The UC Berkeley Entreprenuership Blog
Last week I wrote about The Blind Side, a movie currently in theatres telling the story of Michael Oher a homeless teen who was taken in by a well-to-do family and offered a second chance at life. He grew to become the star athlete, playing Division I football at Ole Miss and being selected by the Baltimore Ravens in the first round of the 2009 NFL Draft. The story was quite inspirational, but I was surprised to see that it was rated PG-13.
I just have one question for every entrepreneur or freelancer who deals with corporate or repeat clients, does your client see you as cost of doing business, just another line on their expense reports, or as a long-term investment? Based on your answer to this question for every client you are currently working with and any client who approaches you in the future, who should you be focusing on?
Anytime sales are low, it is the entrepreneur’s natural instinct to find creative ways to boost sales. When all else fails, small business owners are often faced with the choice of bearing the cost of decreased sales until consumer shopping picks up again, or cut prices to incentivize sales.
An increasing number of social media websites are finding that the only real way to structure advertisements so that they have any significant ROI for sponsors is to integrate them into the social nature of the website itself. StumbleUpon did this through the use of “paid stumbles” where they charged $.05 a visitor from the StumbleUpon toolbar and Digg rolled out a similar program soon after showcasing “sponsored stories” amongst the other submissions on the home page.
My number one rule of networking: don’t sell. Or at least, don’t blatantly sell. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen someone approach a well known figure in the industry they have never met and the first thing they try to do is sell the established individual on a product or idea
Below I have a series of three very well created sports-related advertisements for Big Babol Gum. The ads artistically demonstrate the “chewiness” and “stretchability” of the gum. Of the three, I feel that the basketball one is the most effective. Which is your favorite?
Every week we like to showcase an idea in marketing or advertising which really stands out and sets itself apart from the competition as inspiration for our readers to develop effective advertisements and marketing campaigns. This week’s advertisement comes from the McCann Advertising Agency in Kenya for a brand of Nestle milk pro,moting how it is healthy for kids and how it makes them strong.
Dodge ran an advertisement during the Super Bowl this year which I have to say is one of the worst advertisements I have seen in a while. The advertisement makes fun of the man’s role in the marriage showing a series of miserable looking men and listing all the tedious things their wives force them to do. The advertisement ends by saying that because the husband has to do everything his wife tells him and is miserable, he gets to drive a Charger as his “last stand”.
Google took today’s super bowl as the perfect opportunity to run its first ever television advertisement. The ad ran in the third quarter of the game and was hinted it at in a tweet by CEO Eric Schimdt who said “hell would freeze over” in refernce to the Super Bowl a few days before the event.
The most important aspect of any advertising campaign is whether or not it builds trust. Consumers are naturally skeptical about any form of advertising as it is paid for and thus biased. Hence, even if you go on about your product’s features and how great of a deal consumers are getting, these claims are often counteracted by the fact that consumers know the commercial is biased and thus have no trust in the information presented. This is especially true for small businesses that have no well-known brand name to back them up.
AM Beat is a blog written by Aditya Mahesh, a young entrepreneur and freshman at UC Berkeley who runs ZapPrep, a college admissions consulting business. This blog covers marketing, technology, and finance.
