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BAMF MKTG

“Social Media | Digital | Technology | Advertising | Mobile”

July 30, 2011 New Officially Moved to www.ericlehnen.com

It’s been real. Time to move forward to a larger site with more FUN.

Cheers,

July 20, 2011 Name Change

Oye.

Upon my graduation, I felt it necessary to change the name from “The Student’s Perspective,” to BAMF MKTG. Not only is it politically correct, but its BAMF awesome.

Three reasons why this blog will be better:

1. Bolder

2. More posts

3. More relevant

I am still developing the page and seeing that I lost a lot of CSS skills, I will have to re-teach myself. In the mean time, I will be raising issues, posting questions, and starting conversations. Have a topic to discuss? Share it. Nothing is more rewarding than starting conversations with like-minded strangers with mutual respect for marketing.

June 30, 2011 Published Mobile Application Research

I have finished everything with my Mobile Application Research Study I conducted during my final semester at Winona State University. I attached it below. Copyright is mine, but you are free to use my work as long as you attribute any of my research and the works of th authors and organizations mentioned.

Any thoughts are welcomed! –>Mobile Application Final Click Here

 

May 9, 2011 Finished Mobile Application Research – Expect Published PDF

After many hours of research, I have formulated my final draft for my mobile application research. I will publish it once I receive it from my advisor.

This also brings up another note: I will be changing the name of my blog since I am no longer a student. Any suggestions would be helpful!

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March 8, 2011 Blood bath: Mercedes VS. Audi

Audi VS Mercedes has been a battle that has been making ad agencies very happy. Audi, for some time now, has been directly competing against them in their advertisements as a way to change the perception of luxury and fun, much like Cadillac did with their new line of STS sedans.

Audi and their new campaign to one up Mercedes in my mind has been fairly successful at changing the luxury perception of Mercedes being “Old Luxury” catering to elite rich folk and Audi becoming the “New Luxury” who caters to the savvy, yet young business man.

We have all seen their advertisements but this one holds more relevance:

Audi

We have all seen the Audi “Goodnight” commercial, but this one I feel, is a bit more fun. It explicitly pokes fun at Mercedes Benz owners as gullible and snooty.

Mercedes

Mercedes responds with adverts about their vehicles but this one is a very direct product of the battle as a response to Audi’s positioning of their advertising. This ad tries to show that they can be fun, too.

Both ads have an interesting take on customer’s perception of each brand. One tries to perceive that it is fun luxury, while the other tries to change perceptions that it is just as fun. Trying to remove bias: each brand is attempting to one-up each other.

Once the Consumer is Hooked:

When the consumer enters a high involvement state (ready to buy, more cognitive processing), the consumer who is debating between Audi and Mercedes most likely being their information search, via website.

Mercedes does a great job conveying their message not only through a TV commercial, but on their website:

Mercedes capitalizes on on the brand and the image of the vehicle.

Adds pictures to the text to reinforce meaning and emotional appeal.

The Mercedes AMG website which is for their high-performance line, it has an interactive presentation and has easily accessible, raw information when the prospective buyer is looking for it.

I’m am a die-hard fan of Audi, but their website does not reciprocate the emotional and cognitive appeals from their TV advertisements compared to Mercedes, less interactive presentation.

Cluttered links, hard to find technical information and blocks of mass text looks unappealing.

Again, just below this slide show on the Audi website, mass text, nothing organized.

Further down the previous page, all text.

Bottom Line

Audi does a great job changing perceptions that it is the superior luxury brand, but for the consumers who need the raw technical specs to make a buying decision, Audi lacks.

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February 12, 2011 Mobile Applications: A Love Story

This has been quite some time since my last post, so I excuse my delay. I have been transitioning from the European mindset to an American one which proves to be difficult since I have become accustomed to becoming more relaxed (lazy) with life. Now I am trying to create that “competitive position” again inside the chatersphere.

