Week 8 - Multimedia for Marketing Communication

I'm not really very updated with the marketing scene, so I'll just use the 3 firms that were listed in our notes, haha! After some research, it appears that each of the 3 firms has had a loooong history of marketing strategies, so to make things easier I'll just pick ONE outstanding marketing stint from each firm.

1) Nokia -- Comes With Music

In 2007, Nokia started a program in partnership with hundreds of major and independent music labels to bundle 12, 18 or 24 months of free music downloads with the sale of any phone from the Comes With Music series. Downloads can be mobile or on the PC, and users can search according to many specifications -- artiste, song title, genre, even language.

2) Samsung -- AnyCall

AnyCall is a mobile phone brand under Samsung. Starting from 2003, they began to hire media artistes to star in music videos advertising their phones. Their most notables videos are the AnyClub, AnyMotion and AnyBand series, which are often pre-downloaded onto Samsung phones when they are purchased.

3) Sony Ericsson - Walkman W Series

Launched in 2005, the W series phones are the first-ever music-centric phones. This is notable because it was launched amid a frenzy of portable music players, sans the phone functions. The phones have a prominent media center that manages all the music, videos and photos stored on the phones.

MY EVALUATION:

First thing I noticed: ALL the marketing stints involve MUSIC! =D This is quite unlikely to be just a coincidence... people are the most pervious to music, so it's definitely the easiest way to market something.

Nokia's Comes With Music is very innovative, but unfortunately I feel its competition is not against other phone brands, but against music piracy. Why get a Comes With Music phone specially to download music for free, when you can ALREADY do that so many other places?!

Samsung's music videos stint is clearly targeted at the teeny-bopper crowd, which grants its success to a certain degree since we all know how crazy teeny-boppers can get to support their idols. But unfortunately, I feel that the target group is ALSO the limiting factor for this stint, because it simply eludes the older crowd, who may actually have more purchasing power.

Sony's idea was great too, but as said before, it was launched during a time when people were happy with their mobiles but wanted specialised portable music players. Thus, the W Series' success was short-lived because other phones soon overtook its phone functions, and specialised portable music players began to surpass its music center functions. It's hard enough to beat one group of competitors, let alone two.

Conclusion: Multimedia is a great way to market something, but unfortunately the public's taste for multimedia evolves much faster than the marketing campaign can respond. That is why multimedia-centered advertising stints often taste only short-lived success.