"You could win $1000 or an iPod!"

I just spent about 10 minutes filling an online survey from http://www.indigofeedback.com/ (after I purchased 2 magazines from the Chapters bookstore on Robson and Howe Street) and realizing that this bookstore chain giant in Canada is not making/training their employees to push the customers to go online in an offline purchase.

Personally, after I learned about how you can obtain a free Burger King burger by phone in to take a 5 minutes survey after each purchase, I began to have a habit of reading all the words (not just the numbers) on my shopping receipts. Just like many stores that I visited who actually tried to use their receipts to deliver valuable/promotional information, they failed to include a simple piece of elements to make their online survey more effectively - ASK THE CASHIER TO BRIEF THE CUSTOMER ABOUT THE INFO ON THE RECEIPT.

That reminded me that when Starbucks Coffee is trying to exercise their seasonal online survey, they make sure their employees tell the customers about it. Maybe it's because Starbucks is making the survey seasonal, so the employees do not have to tell the customers all the time. Nevertheless, I still think this little reminder/gesture can actually create more synergy between the online and offline world within the same company and fill in the gaps in between.

7 days away from the eMarketing Gala Trade Show!!!

Email me to signup for this event.

I am pleased to have a TeAM of diversified individuals that contribute to our final group project for the BAMA 513 – e-Marketing class (if you are interested in finding out our project outline, you can find it from Annie’s personal blog page @ http://newvalleygirl.blogspot.com/).

The following is the structure and the preparation that we are working on for the project:

Theme:
Driving Online & Offline Marketing Synergy – Showcasing examples from the fashion industry and featuring the mobile text message application to bridge the online & offline marketing gaps.

Presentation Style:
- Poster board displaying best practices/ideas from 3 different fashion brands
- Power Point presentation rotating our key messages using the researched companies’ websites as illustration
- Giving out information on how to use text messaging as a cost effective tool to boost sales & marketing effects
- Lucky draw to attract audience (use the text messaging tool to perform this task on site)
- Dress up as marketing professional (formal or funky?)

Tasks:
T – Overall presentation layout, style, format design
A – Power point presentation formatting
M – Text messaging information research (get a company to sponsor this service for the evening?)

Materials List:
- Poster Board
- Business Card
- Brochures
- Laptops (x2)
- Screen or projector?
- Luck draw prices?

Time is short and we are ready to roll!!!

Email Your Post to Blogger.com

Just discovered that I can easily email my post to my personal blog (directly published to your blog or save as a draft) by setting up a "Mail-to-Blogger" email address.

For those who are blogging with http://www.blogger.com/, you can simply set up a "Mail-to-Blogger" email address under the following directory/tab:

Customized > Settings > Email > Mail-to-Blogger Address

For those of you who would like to contribute your idea to my blog, you can email your desire post to me at tcwang0210.bdcinternational@blogger.com. Make sure you include your name (or nickname) in the message body.

Happy emai-blogging :)

SARS, Earthquaks, and Milk that Kill?

The resignation of Mr. LI Chang Jiang, Quality Chief who look after the food safety in China, due to the recent contaminated milk incident in China (caused up to 53,000 1~2 years old children sick and 4 death up-to-date) reminded me about the SARS incident back in 2003.

The sudden increased in the sicken children (from 6,000 cases jumped up to 53,000 cases within only few days) made me wonder if it is really the contaminated milk that caused this increase in the diagnostic cases or is it the TV/News media caused the fears and made the parents bring their children to see the doctors.

Chinese government was known for controlling the type of information that was released in media. Of course, during the earlier stage of SARS' spread in China, the information on SARS in China was massively controlled and hidden. It was only until the spread had reached to a critical point that the government realized that they no longer can keep this information from the general public and global community.

Today, the contaminated milk incident, in my opinion, may be overly reported and started to create a state of general public's panic. The question is, how should the public media carefully use this communication channel and relay message to their audiences. The contaminated milk issue should already been existing way before the release of the outbreak, but I think the regulatory body should act on it quickly before it starts to cause public panic.

The media is powerful, but it also need to be used wisely depends on the local situation and the message that one is trying to bring across.


Ref: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26827110/

Marriage Online & Offline Marketing in Fashion: Synergy between Physical and Virtual Marketplace

In the 2003 article entitle “Online customers are often fickle, and it can be tough converting visitors into sales”, author Fergal Byrne was ready to talk about ways to attract customers and how to keep them to company’s online presences. This article might sound relevant at the time especially after the dot com businesses are finding their ways to reposition the internet business model. Today, after another 5 years of development and evolution, we are seeing a much integrated synergy between the online and offline world. When we use the online apparel retailing as an example, we have observed that the online marketing is experiencing some of the same challenges as offline marketing such as ease of buying, retention, and delivery fulfillment.

