Current Problem, Current Opportunity

The phrase ‘something happens for a reason’ might seem too trivial for us, but few people realize that certain things do happen for good reasons.

Australia, just like any other Western countries, is turning into a health-conscious society. Its alarming obesity rate triggers the Heart Foundation to promote healthy lifestyle through its campaigns. One of its significant efforts is to introduce a “tick” program, aimed to help consumers make healthier food choice conveniently. Basically, all food products which have met strict heart foundation standard have a “tick” label on their packaging. This “tick” will differentiate these products from those which are deemed to be unhealthy.

McDonald’s, being the biggest junk food provider in the world, sees this healthy lifestyle trend as an alarming situation. When more and more people become health-conscious, they will consume less junk food. This would mean bad business for this giant fast food chain.

Aware of this threat, McDonald’s quickly joins the crowd by going into the health-conscious bandwagon. They create new menus which can get the Health Foundation’s approval “tick”. They do continue selling the old hamburgers and fries, but some of their menus are healthier. This is a huge loop for their marketing. This strategy causes McDonald’s to have an ‘excuse’ to declare that they do try to address the current problem, even though they are still selling junk food.

Currently, McDonald’s has Health Foundation’s “tick” for their nine new menus. They create a better image to health-conscious people, and with this image, they attract new customers. Customers who have left McDonald’s after being disgusted by their junk food, are now invited back to try their healthy menus.

Similar story also happened in Jakarta few days ago. LG Indonesia announced that they would replace all LG in-store products that were damaged as a result of the flood. By doing this, they bring their relationship with the customers, in this case, the store owners, to the next level. Think of the store owners as LG’s front soldiers. These personnel will have a huge impact in determining who shall win the battle in obtaining the market share of the electronics in Indonesia.

Australia’s McDonald’s has switched a major threat into a new opportunity to get new customers, thus increasing profit. LG Indonesia also followed the trend of changing a problem into new opportunity to expand their market and distribution coverage.

Only few can see a problem as an opportunity, and when these people say that things happen for good reasons, I bet they are right.


Author: Michael A Oei – MarketingFirst Group
Edited by: Melissa Giovanni

Marketing and Love

To the beautiful Barbara Ellen Wijaya. Thank you for being a beautiful inspiration for me in understanding marketing and business. Thank you to keep supporting me with your beautiful heart. Thank you for your beautiful belief in me. Thank you.

In this column I would like to redefine marketing which is often perceived merely as “selling” in the business environment. However, I believe that marketing is actually involved in a lot of different aspects in our life. Intentionally or not, everyone is a marketer. Starting from having a name which is so called “our brand”. When our names are mentioned in the middle of our relatives, a lot of different perspectives and opinion would flow from each different person toward us. Some of them might like us, and hopefully not many of them hate us. This perspectives and opinions come from our attitude, manner, and acts that we have done towards our friends and relatives. This is totally similar to the situation when a brand "Coca Cola" is mentioned in the society. Some of us might like this particular classic soft drink, and some of us might hate it. At the end of the day, having a brand means developing a good culture which can be recognized by the society.

On the other hand, love is another interesting word to be explored. A life without love would only mean emptiness. When you see movie in the cinema you will find love story in it regardless the genre of the movie. It could be an action movie but it will have love story as the spice in it. When you listen to the random song on the radio, the majority of them would refer to love. These facts clearly stated that love is an important aspect in our life. I personally believe love is actually around the corner wherever you go and whenever the timing is.

Now, how can these two interesting aspects could be connected to one another? How can marketing, a concept of becoming a market leader in business be involved in a life aspect called love? And the most importantly, how can the marketing principles be applied in our love life?

Firstly, let us recall our memory when we fall in love. You would try to know them by talking to them, make some phone calls, and ask them out. Basically you are doing the very important aspect of marketing which is market research. Your target is actually your potential customer. In love better understanding on your crush will actually increase your chance to win their heart. I suppose business environment should be treated in the same manner. Better understanding on your potential customer will actually increase the possibility of creating the better product or service for them. The problem is the majority of marketers who claim to understand marketing often overlook this aspect.

I have stated for a few times that business environment is actually changing faster than what we can imagine. Political, technology and culture changes directly or indirectly alter both consumer behavior and business competition. For instance, internet has enabled a lot of new activities which was impossible. This then enables Amazon.com to become the latent competitor of the conventional offline bookstores. These changes are impossible to be stopped. Therefore, the only way to become a leader in business is to create the sustainable culture within the company in order to overcome the external changes which could have the direct or indirect impacts.

I think this condition also happens in love. Creating a sustainable relationship is also not an easy subject. You may have heard the expression “I cannot love you anymore, you have changed so much” in so many love stories. Let’s face it life is a journey. In the middle of our journey, a lot of changes in values would happen. The changes in value would affect our attitude, behavior and action towards our partners. Similar to marketing where understanding customers is a key to stay in the market, understanding our partners would be the key to create a sustainable relationship. I personally think that marketing and love are the never ending learning processes. Therefore, creating harmony within a relationship is pretty similar in creating sustainable values within the company.

In so many love stories we have seen how a guy tries to attract his crush’s attention by acting nicely as a gentleman. At the first date, a girl will dress up beautifully to create a memorable impression and hopefully the guy would become head over heels. The more I think about it, this phenomenon is actually very similar to advertising in marketing. The company actually tries to attract their customers’ attention by communicating the wonderful values behind their service or product via advertisements. In my previous column called “Towards the Good Will Marketing”, we can also see how companies try to create a wonderful impression in the community by giving positive impacts.
On the whole, by reading this column hopefully you will get a better understanding of the applicability of so many marketing principles in your life. I hope this column could further encourage more people to learn marketing in order to enhance their quality of life.

Further comments, questions, and opinions are more than welcome.

David Herlambang

MarketingFirst