Lena Drinks Coca Cola

[Lena Drinks Coca Cola]

Closing thoughts: As marketers, do we get influenced more or less by marketing?

As a marketing student, this is a fun question to discuss among friends. Many of my friends studying marketing say that they are easily able to recognize subtle tricks that get consumers to spend more money, and therefore they do not fall for these influences themselves. However, I have often experienced the opposite. As a marketer, I admire good marketing. If I see a great ad campaign, awesome branding, or even a great sales tactic, it makes me want to buy the product.

…and then I bought it.

As a graphic designer, I’m also a sucker for innovative and well-designed packaging.

…and then I bought it. In every roast.

If a brand I like is participating in social media, you can bet that I will be marketing their product for them.

Got off the couch and walked to the nearest Tims just to take a selfie with a donut.

Marketing is a great field to be in right now. It’s changing and constantly innovating with new technology and ideas. The availability of information and big data has almost reinvented what we do. The best part is that we constantly have marketing stimuli in our everyday lives, that we can think deeper about, and get inspired to create better and more effective marketing that is valuable to consumers.

[Lena Drinks Coca Cola]

I will NOT buy your product

Loads of Christmas money means it’s time to buy myself a few gifts! There are a few things that I’ve had my eye on for a while, things that I don’t need and would normally consider a “splurge”, but feel perfectly comfortable buying with money that I didn’t have to work for.

One of those things is a personalized name necklace in Arabic, so I took a look on Etsy to see what was available. Within what I considered to be a reasonable price range, there were four options in the style that I wanted. After some comparison, I immediately eliminated one option, noticing it was silver plated while all of the rest were sterling silver. Because all of the items were roughly the same price, the silver plated item had a weaker value.

While the other three necklaces looked similar at first glance, I examined the photos closely and found that one necklace stood out as the best – it was a bit thicker and had sharper, cleaner lines.

Then, as I was about to check out, I noticed that the item was made in Israel. This was a problem. I don’t buy Israeli products.

Coming from a Middle-Eastern family, I have known from a young age about the Israeli colonisation, occupation and apartheid of the Palestinian people. With the events of this past summer, the conflict is somewhat salient in people’s minds, but it is shocking and appalling how little people truly know of the situation, and how easily Palestine is forgotten when other issues become the “breaking news” of the day. Throughout my life, I have learned more and more about the situation, and my commitment to my negative attitude towards Israel has progressed through different stages.

When I was young, my attitude mainly derived from identification, which consists of attitudes formed in order to conform to another person or group. I had mostly learned about the conflict from my parents, and as a child, one usually believes everything their parents say to be infallible. Now, as an adult, I keep up with the news, read opinions coming from both sides of the issue, and form my own opinions. This has caused me to internalize my attitude towards Israel, meaning that I have formed deep-seated attitudes that are a part of my broader values of social justice and equality. It is because of this value system that I have committed to the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement against Israel, and refuse to buy anything from Israel, and other companies linked to the Zionist movement.

Though buying the Israeli-made necklace was not an option, I am worried that I will not be satisfied with either of the other two. I will likely experience postpurchase dissonance knowing that I did not get the nicest and best quality necklace that was available. This is known as an avoid-avoid conflict, where both options have negative consequences. After days of deliberation, the decision of simply buying a necklace was too stressful, and I exited the tabs in my browser. The next thing I should probably do is try another website, but I am not really aware of another trustworthy source where I can find such a specific product. Looks like I will have to go back to square one, searching for information. Thank goodness for Google.

[Lena Drinks Coca Cola]

How to find the perfect Christmas gift for your boyfriend/girlfriend’s parents – or not

Christmas isn’t usually much of an occasion for me – I’m Muslim, so I have never celebrated it. However, this year I participated in Christmas with my boyfriend’s family, which brought about a number of new gift giving experiences, where I had to try to infer what was expected of me in order to avoid completely embarrassing myself. The researchers have it right when they say gift-giving provokes social anxiety.

First of all, not long before Christmas, my boyfriend informed me that his mother got me a gift and strongly hinted that I should reciprocate. Not to sound ungrateful, but I started wishing she had not gotten me anything at all, because trying to find her the “right” gift was causing me a lot of stress. I started by Googling variations of “boyfriend’s mother christmas present” long into the night, and asked a bunch of my closest friends for advice. They weren’t very much help.

