Saudi bans old cars

The kingdom has prohibited the import of cars which are older than five years. The move is expected to adversely affect a lot of car dealers, reports Arab News

The Saudi Customs Department has started implementing an official decision banning the import of cars older than five years into the kingdom. “The ban is on used cars, buses and other light goods vehicles more than five years old. Heavy vehicles more than 10 years old are also not allowed to be imported,” Suleiman Al-Tuwaijeri, director of the Customs Department at the Jeddah Islamic Port, told Arab News.

The ban does not, however, cover spare parts for old vehicles in use, Al-Tuwaijeri said, adding that a six-month grace period has been granted to importers to set matters straight.

More than 140,000 used cars valued at SR17.5 billion ($4.6 billion) were imported in 2008. This accounted for 24 percent of total cars imported during the year.

“I don’t know what I am going to do next as the ban is a blow to my business of 24 years,” said Mustafa Baqsha, an importer of used cars.

He estimated 80 percent of workers in the used car market would become unemployed as a result of the ban. “I hope the authorities would review or at least relax the decision to make the ban applicable to cars manufactured before 2000.”

Saleh Abdullah, another trader, said that because of the ban, he had to dismiss some of his workers, and was also moving to a cheaper building. “I used to spend SR500,000 ($133,300) on rent and salaries a month, but now I have to move to cope with the falling income,” Abdullah said.

Several used car showroom owners told Arab News that the prices rose 20 percent over the past two months and that they believed they would remain at that level because of the upcoming summer vacations.

A meeting of the Automobile Committee of the Eastern Province Chamber of Commerce and Industry urged the authorities to relax the rule and ban cars older than eight years.

Ali Hussain Alireza, the chairman of the Automobile Committee at the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry said that 50 importers annually imported a total of 400,000 cars to the kingdom from various parts of the world and that stiff competition sent prices falling to the lowest possible levels.

“Some people expected the prices to fall by 30 to 40 percent. This is not true as prices of steel, aluminum and other metals used in manufacturing car parts did not fall. Hit by the financial crisis, international car companies suffered heavy losses last year and in the first quarter of the current year. They have cut down the volume of production to grapple with higher production costs,” Alireza said.

He said he believes the sale of cars in the kingdom will fall by 20 to 25 percent, particularly as new models are to hit the market soon.

First seen on Arab News.

5 Fashionable Myths About Advertising

1. Consumer Behavior Is Difficult To Understand

Marketers spend enormous amounts of time and money looking for arcane reasons behind consumer behavior. In fact, about 90% of consumer behavior is perfectly obvious. They buy stuff because it tastes better, looks nicer, is more convenient, or costs less.

Marketing executives and ad agencies like to pretend they don't know this and they focus on the 10% about consumer behavior that actually is mysterious. It makes them appear to have some magical knowledge and insight.

Most marketers would be way better off sticking to the 90% we understand and forgetting about the 10% we don't

2. Mass Marketing Is Dead
Tell that to Wal-Mart and McDonald's. This nonsense is being perpetrated by new age marketing gurus who need something new to sell (usually something related to the internet.) If they tell the truth -- marketing is pretty much what it's always been, plus search-- they're out of business.

3. The Purpose Of Advertising Is To Change Consumer Attitudes
Wrong. The purpose of advertising is to change consumer behavior. You don't make a nickel until someone buys something. The fact that they think highly of your brand is lovely. But until they buy it, you haven't done a thing.

Check this out http://www.hoffmanlewis.com/PBA_EBook_3_2009.pdf

4. The Future Of Advertising Is Online
No one knows what the future of advertising is. Not me, not anyone. Those who say they do are full of shit.

But I do know what the current status of advertising is, and it ain't online. The only online advertising methodologies that have proven to be consistently effective are search and email. The rest is all talk, ideology, and wishful thinking.

5. Consumers Want To Have Conversations With Brands
Most consumers, wisely, don't want to have conversations with their husbands. Why in the world would they want to have conversations with the makers of mufflers and vegetable oil?

via:adcontrarian.blogspot.com

Kmart:::Style show-off

KMart has long been associated with providing inexpensive clothes to the lower and middle classes. Trouble is, consumers associate ‘inexpensive’ with unfashionable. With Levi Strauss and Jaclyn Smith now being stocked, the perception, rather than the clothing range was out of date.

KMart saw its target as a young multi-ethnic, passionate shopper - an indulgent dreamer who craves self-expression through fashion. It devised a two-tiered approach to hook in its intended demographic.

First, it held a ‘Style Showoff’ in fashion capitals New York and LA. Participants were invited into a massive warehouse full of unbranded KMart clothes that they could create outfits from. Participants were only told afterwards that the clothes they had been wearing were from KMart.