Let’s brief you on the topic. As my last semester as an undergrad, I chose to create an independent study. I wanted to understand more about mobile applications; specifically, what motivates users to use them more. This will become a time consuming but very enlightening research study. To start out, I focused on speaking with the experts: ad professionals. Liz Giel, a digital strategist from Fallon recommended MobileMarketer.com as a good resource to check out. Following the 20+ articles I found I moved on to eMarketer.com and numerous others. I felt I had a pretty good direction.

It seems to me through a general enquiry of the topic that mobile applications are not yet fully perceived as a cost effective channel to reach target audiences, with a few exceptions. I have found from both agency professionals and articles agree that mobile websites tend to be more effective to reach audiences since anyone with a mobile browser can interact with it.

There is a trade off though: Apps get more face time than mobile websites.

Now I need to revise my direction. Maybe, how to reach a larger audience with mobile apps? Who knows, they are all good questions and I will go where the research guides me.

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January 2, 2011 Recap: RockMelt Web Browser

It has been over a month since my initial review of the RockMelt browser and promised a recap, so here it is:

To be honest, a week after my first impressions, I ditched it. Simply because I felt like I was using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. It was laggy (for me at least), clouted and distracting. I did have a lot of Facebook activity and RSS feeds from 10 different websites which would update on a constant basis. So for the student’s perspective, the consequences were noticeable.

As I would do research for course papers, I would constantly get distracted with updates. Granted it is up to the individual to have self control, but it was if it was taunting me. As I would bore myself with the hours of monotonous research, I had the desire to constantly check on blogs and the latest tech and social media news. However I notice one important factor that determined my frequency of procrastination: “Out of sight, out of mind.” To address this, I simply saw myself using Google Chrome.

However, if I am working on social media, RockMelt brought the convenience of organizing updates, grabbing them instantly and made work easier.

If you are also a Facebook junkie, you like to keep the Facebook Page open. However, if you are chatting via the web page, it will become annoying when you get two notifications of a chat message and a separate window for the chat log.

For the future instalments of RockMelt versions: I would like to make a few recommendations:

  • A “hide all” button to minimize all distractions
  • Integration to other services
  • Optimization of bandwidth
  • Intelligent suggestions – Understand the web content and suggest to the user if they want to share pictures/text/videos

November 30, 2010 RockMelt Browser: First Impressions

RockMelt was introduced to me through word of mouth from a colleague at my agency. The message was simply put that I should check it out and from the link I was given, it seemed worth doing, after all it is designed for social media, sharing and keeping up with the gazillion updates from RSS feeds.

It is an amazing concept. Molding multiple elements into one browser. But first thing is first: What is it?

RockMelt is essentially a beefed up Google Chrome with nice bells and whistles. It supports awesome functions like drag and drop sharing to Facebook friends which are on your left-side bar, making it easier to share with the people you care about. One the right-side bar, there are the sites that you subscribe to and show how many updates are unread and give you a pop up notification for each notification. If you prefer to not get pop ups notification for each subscription, you can easily change it. Take a look at the differences:

I want to bring up a few things that I noticed at first about RockMelt, I want to mention that I have only had this for a couple of days so it would be fair to do a follow up post later on.

Sharing:

Pro: One can easily drag and drop text, links, photos on Facebook friends. You can also share pages via Facebook and Twitter.

Con: Limited to Facebook and Twitter sharing.

Recommendations: Allow the user to pick and choose which networks to share to (Digg, Stumble Upon, WordPress, email etc…)

Updates:

Pro: Organized and simple individual feeds from multiple sites that you subscribe to such as Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, Websites. Also, if you are viewing a page that has an available RSS feed to subscribe to, it will notify you and you can quickly add it to your right-side bar.

Con: None so far. However, I should note that the user should experiment to get a feel for how you are updated, updates can be come very cluttered.

Recommendations: Maybe allow for groups or lists

Functionality:

Pro: I use Google Chrome as my main browser so it was an easy switch. It is easy to share and effortless to customize who I wanted on my Facebook bar (left-side bar) and what subscriptions I wanted (right-side bar).

