Branding and marketing tips from Markkinointiviikko

Hello and welcome. First of all sorry about the quality of pictures. It was really dark and my hand wasn´t steady enough =(

This week started really well. With my group we made some plans for our Mazda project and I am happy that we have some kind of realistic plan. On Wednesday I visited Messukeskus because of "markkinoinnin viikko"-fair. There was lots of great speakers and I am going to tell you what I learnt.
I was really tired after all the lecturing (for me that was lecturing since I was trying to learn) and when I got home, I fell a sleep while still wearing my clothes on. My favourite speaker was Anne Korkiakoski (If you´re interested to know more about speakers, just google their names).

We can´t compete with prices, but we can compete with quality, design, and mental image

Mrs. Korkiakoski told us about how important marketing is to company. She said that one of the biggest problems in Finnish companies is the lack of marketing. We have very innovative products and services and the quality of workers is top tier. But we are not willing to put more money on marketing and push our sells higher. When we are cutting the costs of everything, Swedish companies are investing and marketing and taking bigger risks. Bigger risk=possibility of bigger profit. Finnish firms are trying to compete with lower prices or with technical features. Marketing is the only way to make a successful brand. Most of the fashion brands are making bad quality clothes (we all know it) and selling them with big price tag. The reason why people buy those clothes is marketing.


Yeah yeah As you probably guessed it already, I don´t like that much brands. Why is that? I think it is quite unfair to sell bad/ok quality with big price. It would be okay, if those brands would stop telling people that their quality is good. When we got the assignment from Mazda, one of the speakers told us this: Brand´s only purpose is to make more money to its owner. When H&M sells 5€ shirts, they are selling shirts that are sold elsewhere for 3€. This example was only generalizing. Why would H&M make expensive commercials and sell their clothes costing the same as always? Isn´t the whole idea of marketing that you´ll make more money to your company. And when company has been caught using child labour many times, that company has lost all of my respect towards it. (Proof) Consumers also should think more about their actions. I think it is sick to make money without any moral.


But back to the main topic. How to make brand successful and ore money to your company? Thw CEO of kotipizza, Tommi Tervonen told us how they rebranded kotipizza. It all started few years ago when kotipizza had rough time. They weren´t making much money and something had to be done. Instead of selling tropicana for 5,90€ like before, they started branding and changed the prices. They made better website that look really good (http://www.kotipizza.fi/fi/pizzat). Before it was yellow and red everywhere which looked really cheap. They made lots of tv commercials that had plots. And the commercials started to become stories. They were not anymore dull commercials trying to sell as many pizzas as possible. They became way of telling people "We are now responsible brand that wants to give to its customers best pizza in Finland". They also started telling people that their actions are are morally good, and transparent. The goal was to produce ethical pizza and also get people to think "I don´t want to eat pizza on Friday. I want to eat ethical pizza on Friday. I absolutely LOVE what they have done! (Kotipizza is ethical). I would like to see more brands that think and do like Kotipizza. But the business. How is their sales now? Was that rebranding successful? Do people want "ethical pizza" and pay for it a bit more? It has grown a lot!


This weekend was one of the best ones this year. I traveled to Tallinn to visit my friends. My best started stuDYING there year ago and another friend of mine moved there few weeks ago. On Thursday I met a man on the boat who told me about his career. I went to sit next to him and we watched hockey game for a moment. We started to talk about activities that you can´t do when travelling during work day (drinking beer is one of the things he missed about since he was going to work that day). Anyway, I had really good time. I tried to learn everything that I could. I was like a sponge sucking all that information the man was sharing with me. Im not going to tell you those secreats that he revealed, but I am really glad that I went to sit next to him and asked more about his life. Not many times you meet person who is as old as your father and is not thinking that you´re too young to talk with. 2 hours went fast and at the end we talked about coaching. He has been also ice hockey player and is a coach now, as am I.

Not one of those cheap ciders at vegetarian restaurant

I thought that this trip was going to be less partying, and more shopping and playing video games. How wrong was I. We stayed up all night and I had time of my life. three nights passed really quickly. We played video games and laughed a lot. We drank beer and made jokes about each others and I even learnt more about billiard. I am really bad at it, but after few drinks I even got a good streak that helped me to win few games. Winning is always fun, but it good company was the reason why I enjoyed playing with friends. Tallinn is full of great pubs and bars where you can easily talk with friends without yelling. I don´t like clubs and that is one of the reasons why I don´t go out that often in Finland. Young people don´t go to pubs that much here, and one of the reasons for that is lack of good pubs. Fun fact; Tallinn offers FREE public transportation to its citizens (http://www.tallinn.ee/eng/freepublictransport/). That is awesome! Small distances, cheap food, free public transportation.. is there anything to NOT love about Tallinn? I almost thought that I should also move to Tallinn and party with other students few times per week, but it feels great to be home with my girlfriend and dog. Sadly I am not sure which one was happier;) Svante, our dog wiggled his tail and barked when I opened the door. It was fun to see his happy face again. He thought it was fun to see me again and he even shared his favorite glove with me.