APPLE WATCH

Apple watch ,,personal campaign"

Watch is the most personal device what people wearing and what we ever created said CEO Tim Cook .What he didn t say was that it is also the premminent platform for behaivour disgn. Apple knows very well users for their items  {iphon,mac,and other }  the  time  when all users and journalist waited  release of new iphon 6 , Tim Cook  in the end of presentation surprised all with new Apple watch …

You can do almost anything from your wrist with the new Apple Watch.

What slogan apple used:

- Our most personal device yet. describes how much personal the Apple Watch was (in late 2014)

- There’s an Apple Watch for everyone." was a slogan that promoted the three types of Apple Watch  Apple Watch   - Sport, and Apple Watch Edition in late 2014.

- Innovation in every interaction." was used in late 2014 to promote the Apple Watch technology.

- All watches tell time. This one helps you make the most of it." was used in late 2014 to tell about the Apple               watches features

- Start a whole new kind of conversation." described the Apple Watch's Messages app

- Live a better day" advertised the Apple Watch's health features

The company clearly thinks it has a market winning product however, and Apple's Kevin Lynch demonstrated a host of the launch apps on-stage during the show. These included a look at the Glances feature, which enables wearers to read full notifications on their wrist, as well as jump into full versions of apps including social media giants Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Can Apple Disrupt the Luxury Watch Market?

After the initial shock and awe wore off when Apple announced its eye-popping price point for the gold version of its smartwatch – $10,000 to start – speculation turned to which industry and/or industries such a watch would disrupt.

The fitness wearable industry comes to mind first, but then it’s hard to imagine who would wear a $10,000 watch for a sweaty workout. The cheaper versions, though, would work nicely as a disruptor in this space.

But Tim Cook’s goal is much higher than that [selling cheaper      watches to tech aficionados]. It’s not just the reinvention of the smartwatch category, it is the disruption and potential domination of the luxury watch industry that Cook will seek to challenge during 2015.

Was  campaign successful ??  

None of us  can't say anything .. We will see during the year 2015 

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Evian’s marketing campaign

What was it marketing?

Evian is the most famous still water in the French market. But what you should know is that Evian is also about 3 times more expensive than other similar brands in France. This gap can be even more important in other European countries where the brand is sold, like UK, Germany, etc. For that reason, they needed to differentiate themselves from their competitors and to increase the brand awareness globally.

How did they market it? Was there anything unique?

'Live Young' is their slogan. Evian's brand is probably now so differentiated and has this premium status thanks to their unique brand communication. They used babies to enhance their values. The advertisement features a group of break-dancing babies and is much more playful than previous ad campaigns. 

This campaign was set to launch simultaneously in France, UK, Germany, Belgium, Canada, US, Russia and Japan. In France, this activity campaign was heavily supported by TV. 

In other markets, the activities of the campaign needed to focus on digital channels, such as:

• Digital: a full entertainment program was created online, with 2 pre-launch viral movies, a Premiere, a Making Of, and interviews with the babies on YouTube, blogs and the new Evian Live Young website.

• Public relations: to activate the world’s media and stimulate general interest around the campaign and the brand.

• Events: Berlin Fashion Week, US Masters etc, to engage consumers locally.

• TV & Cinema: to leverage the entertainment dimension.

• The live Young Training Evian Website: to continue engaging consumers with the brand.

• Print: to complete the message of the campaign

• Evian Baby & Me App for smartphones: to give everyone the chance to try the experience for themselves and discover their inner baby

Evian brand could also be effectively differentiated as a result of their packaging design. Since 1995, Evian has issued limited edition bottles annually with customized design.

In 2008 they collaborated with Christian Lacroix, and in 2009 with Jean Paul Gaultier, the Hermes creative director. By working with famous designers to create unique and exclusive bottles, Evian positions its brand as high end and fashionable.

Evian is constantly striving to differentiate their brand.

How successful was it? What effect did it have on the company?

The results and effectiveness of this global campaign were seen in a massive, positive public relations noise or buzz around the brand.

In 2010, the Evian Roller babies campaign was certified by the Guinness World Records as the most viewed online ad of all time with over 165 millions views and counting (20M views in two days, 100M views after 10 weeks, 6.9M shares). The campaign app, which allowed people to “babify” faces, generated 25M baby pictures. Internet users watch the ad three times on average. Ad viewers are three times more likely to go to the Evian website than average.

