Sunday, February 2, 2020

SOCIAL LISTENING


Chris Graham
BLOG ASSIGNMENT: SOCIAL LISTENING
“Pet Party”

For my social listening, I selected petpartyco. This is an online business that makes custom socks that include photos submitted by client. I decided to analyze the feedback on petpartyco because I personally used their products as christmas gifts once I found them via instagram. Once I began to read comments on their instagram posts, I was a bit shocked on the wide variety of feedback.
With Pet Party, the custom pet socks better the customer by allowing them to have a new way to constantly be reminded of their pets and the happiness that follows.
When looking more in depth at the comments of Pet Party’s instagram, it was very back and forth and could leave the people interested in the product confused. Below I have attached screenshots of a select few comments I found within 1 minute of viewing the post. We can see some mixed feelings and have some customers excited and saying they had the custom socks delivered in 3 days, versus some customers having to wait over two weeks.


It is very apparent that Pet Party is using the cuteness factor of animals combined with having it be a personal pet to sell, as it can bring positivity to your day by seeing your own doggos face. Without a doubt this is a great idea and strives during gift giving seasons, so aside from what they are selling, I seem to notice a few possible flaws in customer service and communication side of things while promoting on social media.
With that being said, I feel the marketing challenge facing Pet Party is an overall lack of communication and consistency. The first thing that supports this can be seen in the screen shots from above, this is because we see that lack of communication to these individuals on shipping expectations must have occurred when checking out online, also that the shipping itself is an example of Pet Party being inconsistent. Another simple example we can take away from those screenshots, is how Pet Party did not reply to any of them via instagram. This concludes that communication lacked on website for shipping expectations, and lacked on instagram by ghosting paying customers!
I can confidently say that not replying to these customers was a bad idea. This is because not only will these people be left unsatisfied, but that on this post, there was under a 60 comments and would take a few minutes to reply to these paying customers. If I were the brand manager for Pet Party and I was faced with this issue, I would immediately make sure all customers are on the same page by providing very clear shipping and delivering expectations on website during and after checkout by getting customers email to send updates. Once I am done with main priority as traffic directly through sales on website, I would make sure to assign others or myself to constantly check comments on posts and give replies. I feel this is accomplishable because the instagram account only has 8,000 followers, making it not that time consuming or difficult to respond, especially if it helps spread positive word of our business.
This assignment is a real eye opener to the impact communication to audience has on a business. It shocks me because my experience was luckily very smooth with Pet Party, and I loved the products and assumed the same for others until I began to read the comments. This overall is a great way to remind me how providing a great first impression is crucial when it comes to trusting a business.


Sunday, January 19, 2020

Marketing in the News


Article: “Sony Built a Car That Will Probably Never Get Mass Produced”
Author: Ryan Barwick
Written on January 10, 2020

I am interested in the article found on Adweek.com about Sony’s new car for two main reasons, the first being because I am very brand loyal to Sony, and secondly because I am interested in seeing what Sony will do to separate its car from the other new electronic car competitors. This article consists of a 2 minute and 30 second video that gives the summary on where Sony is at and what they plan to do next. The video begins by informing us that Sony’s technology for back-up cameras, blindspot monitoring and sensors can be found in many vehicles today, but that many people do not know that. With that being said, Sony wants to build own vehicle from the ground up to host own automotive technology instead of just having technology in other brands of vehicles. The value proposition of Sony’s new car is to improve the customer's life by providing a vehicle that uses Sony’s specialized technology for highest end safety, entertainment, and overall efficiency by being an electric car. 
This car is called the Sony Vision-S, and will be the very first car to come from Sony. This is only a prototype at the moment, but will be a huge step in introducing a new product for Sony. As seen in the video, Sony will be heavily relying on its advanced technology in cameras and sensors to reassure consumers with features such as 33 sensors outside the car to avoid and even identify objects and its immediate threat to driver as well as face detection inside the car to notify the driver if they are blinking a lot or too long or show signs of dozing off. These sort of features is what I feel will allow customers to feel as if they are in the safest vehicle to drive in. It is very important they are spending so much time and effort and money into these unheard of features because without it, I feel it stands no chance against Sony’s biggest challenge, which is the already well established Tesla from Elon Musk.
What makes this marketing approach unique is first of all, nobody was expecting a car from Sony at all. The element of surprise in hearing people say “Sony is making a car!’, is enough for me to tell others and spread the word. Secondly, the fact Sony is not just making a car, but they are making a fully electric vehicle is very smart and I feel gives it a lot of respect in that the brand wants to improve the economy as well. If I were the brand manager, I would continue to push and hype this vehicle up by posting on social media. Because this vehicle is only a prototype, I would create polls on social media as fun ways to get feedback on what people would like to see in this vehicle. I only say this because I feel this is where the marketing could be stepped up in my opinion. Sony is able to put professional advertisements up anywhere, but taking a step back and letting customers have an opinion I think would keep them interested enough to keep it in mind until the prototype develops into real thing. Overall I am very excited for Sony and to see what comes from this!

Link to article: https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/sony-built-a-car-that-will-probably-never-get-mass-produced/

Sunday, January 12, 2020

About Me

My name is Chris Graham. I am a 21 year old who is currently in my 3rd year as a student dual enrolled at LBCC and OSU majoring in business. I enrolled in this course because it is required for me, but also because I want to take what I learn from this class and apply new marketing strategies to my own business. From my background as a videographer, I am most interested in learning about the promotional side of marketing. Outside of this class, I have a real passion for traveling and hiking in the PNW with my camera at my side to capture each moment!