Attention All Couch Potatoes: Your future is on the screen.

We had black and white, color, wide screen, LCD screen, high definition, and say what??

Yes, soon our TVs will be in 3D. There will be people standing in our living rooms as we watch our sitcoms and breakfast telvision news.

The 3D technology is so advanced, it's like seeing a sci-fi movie turned into reality. Now imagine the technology being available to the mass market.

Sony is going to launch their first 3D TVs next year, in 2010. It's a move to spur sales after a flat growth in flat TVs. Philips is taking it another step ahead - 3D TVs without the use of glasses.

This amazing innovation in television is going to push the art of marketing and product selling to a whole other level. Even thinking about the possible ways to market such a product blows my mind to bits.

In another 20 years, people could be grabbing chocolate bars out from the TV. Just like how Willy Wonka wanted.

Who Needs Some Skull Candy?

Once upon a time, the music you listen to define who you are.
Now is a time when your HEADPHONES define your taste.

These bulky vintage headphones with crazy graffiti design are the up and rising new trend. Trendy retailers (such as Urban Outfitters) are selling these as the hippest and newest items targeted at the skateboard riding, ipod carrying young generation. It doesn't matter if the sound is not Sennheiser quality or if they are not entirely comfortable to wear. Walk down the street with a pair of these. Instant attention grabber - even without the music blasting through the headphones. No wonder teenagers (or real hip-hopsters) are willing to fork out a hundred bucks for these.

New companies (see below) are established especially for these funky looking skull candies, and established electronics company like Panasonic are catching up with matching designs.

SkullCandy seems to be the leading brand in the industry, with a vast catalogue of different headphones and earphones with varying fucntions and pricing. The website is complete with blog, user reviews, and online transactions (A grade for doing online business with the cyber generation).

Wescs a street fashion brand for "intellectual slackers" - namely skateboarders and snowboarders.

Aerial 7 categorizes their headphones into Tank, Chopper, Matador, and Sumo - each with different designs and functions for different market segments (how much do u want to pay and how advanced to u want the functions to be). They also cater to the female market with products that come with more girly colors.

I'm no hipster (i'm too old to be one), but I really dig this pair of wireless heaphones from SkullCandy. It's a 2 in one headphone with the player embeddded. All you do is insert an SD card into the headphone and music will start playing. NO WIRES!! How cool is that (can you imagine the convenience for skateboarders??). Now that is worth 100 bucks (i'm also too old to be coaxed solely by pretty colors).

WHY SHE BUYS

"If the consumer economy had a sex, it would be female.
If the business world had a sex, it would be male.

And therein lies the pickle."

Why She Buys, written by Bridget Brennan, points out that women are the key influencers in about 80% of all consumer product sales in the U.S. alone—but 90% of marketing execs trying to reach them are men. Little do they realize that women are the bra (main support) of the sagging market in a bleak economy - deciding what to buy for their children, their husbands, and everyone around them.

Many businesses do not tailor their marketing schemes to the true Alpha-shopper, leading to major UNREALIZED losses in sales and revenue.

There are five important global demographic changes affecting female consumerism

1. More women in the work force
2. Delayed marriages and therefore more spending on self
3. Lower birthrates resulting in fewer kids (but more spending on each kid)
4. A divorce economy, which translates into needing two of everything
5. Growing rate of active older women—mean that the female market must be well catered to.

THE MAJOR TAKEAWAY: successful marketing executives nowadays must be FEMALE LITERATE. In other words, they must understand the trends, life stages, and lifestyles that affect women consumers in order to successfully market their products (even stereotypically macho products like cars).

This book was a fun read, written with lots of research and facts, and the advices are simple and to the point. I realized after graduation that the marketing courses I took at school are simply not enough. It's neccessary to keep up with various marketing news and opinions from marketing experts with years of marketing experience. Much is to be explored.

Diesel - Only the Brave

Usually I'm not a big (spending) fan for fragrances, but this time I caved. An interesting product does marketing for itself. When it is being seen, marketing is being done. One look at it at and I was sold (and then afterwards I realized it's a cologne for men).

Always one to break the mold, the new Diesel scent is bottled in a smoky, gray flacon in the shape of a clenched fist, branded by a silver Diesel silver ring on the third and fourth fingers. It was inspired by Diesel founder Renzo Rosso’s own hand, particularly the RR finger tattoos, which he gave himself for his 50th birthday.

The Brave fragrance: passion, will and conviction. He’s in control of his own destiny and has made his mark in all of his pursuits, creating changes through every effort and every medium.” Such is theme for the brand, and men who seem the most capable of handling this theme are cast as models for the cologne ads (Kanye West, Tony Ward...)

In terms of the actual scent and marketing involved (slogans and commercials), the work is good, on brand, but not eye-popping outstanding. However, Diesel always has had good footwork for maintaining an outstanding, bad-ass brand attitude. This top selling fragrance brand is winning over millions with the unique bottle design, and through effective distribution at online stores and large chain stores such as Sephora.

iSing Posters

As a fresh marketing grad and an incidental graphic designer, my fellow friends tend to come to me for branding + design advices. Once in a while they will make me do the actual work.

Let truth be truth, we all judge books by their covers. That's why we always have to look good (or at least look like what we're trying to sell). In recent years, the clean, fresh, iTune-y (Apple) look has been a very trendy look/feel for new brands, and appearing on all sorts of publications (books, magazines, commercials, and bus ads).

So I've done the same for the brand image of one of UBC's newly established Accapella group, Essonance. It did cross my mind that the Apple trick is getting old, but there is no harm in doing a little mock marketing for a student choir.

Here are the logo + posters that I've designed. What do you think?

I haven't updated feverishly for the past week. I am busy reading up on my marketing books and exploring into the interesting details of the real marketing world. As Seth Godin says, "Not doing any marketing is better than doing a bunch of marketing ($$$$$) just to keep busy." Coincidentally that also happens to be my life philosophy.

Wearing a Stranger on My Shirt

The weekend's National Post introduces a new global humanitarian/empathy movement started by Toronto entrepreneur Jeff Woodrow. He has this idea that you wear a shirt with the artistic portrait of a real person, and while you wear that shirt you think of that person, and about how our everyday actions affect others in the world.


The portraits are all illustrations of real people, whom have a hometown, an identity, and something they care about. On the website is a library of over 700 different faces of different people from all over the world. This is a really interesting humanitarian movement combined with artistry and creativity. Shirts are distributed in different stores across the country (and this will expand for sure , if viral marketing becomes successful).

Joy T-shirts are on a tour trying to expand to the west of Canada right now. In my opinion, if they do a good job in appealing to the demographics of young people in Vancouver, they will have a great chance of expanding to Asia. Vancouver is a superb location for business expansion to Asia and vice versa (sure, it's not as big as Toronto, but we have nothign in between us and Asia other than the Pacific Ocean). Cities on the pacific rim are alike to each other than cities that belong to the same country when it comes to climate, economy, and people culture.

Let's see if joy t-shirts can hit the jackpot.

Evian - bring it ON!!!!

Rollerskating babies hip hopping in a park? This is a genius commercial by Evian embedded onto youtube's homepage (which I would probably not see if it's played on TV. I wonder how much Evian had to pay youtube???) -> i smell a combo of excellent brand image with the perfect distribution channel. What a way to target the young (kids and young adults alike).

This little video is meant to create a wild buzz on the internet - as it comes with a complete website http://evianliveyoung.com/ complimented with teasers and production videos of the crazy dancing babies.

Perhaps advertising is NOT dead, but instead, is merely brought to new heights.