Friend 1: Chocolates, obviously. This isn’t hard.
Me: There’s a box of chocolates resting every surface of their house! And don’t even say mugs. Everyone already has about a million mugs.
Friend 1: Okay, then buy her some nice soaps and bath stuff, so she can pamper herself. Moms love that kind of stuff!
Me: What about his dad? Will he feel excluded then? Am I expected to get him something too?
*half of friends say yes, half say no*
Me: What are you even supposed to buy for people’s dads though?
Everyone: …
Everyone: …
Everyone: …
Everyone: Forget about it. Dads are impossible to shop for.
Friend 2: What about a nice pashmina? They’re really classic and easy to wear, there’s no way she wouldn’t like it.
Friend 3: Pashmina is a great idea!
Friend 4: Isn’t that too personal though? Clothing and accessories are usually kind of personal… I don’t know if I’d go there.
Friend 1: Yeah, I don’t think you’re at that stage yet.
Me: Never mind the pashmina then…
Everyone: Wow this is actually really hard. Sucks for you!!!!!!!!

We all went to the store but nothing really seemed “right”. After a long search, I decided to just give up and talk to my boyfriend.

Me: Can you please just tell me what to buy your mom? Everything I can think of has a major flaw. I give up!
Boyfriend: It doesn’t really matter what you get her. It’s just for show, since she got you something too. Just get her anything half-decent, it doesn’t really matter what it is.

I then realized, I didn’t have to find a maximizing solution, just a satisficing one.

Funnily enough, my mom later walked into my room with a brand new set of espresso cups and saucers, asking if I wanted to give them to anyone for Christmas.

Don’t get me wrong, this was not a cheap case of regifting – the set was the perfect gift I had been looking for all along! Everyone has a million mugs, but espresso cups are just different enough to make a unique gift. They also love coffee, and there were 4 cups, for the 4 members in their household.

Anyways, I think I learned a lesson from all of this. You don’t always need to find the “perfect” gift – just one that is appropriate. This gift didn’t have a dramatic impact on my relationship with my boyfriend’s parents or their views of me. It merely showed my appreciation for their gift, and that I was thinking of them, which is the polite thing to do and the true gift in itself.

[Lena Drinks Coca Cola]

How I got paid to buy 20 chocolate bars

One of my friends told me about an app called Checkout 51, where you can earn rebates on your weekly groceries, so I decided to sign up and check it out. (Aside: if you want to sign up, use my referral link and we can both save even more!)

The app has offers that change on a weekly basis, and you simply take a photo of your receipt, select which offers coincide to the items you purchased, wait a few days for processing, and then get the money added to your account. Once you have earned a minimum of $20, you can cash out your rebates and have a cheque sent.

There was once a really great offer for $5 back on 5 chocolates (Snickers, M&Ms, Twix, or Mars), which could be redeemed up to four times. This was a steal, seeing as stores usually sell these chocolate bars for around $1.30 to $1.50. But at the dollar store, things get even better… At 77 cents per bar, I ended up with a month’s supply of Snickers and made about $3 while I was at it!

I know what you’re thinking… there must be some kind of catch to this.

Well, it’s not much of a catch. Nothing you wouldn’t expect, and the money is indeed legitimate. What the company benefits from is your information – you are uploading your entire grocery receipt, which contains a wealth of information about your habits and loyalties as a consumer. Remember Target’s kind-of-creepy pregnancy algorithm?

Checkout 51 sells aggregate (i.e. not personal) data to third-party companies, who then target you with personalized marketing, leading you to buy more, and increase their profits. Checkout 51s privacy policy states that they “may use your email address to email you about products and services that [their] clients or partners offer.”

Being a marketer, I feel more comfortable than most about giving this information up, because I want those tailored advertisements as a result, and because I want to contribute in a small way for my industry.

[Lena Drinks Coca Cola]

Do marketers have too much influence?

I just watched a really great video on the impact of marketing, and how deceptive it can sometimes be.

The video highlights questionable practices in food-lableling. Funny enough, the people behind this video are great marketers – this video’s use of humour and satire is extremely compelling and well-executed.

Marketers need to balance conflicts between marketplace success and good ethics – Only Organic knows that the two don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

[Lena Drinks Coca Cola]

[stunningpicture]

70s Lego had the right idea

[smartgirlsattheparty]

Perfect!

[braincraft]

YES.

[lenadrinkscoke]

Beautiful. Would like to see more companies doing this sort of thing.