The economics results of this campaign were seen in a rise of sales and market share:

France: +7% in sales.

UK: +13% in market share.

Canada: +7% in market share.

Why do you think this was successful?

I think it's relevant to mention that Evian, now as a global brand, has a strong esteem in its country of origin and is considered as a strong local brand, which may have helped in its success as a global brand. Consumers in France have known Evian for many years and have developed a close relationship with it.

However, Evian knew how to make an extremely creative, funny, high-quality and engaging YouTube video, placing the video at the heart of a global digital campaign and take advantage of synergy with TV. With Youtube, they simply uploaded videos and ads to their channel without paying for it. The YouTube channel served as the “television channel” for Evian, which might have saved Evian a great deal of money. What is more, YouTube can be accessible to people all over the world. All it requires is a stable web service. 

Also, on both ads, they show the effect of Evian by showing people of different races, who can all become young after drinking Evian water, as suggested by the slogan of the brand. The use of multiculturalism is more likely to appeal to people of different races.

Luxury Retreats

The email subject line did the first part of the work for us: Who says resolutions can’t be fun?

After clicking the email, subscribers hit a landing page where they could stamp their virtual passport with all the destinations they wanted to visit in the next year.

After dragging and dropping destinations, subscribers were able to save their passports, share it with friends, and get a freebie that they were not expecting—free car rental for their next vacation.

The coolest part for the marketer starts here: now you have a database with all the destinations that your subscribers are thinking about going over the next year. And with that info we retargeted subscribers in January, with a very simple text email, coming from their Travel Luxury Advisor, to dig for more details on their vacation plans.

Campaign Success

The results were great! They were able to convert 40% of the answers into leads that were worked directly by their sales team.

With a little bit of creativity they were able to turn a game into a “lead generator” to start the year with great numbers without bugging their subscribers.

They are already working on their ideas for the 2014 holiday season that will give them the precious data that all marketers crave and the fun and engagement that their subscribers are expecting at this time of year.

Telecom’s Corporate Social Responsibility

Telecom’s Corporate Social Responsibility

The concept of Corporate Social Responsibility day per day is developed for a lot companies; generally this idea is used by organised companies that have enough monetary resources to invest in different kind of programs that are connected with the products that they sell.

Before to write about one of the biggest companies, I would like to give the definition of Corporate Social Responsibility, CRS is the group of activities that one company do in order to generate a positive impact in the society, such as: creation of foundations, activities related with environment, education, disaster relief.

One of the companies that applies this concept is Telecom; this company has been in New Zealand since 1987 and today it has a significant level of operational scale within the New Zealand telecommunications market, with assets including; the PSTN network equipment for fixed line calling; the XT 3G mobile network; national backhaul networks; a 50% ownership interest in the Southern Cross international cable; and one of Australia's most extensive fixed IP networks.

Telecom has included the following activities in order to contribute with the society:

·         The Telecom Foundation

The Telecom Foundation is an organisation committed to supporting the charitable causes related with children. 

·         Environmental responsibility

The company recognise the importance of environmental responsibility. Their employees are part of local communities in order to protect the environment.

Employees develop environmental activities include recycling, waste minimisation, power saving and fuel reduction initiatives. And they also examine their carbon footprint to identify further opportunities to incorporate sustainability practices into our supply chain and procurement systems.

·         Internet safety and discouraging bullying

Telecom works with relevant authorities to ensure a "no tolerance approach" to the use of the Internet or communications technology in a way which is harmful or hurtful anyone, but especially children.

New era of marketing

            Now a day people are more concern about environment and social responsibility. So that is the beginning of the new era of marketing that’s not about promoting your product but building good image for your company.

            My study case for today will be Coke,the largest beverage company. What's the best image for soda drink? Of course happiness in a few year earlier coke launched an ads about happiness
Happiness Factory. But now they go beyond wasting money for a cool ads but they start to do some thing that really make people happy. This is some of their idea Hello Happiness or Bringing India & Pakistan Together . Last but not least they doesn't for got about environment. This is some cool idea of coke Coke bottle's 2nd life that can effectively reduce plastic waste.
         From all I have talked about. I think coke is one of the most responsible company and the leader of new era of advertisement.

Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility

Why does Ben and Jerry’s fit that topic perfectly?

(Besides their great taste?)



Ben and Jerry’s have a three part mission guide of their decision making.


