China232.com Blog

Add and I have been working on a monster secret project.  We’re still doing the 232, so don’t worry.  We’ve been going pretty wild in the VIP room as well, so you’d be very wise to check that out.  Trust me…

Anyway…

So the secret project is that we’re now teaming up with our best friend from our home town in Canada to make the world’s best brand of potent and effective herbal supplements.

Herbal supplements are kind of like a “natural medicine” from plants.  A lot of the brands on the market don’t work well because they are made from very low quality parts of the plants.

It would be like trying to make good wine, but instead of using great quality grapes, you use the dirt and the leaves, and the stems.

Ridiculous!

The first couple of products that we’re making are for sleep and anxiety.

The sleep formula we’re making is not too hard to understand.  It is designed to make you fall asleep quickly, stay asleep the whole night, and wake up in the morning feeling energized and AWESOME!  A lot of products on the market don’t do that at all, and either don’t work, or they make you wake up feeling “groggy”.  Groggy means really sleepy and sort of “out of it”.  Like the only way to get through the day is to have 3 cups of coffee.  That is “groggy”.  The product is called “Sleep X”  You can check it out here.  Herbal Sleep Supplement

I’d love to hear what you think of the concept and the page design

Then next product is an anti anxiety mood enhancer.  That means it makes you feel good, feel happy, feel confident, and feel less nervous.  We’re SUPER excited about this one.  We’ll we’re excited about both actually, but this one even more.

Check it out here and let us know what you think of this.  Natural Anxiety Supplement

In the near future, we plan on making some detox ones, and some weight loss ones.  The weight loss one we’re working on will make you burn fat, not feel hungry, and feel really happy, all at the same time.  No one else has made this type yet, but we’re going to do it.

The brand name is 88herbs.  We’re branding it as the “best Canadian supplements”  Well, to be honest, we’re going for the world’s best brand.  But we’re starting to sell in Canadian stores but online internationally.

I’d love to hear what you guys think, any advice you have, and if you think it would sell well in your country.  Where are you from and do people buy this kind of thing?  Trust me, these work really well.  And we have all the legal paperwork from Health Canada (the medical part of our government).

We’ll talk about some real stories (good and bad) in the business English part of our VIP lessons.  This is a really interesting time and I hope you guys follow along for the ride with us as we jump into this new thing!

Please let me know your thoughts, comments, and questions for all this!  If you have any ideas at all, please share!

Let’s let 2014 be the best year for English learning EVER, so now is not the time to be shy.

This blog post is actually more of a discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of “Youtube” or “independent news” VS “mainstream news”

Mainstream news would be stuff like the news on TV, or major newspapers like the New York Times.  If it’s a big company making news, it’s “mainstream news”.  They have the advantage of having more money than independent bloggers or people making news on Youtube.  They can use all that money to send their staff to find out the real story.  They might (not always) be more attractive (if they are on TV) or talented at writing (If they write for a major newspaper).   Sounds like they should be a lot better right?  Well…

The problem with mainstream news is that it’s almost impossible to tell exactly how fake it is and how much BS they are feeding us.  Why would a major news organization want to make fake news if they can just tell the truth?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this question lately for some reason.  (I’m weird, I know.  You can say it.  Lol

Companies pay millions of dollars for advertising to the mainstream news companies.  So, even though the news organizations can theoretically write or say whatever they want, it’s the companies who are actually in control because they are paying the money.  They are not in direct control of the content, but they will take their advertising dollars to another place if they aren’t happy with the content of the news.

I read somewhere that climate change was hardly talked about at all last year by anyone in the mainstream media.  This is a perfect example of the power companies have with the advertising dollars.  Do you think that big oil companies will want to advertise on a news channel or newspaper that talks about how terrible oil is?  No way!  Do you think that Walmart will want to spend millions of USD on advertising to news channels that talk about how Walmart loves paying terrible wages to their workers and how they also try not to give them health insurance?  Obviously not.

So all private news stations and newspapers are corrupted by the people who pay them money.  It’s a huge problem and it leads to a very brainwashed society.

When I was growing up, I remember learning that government owned news networks are terrible because they always lie to make their own country look good and other countries look bad.  That is totally true, BUT, as I’ve grown up, I’ve also learned that news from private news companies is also a huge joke.  It’s almost impossible to get reliable news because there is so much bias in mainstream media.

Independent news shows on Youtube and people are blogging about the news are a lot better in the sense that they can say or write whatever they want because they don’t deal with advertisers directly, but the problem with them is that they don’t have the money to get the real information themselves.  If a blogger wants to write about a news story, they can’t send someone to the actual place the event is happening, they can only follow the mainstream news and then make their best guess from that.  It’s sick!

Hopefully this will change with “new media”, but it’s going to take some time.  BTW, “new media” is basically a term that describes the ways of getting information on the internet.  ”Youtube, Twitter, Blogging, etc”.  It’s in contrast to “traditional media” which is print newspapers, online newspapers, and TV news.

The news is different in every country, and it shapes our cultures and our understanding of the world.  I’d love to hear your thoughts and opinions on how you think the news is covered in your country, how you think it’s covered internationally, and what you think a possible solution is.  Do you even think it’s a big problem like I do?  Very curious to hear your thoughts on that below.