[Lena Drinks Coca Cola]

Deception tastes a lot like lemon

It takes humans just milliseconds to form a first impression of objects or other people – something we likely do thousands of times per day. Perception, the way we organize and interpret the sights, sounds, and other sensations around us, often relies on a variety of mental shortcuts to help us focus on what’s important, and prevent us from being completely overloaded by stimuli. We’re not always right, but as it is often said, first impressions are notoriously hard to change. In high school, my science teacher subjected the class to an interesting experiment, and an even more interesting lesson about the way we all think.

Everyone in the class received a small paper plate with cubes of orange, yellow, and green Jello. We were studying the senses, and were required to look at, smell, touch, and taste these three different types of Jello, and write a description of our various sensations. The descriptions were supposed to be fairly detailed – for example, beyond just stating a flavour like “lime” we were supposed to discuss the sweetness, sourness, aftertaste, and so on. Considering the detail required, one would think that we were paying close attention to what our tongues were telling us.

Nobody clued into the fact that all 3 samples were lemon flavour, with food colouring added to the orange and green batches. Every student’s description included the words “lime”, “lemon”, and “orange” somewhere. Clearly, the colour that we saw influenced our perception and led us to believe that all three squares of Jello we tried actually tasted different. Boy, did we feel stupid – but at least we were all stupid together!

Plot twist: these jello shots are actually chicken flavoured.

Colour is often symbolically linked to scent and flavor. When it comes to fruit flavours, colours have taken on a symbolic meaning. Red usually means strawberry or cherry, and purple usually means grape. We don’t expect these norms to be violated. Some food experts speculate that we tend to associate red with sweetness and green with sourness, because that is often the process fruits go through as they ripen.

An interesting study was conducted with white wine, where experts drank a white wine in its normal colour, and the same wine dyed red. In describing the flavour of the undyed wine, they described it in terms associated with white wine, such as “straw” and “honey”. However, when they drank the dyed version, they used descriptions like “intense” and referred to fruits like cherry and raspberry. None of the 54 experts figured out that they were drinking a white wine.

How colour is used in the food industry:

Knowing the true power of perception, marketers have experimented with colouring foods to varying degrees of success. Heinz green and purple ketchup had initial appeal as novelty products, but are no longer around. Crystal Pepsi mostly confused people and ultimately failed, because consumers couldn’t associate the clear colour with cola.

This makes me wayyyyyy uncomfortable.

When you think of coloured foods, what comes to mind is bright, highly processed foods, like Fruit-Loops cereal or M&Ms, but colour additives can show up where you least expect it. Butter is sometimes tinted yellow because that’s just what colour we expect it to be. How would you feel about eating a grey salmon? Picturing that just made me gag a little, which is why naturally grey farmed salmon are fed substances that turn them pink.

And why the heck is cheese orange? That’s always bothered me.

Perception can be more influential than sensation in many cases. When it comes to food, there is a common saying that we eat with our eyes. I think it’s very true. That’s what the whole foodporn trend is about, after all.

As a web and social media marketer, I am obsessed with A/B testing webpages and copy to obtain the most optimal responses.

[Lena Drinks Coca Cola]

Where are the prices on this menu?

My family went out for dinner recently, to celebrate my parents’ paying off their mortgage. I thought it was a bit silly when they couldn’t find the prices on the menu.

Mom: Where are the prices on this? I can’t find the prices anywhere.
Me: It’s the numbers beside each item. See “Salmon filet” with the 17 beside it? That’s 17 dollars.
Mom: That’s not the price! There’s no dollar sign.
Me: It’s the price.
Mom: Maybe we should ask someone.
Me: No mom, it’s the price. Don’t worry about it. It is for sure.
Five minutes later…
Mom: Where are the prices? I don’t understand this menu, there are no prices anywhere.
*SIGH*

I had to explain it to her four times.

I remember thinking this notation was a bit unusual the first time I saw it a number of years ago, but I attributed it to the minimalism design trend. Later, I found out that the reason behind this is actually consumer behaviour. A famous study from the Center for Hospitality Research found that removing the dollar sign led to a significant increase in sales. Basically, without the dollar sign or decimals, customers are less likely to make the mental connection to spending money, thereby becoming less price-sensitive.

One restaurant I recently visited with coworkers went as far as using the ½ symbol, as in 21 ½ instead of $21.50. And you know what? It actually does look friendlier to my wallet.

