Apple is Alive and Well in China

     

It is interesting to look into different cultures to observe different marketing strategies used in retail to promote business. Many malls and super markets use a lot of sales people as marketing tools to stand in their assigned position waiting to pounce on anyone who dares to walk by, but if you are lucky enough to have a small store on a city street the marketing strategy is a little different.

     

Around dusk you may see a lot of people migrating outside of a store with a lot of hustle and bustle going on. Workers (or a catering company) are busy setting up huge lights, a stage, speaker system, smoke machine, and a tent with marketing information. They can get this thing set up and ready to go in about an hour. Then the promotional marketing show begins – it usually consists of two cute Chinese girls wearing matching short shorts and t-shirts – the music begins and the girls dance in the form of an aerobic workout session. I can never tell if we are supposed to join in like a flash mob dance or just stand there and watch – well after around 5 minutes the realization settles in that they only have a couple of routines that continue over and over again. Oh well, the thrill is gone. Reality sets in and I take note of the store doing the promotion and move on. 

     

Now that you have an overview of this marketing strategy I can tell you what I experienced last night.

      

I was riding my bike home from my weekly shopping excursion when I noticed a promotional event taking place in front of the new Apple store.  China is big on Apple products and although many cannot afford them – given the choice – most people would buy them - including me. An unlocked GSM iphone would answer all of my prayers at this point in time, but at $800-900.00 a pop currently this lands at the bottom of my priority list.

       

The music I heard intrigued me and as I got closer, I noticed two Chinese girls on stage; both were beautiful with long black hair and both girls were dressed in the same classy white ruffled outfit. Each was playing a violin and they were doing a great job. The violins were backed up with an almost eerie new age techno sound and it was strangely enticing. 

    

 It was awesome, I was ready to run home, grab my neighbors and come back out to listen to the music, but after about five minutes – as with most promotional events – I noticed that the music was sort of doing the same thing over and over again. Once more reality set in as I took note of the store and moved on.  

     

Please keep in mind that I never visit cities in the U.S. unless I am on business, visiting my brother and his family who lives in Seattle, or my sister who lives in Fort Lauderdale. It is possible that this type of promotional event is common practice in U.S. cities and I am not aware of it.     

     

This is interesting to me because when Myrtle Beach runs a promotional event we usually go to a lot of trouble to set it up and it would probably last all afternoon or evening. Sales people would be standing by with promotional items and drinks and food would be served. The media would be alerted as well as the police and possibly an ambulance would be on alert for the occasion.

     

So given my experience with promotional events (and I have both worked and participated in quite a few) I must say that I sort of feel like I was ripped of something more that was not there. 

I may not be ready to take the Apple plunge today, but it will happen in the future. 

     

If Apple had added a little more to this event such as – complementary bottled water, a few snacks, and possibly a few friendly low key sales people wandering around to motivate the crowd to be happy or to dance

 – would this be more effective

 – or was it just as effective the way it was? 

Would I have become a more motivated Apple consumer buying an iPhone at an earlier date if I saw that this company was making a better effort than other stores to reach out to its potential clientele?

       

It might have knocked the iPhone up a notch on my wish list, but as of today, my thoughts still stand solid. This was a class act promotional marketing tool shining a new light on Baoji. It raised the bar just a bit – to show that culture could be intertwined with marketing promotions to compliment the people who live and work in the town instead of the gimme, gimme, gimme attitude.

:)