Con: I have noticed there are a few minor bugs with the browser. I have had a few lock-ups but not sure if it was the browser’s fault or me over-experimenting with the functionality. Again, minor and not constant. Many new things are not flawless, a few minor bugs are acceptable. They will probably be fixed soon.

Recommendations: New features to merge with tools to adapt to the constant change of the web, BUT, give the user the ability to turn on/off features or customize which ones to use.

Practicality:

Pro: If you are a blogger, social media guru, journalist, or any profession in communication, this is very useful.

Con: If you are a student, this is very distracting, but you should have the maturity to avoid the distractions or turn them off if you are trying to type a 10,000 word thesis…

Recommendations: A practical browser is always a simple one. I recommended above with new features, but make sure they don’t clout the browser, unless you want to change your position on the “browser”.

Summary

RockMelt is in a good direction. With the development of the Semantic web, RockMelt saw this great opportunity and approached it beautifully. The next steps will be to keep up with the developments in technology. I have not looked at other browsers such as Flock or Fizzik, so I can not say which is better. What I can tell you is, the one that sets trend changes will be the best. Much like Clay Shirky said about “when we change the way we communicate, we change society”, if we change the way we surf the web, we change how we interact.

Take a look at RockMelt’s video demonstration

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November 26, 2010 Why Microsoft will Struggle at Mobile Devices

Before reading: do not think I am biased on this. I owned two Windows Mobile devices and the reason for the 2nd one was because I loved the first. I respect Mac’s for the media and arts and PCs for the general user. The purpose of this post is to identify Microsoft’s future in mobile devices subjectively through facts.

Microsoft, up until a few years ago, developed some pretty innovative mobile devices that enabled a lot of businesses to expand with the Windows Mobile (WM) OS. As it is still widely used today in retail, logistics, and service industries, it has struggled with keeping its market share on the consumer market.

The WM platform has hit a few major road blocks that I will try to explain and predict Microsoft’s future with mobile devices. First off, the introduction of Android. This has been a detrimental part in Microsoft’s market because in many cases, Android appeals to a wide variety of demographics. According to The Nielsen Company, a major research firm, not only did Android surpass WM in market share, but they have lost touch with the younger demographics. Additionally, they are 4th in market share compared to Blackberry, Android and Apple.

It does not help either that they had a major product failure with the Windows Kin phones that were exclusive to Verizon Wireless. They were going to launch into Europe but cancelled due to the lack of product adoption. However, I do have to hand it to them by bringing an innovative phone that syncs everything on cloud but the product just wasn’t marketed enough nor liked by the market. Wired.com gives their opinion in four reasons why the Kin failed and two are worth noting:

  • Expensive for what you are getting
  • No games – No apps

Being a  built for social networking, it is nearly essentially to have games/apps. Overall feel it was a impulse attempt to hold the younger markets. They just lacked the research or “forgot.”

So now that the Kin is dead and the Windows 7 phones just launching, you really have to wonder: did they know Kin was going to fail and was Windows 7 for mobile devices in research before/during the research of the Kin? They do have a history about this as well. For instance, Vista and Windows 7 for PCs. Right when Vista released, there were already rumours of Windows 7 development.

I want to sum up Microsoft’s control over product releases in a fun analogy:

At first you think your product won’t sell, keep building it any ways and build another better one, just in case.

With the release of the Windows 7 phones, I really do feel Microsoft will struggle. Yes, Windows 7 for mobile devices are new, innovative and somewhat appealing – it does not make them good. However, for many consumers, it just may not appeal to them. Maybe Microsoft is changing their position in the marketplace purposely. Or they just stopped believing in their company.

It’s not what you do, it’s why you do it!

It also does not help that their CEO, Steve Ballmer, dumped almost $2 billion in Microsoft stock, according to Business Week. He does say it was for personal finance in a public statement, but you be the judge: to me, the quote that Business Week took from Ballmer’s statement sounds generic and sugar coated.

