Assignment #5 Event Participation—-Go sens go!!

My dearest friend Mishi got invited by Algonquin to the ice hockey game—-Ottawa Senators VS New Jersey Devils. Of course, I decided to go to the game with Mishi, as her plus one. Here is the ticket I got:

Even we both are not huge hockey fans, but we had never been to any hockey games before, so we were excited for days before the game. It was on Thurday, April 10th, we left school early, changed our red colored dresses, turned on our very loud music while driving to Kanata. We were surprised by the huge traffic on our way diving, and we knew these people are all going to the game.

When I first got in the statium, I couldn’t believe my eyes for the super-ecxited crowd. I didn’t even know there are so many people in Ottawa. This photo was taken before the game begins:

We were in the top level suite with all Algonquin people and we are served by nice dinner. Loved the chicken:

Here was the game begins and we were busy taking selfies:

We were all moved by the excitement and lively atmosphere. We screamed, laughed and danced for our Ottawa Senators. Of course, Ottawa Senators won the game as 2:1.

What really surprised me was they have all these sponsers and fans, it was like a complete community. What will happen if they really have a lockout?  So I discussed this question with one of my hockey fan friend, here are some major impacts could happen if they lockout because of the negative economic.

To the teams, iManagers will suffer from lockouts since their salaries came from part of the revenues as well. For these professional players, managers and those who work for the team will lose their jobs. Many teams will struggle with their low finance status and having a hard time to maintain their training and morale.

To the sports, “According to Intuit (2012), an estimated $800 million revenues loss was caused by 1994 Major League Baseball lockouts and an estimated $3 billion revenue loss was caused by 2004 National Hockey League lockouts.” The lockout cost on the sport is magnified by many things besides the actual game matches, such as the revenues made by TV commercials, equipment production and more. “For example, there would not be any 1.7 million worth Super Bowl Ad or 2.7 billion licensed NBA product made if the cancellation of those games happened in 2011 (Ocean Media, 2011). ” The lockouts occurred in one sport will lead their audiences to participate in another sport and cause significant loss to itself on a large scale.

To The Sport Fans, economically speaking, sport fans benefit from lockout as they will save their money for buying tickets. However, there is another way to look at this issue. “In September 2012, the NHL began its lockout. Twitter sentiment toward the NHL and its players was just 12% positive (MediaMiser, 2013).” Fans became disappointed and upset about the lockouts, especially those loyal fans. They may easily bring their negativity with them day to day. The potential economic cost caused by these negativity emotions was imponderable.

To The Local Communitie, small businesses are usually the real victims from lockouts. “According to SportsNet (2012), because of the NHL lockouts in 2012, drinking establishments were being hit the hardest with falling nearly 35 percent and restaurants were taking a nearly 11 percent hit. Edmonton was facing the largest impact with business falling by 27 percent as a whole.” Besides that, thousands of people may lose their jobs in one city due to a professional game cancellation.

Anyways, we should look further and look beyond the salaries and contracts. Better to let the games keep playing. It was a really great game and thanks for Algonquin college and my friend Mishi for this opportunity!

COM0015 Assignment #1Blog Post #4 Out of the box

In terms of social media, its unique feature which differentiated itself from traditional media is bringing interaction between the end users and developing a two way communication. Information can be easily transferred between users without space and time limitation.

Realizing such a feature of social media, many creative methods on marketing and branding products were adopted by smart players. Viral marketing is one of the most representative examples of using social media to create a new way of marketing. Through traditional media channel, such as TV, newspapers, communication is usually one way. The direct audience/ reader absorbed the information and that’s the end. Stand on the view as marketing personnel, only if the audience/ reader willing to, the information may be spread only through mouth to mouth with incomplete detail and not as convincible as the original one. Information will not be exposed to the public without deep personal interests. However, social media change the way information spread. In most of the cases, one click is enough to share the information to all the people that are connecting to the user, and shared exactly as the original design. The level of information exposure will be reached maximum. Other people who may interest in the product but never got the chance to access its information from the traditional way now involuntarily absorbed the information. One by another, viral marketing brought its strong impact through social media and became a successful method on marketing.

COM0015 Assignment #1 Blog post #3 Professional Networking now and in the future

As an important part of my life, I consider networking is equally important comparing to gaining academic knowledge from class learning. On the internet, I had been using Facebook several years ago and used it to keep in touch with most of my friends. Ever since the emergence of Linkedin, I realized its power of more effectively and efficiently to develop professional social network instead of regular personal level network. I learnt to use Linkin and kept tracking others’ working status from the people around me. But I have to commit that I often used Linkin when I need to use it, not as casual as posting things on Facebook.

