Seoul, Day 1: Nike Visit!!!

Today was our first full day in Seoul. After getting to our hotel at about 6:30pm yesterday (4:30am CST), it was a struggle to stay awake; but we forced ourselves to get out of the hotel and see a bit of the city. Thank goodness we did, as it allowed me to pass out at 9:30pm and sleep through the night. Battle jet-lag over, Erika wins.

What was on the docket for today: Nike visit and more city exploration.

Nike was pretty darn cool. We were escorted into one of their show rooms for the presentation, which held a number of items that have yet to be introduced to the stores. I instantly spotted a pair of yellow and blue running shoes that I will have my eye out for within the next year. The presentation gave us an overview of Nike Global, and then more specifically discussed Nike Seoul and their local marketing strategies. Interestingly, one of the cultural barriers for Nike in this country is that it is a culture of education. Apparently, kids spend way too much time studying. "If you sleep for four hours or less, you will get into one of the top four universities" is a key idea that most young students take very seriously. At most, the typical kid (as young as elementary school up though high school) only gets about 20 minutes of exercise. Basically, kids here study wayyyyy too much. Since Nike is all about athletics and sports apparel, you can see how this has an effect on their marketing strategy. If working out and athletics is not an important part of their target consumer's lifestyle, they basically have to convince a culture to change their behavior. Getting a consumer to change a behavior is one of the toughest challenges for a marketer.  

They also discussed how they might take a global campaign and give it more of a local feel so their message resonates with the local consumer. For example, they might use a local soccer star, who is well known on the national level in their marketing campaigns. While the global campaign might feature the Brazillian footballer, Ronaldo, the local campaign could feature Ki Sung-Yueng, a South Korean who plays with the Celtics. They further discussed the dynamics between global and local, and how much autonomy they have to make campaign decisions. Basically, everything depends on the situation and the campaign at hand.

This was a fun and interesting visit for our first day. Plus they gave us free swag!

Since today was our only day in this beautiful city with an free afternoon, we decided to take full advantage. After a quick shoe change at the hotel, we were back out in the city and on our way to see a Palace! We braved the subway system, which actually wasn't that difficult once you got over everything being in not only a foreign language, but completely foreign alphabet and writing system. They actually make it more intuitive by using a lot of arrows and numbers. You know you are heading in the right direction, if the numbers are going in the right direction (up or down).

One more note on their subways: they are super clean and bright.

We found our way to the Palace and made it in time for the last english tour of the day. It was pretty cool. What I found most interesting was the sharp contrast between the old palace and the modern city background.

After our tour of the palace, we walked about a half mile to a market to do some shopping and bargaining. We ended up finding a neat restaurant in the market to have dinner. Yes, we had to take our shoes off and sit on the ground. Note to all girls: maybe plan on wearing shorts or pants as it is very difficult to navigate this dining position in a skirt. After dinner, the group of us basically ran back to the subway, as we wanted to go on a river boat cruise at 7:30. We missed the boat by 5 minutes and had to wait for the 8:40. By the time we arrived back at the hotel, we were all falling over with exhaustion.

Tomorrow we'll start the day at 9:30am and we'll visit three companies, ending the day at 7pm. There are of course more pictures and stories from today, but this post is already extremely long and the wifi is extremely slow. So, good night for now and I'll try to post again tomorrow!