(EDIT)

The main reason why I think Microsoft will struggle, is they shot themselves in the foot before the release of Windows 7 for mobile devices. They have a declining market share and a bad reputation. Both of which are difficult to fix. Maybe their new release will recover their territory, but they will struggle doing it. That is a fact because after consumers sawhow bad Microsoft did with the Kin, it gave consumers a bad impression. So why should they buy the Windows 7? Microsoft will have to overcome this slump by creating a desirable product. But as stated above. Having an amazing product does not make everything OK again.

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November 2, 2010 A Futuristic Look at Google’s Dominance

Recently, I have been very interested in the subject of sociology and the effects and ethics of the internet, the web and social media. I have been thinking of many theories and writing notes and I have a very brief theory of the future of personal data aggregation.

Let me start off by saying Google does it brilliantly. Providing absolutely* free applications such as Google Docs, Mail, Calendar, Talk, Analytics and many more. With the addition of Android, the open source mobile operating system, they provide additional personality to their brand.

Yeah yeah yeah, about, the asterisk. By using Google, whether it be searching for something at www.Google.com  or using any of their apps, you give up your privacy for…. pretty much any content you provide to Google. Let me summarize by going over their privacy policy:

“When you sign up for a Google Account, we ask you for personal information. We may combine the information that you submit under your account with information from other Google services or third parties in order to provide you with a better experience and to improve the quality of our services.”

This includes: Cookies, Log information, User communications, Affiliated Google Services on other sites, Third-Party Applications, Location data, Unique application number, Other sites. (all found from the privacy policy as it clearly states)

It makes sense, “to provide you with a better experience and to improve the quality of our services.” We are given a number essentially and tracked. But the free stuff is so appealing! Many business of opted out of purchasing expensive programs such as Microsoft Office and just used Google Apps.

But here is my scenario that I play in my head over and over again:

Open my eyes. Look at the clock which personalized and recommended by a computer. This computer aggregated everything about me to distil a algorithm that can tell you everything about my personality, values, goals, beliefs etc…

I notice it is time to get ready for the day. Roll out of bed and walk to the bathroom to take a shower. Since a computer knows my preferences, it sets it at exactly 104.4 degrees Fahrenheit because 104.2 is too cold and 104.6 is too warm. After I shower, I brush my teeth and use a special mouth rise because I recently was told by my dentist that I have sensitive teeth and I should use Product X. He wrote down notes on a tablet pc about this and it automatically notified a server that I am in the market for Product X .

So at the last time I was at the market, I bought it because my phone noticed I was at the supermarket and notified me that I need to buy Product X for my sensitive teeth.

Proceeding my brushing and mouth rinse. I head for my car that was previously decided based upon my income and my preferences. It was chosen for me to buy because I would prefer to own a car sooner and opt out of buying an over-priced car. So a server went through every car made and found a car that I could pay off in 3 years and gives me the best value for my dollar. I prefer a fast yet practical car. This car was also chosen because I can afford $400 monthly payments and gives me the highest performance and value. $395/month would be less optimized and $405/month is out of my price range.

What happens when possible choices that are developed on our own, are challenged by recommended choices are created with data aggregated by databases? We lose the power to decide our own fate and choosing against the recommended choices simply to make us feel we have power over our lives no longer applies because we are not ‘optimized’ to produce the best life.

To get a better idea of what I am talking about, read this Business Week article published in 2007. The author, Rob Hof, talks a lot about how Google is working to become a working A.I. search engine. He takes my idea and illustrates it quite well and examines other players such as Amazon.

The short version is: I love technology and how it allows us to be  more efficient and make better decisions. However, there needs to be a line. It is a massive trade off: completely remove humanity and thinking all together but have the most optimal life made for us.

Once this computer knows everything about me, making choices are pointless because the decision is already made by the computer.

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