Right time + Right promotion strategy + Right target market ≠ expensive

We had a marketing manager of a Canadian wireless adopter company as a guest speaker to one of my classes. It was a bit disappointed to know the company is not really doing much marketing in term of promoting its product or brands.

The company do not promote their brand because they think their customers are the dealers or the mobile service providers even though the end user are the consumers. My thought was if they can promote their brand and establish brand awareness or image, they can turn the demand from push to pull. If the end consumer demand for the brand, the dealers would have to carry the product. But they think they are too small in comparison to the cellular phone producer. I believe small company will have way of promoting the product within the budget if they can narrow down to the media target at their customer. Internet marketing would be the answer.

He mentioned since the service provider have bigger share of the profit and should promote the product. But my question was why would the dealer promoting this product while carrying other products. The service provider would be more interested in promoting the service to the consumer, not the product they give away for free. His argument was the cost of advertisement was too high for the small company like theirs. Generally most of the company only think of traditional promotion and advertisement. I was wondering why didn't they think of Internet marketing. Their target customer should be those use Internet frequently and online marketing should be the most efficient way for promotion. I guess the marketing managers did his MBA in 80s and there was no Internet marketing course. But it was a trend and as a marketing manager, the idea should had been picked up long ago.

If they could have promote the brand awareness when market was still fresh with less competitor, the negotiation power would be in the hand of the company, not dealers. If their brand awareness were established the company might also have some price advantage but was fail to recognized as an advantage. I think it is important for company to maintain or improve the position in the market with promotion strategy at the right time.

Other thought:

I was in a conversation with some Chinese Governor who had visited few Canadian companies in Vancouver. The overall impression of Canadian business was not aggressive in comparison to US company. The example of Nortel was one of the first telecommunication companys to invest in China but did not take the first mover advantage and now became one of bad example of foreign investment in China. They also mention about the company they visited that develop and produce special engine for bus. Personally I do think Canada has the best bus design and they agree with the concept. But that company fail to see the opportunity in China for the new bus reform in preparation fo Olympic and Shanghai Expo.

All of these make me wonder why. Is that just management or culture difference? We all know Canadian are nice but would that mean they are less aggressive too. Beside Blackberry, there is not many global Canadian brand out there that is well know. Is there anything to do to change it?