Fist Pump Your Way to Ultra

Ultra Music Festival or UMF is an annual outdoor electronic “techno” music festival that occurs in March in Miami. Russell Faibisch and Alex Omes founded it in 1999. The event is regularly during the Miami's Music week and the Winter Music Conference. It used to be a 1-day event when it first started back in 1999 until 2006, it became a 2-day festival from 2007 to 2010, in 2011 was a 3-festival and now in 2012 it’s going to stay as a 3-day festival. It will be held March 23, 24, 25th at Bayfront Park. Ultra music festival is one of the highest grossing music festivals in the world and in 2011 alone; over 100,000 people attended the festival.

UMF 2012  

       

The UMF has been successful and has met the expectations every single year. This year, 2012 they are expecting double of 2011 attendance and double the income. The reason to this, is how they improve their marketing and advertising plans every year for the festival. Some of the reasons for the success of the UMF are:

1) They started a few years back to promote the next year’s festival during the current one. This is ideal because the audience is experiencing a great time so they’ll get encourage to attend the next year. 

2) Their social media has increased significantly. From Facebook, Twitter and their website, they are keeping the festival up to date for the audience. Also their “sign-up” for e-mail alerts of future events keeping the attendees with the interest on coming back.

3) Their artist line-up is not released until their tickets are completely sold out or about to be sold out. Which forces the buyer to purchase the 3-day event ticket to not miss out on their favorite artist. 

4) Their most recent marketing strategy for the 2012 festival which is the availability of purchasing the tickets. There’s only the 3-day festival ticket combo for the fist pumpers. They can’t purchase a ticket for only one day to attend. This method forces the electronic listeners to buy the 3-day ticket combo either way, if they want to see their favorite artist.

UMF 2011

The tickets started pre-selling at $149.00 and now they’re at $299.95 without tax and if you’d like the VIP section, they are $599.95, where u get to meet the artist and you’re closer to the stage. Their line-up is still not announced but their tickets are predicted to be sold out by January so the fist pumpers will found out very soon who’s coming to the UMF in 2012 to make history.

Also if you’re planning on going I suggest you make your hotel reservations as soon as possible because the nearby hotels are raising their rates for that weekend and most of them are packed for the weekend of March 23, 24, 25 of 2012 already. 

Enjoy and fist pump your weekend away safely!

-Jess!


"Creating Memories, Building Characters."

Shoppers Behavior On Black Friday

As we all know, Black Friday is the day that Christmas shopping inaugurates. Is one of the biggest shopping days of the year because of the drastic discounts and huge sales. Retail stores and e-commerce use this day to break records in sales and a way to eliminate old merchandise to put out the new, which is for the Christmas season. 

Consumers know this and make sure they take advantage of these massive sales and discounts to get as much as possible from the “To Buy” list. When you tell people there’s limited merchandise and only the earliest customers can get the products, it makes then go insane and they prepare themselves to wait to be the first customer.

Faithful Black Friday Shoppers 

There are 5 behaviors in which I believe the shoppers go by (which I don’t necessarily agree with, but from observing it’s obvious):

1) Aggressive behavior: once that door opens everyone is pushing without the concern of the next person. They fight; insult each other and employees. They even yell at the employee because what they came for was already out of stock (like is the employee’s fault).

2) Selfish behavior: these shoppers would cut the line and they get into a competitive mood. Also selfish towards the employees because they would knock or drop some items on the floor and they just don’t care.

3) Dedicated behavior: let me tell you these faithful black Friday shoppers are willing to wait hours or even the night before for these deals. 

4) Impulsive behavior: I say impulsive because some things are bough without being necessary, they’d buy it just because it’s on sale. 

5) Team work behavior: this sounds crazy but there are families that team up and then separate into small groups to get to different departments to get the items quicker and meet up with the person who’s already making the line at the register. (I know, they have a very thought-out plan.)

Target

I don’t know if anyone noticed but the music in these different stores is very festive, up beat music; music that would get the customers to shop quick and build a positive environment. However, there’s always someone who has to take their selfish and aggressive behavior to the next level. For example; in a Wal-Mart in Los Angeles a woman trying to get her way through the lines spewed pepper spray on a crowd and 20 people suffered minor injuries.

           

Sales Increased

And this is where I get upset at these faithful Black Friday shoppers, Why the hostility? Why the madness? Why the aggression?

But these shoppers always seem to amaze me. This year, the shopping season started strong and with more customers spending more money than ever before. According to ShopperTrak — the world's largest provider of retail and mall foot-traffic counting services — Black Friday sales increased 6.6% over the same day last year. This represents $11.40 billion in retail purchases and the biggest dollar amount ever spent during the day. Retail foot-traffic rose accordingly, increasing by 5.1% over Black Friday 2010.

Nice welcome to the holiday shopping season!

-Jess!


"Creating Memories, Building Characters."

           

            

Product Placement in Films

A business always tries to find new ways to advertise their branded good or services. An increasingly common way to promote is by showing the actual product or an ad for it as part of a film. This form of advertisement is called product placement and even though it does not constitute a major segment of the advertising and promotions business, it has proved to be effective for plenty of companies.

E.T.

Throughout the years advertisers have become more and more reliable on product placement in films. It has been around since the early 1990s but it wasn’t noticeable until Reese’s Pieces were used in the film E.T. in 1982. The audience didn’t realize that a promotion was going on but it was acknowledged. Why? Because that year, Reese’s Pieces sales rose around 65% to 70% and the candies were added to about 800 movie theaters where they had previously not been sold.

Cast Away

Another huge blow out with product placement in movies was the film Cast Away. Fed Ex and Wilson Sporting Goods decided to take action with the product placement. Fed Ex didn’t pay a thing for brand placement. At first, the story of how a Fed Ex airplane crashes with all the packages, was a concern to the CEO because it might affect the image however, overall it was seen as a good thing. The company saw an increase in brand awareness after the film. After the film was released Wilson Sporting Goods introduce its own promotion focused around the fact that one of its product was a co-star with Tom Hanks. Wilson manufactured volleyballs with the hand print face on one side like in the movie. It was sold for a limited time and customers purchased the volleyball because they really just wanted “Wilson” to be their friend too; excellent marketing strategy.

Wilson

It's become more and more common throughout the years, but like every marketing technique it has advantages and disadvantages. Exposure is an advantage because there is a large amount of people that watches movies. Also how frequent the product is utilized in the film. A disadvantage can be a high cost for the product placement. In some contracts you may have to pay to have the product seen, pay more for an actor to mention it and pay extra for the actor to actually use it.

Many companies use films to promote their products. Advertisers often have to make decisions based on their own creative insights or just rely on the credibility of the source. However, there is some prove that has demonstrated the potential effectiveness of product placements. They just have to keep up with the technology and what their target/market is always up to.

-Jess!


"Creating Memories, Building Characters."