be processed. Then the advent of digital cameras came along. This new product, the digital camera, caused the death of the 35mm cameras for the average consumer. This would represent the product life cycle of the 35mm camera. You never really know how long you will be able to keep a product alive. The goal of the marketer is to keep it “living” as long as possible. If there is a way to adjust the product to keep it on the market longer it will usually be done.

To prove the death of the 35mm camera I would challenge anyone to walk into a WalMart or Target and see if you can still buy a 35mm camera in today’s market.