Hello and welcome to “Teach the 4 Ps” a blog for marketing instructors and people interested in reading about marketing. The blog came about after Bill Perreault and I (Joe Cannon) developed a newsletter (Teach the 4Ps) for instructors using our text books – Essentials of Marketing and Basic Marketing. The newsletter is designed to give instructors current articles, websites, viral videos, and online advertisements – with comments suggesting how they could be used in teaching the introductory marketing course. We all know our students like current examples, so Bill and I want to provide more for users of our books. We received many positive comments on the newsletter – so we decided to share our ideas with anyone teaching marketing or interested in marketing. We hope you will share back – and give us comments and ideas on the blog.
For several reasons, this resource is even more valuable in a blog:
It makes the newsletter interactive – we hope you will offer comments on our posts.
We post almost every day – making everything that much more current.
The blog format makes it easy to find J.I.T. (just in time) examples for your classes. For example, say are you teaching pricing this week – click on “Price” in categories to the right and you will have a listing of only those blog posts that have something to do with price.
So, please take a look around. We are kicking this off with more than 80 posts already up. Let us know what you think? Do you have ideas about how we might make this resource even more valuable? Click on the headline above and add your comments (or read those of others).
The day after the Super Bowl there are plenty of pundits ready to crown the best and worst ads shown during yesterday’s game. Plus, there are plenty of sites dedicated to crowning fan favorites — see “Super Bowl Ads 2010” at the Wall Street Journal (I don’t think you need a subscription here), which as of this writing ranks the Audi “Green Car” as tops based on the votes of WSJ readers. Probably the grand daddy of Super Bowl ratings, the USA Today Ad Meter (which uses a panel of 250 adult volunteers) had the Mars’ Snickers with Betty White at the top (we embedded that ad below). Here at “Teach the 4 Ps” used the Media Curves widget (see post below) — it’s online voters ranked the Budweiser Bull #1. All these sites include links to all the ads. Among pundits, you might enjoy reading reviews of the ads from Seth Stevenson at Slate.com, Stuart Elliott at the New York Times, or Bob Garfield over at Advertising Age (subscription may be required for this last one).
By the way, I would love to hear how you use these ads in class. I usually show a couple of the AdMeter’s top rated ads and one of the lower ads. I explain the research methodology used by USA Today. Then I ask students why the top ones are “better.” Eventually, I ask how we should judge these ads — and use it to bring us back to Promotion objectives. If the objective is “likeable among a large cross-section of Americans” then these ads score well — but maybe the goals are to drive purchase, build awareness, or inform a particular target market. This points out that these “popularity contests” may not be the best metric for judging the success of these commercials.
I will try to send you a variety of post Super Bowl advertising links on Monday. But if you are looking for something real-time, check this out. If you click on the “Learn More” link in the widget, you can read about the research methodology that Media Curves employs. It might be interesting in class to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of the approach in a market research class.
MediaCurves.com is conducting a study with thousands of Americans on the 2010 Super Bowl commercials. Participants of the study will evaluate the ads shortly after they air during the game. As the preliminary results come in, an online widget (see right) will be updated with the ads’ scores and overlaying “curves” to represent real-time interest levels.
The top 20 commercials from the previous year’s study are displayed until the first commercial from the 2010 Super Bowl is ready. After the study has concluded, the widget will be updated with the final results.
…and I was not impressed. But somehow, it shot up to #1 (with more than 1.6 million views last week) on Visible Measures Top 10 Viral Video chart — knocking the Evian roller skating babies out. What do you think?
Looking for something fun to show to class. Everybody has their favorite Super Bowl ads – here is one “Top 10″ list at MSNBC, “Ah, the good-old days: The best Super Bowl ads,” (February 2, 2010). While the MSNBC article shows each ad in a small screen, you can search on YouTube for most (if not all) of these ads for a larger format for class. Many of our students may not have even seen these oldies but goodies. My favorite from this list is the classic Larry Bird and Michael Jordan from 1993, “The Showdown” which I embedded below.
My former colleague Jim Pailin, who was in the PhD program with me at North Carolina, worked on a dissertation in this area almost 20 years ago. And it is still true, “Happy Employees Create Better Customer Experiences” (Customer Experience Matters blog, February 1, 2010). Jim was particularly interested in looking at this for services — and I am sure that happy employees matter even more in service businesses. From Bruce Temkin’s blog post you can find a link to Fortune magazine’s list of the 100 best companies to work for.
Brand Keys has released its “2010 Customer Loyalty Engagement Index.” It is interesting to see the winners and losers in 2010 given last year’s economy. Hyundai, whom we have talked about before, leaped to the top of the automobile ranking (from the bottom third in 2009). We talk about customer equity and lifetime value of customers in chapter 2 in our books.
The annual Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Winners are those brands best able to engage consumers and create loyal customers. Initiated in 1997, the Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index is fielded annually in the spring and fall. The current Index examines customers’ relationships with 518 brands in 71 categories.
Personally, I would probably consider printer/copier paper to be a commodity product. Obviously you don’t want to think that if you are in this market. This interview with Double A paper’s Thirawit Leetavorn explains how (Australian firm?) Double A has developed a brand with awareness, differentiation and preference through advertising. You could follow up this video with a couple of ads — the “Girl on the Copier” doesn’t do much for differentiation, but it’s viral and buzz potential built awarness. Another add – “No Jam” develops one of its key points of differentiation. This video series could be used with our books chapter 2 (marketing strategy planning), chapter 4 (positioning), or with a discussion of the product life cycle (market maturity), in Promotion tied to promotion objectives or advertising to create differentiation, or even around pricing. It’s also nice to show students some international examples.
By next week we will have plenty of Super Bowl television commercials to “edu-tain” our students. Over at Marketing Profs they have their own top 10 list viral campaigns (with links to each) – see “Decade’s Top 10 Viral Campaigns.” The list goes back to the John West “Bear” (see below) one of the earliest viral videos from back in 200 when we had to send videos as e-mail attachments. The list also has classics like Eepybird’s “Mentos and Diet Coke” and yes the “Subservient Chicken” still works — as well as some campaigns I had not heard of before. I always try to link an ad or video with the class content for the day. Obviously it is easy to tie viral campaigns to discussions of IMC, advertising, and publicity. Sometimes I wonder if the video actually has a promotion objective — and you can ask the class that. You might also ask what market research could be done to test the effectiveness of a viral campaign. How else have you made viral videos like these relevant to your classes?
Author Laura Ries provides a post with her perspective on the current Verizon-AT&T battle at her Ries’ Pieces blog, “Verizon and its Atomic Bomb” (January 27, 2010). We have blogged about this battle before on Teach the 4 P’s. Laura is the daughter of Al Ries (whose now almost 30-year old book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind with Jack Trout is still full of great thinking). Laura is no slouch either, a frequent commentator on television news she has co-authored several books with her father and runs a consulting firm.
We have used webinars to promote our text books — and I think they work great. The media is really easy to use and allows marketers to convey information in an interactive environment. It is also a very efficient way for buyers and sellers in B2B to share information. Many B2B sellers feel that “Webinars educate, drive brand awareness” (BtoB, January 18, 2010). This article does not provide any particular company examples, but it certainly suggests the types of Promotion objectives that Webinars can help achieve. So it provides some non-traditional examples you can use in discussing Promotion objectives.