First of all, they strive to create the best taste possible


Secondly their economic mission asks them to manage their company for sustainable financial growth.


And thirdly their social mission compels them to use their company in innovative ways to “make the world a better place”



On Their website you have the chance to see a youtube-video where they show and talk about their social responsibilities.

What I really liked about the video is that they said that it sometimes works out they way they want it and sometimes it doesn’t , but they try their best to stay transparent and don’t fake anything.


To example this is how they ensure their dairy fits their criteria




“…since we know dairy farms are like our flavors – each one is unique – we help each farmer develop a unique action plan to improve his or her practices. In exchange for participating, Caring Dairy farmers get a little extra for their effort. It’s a simple as that.”



The farmers themselves take accountability by using a web-based self assessment. It's provided to the farmers to evaluate their sustainable indicators.

So if the farmers do a great job they'll earn more.
Which is a great way to ensure the best quality possible.






 Julia Isabell Hazar

Adidas - We are, what we wear!

Adidas – We are, what we wear!

GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT ADIDAS

Adidas is a German multinational corporation with the thematic priority of designing and manufacturing sports shoes, clothing and accessories based in Herzogenaurach, Bavaria, Germany. Founded in 1949 by Adolf Dassler, it is the holding company for the Adidas Group, which consists of the Reebok sportswear company, TaylorMade-Adidas golf company (including Ashworth, Adidas Golf and TaylorMade), Rockporth and 9.1% of the German football club FC Bayern Munich. Besides plimsolls, Adidas also produces other products such as bags, shirts, watches, eyewear and other sports- and clothing-related assets. Adidas is the commanding sportswear manufacturer in Germany and Europe and even the second biggest sportswear manufacturer in the world, after Nike. The corporation is under the government of a governing body consisting of 4 people: the chief executive Herbert Hainer, the chief executive officer Erich Stamminger, the chief financial officer Robin J. Stalker and the chairman Glenn Bennett.

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY WITHIN ADIDAS

PEOPLE:

The employment standards of Adidas forbid, according to the ILO-convention 138, the employment of minors under the age of 15 or the employment of children required to attend school.     --

The 'SMS for workers' project, launched at the end of 2012, was expanded and introduced to a total of five facilities in Indonesia and one in Vietnam, covering almost 35.000 factory workers. The initiative, which takes advantage of the fact that the vast majority of factory workers in Indonesia have mobile phones, allows factory workers to send a simple SMS to the factory management, if they are concerned, that their human rights are being compromised or simply to ask for clarification.

More than 1.000 local community projects were supported financially or through employee volunteering globally.

PRODUCT:

The target of using 15% Better Cotton by 2013 was overachieved as in 2013 the Adidas Group sourced more
than 23% of all cotton as Better Cotton. The Adidas Group has committed to source 100% of cotton across all
product categories in all its brands as ‘sustainable cotton’, by 2018.

 Water is a key area of focus for the company. The product offer integrating DryDye fabric has steadily

 increased, reaching two million yards of DryDye fabric produced by the end of 2013 and saving 

 50 million litres of water. This game-changing technology will be further rolled out across product ranges. 

PLANET:

New heel counters made out of recycled material will be inserted into 110 million pairs of shoes every  year. This will allow 1.500 tonnes of polystyrene waste to be diverted from landfills and energy consumption was successfully reduced at supplier level, thanks to Energy Management trainings.

 

PARTNERSHIP:

Adidas is the official Sponsor, Licensee and Outfitter of the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil. In a spirit of 

transparency, as has been done since the 2006 FIFA World Cup Germany, the list of factories 

manufacturing products for the event has been published.

SOURCES USED:

-www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adidas , www.google.com/Corporate Social Responsibility within Adidas

The top money manager of the Twentieth Century, Warren Buffet,

In 2008 he was ranked by Forbes as the richest person in the world after his donating millions of dollars to charity he was ranked as the second richest man in the United States.

Warren Buffet was born in 1930 in Omaha, Nebraska, the second of three children.  Even as a child he showed an interest in making money. He worked in his grandfather’s grocery shop, he sold chewing gums and coca cola from door to door, and during high school he made money by delivering newspapers.

When he was 10 years old, he travelled to NYC and visited Stock Exchange, with 11 he bought his first shares.

In age of nineteen, he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in business administration.

