Commercials in a World of Netflix

Netflix is a great thing. You can use Netflix to avoid pretty much any adult responsibility you want. Throughout the past year I have gone back and forth between watching basic television with my antenna and watching Netflix. I would get really annoyed when I switched from Netflix to TV because I would become so accustom to watching different movies and tv shows without commercials. Netflix is a service that people pay for, so I understand not having commercials in between shows or movies but what I don't fully understand is why channels that you have to pay for still have commercials. If Netflix can be successful with only subscription payments, do television channels need the income from advertisers and those paying for the channels?

My best guess as to why television channels still advertise, both on actual television plans and on their online services is because they can. For years commercials have been the norm, so why would that change now? Could television without commercials be the next big craze? It seems to me that even television is becoming a thing of the past mostly because I look around at all the college students I interact with every day and they have a Netflix subscription and if a show is on tv that they want to see they find it online somewhere. 

One of my favorite comedians is doing a show on Netflix and it sounds like the show will have a tv type format where a new episode is added every night on certain days. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out becuase right now a huge part of the appeal of Netflix is just binge watching shows. I am intriqued to see what happens in terms of entertainment in the future! Maybe it will be some strange combination of Netflix and cable! 

This Blog Post is Worth A Million Bucks

You know that bottle of wine you brought to your friend's dinner party that set you back $20? You could take your friendship to a whole new level if you let them know how much your dropped on the bottle. The level I am talking about is moving from social norms to financial norms. In the book Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely the difference between social and financial norms are mentioned in Chapter 4. One example that Ariely uses is a daycare that began to charge a fee for parents who were late to pick up their kids. Before the daycare decided to charge parents who came late, people were not always on time but did feel genuinely bad about being late. These parents were following social norms, which put more pressure to take into account other people's time. Once the daycare started charging a fee for parents who were late, parents began to follow financial norms. These financial norms seemed to convince parents that since they were paying to be late, they could be as late to pick up their children as they wanted. The most interesting part was that even after the late fee was taken away, parents continued to follow more financial norms and still showed up late.

One place in marketing where promotion and consumer behavior overlap is warranties on products. Warranties tend to serve as an excuse for consumers to use financial norms instead of social norms. One example from my own life is how I treat products if they have a warranty. Way back in the day, (actually just last year) I bought a fitness tracker for myself. Now this fitness tracker had a warranty that I paid for, I didn't take the best care of it and ended up dropping it in water. I was a little mad at myself, but also wasn't too worried because I had paid for the warranty on it. I was following social norms, I paid for a warranty so had no problem using it.

Now a few months back, I bought a new blender. This blender also had a warranty, but it was included in the price of the blender so I was not paying any extra money for the warranty. I have taken such good care of that blender because I didn't feel entitled to using the warranty since I didn't pay anything out of pocket for it.

One way markers can promote consumers to use social norms instead of financial norms is to include as many "free" features as they can in the pricing of a product. If a consumer feels as though the warranty is a gift as opposed to an added feature they are paying for they are more likely to use social norms.

Risky Business: The App Story

Apps are a great feature on phones, tablets, and computers but it seems like apps are the only new products entering the market. For class we were asked to create a product or service that could not be a stand alone app to solve a problem people 18-24 years old face. While my group was brainstorming we couldn't help but come back to an app. It seemed like the easy way out, just make an app. That got me curious if some businesses or people create apps to solve problems just because it is an easy way out.

For any class where our final group project was to create some type of product or service, one group at least creates an app for something. Apps can be really great and useful, however if they are just the easy way out, are they really solving problems? 

There are so many different apps on the market, and they are a lot less of an investment than creating a physical product. I truly wonder how many apps on the market have taken the place of a product. It is really difficult to not just jump straight from the problem to the solution. I am sure many businesses have thought they went through the long process and finally created an app that solved the world's problems, however they might have just jumped to a solution without thinking fully about it 

Then there are also cases where products are made and they pair with an app. Fitness trackers are a great example of this. With the new fitness trackers and large displays, you do not absolutely need to have the app to have a fitness tracker. The app is an added feature that helps maximize the product. I firmly believe that apps can help make a product even better, but stand alone apps may not always solve the problem you are aiming to solve. 

Next time you look at an app on your phone, think critically and ask yourself "is there a product that could be even more useful than this app?" 

My Retail Job is Still Marketing Experience

Having a job working retail can some days feel as though it is just another job to pay my way through college. Turns out, it might actually be more marketing experience than I thought. At my current retail job, I have the flexibility to create fun and interesting sales displays to hopefully sell more product. The first time I was given this task I just completed the task and made the sales display look as nice as I could without putting in much thought. Turns out that product really does sell better when it is presented a little nicer.

Creating nice looking displays isn't always enough to convince customers to buy products though. A lot of thought needs to be put into creating displays. Simple things such as whis next to which can make a huge difference in what customers will buy. If you are trying to sell a certain purse you need to think about where the purse is positioned in the sales display and if it clashes with other items in the display. Also, the purse should be the most prominent feature of the sales display if that is what you are aiming to sell. If you are trying to sell a certain shirt or outfit, the rules change a little. With each different display, it takes critical thinking to decide how to put it together.
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I have been working in retail a few years now, for a few different stores and I would have never thought about how much effort it takes to create a sales display. Next time you are in a store, look around at how different displays make you want certain items. Once you start to notice these small details you might even be a more rational consumer.

Do Facebook Ads Even Really Work?

In college so far, I have experienced many a group project that focused on social media. As social media has taken the world by storm, many businesses realize the value in having a social media presence. Group project after group project my team has picked a local business, done some research into their marketing efforts and suggested some sort of presence on social media. For many local Bozeman businesses, social media is not a huge part of their marketing efforts. This lead me to the question, what makes a Facebook or Instagram Ad effective?

I recently came across an article by the American Marketing Association (AMA) about a company who set out to figure out which Facebook advertising myths were just that, myths. The article starts out by introducing what many believe to be the best practices of Facebook ads, these included things like using pictures of people, only having pictures relevant to your brand, and having text overlay on pictures. The findings of the study showed that irrelevant pictures are more likely to be effective in getting people to click on the links than relevant pictures. Brand statements and calls to action on pictures tend to perform the worst.

If you want to read the full article click here


This ad for Tampax is a good example of what people generally think of as a good ad for Facebook. It has words plastered on to the picture and the brand name in the corner, as well as being a picture of people, and showing that this brand can be used in an active setting. Now even though this has all the benchmarks of being a great Facebook ad, I spent less than 3 seconds looking at it because my brain flagged it as an advertisement right off of the bat.

Some of the ads that get my attention and hold it the longest are the ads that I mistake for friends posts. On Instagram one time, I came across an ad and ended up staring at it for at least 20 seconds because I thought a friend had posted the picture of a large group of people and I was trying to figure out which one was my friend. I eventually felt pretty stupid for thinking it was something my friend had posted, but the advertisement really got my attention and I actually ended up buying the product within the week.

This Coca-Cola ad is a lot like my example from Instagram, I stopped and checked it out for a second because I thought it was one of my really cool friends who always posts really rad pictures. This ad is a picture of person, however there are no overwhelming words plastered onto the photo, and the only relevant piece is that the girl is holding a bottle of Coke.

It is pretty clear to see from both the research, and also just a quick lap through Facebook or Instagram that a one size fits all method for advertising on social media is not always the best method.