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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.”  [Note:  sorry this link used to work, but apparently was only temporarily publicly available.]  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.

As marketers move to social media, they are trying to figure out how to measure the success of such campaigns.  An Adweek article posted this morning notes that advertisers may soon have a new way to measure the amount of online buzz (see “New Campaign Metric:  Social Chatter,” January 27, 2010).

But, “Does Chattter Matter?”  An article in the November 2009 issue of the Journal of Interactive Marketing, “Does Chatter Matter? The Impact of User-Generated Content on Music Sales“  (by Vasant Dhar and Elaine A. Chang, pp. 300-307) shows some evidence that in the music industry online chatter matters and predicts future sales.  We could use more academic research to show what types of products benefit from online chatter.

Here is a new ad from Coca Cola that ties into the Olympics.  Does a nice job reinforcing the happiness positioning (see earlier post) — and everyone (o.k., lots of people) like these Olympic athletes have fun together themes.

Another example from China — this one looks at retailing there.  Just published in BusinessWeek, “China: Where Retail Dinosaurs Are Thriving” (January 21, 2010).   This might be useful when talking about consumer behavior in other countries, in retail, or international.

Ben Sturner, president and founder of sports marketing firm The Leverage Agency, talks about ambush advertising (The Wall Street Journal, June 22, 2010).  This is where a non-sponsor advertises around a sports event, diluting the benefits of the official sponsor, often confusing consumers who might believe the “ambusher” is the real sponsor.  When I worked at Kodak years ago, we lost sponsorship of the Olympics to Fuji — but Kodak ambushed Fuji and most consumers thought Kodak was the official sponsor.  You could show this during class when talking about Promotion and particularly sponsorship.  This might be relevant with a few big upcoming sporting events (Super Bowl and Winter Olympics).  It certainly raises ethical questions.  An instructor might also talk about how this effects the value of the sponsorship and what an event might do to minimize the effects of ambush advertising.

This is our 100th post here at “Teach the 4 Ps.”  We were not sure how this would go — but we seem to be building a following and have received good feedback.  So we are going to keep going for our second 100 posts.

I heard another great story on Marketplace radio.  The story, titled “What prices really mean,” (links to a listen and transcript) is an interview with William Poundstone, author of the recently published “The Myth of Fair Value.”  The author describes psychological research in the area of pricing — and how marketers manipulate perceptions of price and value.  It sounds interesting — I have the book on order, I will let you know what I think.

UPDATE, January 25, 2010.  BusinessWeek favorably reviewed the book as well, “Why the Price is Rarely Right” (January 21, 2010).

People have long predicted that online shopping and home delivery of groceries would change the market.  Another wrong prediction (see Webvan go down in flames) — and of course they said no one could sell shoes online (tell that to Zappos).  Anyway, I digress.  This January 14, 2010, Wall Street Journal article, “In France, a Drive-Up Grocery Takes Off” (subscription may be required - for “back door” see here) describes a French retailers hybrid version — online order then pick-up.  Would this model work in other cultures?  Or is it uniquely French?