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Marketing - A Juggler's Art:
Marketing, in more the one way, is like juggling. This strange analogy will become crystal clear if we take a close look at it. Just like the juggler the marketer too has to do these things to thrive in his business: first, he has to hook his audience; gain their attention through several jazzy tricks; and then hold their attention by still more innovative juggling. All this he has to achieve without losing balance, focus or steadfastness in the art, the industry, in the marketer's case. In short, marketing is all about alluring, attracting and holding a collection of customers for your Company's welfare.
The Purpose Behind:
To quote the American Marketing Association's definition, it is "an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders". If one dilutes all the verbosity and looks at it, marketing means "selling" a product. This is the prime purpose behind any kind of marketing. The "selling" is accelerated with the help of properly chalked out plans called marketing strategies.
Factors that Influence:
With "selling" as the ultimate goal, marketing strategies are influenced by two basic factors: first, acquisition of customers; second, retention of the acquired customers. So every other strategy that is laid out will focus on the above two. A Company has to work closely towards achieving these two to attain the desired cutting edge over its competitors. There are also a few other objectives like creating awareness (informational and educational) about the product, brand-building and accelerating sales.
Traditional Marketing:
With the world changing at every nanosecond, marketing is also reeling under a whirlwind of change. New modes of marketing like e-marketing and online marketing have evolved. Yet traditional marketing still holds sway with many corporates. Traditional marketing operates based on the following strategies.
The Four Ps- Worship them:
The 'Four Ps' or the 'marketing mix' is a cliché with every marketer. Formulated by Jerome McCarthy, the 'Four Ps' refers to the four factors that a marketer has to consider before launching a product or offering a service. The marketing mix comprises of Product, Price, Promotion and Placement. In McCarthy's assessment, first and foremost comes the Product-its production and management; second, the process of fixing an affordable price; third, the promotion of the product which includes advertising, branding etc and finally fourth, the placement or distribution of the product, its retailing and the process by which it reaches the customer. All these four elements have to be decided and well planned before pitching into any product launch.
Segmentation- Categorize your audience:
In traditional marketing, the market is segmented into many subsets or segments depending on geographic, demographic, psycho graphic and behavioral variables. Each segment is homogenous and responds in a particular way to a particular marketing strategy. Small segments are considered as 'niche' markets or 'specialty' markets. A product is aimed at a particular segment and is launched only after thorough market research and consumer research on the segment. This assures the marketer that he is not bungee jumping but walking safely and securely on a well-laid road. Hence a product that is not needed by that particular segment is not produced. This deep analysis of the target segment is called 'depth segmentation'. While the study of the target customer's behavioral traits, nature, lifestyle etc is called 'Buyer's Profile'. With all these the marketer draws a marketing plan, which is fully geared to reach the target consumer.
Other aspects:
Traditional marketing, unlike New Marketing, is Company-focused and product-based. It intends only to increase the visibility of the Company and its brand. The message conveyed to the customer is Company-controlled and motivated unlike in new marketing, which is Consumer-focused and attuned to consumer's interests. The Company becomes the active participant while the consumer fades into the inactive and passive zone. A marketer, adopting the traditional method, will use his product's USP (Unique Selling Proposition) to market it. USP is that unique feature which is exclusive to a particular product from a particular brand. With less number of competitors, USP-marketing is a very novel method. But in today's world every other brand has all the features offered by its competitor. Hence the glamour of USP-marketing is fading away.
Advertising and Promotion:
Marketing plans and strategies finally end in advertising. For it is advertising which exposes the product to the world and places it in a platform for the target customer to view. It gives the product visibility and helps boosts its sales. Advertising, in general, can be classified into two trends: Above-the-line (ATL) and Below-the-line (BTL). ATL covers all the advertising done through media. BTL stands for all the promotions- public relations, sponsorships, merchandising etc. In traditional marketing mostly ATL is practiced. The following media are the ATL modes of advertising:
Print Medium: Newspapers, Magazines, Yellow Pages, Posters and Billboards.
TV & Radio: All kinds of TV and Radio spots
Other Communications: All kinds of mailers and leaflets
Traditional Marketing - Is it valid today?