The most stylish entrants were then used in online and TV adverts encouraging other wannabe fashionistas to upload a photo of their best effort at a vogue KMart ensemble, along with a 50-word blurb, onto a custom-created microsite. The winner received a $10,000 gift card for the store.

Online, KMart’s campaign reached in excess of 21 million people through Yahoo’s network. 26 milli

BRAND:Kmart

CATEGORY:Accessories/ Clothing/ Footwear

REGION:USA

DATE:Mar 2008 - May 2008

MEDIA AGENCY:MPG

MEDIA CHANNEL

Sprite:::Truth Hunters

After two years of advertising inactivity, Sprite found itself in a position no brand wants to be in – it lacked an identity. It had lost its ‘cool’. Sprite wanted to define itself in order for it to be seen not simply as a product, but a lifestyle choice.

Sprite identified ‘piss-taking’, ribbing friends about certain home truths, as being nothing short of a national past time amongst its target audience, Australia’s Generation Y. Deciding this fitted with its already established “Thirst for Truth’ tagline, it aimed to engage its target demographic on this level.

Initially cranking up the ‘piss-taking’ for comic effect, Sprite rolled out a campaign ‘exposing brutally honest truths’ about Australian culture. It also put together a team of funny but quite real Generation Y Aussies called ‘The Truth Hunters’, who served as the spirit and voice of Sprite. They went out on the streets with cameras to interact with members of the public about their humorous "truths", such as "People will take anything if it's free". The Truth Hunters went out and distributed old newspapers, bits of food and used soap to see whether people on the streets would take it. People were also invited to submit their own videos via a YouTube channel.

The campaign was rolled in cinemas and gym changing rooms, on websites and mall tabletops – in short, anywhere Generation Y existed. The experience was interactive, with a full-time editor responding to the banter and continuously integrating consumer brutal truth ideas into the campaign.

Some 5.5 million video views, 5,000 posts and over 50,000 interactions were achieved through the campaign that saw Sprite win back its ‘cool’ image.

BRAND:Sprite

BRAND OWNER:The Coca-Cola Co.

CATEGORY:Drinks (non-alcoholic)

REGION:Australia

DATE:Dec 2007 - Apr 2008

Vimto Seriously Mixed Up Fruit

Released:	May 2009
Avertiser:	Vimtо
Agency:	Driven
Country:	United Kingdom
Category:	Non-alcoholic drinks

Credits:

Carrying the strapline seriously mixed up fruit, the spot sees three CGI fruit characters on a trip to the fairground.

Agency: Driven

Advertiser: Vimtо
Project: SMUF
Client: Neil Gibson, head of marketing, Vimto
Brief: Combine the product truth of mixed fruit with a brand attitude that will appeal to teens.
Writer: Driven
Art director: Driven
Planner: Driven
Media agency: Mediaedge:cia Manchester
Production company: Passion Pictures
Director: Against All Odds
Post-production: 422 Manchester
Audio post-production422 Manchester
Exposure: National TV

