2012 FURBY CRAZE DMCM1213

FURBY IS BACK AND BETTER THAN EVER! 

WELCOME TO THE ULTIMATE 2012 CHILDREN'S CHRISTMAS CRAZE!! 

Remember back in 1998 those super cute FURBIES that many of us had? Well it was this time 14 years ago when Hasbro (makers of Furby) achieved an accolade of the best selling toy for 1998, with over 40 million  units sold for around £24. That original invasion lasted 2 full years before the population woke from the craze in 2005. You may remember Furby from his first incarnation, the chatty five-inch-tall robot that found its way under countless Christmas trees. Back then Furby was equipped with robotic eyes and ears, simple sensors and the ability to speak. It was amazing at the time...

From this in 1998 

To the revolution in technology for the 2012 invasion 

Well look what the digital age has developed.... ohh how times have changed! The new Furby takes the idea of a talking electronic sidekick to a new level: With a variety of 10 bright colours available, its body is more active, with the ability to wiggle its ears and dance. In an interesting design choice, Hasbro opted to replace Furby’s classic white eyes with LCDs. The 2012 edition includes built in Wi-Fi connectivity which allows it to transmit a live steam of video content while interacting with its friends! 

BUT there is one problem... The 2012 invasion has led to toy stores, supermarkets and on-line stores selling out of these furry critters! Parents including myself are now frantically struggling to get hold of one of these must-have 2012 Christmas toys. Originally retailing for around £60 at Asda, Argos and John Lewis, EBay dealers have identified the profit margin and are now selling for between £80-£100. Quite a price increase since 1998.. I wonder how much the next generations will cost and what they will be able to do... Drive cars? Cook?...

Experts reckon they could easily be selling for more than £100 each by Christmas Eve. The four highest bidders to the mailbox@sundaymail.co.uk will get their hands on a Furby, which they can pick up in-store or have posted to them in plenty of time for Santa’s sleigh.

To keep up with prices and try to get you hands on one (if you are lucky) visit UK toy sale

If you know anywhere that has stock or is going to get some please get it touch... 
The teal is the one on the Christmas list...

Twitter 2012

Twitter...

Twitter is still the enigma of the social networking with its usefulness questioned by a lot of people. Its simplicity is still its main attraction along with its immediacy in breaking  news about the latest  ”events”.

Research shows that the main reason people retweet is due to interesting content.

As it approaches its sixth birthday its revenue is slowly climbing with projections that in 2012 its income will  hit $260 million.

Some facts and figures to note about Twitter are:

• There are over 465 million accounts
• 175 million tweets a day
• 1 million accounts are added to Twitter every day
• Top 3 countries on Twitter are USA at 107 million, Brazil 33 million and Japan at nearly 30 million
• Busiest event in Twitter’s history is now “Castle in the Sky” TV screening 25,088 tweets per second (previous record was the last minutes of the 2012 Superbowl with 10,245 tweets per second).

DSMMCM12

Task Aii Aiii DSMMCM12

Task Aii

The Strategic Direction

Davies Sports currently sell personalised football Team Wear range.

There is opportunity to expand the range to offer additional personlised sports kits as Davies Sports main competitors do not offer the same service.

Our Decision

1^st priority is to offer the swimwear range as we feel this would be a marketing opportunity as recent reports stating that 40% of children are unable to swim. This product offering will be highly supported the Government as there is a urge to get children swimming. Steve Parry’s celebrity endorsement will help increase raising brand awareness and influence consumers purchased decisions as it will create a high level of public interest. It will also create differential competitive advantage among competitors.

Our decision

We feel that strategic direction 1 should be the core focus because it will increase opportunity for customers to make swimwear purchases and allow cross selling. Due to a very competitive sports market we feel that direction two would be time consuming and difficult to accomplish. However we feel that there is also an potential risk traffic could be slower than anticipated. Improving website traffic will also result in increase demand, therefore we have chosen not to focus on direct two as it will be achieved on our focus on direction one.

Task Aiii

 

Chosen Approach

In order to achieve our strategic direction we feel PPC will be our best source to increase website traffic which will intern create higher brand awareness. Taking into consideration its advantages, in the given time frame it will allow for instant results and be less time consuming. Using PPC social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter will improve coverage and increase awareness as they have a huge target market creating opportunities such as directing people to Davies Sports website.

Using SEO marketing would be extremely time consuming due to the high volume of sports companies. Affiliate marketing we feel would be the wrong direction because as a company we want to be customer focused and would be unsure if the information given by the affiliate was correct.