In 1962, W.B. started  buying stocks from Berkshire Hathaway. The company was originally operated as a textile manufacturing company and his headquarter is still in Omaha.  Today is  Berkshire Hathaway the ninth largest public company in the world.  He had an average annual growth up to 20% in the last 48 years. The company has a hand in different business areas. E.g. railroad, home furnishings, manufacturers of vacuum cleaners, jewelry.  Did you know, they are involved in IBM, American Express and in the company  that I work for?  The reinsurer Munich Re.

Buffet gave 99% of his fortune to philantropic away and is still active against his high age.

Microsoft and General Electric Joint Venture, Caradigm

In the last ten years more companies have been motivated to create different ways to sell their products by adapting to the market according to the needs of their clients. Furthermore, some companies use to sign business agreements that are called Joint Venture. In  those agreements  both companies consider the activity that will be developed, a finite time, a new entity and new assets by contributing equity.

One of the best examples of Join Venture was in December 2011 General Electric and Microsoft Shared Plans for New Joint Venture, “Caradigm”.

When Microsoft Corporation and General Electric formed a joint venture which is a health IT company of its own kind. This their common objective was to improve patient experience and the economics of health and wellness through providing the health systems with required systemwide data and intelligence.

For one part General Electric Healthcare provided transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Their broad expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies, performance improvement and performance solutions services help our customers to deliver better care to more people around the world at a lower cost. In addition, we partner with healthcare leaders, striving to leverage the global policy change necessary to implement a successful shift to sustainable healthcare systems.

On the other hand Microsoft was committed to improving health around the world through software innovation. Over the past 16 years, Microsoft has steadily increased its investments in health, with a focus on addressing the challenges of health providers, health and social services organizations, payers, consumers and life sciences companies worldwide. Microsoft closely collaborates with a broad ecosystem of partners and develops its own powerful health solutions, such as Microsoft Amalga and Microsoft HealthVault. Together, Microsoft and its industry partners are working to deliver health solutions that enable better health outcomes for more people.

Lactalis-Nestlé, an unusual joint venture

Hey guys!

I hope everything goes well for you, even if we are entering in the coldest period of the year…

This week in business, and maybe for the last time (at least as long as Regan will not be teaching the business class), we are posting some interesting business articles. 

This week, we are focusing on Mergers, Acquisitions and Joint ventures. What do you know about this specific subject? I guess most of you are thinking they are just different words with a unique and common meaning. But, even if this 3 words seem to be similar to each other, in fact, there are some slight but important differences.

Very quickly, for your main culture:

-        Acquisition: one company is taking over another company; it means the big company swallow up the small one. This former small company loose its identity, and deeply belong to the big one.

-     Merger: creation of a common company following a fusion between different firms. Both firms are loosing their former identity and they are creating a new and common identity/culture.

-      Joint venture: quite similar to a merger, unlike that the 2 companies are not creating a common one, but a third one. This new company could be operated by only one company or both of them, but, in all cases, expenses and profits (and most of the knowledge, know-how, technology…) are shared by the 2 companies (usually at 50-50).

As an example of a joint venture, I would like to introduce LACTALIS NESTLE PRODUITS FRAIS (aslo and surely most known as LNPF or LNUF). This joint venture was created in the late 2006 by Nestle (food industry world leading company, Vevey-based, Switzerland. For more information, click here) and Lactalis (dairies product world leader, Laval-based, France. For more information, click here).

This joint venture is a little bit untypical because it’s not equally owned by each partner, but belongs at 40% to Nestle and 60% to Lactalis. This operation gave Lactalis the dairies fresh products European leadership (2013) and the challenger position (2nd) in the world. For all that, Nestle is not loosing in this deal. Indeed, Nestle is benefiting of the whole knowledge of making dairies fresh product via Lactalis, helping them to keep and even restore their market shares against the French Danone and the US Deans Food. The 2 Groups are sharing crucial and complementary activities as industrial, logistic, commercial and marketing. 

In my opinion, the joint venture is really successful. Indeed, usually, this kind of partnership lasts just a little time, maybe 2 or 3 years in average. In the LNPF case, this operation is still running (over the last 8 years) and I don’t think they plan to stop this really lucrative business. Moreover, they have covered 9 European countries like France, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, the UK and Ireland, Italy and the Iberia peninsula (Spain and Portugal). And they will likely gain lots and lots of new markets in the near future. They are also operating common brands, following a co-branding partnership, like Nestlé, La Laitière, Yoco, B'A, Bridélice and Sveltesse brands in France and Belgium ; Ekabe in Luxembourg, Ski and Munch Bunch in the UK ; Longa Vida and Yoggi in Portugal ; La Lechera in Spain ; Fruttolo and Mio in Italy ; and Hirz in Switzerland. All of this allows an annual turnover of €1.5 bn and permits the employment of over 3,300 people.