When the world shifts gears and operates in a faster pace, it is advisable for us also to follow its lead and take up the trend. Traditional Marketing, say many market analysts, fails to work in today's world. The brand recall is very minimal as the customer is exposed to a variety of brands. Moreover, as every other brand is as good as its competitor, there is no particular reason for the consumer to opt for a particular brand. That's why today's marketer aims at 360-degree marketing - an all round marketing strategy covering all the available modes and aimed at constant brand recall. This is where online marketing offer a lot of hope for the marketer as the web reaches out to the prospective buyer in a fastest pace possible. With all these around, the question of whether traditional marketing is valid today rises.
Maybe one can nullify this question by a few well-grounded answers: Traditional Marketing is adjudged as the best method according to a national survey conducted in 2005 in the U.S. jointly by Harris Interactive and Public Relations Society of America. As per the survey, most of the general public, Fortune 1000 businessmen and Congressional Staffers voted the traditional method of marketing as the best method. Though the year 2005 belongs to a dead past now, the statement by the reputed marketer Mr. Wilson will put an end to doubting queries: " Traditional Marketing helps because people still view them".
Overview of Traditional MarketingIn looking to download music to a MP3 player the process is relatively easy once you learn the basics. First, you'll need to have all your connecting cables or docks, software and the music you want to download in place.
As not all portable devices are created equally, you may need your manual to tell you where to begin. This is especially true if you're a total newbie to a particular media player or to MP3 players in general. However, most portable devices usually work in the same manner, so in order to download music to MP3 players you should follow the same, or at least similar, steps.
Hopefully your MP3 player can hook up to your computer using a USB connection; this would be the easiest way to download music to a MP3 player. Just transfer music files as you would other files and documents to a removable disk drive and copy and paste.
To have organized playlists here's a useful tip; before downloading music onto your MP3 player you can create the folders beforehand and just sequence the music into the folders while you're on your computer. This will save you valuable time in the long run because you'll be able to locate the songs you want to listen to very quickly.
The accompanying software is important because some computers will need them to recognize your MP3 player when you insert it as a USB drive. If you don't have the software - for example, you're using a different computer to download music or you were so excited to buy your MP3 player that you don't remember where you put your software CD - you can probably search for it online. Once your MP3 player is recognized, downloading music will be easy.
Creative Zen players work in this manner, but will ask the user to employ Creative Media Explorer to ease up the transfer of files from your computer to your MP3 player. Creative MediaSource Organizer, meanwhile, helps you organize your files on your computer before downloading the music onto your MP3 player. You can get these two devices by pressing the "Import Media" link.
iPod does it a bit differently but similar, of course, with iTunes, which is downloaded from the iPod website. iTunes is supposed to be the most popular method in managing your music files, but can also be a pain in the neck if you let it.
iTunes is your online music manager - it organizes all your music files in folders according to artist, album and other categories, lets you create and edit playlists, and even works as a music store by offering particular files for download. Next, you sync your iPod into your computer and all the music on iTunes automatically transfers into your iPod.
Interestingly, your computer reads your iPod as a removable disk drive connected through USB, which is exactly what it is, of course. If you find that you can't play particular songs on your MP3 player, it's most likely that it's DRM-protected. Digital Rights Management has a whole slew of limits and limited accesses, such as allowing certain files to play on iPods but not on Creative Zen players or RCA Lyras, and so on.
The simplest way around this is to download music only from the sites that are compatible with your portable device to ensure that you won't be wasting money buying downloadable music that you don't actually work on your MP3 player. More complicated methods could involve illegal activity, or breaking copy-right infringement laws, so tread carefully.
As stated before, getting music into a portable device follows a general procedure. And once you start to download music to a MP3 player you'll be amazed at how easy the entire process really is.
How To Download Music To a MP3 Player - Download a Free MP3 Music Player NowWWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008 is a popular wrestling video game based on the famous WWE-style wrestling. It is developed by Yuke's Future Media Creators and marketed by THQ. It is the latest installment in the WWE SmackDown! series of video games. It will be soon followed by WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2009. Its first release was on November 9, 2007 for Europe and then later was released in North America on November 13, 2007.
WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008 is a console game and available for console platforms only. It is available for Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, Wii, and Nintendo DS Video Game Console. Players can opt in for either the single-player mode or the multi-player mode. The multiplayer mode can also be played online. It is the first WWE game to be released for all the seventh generation consoles. WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008 is also the first game of the SmackDown series to include ECW brand.
Several different modes are available in the game. Modes from the previous versions of the games are also included. Players can play as a wrestler, or as a General Manager. ECW Brand is shown in accordance with the Raw and SmackDown brands. Now wrestlers have two fighting styles: primary and secondary. Both have their own advantages and disadvantages for the players. Special moves of the wrestlers are based on their primary styles. The player's aim is to acieve "legend" status by winning matches, defeating other players either alone or in a team works.