Menu design in general uses many tricks to manipulate customers’ behaviour. The upper-right corner is often the first place people look, so higher-margin items are placed there, while low-margin items are placed in smaller font in the bottom-left where people seldom glance. Sometimes menus even include one ridiculously expensive item just to make other items on the menu look like a better deal.

When I was dining with my coworkers, we were handed a smaller lobster-feature menu along with the main menu. I looked at the smaller menu first, as I knew it would take less time to read, and was immediately attracted to a chicken and lobster dish which appeared prominently through a feature box. When I checked out the rest of the menu, it was to see if there was anything better than that dish at a similar price point – essentially, I was comparing every other option to the first suitable dish that attracted my attention. This is called an anchoring effect, and menu designers intentionally emphasize specific items to lead to this behaviour.

As a web and social media marketer, I am obsessed with A/B testing webpages and copy to obtain the most optimal responses. If I were a restaurant owner, I would go one step further and A/B test the menu.

[Lena Drinks Coca Cola]

Marketers, sometimes we just have to laugh at ourselves

Good marketers hate cheesy stock photos but love trends and buzzwords. Combine the two, and hilarity ensues.

Credits: Things Real People Don’t Say About Advertisements – follow them for more marketing fun!

Repositioning will solve all of your problems! Okay, maybe not…

Actually, I wish I could manage this information overload.

This is classic stuff. Let’s move on to some of the latest marketing trends…

Does your brand need a Twitter account? OF COURSE IT DOES. Twitter is for everyone… except Apple.

Excuse me while I check my Klout score for the fifteenth time today.

How marketers wish marketing worked.

Neuromarketing is why people think marketers are evil… but it works.

Have you lost about 5 years of your life to clickbait, or is it just me? @SavedYouAClick retweets clickbait-y headlines from popular news sites and tells you what you really need to know.

Last night, at an event watching an entrepreneur pitch an app idea, my boyfriend turned to me and said, “this guy’s idea would be 100x better if he just gamified it.” He was totally right.

Me, every single day. #graphicdesignerproblems

What every modern marketer wants to achieve in life.

 …

Of course, these image macros exaggerate the subtle influence that marketing actually does have on consumer behaviour. Many of the trendy tactics mentioned above – gamification, viral marketing, social media – will come up again in more detail over the course of this blog. Which recent marketing trends will be effective and sustainable in the long-term , and which ones will fade away before the end of2014?

Marketers, I urge you to take a good look at these images and ask yourself which of these tactics tend to influence your own consumption behaviours, and which ones make you roll your eyes.

[Lena Drinks Coca Cola]

What does your complicated coffee say about you?

Lately, I’ve been seeing many articles online that involve baristas complaining about high-maintenance customers, annoying orders, and other ridiculous behaviours they encounter on a daily basis. As someone who has worked in retail and customer service I can often relate to their frustrations.

This article in Business Insider however, is the most interesting that I have seen from a consumer behaviour perspective. Rather than baristas just ranting about picky customers, they have noticed some really interesting behaviours.

The article mentions customers trying to “check off every box” to appear in-the-know. Why do people want to do this? Possibly because they relate to the brand and even consider it a part of their identity. I am surprised that the article makes no mention of the Secret Menu. This started out as semi-official recipes known to baristas and their inner circle, and grew into a way for diehard Starbucks fans to create and share completely new recipes for customized drinks. I usually think of Secret Menu fans as having a high need for uniqueness, or novelty-seeking tendencies.

Another interesting behaviour that was noted was the way some people seem embarrassed about their beverage order and try to keep it hidden from the public. One’s coffee-drinking habits can be subject to judgement, in the professional world especially. Some people engage in impression management by asking the baristas not to write on the cup. One lady always asked for her frappucino in an unmarked hot cup, to look as if she were drinking a plain coffee.

As both a student and young professional, I can attest to the fact that coffee does indeed convey an image of productivity, and fosters an odd kind of a bonding experience among the constantly busy and tired. Around exam time, students often talk about the excessive amount of coffee they’ve had throughout the day. I know a student who occasionally jokes or tweets about coffee even though he doesn’t actually like or drink it – but it’s relatable to his peers and supports the image he wants to cultivate as a busy young professional.

Beyond that, I often notice that coffee is associated with loyalty bordering on snobbery. This likely won’t be my last coffee-related post on this blog. I would love to explore why people are so opinionated and defensive about their coffee preferences. I am a loyal Tim-Hortons double-double kind of girl, myself. Feel free to analyze what that “says” about me. ;)