On the other hand, I attended many different networking events that are hold by the college. Besides grabbing business card from others, I now started to ask if they used Linkedin so that I can get their newest update all the time.

For the following half to one year, I am planning to attend more of the job orientation event where will also be a good place to social with other people. And I will better complete my Linkedin page to interact with people through this social media channel.

COM0015 Assignment #1 post #2 Strong & Weak Organizations

The strong case: Nike 

When we talk about professional sport shoes, we are easily come up with brands like Nike, Adidas, Reebok, and Puma. Then based on these, when we think about the young culture of sneakers, Nike becomes a symbol of popularity. The swoosh check mark and “JUST DO IT” slogan have identified Nike around the world for more than two decades without even mentioning the company name. For the purpose of making its potential buyers believe they are the best, Nike introduced a series of superstars from sport to entertainment areas. Comparing the list including Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Andre Agassi, Shane Warne, Maria Sharapova, and Venus and Serena Williams who endorsed Nike’s sport equipment, Jay-Z and other rap stars have the same effort on Nike’s pop colour sneakers. When the young people involve in the rap culture groups, Jay-Z and other rap stars represent their cultural spirit in every of their skills, movements, and dresses. So after the time Nike asked them to wear its products, these products automatically became the highest option for the interest groups. Don’t forget the quality of Nike that mentioned above. People do not follow a star randomly, it is the well-design of Nike shoes, plus the celebrity effect, made these people crazy. The less make the things more precious, the limit release of Nike Air Yeezy IIs made the shoes unbelievably valuable so that people were willing to wait for days to get one pair. It’s in part been driven by Nike’s use of Instagram; inspirational, community-building hashtags like #MakeItCount and #NeverNotRunning, which collectively are home to nearly 200,000 images, rally runners and wannabe runners to engage with both Nike and with their communities, making the photo-sharing network a starting point for the IRL translation of Nike’s URL messaging.

The weak case: Adidas 

Besides sportive brand, Adidas has more focus on originality and fashion style. Which give them a lot of follower, but not as effective as Nike’s all-star strategy. Also, Adidas is not putting as much effort as Nike in social network such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. At same time, Adidas has been too slow to introduce new products. Customer can see Nike have new line of sports shoes evey year, but not Adidas. On the internet search ranking of SE in China, the search time of Adidas is 266815, but Nike is 444887. Over all, the use of social media for Adidas is obviously weaker then Nike.

COM0015 Assignment #1 Tool & Sources

    Ren ren is the most favorite social network I have been using since 2009. It is the earliest school social network in mainland of China. For Chinese people, Renren is the Chinese veison of Facebook. Because of few reasons we don’t discuss, Chinese people in mainland have no access to Facebook, however, we have Renren. Same as Facebook, I can see what are my friends doing, even I am not in China. I can also post my recent photoes, the news I’m reading, the music I’m listing, and so on. The most thing I love about Renren is, it is a way for me to get in touch with my friends even they are far away. We share the same funny video, we “like” the same hot guy’s picture, and we comments each other’s status just like we are talking face to face.

 The most thing my boyfriend and I love to do for relex is going to theatre and watch a nice movie. The Cineplex app on my iPhone helped us a lot. This app shows the showtime for every theatre in Canada, it makes sure I can buy movie ticket any time and it gives the nearest theatre for me. It would show the barcode of my movie ticket ss soon as I finish my payment, I can just go straight to the theatre and scan the barcode, I get my ticket instant! How efficient and wonderful is it!

 Reading newspaper is one of my daliy habit. Metro is free, easy to read, and has great amount of information. I like the feeling of have somebody hand you a newspaper with a nice big smile and “good morning” while you waiting for bus. The bottom page is always the first thing for me to read—-the Horoscope! I would feel much more motivated if my horoscope says something nice on that day. Silly? (laugh). Through metro newspaper, I read a lot of news on the international page about how the outsider sees China. It is quite different from the information we have been told!

 Some people might tend to listening music while driving, but I find that it’s more fun for listening news in car. CBC car radio provides comperhansive news I was not expected. It is like you are getting information when you are not even paying attention. And I really like the voice of the anchor!