Last Friday afternoon, my spouse sent me this screenshot of the notifications on his phone:

Just Eat, the online food-ordering service, had sent him a text message urging him to stay home and enjoy a discount on their services.

The message is vague, but to anyone with an (un)healthy addiction to Netflix, the code “FRANK15” is clearly referring to Frank Underwood, the protagonist from House of Cards so expertly played by Kevin Spacey. And as all “binge watchers” know, Netflix released the show’s fourth season that very same day.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, my spouse is a privacy-conscious man who claims to be impervious to advertising and uses ad-blockers on all his devices… But this one really had him stunned.

Was the ad a bit creepy and invasive? Maybe.

Was it so very relevant and tempting enough that we thought of cancelling our dinner plans? Definitely.

Every time I’ve tested products, services or brands in focus groups in recent years, participants have stressed the importance of local products*. In qualitative research, local companies, brands or products are often preferred over others, and the reasons for gravitating towards these are legion… Higher quality perception: For example, fruits and vegetables are considered fresher; […]

THE INFLUENCE OF MARKETING ON BRAND IMAGE
As a semi-recent immigrant – coming up on five years now; Go Habs Go! – I find myself having different perceptions of certain brands than those around me.

Take the beer Stella Artois, for example. Even after all of this time, it still makes me giggle when I see it advertised as “Premium” Belgian Beer.

Back home, in the land of beer, chocolate and waffles (or Belgium, as some like to call it), Stella Artois has been around for centuries. But in Belgium, there is nothing premium about it. It’s one of the five mass-produced lager brands and is, quite frankly, perceived on the lower-end side of the quality spectrum (think Colt 45).