Beer Wars: Branding Lessons of the Independents

By Mya Frazier June 8, 2009 The rise of the beer behemoths in America—and those seemingly limitless TV advertising budgets—steadily wiped out the diversity of beer brands available to consumers as brewers shifted to mass production to cut costs and take advantage of economies of scale. How does one explain this huge shift in the marketplace? Was demand fundamentally altered because of a change in the supply side, instead of the other way around? Did the big brewers win dominance by unfairly altering the distribution system and, therefore, the economics of the beer business? Those are just some of the questions raised in the quirky, low-budget documentary Beer Wars, released recently. It weaves a classic David v. Goliath narrative about the struggle craft brewers face when growing a brand and trying to steal share from the beer behemoths like Budweiser, Miller and Coors. The documentary aired in more than 400 theaters in mid-April 2009, a one-night event that included a live panel with the filmmaker, independent brewers and industry experts moderated by an ever-snarky Ben Stein. The narrative in Beer Wars focuses on craft brewers’ fight for retail shelf space. It’s a battle any upstart brand understands and, in the consolidated retail landscape of today, must overcome to be successful. In the beer business, the gatekeepers are the beer distributors, who have longstanding relationships with the major beer companies. Beer Wars explains this distribution system and offers a lengthy digression involving a trip to Washington, DC, for an inside look at lobbying. Big brewers hold parties to ingratiate themselves with members of Congress and other Washington insiders—for the sole purpose of protecting the so-called three-tier distribution system. (A system where brewers make the beer, wholesalers distribute it, retailers sell it and none of the three can do one of the other two things at the same time.) Beer Wars argues this favors the powerful big brands that can command retail shelf space at will and therefore take advantage of the “billboard effect.” Beyond the conspiratorial lobs thrown at big beer brands and nasty insults about the watered-down taste of mass market beers, there is a moment in the film that poignantly addresses what could be a time bomb for major beer brands: the problem of commoditization. The scene takes place in a nondescript bar that could be in any city in America. The film’s moderator is conducting an admittedly unscientific taste test of sorts. Paper bags are placed over three beers—Bud Light, Miller Lite and Coors Lite—as the beer drinkers confidently proclaim allegiance to a particular brand (as in “I’m a Bud man”). All three beer drinkers fail to pick their supposed favorite beer, proving that the taste testers are susceptible to marketing and packaging (although it’s hard to discern how many other unscientific taste tests ended up on the editing room floor). If we believe it took only one take to find three beer drinkers who really didn’t know what they were drinking, one can only conclude this: All is not well in mass-market beer land. Despite dominating the beer category with a 78 percent market share, the three major beer brands in the US—Budweiser, Miller and Coors—are arguably suffering from a dangerous brew of sameness and commoditization. Is that what explains such lackluster beer sales, essentially flat in 2008? It’s still an enormous category, with total sales of US$ 101 billion last year on 210 million barrels of beer. But could the big brands now be paying a price for all this uniformity in taste and mass-market dominance? The beer category’s only hot spot for growth is in the craft beer category, which grew by 5.9 percent in 2008, according to the American Brewers Association. Meanwhile, sales of imports declined 3.4 percent and non-craft domestics (a category that includes the likes of Bud and Coors) were essentially flat, at 0.6 percent growth. (The ABA defines a craft brewer as small, independent and traditional, with annual production of less than 2 million barrels annually.) Nevertheless, the top three brewing companies in the US—Anheuser-Busch InBev, Miller Coors Brewing Co. and Pabst Brewing Co.—remain firmly on top of any list of annual sales. But fourth place belongs to a once tiny little brewery based in Boston, Mass., started in 1985. The fast-growing Boston Beer Company manages the now well-known Samuel Adams line of 20 beers, and in 2008, the company logged sales of US$ 398 million, up from just US$ 217 million in 2004. The branding question for the category is clear: Can the feisty upstarts in the craft category take advantage of this opening in the market? With shoestring marketing budgets and limited distribution, new beer brands must rely on the sheer force of personality and a dedication to authenticity, quality and uniqueness. Commoditization was never an option. The big brewer brands, however, aren’t idling either, but are responding to shifts in consumer tastes by launching new product lines and by importing and distributing foreign brewers’ brands. Beer Wars exposes a clear and lasting dichotomy of cultures between the big brands and the smaller upstarts. In interviews with big beer brands, the executives and brewmasters come off as stuffy, establishment types. On the other hand, the craft brewers—among them Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head, Greg Koch of Stone Brewery Co. and Jim Koch of Boston Brew Company—are passionate, fun, anti-establishment and maybe even a little eccentric, the kind of guys you’d want to sit down and have a beer with. Just consider the self-deprecating tagline for Dogfish Head beer—“Off-centered beer for off-centered people”—not exactly in the same vernacular as the boastful “King of Beers.” Dogfish experiences a growth tear throughout much of the film, and Calagione is depicted managing the opening of a newer, larger brewery operation to keep up with demand for his product. Greg Koch of Stone Brewery talks unabashedly about his feisty “angry” beer brand based in San Francisco, CA, a line of beers known for strong biting flavors and caustic names like Arrogant Bastard Ale. Despite the arguable unfairness of a distribution system that favors the big breweries, the unbridled lust for growth by the Goliaths of the world isn’t keeping down the indomitable Davids like Stone Brewery, which saw sales grow by an astonishing 47 percent in 2008. Maybe the three-tier distribution system is unfair, but it isn’t preventing these upstart brands from finding a niche and, perhaps, radically changing the demand side of the business in the process. Mya Frazier is freelance business journalist. She can be reached at www.myafrazier.com

extremely expensive"Palm Pre phone ad" to create

According to USA Today, the ad "features 1,000 dancers directed by three choreographers, including Sun Yupeng, who helped create the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony." The commercial, which takes places in an expansive field, shows the dancers forming circles around actress Tamara Hope, who sits on a rock and operates the new phone.

Fiat 500C "Happy Drive"

Fiat 500 was luanched yesterday in France with an unnusual test-drive: using Google Street View, it's possible to drive it around Paris, London, NY an other cities.

Check the site here:
Fiat 500C Test Drive

Sci Fi Channel:::Eureka moment on Twitter

Technology saving the day is nothing new in sci-fi… on-screen, that is. Off-screen it’s a different matter. But when Sci Fi channel execs saw viewing figures for Eureka plateau they decided to use Twitter to regenerate a buzz around the programme.

Having exhausted a range of scientific anomalies throughout three series, execs realised it was the idiosyncratic residents of genius-town Eureka that kept viewers coming back for more. Twitter proved an ideal opportunity to let fans converse with the show’s characters.

It was decided the most likely ‘twitterer’ would be the show’s talking house, SARAH. SARAH observed all the characters but couldn’t participate directly, which made her the perfect candidate to talk to people about the secrets of the show.

