The 6th - Enterprise Week activities

During November last year, the marketing students participated in this event and I think it was good for everyone as it got the students to meet outside people from the industry who we normally would not get to meet. The chance to speak to all these people is a good experience and many people would have enjoyed it.


The events which I was able to attend were 'Telling it Like it is' and 'Transmitting Information is easier than creating understanding'. We went with friends so there was less listening and more talking and drawing on books. But there was some very useful information which came out of these events. I think the best event will have to be the 'telling it like it is' because there were people from leading companies their and they helped to show us what it is like working in these companies and how did they get their. They were ex-students of the Uni so they had a viewpoint of the audience so it was easy to understand.
Here is the people who were at the event;

1.) Sue Elms - She is the Executive Vice President of Global Media Practice Millward Brown
http://www.millwardbrown.com/Home.aspx

2.) George Hutchinson - He is the Chair and Managing Director of Public Affairs for Burson-Marsteller UK
http://www.bursonmarsteller.co.uk/index.php

3.) Sue Unerman - She is the Chief Strategy Officer for MediaCom
http://mediacom.com/

4.) Matthew Chapman - He is the International Service and Systems Innovation Director for Billets
http://www.ebiquity.com/uk/billetts/

5.) Rik Haslam - He is the Group Creative Architect for WWV Rap
http://www.rapp.com/home/

This event was basically a long discussion about several marketing topics. They talked about how marketing communication has changed and how the Internet has taken over. From my friends notes (we made him write all the notes!) it was said in the panel that 80-85% of marketers have started to use mobile marketing through the Internet. This is a very good statistic and shows how the marketing communications are being developed everyday and many marketers have to keep up with the latest technology and they have to see how they can cover the most number of customers.
After the first discussion, a student from the third year did a presentation about the Internet and how marketers are using the Internet. He mentioned about 9 billion adverts appear on the most visited site on the Internet, Google.
After this, brands were discussed. They discussed the fact that customers want value and high quality. The price interestingly they said is not a massive factor in deciding what to buy, it just has to be of good quality and of value. (Maybe they said this because they are rich)They also said packaging is a good point to mention when discussing brands, for example Asda smart price range has very basic packaging but the higher range has better colors. But they also mentioned the fact that just because the packaging is bad does not mean the product is not popular so the brand has more to do with it then the packaging. I learnt a lot from these discussions and the opportunity to meet these people was very good as it was a good experience. The notes also helped with another piece of coursework and I may use them in the future.
Another event in the three weeks was the Apprentice challenge. 6 people from our class actually won this challenge so Ruth was really proud. We were not able to enter because of one of the group members being ill.

The 5th - Gender

Gender is one of the most widely used ways of targeting customers. It is sometimes very easy to distinguish which ads are for males and which are for females.
Males and females will respond differently to certain things:

Men make buying decisions based on partially digested information
Less patience with long copy
Less disposed to pictures
Look for clarity and simplicity
Fewer men’s lifestyle mags than women’s lifestyle mags
Men to be relatively obsessive and have narrowly defined hobbies – reflected in media choice
Men look for humour in ads
Men’s humour is cruder and likely to be more aggressive.

These above are the characteristics of men when it comes to buying and their behaviour towards adverts.
Schiebe and Condry (1984) examined advertisements according to product type and found major gender differences in the values promoted in advertisements. This shows that there is always major differences in the way in which advertisers promote their products. Look at the two adverts below, which is targeted at male and which at female? It will be very easy to distinguish. After seeing them, play both at the same time and you will see the difference!



This is how adverts differ with males and females:
For women:
ads often are more detailed. eg toiletry ads.
women appreciate very fine distinctions, such as 5 different variations of shampoo-for curly hair, straight hair, oily hair, dry hair, etc.
For men:
Toiletry ads focus on a single product.
Men are likely to pick up on one or two very salient and obvious kinds of cues. (Free)
Men think in a more macro way, and need to be shown the big picture.

From the two videos, it is easy to see that the Loreal advert, is for women. The above points show that women like very fine distinctions, and in the advert, Cheryl Cole says that, the shampoo is for 'limp, lifeless' hair. This goes with general marketing theory that women like the little things and the distinctions.
Men, on the other hand, like there to be more humor and need to be shown the bigger picture. In the advert, this is clearly shown and fits with the theory.
So I would say they are very good adverts for their own gender, if you showed the Loreal advert to a man, he would most likely just concentrate more on Cheryl Cole then the product. If you showed he Yorkie advert to a women, she would not like it and most probabbly try and sue you for showing the video to her!

The 4th - Personality and Self-concept

Dr. Joyce Brothers, a famous psychologist once said:
“An individual's self-concept is the core of his personality". (Dr. Joyce Brothers 1960)
Self concept simply means what one person thinks of themselves. For example a young person would think differently of themselves then a older person, this would be because of age but there may be many reasons why a person thinks in a certain way about themselves. The main ones I think could be:

Age and Gender

Culture

Background

Income

Lifestyle

These would be the main ways in which a persons self image is constructed. Age is an obvious reason why some people think of themselves in certain ways. My grandad always says to me, 'Im old so I cannot walk to your house everyday, even though he is there every week! But this is the self image he has of himself. Looking at what a young person would think of themselves, my younger cousin is a prime example. Many times he says to me he can drive a bus, just because his father is a bus driver! Trust me he can't! This is just the concept in which he thinks and this should change with age. (Hopefully!) One way in which marketers and product developers can take advantage of this is through targeting young children with small cars, I mean toy cars not Minis! This would be taking full advantage of this market because many children would make their parents buy these.

Some peoples self concept is negative and some people's positive, a person who has a negative self concept will spend more on cosmetics and jewellery. A person who has a positive self image will most likely in my opinion spend more money on cars, their house and things like that.

Marketers can use this to their advantage, like the boots 'here come the girls' advert is for girls who think they have to wear make up to look good. This advert will target these sort of people. So self concept is very important in the way marketers plan their adverts, generally, people of a certain age and gender will have a certain image of themselves. For example, males around the age of 40 will say they are lazy, this is in general. Advertisers will have to meet this by designing ads which will fit the self image of certain people:

Take a look at this ad designed to get people out of their chairs and get active.

This ad, I think will be very good in influencing people to get out of their chairs and actully do something active. It fits the profile of males and it fits their self concept. If you have any questions about self-concept contact the lady in the above picture.