In response to Brookes blog: Tide Laundry Pods
 All the ads contain bright colors with energetic, attractive models. "The 'pop' motif is repeated in phrases that appear in the ads, among them 'Get ready to pop your laundry,' 'Pop of fresh,' 'Pop of clean' and 'Pop of hello gorgeous.'" Do you think this campaign is going to be successful in targeting the younger audience by using these phrases and colors in the ads? Will people be open to trying something new or just stick to their usual detergent?

I believe that the campaign will be success in advertising and increasing the consumer interest in the new product, however I also feel that unless the product has been properly designed and works as good as advertised they will not see anyone switching over from their normal routine/ product. Tide is already one of the leading competitors in the laundry detergent business and will not lose any revenue if the product doesn’t take off but if it does they stand to control yet another part of the laundry detergent market. The fact that they are now marketing their product to a younger more technologically equipped generation tells me as a consumer that this product is worth giving a shot. The younger generation may be more experienced with technology but what really makes the difference is the trust we as a young generation automatically put into new technologies whether they have been proven to be successful or not. I believe the success of this product will be determined strictly by how the product performs and how user friendly the product is. Time will tell if Tide Company has made a good or bad decision marketing a new product to a younger generation. Let’s face it most of young kids still bring our laundry home for our parents to do; just kidding.

Summer fun; local threat

Marketing can be broken down in many different ways through orientation or environmental and so on. This post is being used to evaluate the environmental analysis associated with small businesses in Keene NH and the local surrounding areas. Keene presents an interesting environment which consists of many different geographic and demographic differences. The most important environmental analysis that should be drawn about this area is the thousands of college students that inhabit the area, the most notable problem with marketing to this demographic is the fact that they are only around Keene for half the year and then they head home for the other half. This makes it difficult for small businesses to tailor their operations to the genre of students. Businesses like Wallmart, Dollar Tree, and supermarkets need to anticipate the change in the environment to dictate how much and of what products they need to have stocked. Any business dealing with the sale of alcohol will see the same trend when in the summer brings less sales on alcoholic products. Small local businesses will find it much harder to make such changes to their business operations that the big corporations because of their limited resources and limited employee base. Small businesses face a much bigger threat to their success than their much larger competitors and such threats can eventually lead to the downfall that ends the small business altogether. It is important that these businesses tailor their operations to deal with the sudden drop in sales and customer base to ensure they do not have too much lost inventory/ overhead.  

What else can these small local businesses do to combat the sudden fall in customer clientele and how can they go about structuring their employee roster without hiring and firing people twice a year?