Any Twitter users that had mentioned Eureka in their posts were targeted in order to build up a loyal online group quickly. SARAH interacted with them in character, under the Twitter username _S_A_R_A_H_ . Some of her tweets even served as teasers for upcoming episodes.

The campaign served its purpose. Eureka traded in its plateau for another rating peak, reaching 2.1 in viewing figures – nearly 20% higher than the target increase. SARAH conversed with over 4,100 Twitter users.

BRAND:Sci Fi Channel

BRAND OWNER:NBC Universal

CATEGORY:Entertainment

REGION:USA

DATE:Jul 2008 - Feb 2008

OTHER AGENCIES:Fallon

MEDIA CHANNEL:

QR code::: living book

Positioning Strategy

An exasperated CEO stood up in the board meeting and exclaimed, “Is that all you marketing know how to do, compete on price?!”

In today’s marketplace where everybody’s competing for the same shrinking budget and differentiation is hard to come by, marketers often think of price as their only lever.

That’s just incompetent marketing, plain and simple.

There are lots of ways to differentiate a product. You can even create the perception of differentiation, if you’re creative enough. It’s called product positioning and it’s something of an art.

Here are Five fundamental product positioning principles that will help you destroy the competition:

1. Find a product attribute that captures the customer’s imagination. It’s so easy to get trapped in the same old box of features and benefits. If you can’t differentiate that way, look at the problem with fresh eyes and fresh data. Find a new attribute that can get customers excited and focus your positioning around it.
2. Market share gains are expensive. There’s simply no way around this. Market share comes at a heavy cost and your product planning and positioning must reflect that or your P&L will suffer and you’ll end up back at the drawing board. The cost is a function of how entrenched the leaders are and the perceived “switching cost” for customers.
3. Reinvent the “customer experience.” Nothing matters more, and it’s not just for Internet and B2B. Just as with product attributes, you can shake up the competitive landscape by rethinking the customer experience in new terms. What’s important to customers changes as a function of time and market conditions. Take advantage of it.
4. Only target up, not down the totem pole. Publicly and to customers, always position your product relative to the market leader. It elevates your product in terms of customer perception. That said, train your sales force (and other internal groups) on features - benefits versus all competitors. That’s a whole different story.
5. Infrastructure (or ecosystem) as a competitive barrier. This is an important and often ignored aspect of product planning and positioning. Many products and services, especially in technology, require related companies and industries to support them in some way. If you get enough support for your product, it can be an extraordinarily effective competitive barrier that you can use in positioning.

Here’s a great example that utilized four of the five principals. When Toyotaentered the luxury automotive sector with the Lexus brand, it 1) made “ergonomics” and “quality” the new “performance” and “luxury,” 2) initially undercut the competition to gain entry and early market share, 3) created a low-stress and more respectful showroom experience, and 4) targeted Mercedes andBMW - up the totem pole.

Apple also uses positioning strategy extraordinarily well.

Samsung has done a great job with their product positioning. They focused on their strengths of innovations in technology and design to overtake Sony in consumer electronics.

Subway Sandwiches "EAT FRESH" have done a good job with their positioning. They're leveraging on their 'fresh, natural food' strength to edge out the competition in the fast food market.

on the other side in today’s marketplace, positioning has multiple problems:

1) Positioning is immeasurable: You can’t say “our positioning has improved our sales by 5 % or as a result of our positioning strategy, our brand is 12% better than competitions. Furthermore, it is impossible to measure the ROI or benchmark positioning.

2) Positioning is only suitable for mass markets. Yet branding today is about segmentation and communicating and engaging with those segments via relevant channels and with messages that resonate specifically with those segments or niche markets. Does this mean that a company should develop different positioning for different niches?

3) Positioning is suitable for mass markets with limited competition and limited consumer access to media and information. Today, consumers can get any information they want on anything from anywhere.

4) The wikipedia definition is a top-down, company knows best, hierarchical marketing approach. Yet we live in a C2C environment in which consumers define brands.

5) Positioning is one-way. The company knows best and you must listen to us. We tell you how our products are positioned. Bu today, if you are not entering into 2 way conversations with consumers you are about to join the brand graveyard.

6) Positioning was developed for the US mass market of the 1970’s. But we’re in a globalized world now, with much more competition and more knowledgeable consumers.

7) Positioning is competition, not customer driven. The basic premise of positioning is that you want to be number 1 or number 2 in a category in a prospect’s mind. If you can’t be number 1 or number 2 in an existing category because of competition, you make your own category. In today’s congested marketplace, the investments required to develop a new category are enormous. Furthermore, besides the difficulty and expense of creating your own category, you are also letting your marketing be driven by the competition rather than consumer demands for value.

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Positioning (marketing)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positioning_%28marketing%29