Struggle Submission system is the new feature included in the WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008. Player can decide how much pressure to exert using the analog control meter. Many new weapons are available under ECW Brand. Even guitars can be taken as weapons. The PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, and the Xbox 360 versions contain Tournament mode where player can play as one of the superstar. Several match types like Royal Rumble, Iron Man Match, and Ladder Match etc are also featured in the WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008.
Depending on the platforms to be played, WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008 performs differently. Like Xbox 360 version includes customized entrance music, PlayStation version features first-person view during entrance, Nintendo version make use of touch screen to control wrestlers, and Wii version features five matches. Below is the download link for WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2008. Click on the link to go to the place where you can free download WWE SmaxkDown vs Raw 2008.
WWE SmackDown Vs Raw 2008 Free Download and Review"Do you have Facebook?"
"Yes, of course. But I don't think you can find me, as there are too many people who have the same name as me. Try searching with my surname as well."
"Hey, you celebrated your birthday in K-Box, right? I saw the photos in your Facebook."
"Bro, I saw your comments about the YouTube video that I've posted in my blog. I'm happy that you are also deeply moved by the 'Dancing Peacock Man' as well."
Social media or "social networking" has almost become part of our daily lives and being tossed around over the past few years. It is like any other media such as newspaper, radio and television but it is far more than just about sharing information and ideas. Social networking tools like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Blogs have facilitated creation and exchange of ideas so quickly and widely than the conventional media. The power of define and control a brand is shifting from corporations and institutions to individuals and communities. It is no longer on the 5Cs (e.g. condominium, credit cards and car) that Singaporeans once talked about. Today, it is about the brand new Cs: creativity, communication, connection, creation (of new ideas and products), community (of shared interests), collaboration and (changing the game of) competition.
In January 2010, InSites Consulting has conducted an online survey with 2,884 consumers from over 14 countries between the ages of 18 to 55 years old on social networking. More than 90% of participants know at least 1 social networking site and 72% of participants are members of at least 1 social networking site. On the average, people have about 195 friends and they log in twice a day to social networking sites. However, 55% of the users cannot access their social network websites at work. In the past, not many adults were able to make more than 500 friends, but with social media, even a child or teenager can get to know more than 500 people in a few days by just clicking the mouse. Social media has devalued the traditional definition of "friend" where it means trust, support, compatible values, etc. Although we get to know more people, we are not able to build strong bond with all the people whom we met as our available time is limited. Hence, there is an upcoming social trend of people with wider social circles, but weaker ties (people we don't know very well but who provide us with useful information and ideas).
Social media also influences people's buying behaviours. Digital Influence Group reported that 91% of the people say consumer reviews are the #1 aid to buying decisions and 87% trust a friend's recommendation over critic's review. It is thrice more likely to trust peer opinions over advertising for purchasing decisions. 1 word-of-mouth conversation has an impact of 200 TV ads. With the prevalence use of social media, there is numerous news related to it from the most viewed YouTube video on "Armless pianist wins 'China's Got Talent'" to Web-assisted suicide cases (e.g. New Jersey college student who killed himself after video of him in a sexual encounter with another man was posted online). Thus, does social networking make us better or worse off as a society?
Positive Effects of Social Media
Besides having opportunity to know a lot of people in a fast and easy way, social media also helped teenagers who have social or physical mobility restrictions to build and maintain relationships with their friends and families. Children who go overseas to study can still stay in meaningful contact with their parents. To a greater extend, there is anecdotal evidence of positive outcomes from these technologies.
In 2008, President-elected Obama won the election through the effective use of social media to reach millions of audience or voters. The Obama campaign had generated and distributed huge amount of contents and messages across email, SMS, social media platforms and their websites. Obama and his campaign team fully understood the fundamental social need that everyone shares - the need of being "who we are". Therefore, the campaign sent the message as "Because It's about YOU" and chose the right form of media to connect with individuals, call for actions and create community for a social movement. They encouraged citizens to share their voices, hold discussion parties in houses and run their own campaign meetings. It truly changed the delivery of political message.
Obama campaign had made 5 million "friends" on more than 15 social networking sites (3 million friends on Facebook itself) and posted nearly 2,000 YouTube videos which were watched over 80 million times. At its peak, their website, MyBarackObama.com, had 8.5 million monthly visitors and produced 400,000 blog posts. In order to ensure that their contents were found by people, the Obama campaign spent .5 million on Google search in October alone, 0,000 on Advertising.com, 7,000 on Facebook in 2008, etc. Currently, Obama's Twitter account has close to 6 million followers.