Finally, I remain confident in this joint venture and keep thinking they will improve their respective leaderships thanks to this common entity. 

Good" Customer service

Hey:Guy

In business class this week we learn about customer service because this is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction and feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation. For example Lexus this automaker companies has been top rankings for guest satisfaction by J.D. Power and Associates. Lexus promises extraordinary customer satisfaction, the automaker needs outstanding personnel who share the company's values and the talent to deliver on them. Lexus has set extremely high standards for its dealer selection process and they were subjected to a demanding application process that required extensive customer satisfaction surveys and related data. The application process included several face-to-face interviews between the company and each prospective dealer. In the end, only 80 existing Toyota dealers were chosen from a field of 1,500 applicants. The company then turned to top dealers of competing luxury brands. It promises that Lexus will produce the finest cars ever built. In turn, Lexus dealers must promise to constitute the industry's best dealer network, Lexus dealers go to remarkable lengths to please their customers. Lexus execs tell the story of one South Atlanta dealership, which serves a vast portion of Georgia, whose service and parts personnel fly their own planes to reach distant customers whose cars need maintenance. “This is beyond service!” exclaimed one customer after watching the Lexus team fix her car in her own driveway. In a survey of dealer attitudes published by the National Automobile Dealers Association in mid-2006, Lexus dealers were by far the most satisfied of any dealership group.

Customer service... Pardon ?

Hey Guys! 

Again and again we are giving you a lot of interesting information about business and business-related things. This week, we spoke about Social media and, above all, Customer Service. According to you, what’s a good customer service? What’s the work achieved by this department and what are these duties? A lot of questions, isn’t it?

First at all, the customer service is not just after sales but could easily fulfil some pre-sales duties. For example, when you are doing your shopping, all of the information given by the front-line employees is part of the customer service. It could take the shape of a piece of advice or everything else helping you to choose the best item regarding to your expectations. Customer service is particularly used in the service area, I mean for example, when you are going to the restaurant or the hostel. Normally, in that case, more you pay; better will be the customer service. But sometimes, money and customer service are not directly linked: I will develop this idea in a further paragraph, speaking about my customer service experience at Carl’s Junior.

Closing the brackets, the second area of the customer service is the aftersales service. I bet you know what I mean; you surely have already experienced dealing with an aftersales service… Could be really positive, or could be really awful. Unfortunately, most of the time, the aftersales service remains awful… Fortunately, most of the big companies are coping really well with this kind of customer service (except Apple, perhaps…).

Now, I would like to introduce my surprisingly good customer service experience. I was just astonished, that’s why I would like to introduce Carl’s Junior. Carl’s Junior is a US-based fast food restaurant, supplying hamburgers at the fourth corners of Earth. They are well established in the US, but not only. Indeed, you can easily delight yourself in eating a burger in Canada, Dominican Republic, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Malaysia, Denmark, Costa Rica, Russia, Vietnam, Thailand, Panama, Turkey, China and, for sure, New Zealand (2011)!

Normally, I expect nothing else than eating a disgusting meal in a fast food. Food is most of the time bad, and employees just impolite and not really nice. I always have had bad experiences with fast food chain restaurants (and it’s not a restaurant to me, just a store in which you sell products really similar to everything but not burgers…). Let’s move on the interesting facts. 

 

Once arrived at Carl’s junior, I surprisingly saw smiling and cheerful employees, welcoming me like at a real restaurant. I was a little bit confused, I admit… Once on the counter, I was just lost between all of the offered meals. They just took their time in helping me choosing my meal and gave me a kind of sign with a number. They said to me it was because I just needed to sit in at a table, and they will bring me my meal. Just perfect! After a short while, a waiter brought me my meal, with a lot of sauces and told me “Where are from? I guess you are French”. It’s strictly nothing but asking and trying to create a confident atmosphere with your customer seems really important to me. Finally, the same waiter came again maybe twice at my table asking me if everything was well and if I needed something special, always repeating “take it easy and enjoy your meal, we manage all the rest”. Moreover, he even meant “cleaning up the table and throwing my meal”!