Add and I are also SUPER excited this week since the launch of our brand new private English community.  I’ve got a very strong feeling this is going to kick ass more than anything we’ve ever done, BY FAR.  Thanks to everyone who is in there already, and thanks especially for sharing your stories and helping to make it kick total ass.  Hope to see more of you in there… (It will be awesome; just sayin…)    :)

Looking forward to your comments as always guys!

Have a great day!

I like sharing both English AND culture with you guys.  That’s what the 232 brand is all about.  It’s impossible to learn English properly without learning tons of new culture as well.

I just watched the “Super Bowl” today.  The super bowl is a very famous sporting match.  It’s the final game of NFL football.

This is a very different game than what most of the world calls “football”.  We call the game that is played at the world cup “soccer”.  We call “American football” just “football”.

Soccer isn’t so popular in America and Canada (probably because we suck at it).  So when we’re talking to each other about football, we’re talking about a different game.  And the most important game of the year is the “Super Bowl”.

This is a MAJOR sporting event on TV because about 100 million people in the US watch it on TV.  That is about 30% of the whole country.  More Americans watch the Super Bowl more than anything else on TV.  This means that advertisers LOVE this opportunity to make TV commercials.  Every year, companies pay a fortune (lot’s of money) for one 30 second commercial.   This year, one 30 second commercial cost about $4 000 000 USD

These Super Bowl commercials get talked about a lot.  It’s the best way to make many people think of your brand all at one time.  Now with the internet, Super Bowl commercials are even more important, because people watch them both on TV and then on Youtube and other video sharing sites.  They share the commercials on Facebook etc.  Blogs write about them.  Even I’m giving free advertising to these companies right now!

These are NOT just regular commercials.  The companies spend a lot of time and money designing these special commercials.  They are supposed to make people think positively about your brand.  They are supposed to make people talk about your brand.  They Can’t be boring.  Boring is a bigger fail than stupid or weird.

I want to talk about 3 commercials I saw today and show them to you.  I’d love to hear your comments below.  Which ones, if any, did you like?  Why did you like them?  Why did you not like them?

1st commercial:  Blackberry

I wanted to start off by talking about Blackberry, Canada’s most famous technology company.  Maybe it’s because I’m Canadian, I don’t know.  Anyway, Blackberry is trying to get back in the smart phone game after totally sucking compared with Android, Samsung, and Apple.  They are starting to sell their new Blackberry 10.  It is by far the best phone the company has ever made.  This could save the company if people like and buy the phone.   I’m curious to hear what you guys think of the brand image of Blackberry in your country.

The commercial tried to be clever and basically say the Blackberry 10 can do so many things, therefore it would be easier to show you the things the new Blackberry CAN’T do.  It’s supposed to get people thinking and talking about the new phone.  Was this a good idea?  Here it is:

2nd commercial:  Doritos

This one is a cute of from Doritos.  They are trying to show the relationship and a guy with his pet goat.  The goat loves to eat Doritos.  What do you think about this one?  (By the way, It’s a joke.  Americans don’t really have pet goats!)

3rd commercial:  GoDaddy

This is a commercial from GoDaddy.  This is a website company.  The commercial takes a big risk and wants people talking about the commercial.  Some people think it’s terrible, some people think it’s awesome.  It depends on your taste.  Certainly people ARE talking about it.  Do you think it’s too much?  Was it a good idea or a bad move?  I’d love to hear your thoughts guys!!!!!

Add and I started this China232 project about 5/6 years ago and have learned so much since then. We made so many marketing mistakes and have tried to learn from them.

Before we started this, we read a ton of stuff about how to do marketing, but at the end of the day, we really had no idea of what really works and what really doesn’t. Marketing is much more of an art than it is a science. It’s really hard to know what to do until you try it and learn from your experiences.

Some of you may already know that I’ve started writing my own personal blog about what I’ve found out about marketing. I’m using my own name, Andrew Best, to market myself as an expert or a “guru”. It’s kind of funny to actually do that, but I truly believe I’ve learned enough from my mistakes over the years to actually put myself in that category. You can read along and let me know what you think.

A lot of this stuff on my marketing blog is a combination of the hundreds of books I’ve read over the years and also what I’ve learned making China232.

Looking forward to your thoughts as always.

The ability to design cool brands and logos is always something I’ve had great respect for, partly because I’m just terrible at it.

Art is one of those skills where you either have it, or you don’t. Unfortunately I don’t so I’ve gotta get help from somewhere because I realize it’s such an important part of any business. I was looking around for the best brand and logo designer and I found Son Duong.

In English there is a saying “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” but in my opinion, sometimes beautiful work is pretty obvious when you see it. Check out Son’s design work. It’s really unique and obviously awesome. I’ve got less than 0.1% of his artistic talent and I’m really hoping Add and I can get him to help with the logo for the 232.

If you go to his website above, you’ll get to see a wide range of what he does. I’m super impressed and I wanted to share his work with you guys. If your company needs a new brand image or logo, he’s the guy for sure. Just contact him at sonofagunart.com

I’m sure he’ll deliver something pretty sweet. He’s able to do all kinds of different things with images so it could be a real “one stop shop” if you are lucky enough to get him to work for you.

I’d love to hear your comments about his work. I think it looks wicked!