Saturday, December 7, 2013

Khue Ngo Final Blog

My Take on Current Events: Burger King gives away free BigMac’s

Burger King Norway decided that they do not want any hypocrites as fans on their Facebook Fan Page that only post bad comments and trash the site. That is why they started their Loyalty campaign: They offered each fan a voucher for a free Big Mac. However, if the fan accepted the voucher, he or she had to leave the fan community. They would receive a goodbye letter from Burger King along with the voucher and would be banned for life from becoming a Burger King Fan. Their fan base was reduced from 38,000 people to only 8,000 members that showed true loyalty to the brand. Burger King said that their Fan Page is now much more positive and includes people that are real fans of the brand and not just there to demand free food or give negative comments.
This shows a valuation of quality over quantity. However, a difference of 30,000 people is a lot, and whether or not the quality of fans will make up for the huge gap in number is to be discussed.



My Recap

In print and publishing, the number of readers is directly tied to the rates that can be charged for advertising. Harper’s Bazaar decreased the annual price for subscriptions to a minimum in order to increase their readership. It is now down to 5 to 10$ per year (10 issues), which is about 90% cheaper than the price offered at newsstands. With every new subscriber, the magazine can charge a higher rate for advertising.
Also, in order to build relationships with their readers, they have diversified their offer and expanded the brand. Harper’s Bazaar is not just a magazine, it is a website, and a shop, and events. By using an integrated approach, the brand ensures that the Bazaar experience is consistent, even though the content on each platform may differ.

As I do not read any magazines, I will discuss possible opportunities and enhancements in general: One hurdle magazines have to overcome is the rivalry with free online content. Why should you pay and wait for a magazine to be delivered when you can have every trend available at your fingertips in the www? An approach to tackle this problem would be to build a strong online presence for the magazine itself and tie the content to the printed version. Even though it is crucial to provide content in the online version, offering exclusive content for print could serve as an incentive for subscribers.
Another suggestion is similar to the Shop Bazaar solution from Hearst. Online articles about Fashion trends or specific items for example could offer links to online shops so that the reader can immediately purchase the item. The magazine does not have to have its own shop, but could just redirect the reader to a brand’s online store, or cooperate with a more generic online store that offers all brands. A note in their print version saying that links to online stores are available on their web presence could also drive visitors to their website.


Final Reflections

The Evolving Industry course was very helpful to get an overview of the entire communications field and really understand the different components and how they function and interact with each other.
As I wanted to explore other options than Public Relations where I’ve been working in, this was the perfect platform to learn about and get insights into other areas of the industry. Even though I have decided for myself to try out the advertising field, I also found other types of companies that would be very interesting to work in.
I really enjoyed this course and think that it provided us with a good understanding of the industry.


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