In 2010, after the earthquake happened in Haiti, many of the official communication lines were down. The rest of the world was not able to grasp the full picture of the situation there. To facilitate the sharing of information and make up for the lack of information, social media came in very handy to report the news about the affected area on what happened and what help was needed. Tweets from many people provided an impressive overview of the ongoing events from the earthquake. BBC covered the event by combining tweets from the work of its reporter Matthew Price in Port-au-Prince at the ground. Guardian's live blog also used social media together with the information from other news organisations to report about the rescue mission.
It has been two years since CNN officially launched iReport as a section of its website where people can upload video material, with contact information. During the Haiti crisis, CNN had published a range of social media material but not all the materials were verified. The editorial staff would vet the reports from the citizen journalists and labeled them differently compared to unverified contents. On Facebook, a group, named "Earthquake Haiti", was formed to show support and share updates and news. It had more than 14,000 members and some users even pleaded for assistance to the injured Haitians in the group. Using email, Twitter and social networking sites like Facebook, thousands of volunteers as part of Project Ushahidi were able to map reports sent by people from Haiti.
The most impressive part of the social media's impact on Haiti is the charity text-message donations that soared to over million for the victims in Haiti. People interested in helping the victims are encouraged to text, tweet and publicize their support using various social networking sites. The Global Philanthropy Group had also started a campaign to ask wealthy people and celebrities, like Ben Stiller and John Legend to use Twitter and Facebook to encourage others to give to UNICEF. An aid worker, Saundra Schimmelpfennig, allowed the advice from other aid workers and donors to post on her blog regarding to choosing which charitable organisations to support. In the meantime, donors were asking questions in Twitter, Facebook and blogs about their donations and endorsements of their favourite charities. After every crisis, the social media for social cause becomes a more effective medium to spread the word.
Negative Effects of Social Media
There are always two sides of every coin. Social media is just a tool or mean for people to use. It is still up to the users on how to use this tool (just like a knife, can help you to cut food or hurt others). Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project and Elon University's Imagining the Internet Center conducted a study on "The Future of Online Socializing" from the highly engaged, diverse set of respondents to an online, opt-in survey consisted of 895 technology stakeholders and critics. The negative effects presented by the respondents included time spent online robs time from important face-to-face relationships; the internet fosters mostly shallow relationships; the act of leveraging the internet to engage in social connection exposes private information; the internet allows people to silo themselves, limiting their exposure to new ideas; and the internet is being used to engender intolerance.
Some respondents also highlighted that there will be development of some new psychological and medical syndromes that will be "variations of depression caused by the lack of meaningful quality relationships", and a "new world society". The term, "Social Networking", has begun to deceive the users to believe they are social creatures. For instance, spending a couple of hours using Farmville and chatting with friends concurrently does not convert into social skills. People become dependent on the technology and forget how to socialise in face-to-face context. The online personality of a person might be totally different from his/her offline character, causing chaos when the two personalities meet. It is apparent in online dating when the couple gets together in face-to-face for the first time. Their written profiles do not clearly represent their real-life characters. It is more enticing for people to type something that others want to hear than saying the truth.
Besides the "friendship", creators of social networking sites and users redefine the term, "privacy" in the Internet as well. The challenge in data privacy is to share data while protecting personally identifiable information. Almost any information posted on social networking sites is permanent. Whenever someone posts pictures or videos on the web, it becomes viral. When the user deletes a video from his/her social network, someone might have kept it and then posted it onto other sites like YouTube already. People post photographs and video files on social networking sites without thinking and the files can reappear at the worst possible time. In 2008, a video of a group of ACJC students hazing a female student in school on her birthday was circulated and another video of a SCDF recruit being "welcomed" (was hosed with water and tarred with shoe polish) to a local fire station made its way online.
Much news has been reported about online privacy breach in Facebook and Facebook is constantly revising their privacy policy and changing their privacy controls for the users. Interestingly, even when users delete their personal information and deactivate their Facebook account, Facebook will still keep that information and will continue to use it for data mining. A reporter asked whether the data will at least be anonymized. The Facebook representative declined to comment.