Businesses these days should not apply the same internet business model to the online marketplace or treat them as a separate entity from the offline world. In fact, according to the trend briefing report published by trendwatching.com in September 2008, the offline world is “adjusting” and “mirroring” to be more like the online world. For example, designers are adopting the images of QR-Code Pattern or Pixels to create landscaping design, furniture, and even fashion accessories. While the creative minds are “turning the online symbols into the object”, another trend to encourage the virtual creativity is to materialize the binaries into the tangible that can be touched and feel. The virtual creation is now walking into our daily lives.

The impact of internet on people’s lives has been so significant that businesses and marketers are seeing an opportunity to create the consumer products/services experiences based on the users’ online behaviors. We are seeing more individualized products or customized services for users from various background and knowledge that gear toward this change in consumer behavior. The core concept is that taking what’s being done “better” online and apply it offline. Some of the concepts or processes include the following:

• Sharing (Zip Car)
• 24/7 (Shoppers Drug Mart)
• Cheap, fast and easy (Virgin Mobile)
• Free (Fitness 1 Week Free Trial Membership)
• DIY (IKEA)
• Customization, personalization, creation (Dell Computer)

The list indeed goes on with many more best online processes and practices (or coming from offline originally) that the offline world is making an effort to perfect it.

While many might go crazy of turning the offline into online, there’s another stream of creative businesses moving the online word in to the offline mode. After all, if OFF=ON; then ON should equal to OFF as well. The online community is attempting to create more “Visibility”, "Warm Bodies”, and ease of travelling with the need to enable internet ready’s “Mobile” device. The German version of the “Wikipedia encyclopedia in one volume” is an example of how the online creation gets their visibility offline.

I do believe that human beings cannot live without any social connection in the physical (offline) world. With this being said, I personally give a high remarks on Meetup.com’s tagline that they believe to help their members to “Use the Internet to get off the Internet!” The internet is a powerful tool that help people to explore and expand their current social network, but it should never replace the basic human’s need in people connection. The body language, the tone of voice, and the emotion will not be replaced easily by the machine or online symbols.

All the above ideas and examples are trying to illustrate the integrated relationship between the online and the offline world. Businesses in today’s “digital age” need to take a closer look on how they can marry their online and offline activities in harmony. The online and offline are still two distinct activities, yet they have lot of rooms to work with and for each other.

Just like any marriage in real life, it all started with an idealized plan for the new and wonderful future. You spend all the money to plan and to create the wedding (i.e. offline company launches their online presences). You enjoy the honeymoon period on the early “merging” stage, as you still look handsome and beautiful in each other’s eyes. Sometimes later in your marriage, you assume that the other party is going to get the things done, yet nothing happened (why is the online business not generating the targeted sales? why do our customers complaint so much?). You met the attractive someone and thinking that will change your life (a new marketing channel or tool that get you excited and you ignore about your existing online platform). You realized that you’ve already made the online investment and decided to stick with that (begin to reinvent the ways and develop your online/offline synergy). A true harmonized marriage takes the time to work on all the glitches and mismatches. We don’t know how well will it perform, but we need to be adventures enough to step into each other’s (online to offline or offline to online) territory in order to understand how to work better with each other.

PS. Although the above use the marriage metaphor to describe the online-offline integrated relationship, the Wikivorce website is another classic example how a typical offline divorce advising services went wild and big online.

References:

1. Online Marketing, Fergal Byrne; Directorl August 2007; 57, 1; ABI/INFORM Global pg. 54
2. Trends in online apparel retailing: Online issues, Malcolm Newbery; Just – Style; June 2006 ABI.INFORM Global pg. 17
3. www.trendwatching.com/trendreport

eMarketing 101 vs. Business Startup 101

Hello Bloggers,

How are you? please welcome me (the newbie) to join the blogging community. Please feel free to show me the Do's & Don'ts on the blog and let us have some fun with it.

When it comes to eMarketing & new Business Startup, I think it's important not to let that one great idea slips out from your mind too quickly... ALWAYS WRITE IT DOWN!!!

I hope that my blog motto of "Blog it Locally, Discuss it Globally, and Create it Passionately" can provide the readers with a fresh perspective on communications.

Although the creation of my first blog is for academic learning purpose, I am excited to carry on in the blogger community even after I have completed my UBC International MBA Program.

Consider this posting as my warm up exercise! Stay Tune!... as more will come.