In the corporate world, human resource managers can access Facebook or MySpace to get to know about a candidate's true colours, especially when job seekers do not set their profiles to private. Research has found that almost half of employers have rejected a potential worker after finding incriminating material on their Facebook pages. Some employers have also checked the candidates' online details in Facebook pages to see if they are lying about their qualifications. Nowadays, younger generations have a complete disregard for their own privacy, opening doors to unwelcome predators or stalkers.
Impact of Social Media on SocietyWhen looking back at past eras, the 1950s is looked upon by some as an idyllic time in American history. The nuclear family headed by a male breadwinner was the desired norm and televisions shows such as Father Knows Best and I Love Lucy were popular. However, there was a dark underside during this era. Women were treated like second-class citizens and some were living unhappily married because their financial and educational options were limited.
The media, in collusion with the government, and family sociologists constantly espoused the virtues of family and children and women, who wanted more out of life, were looked upon as freaks of nature. However, some women during 1950s expressed dissatisfaction with their lives and an unarticulated longing for a life beyond their children and husbands. Some of these wives were forced out the workforce after World War II and felt resentment that their only option for financial stability was marriage. This unarticulated longing would lead to a major social upheaval towards the end of the 1950s and would be the beginning of the second-wave feminist movement. This movement caused a shift in family values and altered family structure for future generations to come. The 1950s Family Experiment would be short-lived but fondly remembered.
Several factors lead to the forming of the nuclear family. By the end of the 1940s, the divorce rate dropped sharply; the age of marriage feel to a 100-year low; and the birth rate soared. Women dropped out of the workforce as soon as they become pregnant and some young women had two or more children in diapers at once. Also during this time, the education gap between young middle-class men and women increased and job segregation for working women and men peaked. Limited educational and job opportunities for women made them more dependent on marriage for their financial well-being.
Young, newly married couples were encouraged to sever their family ties and put all their emotional and financial eggs in the small basket of the immediate nuclear family. Women were told by experts that all their energies should be used for their husbands and children, not aging parents and other relatives. Psychiatrist Edward Strecker and various colleagues argued American boys were infantilized and emasculated by women who were old-fashioned "moms" instead of modern "mothers".
Modern mothers placed their parents in nursing homes; old-fashioned mothers took their parents in at the expense of their own "important" nuclear family. A modern mother was not supposed to have friends, a job, or anything or anyone that would take attention from her husband and children. She was also supposed to grant early independence to her male child. It is no wonder that many women who believed in this advice and put it into practice ending up abusing alcohol or tranquilizers over the course of the decade.
Women were encouraged to confine themselves to a very narrow definition of "true" womanhood by a variety of sources such as family education specialists and marriage counselors, columns in women's magazines, government pamphlets, and above all television. These experts told women during the 1950s that their greatest role on the planet was to be wives and mothers. The role of a "real" woman was to have no interest in a higher education or a career and women were taught by these experts to pity women who had the nerve to want a life beyond being a wife and mother.
Televisions shows such as Donna Reed, Ozzie and Harriet, Leave It to Beaver, and Father Knows Best showed women how much easier their lives would be if their families were like those families and the I Love Lucy show warned women about the perils of what happened to a woman who wanted a career or if she schemed behind her husband's back (Coontz 38), The mothers on Leave It to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet were immaculately dressed with pearls around their necks. Their homes were clean and their children never got into trouble. However, on I Love Lucy, Lucy usually looked terrible by the end of the episode. Her hair was at times standing on top of her head and her clothes filthy from her weekly adventure. Women and their families watched these shows and tried their best to emulate the perfect and bright lives shown to them on a weekly basis.
However, towards the end of the 1950s, a dramatic shift occurred. Cultural values changed dramatically and the children of these women found the social immortality of their parents sickening. Many young adults and their mothers would march in the streets to protest against sexism, racism, and militarism. Minorities and women began to receive the civil rights that were rightfully due to them and more and more women entered the workforce, forcing a dynamic shift in childrearing practices. By the 1970s, husbands and wives had begun to share household duties and women were no longer bound to their homes.
The concept of family has changed and sometimes it was for the best, sometimes for the worst. Although women have more rights, divorce is commonplace in our current society and many children live in one-parent households. Women are still discriminated against in American society and some us still do the majority of household work regardless of how many hours we work per week or if we have a house-husband. But we now have opportunities that would not have been imagined fifty-years ago. Children do not have to see their mothers treated like chattel and we almost had a female President of the United States. Nothing remains the same - ever. The constantly changing landscape of the American family owes a lot to the women of the 1950s.
1950s Family Life