teachthe4ps.com - teaching the 4 ps

This is an interesting video from the Wall Street Journal (July 30, 2010) provides a nice, easy-to-understand tutorial that explains Internet cookies.  At 7:14, it is a bit on the long side, but provides a pretty straightforward explanation of a technical issue of importance to our students.  Many of our students (and many of us) may not be familiar with behavioral targeting but it is clearly the future of advertising — unless concerns about privacy hang it up.  This might be shown in class to stimulate a discussion about online privacy.  My students seem to have a wide range of opinions about privacy — I am often surprised by their openness on Facebook for example.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest has brought a class action lawsuit against Coca Cola.  CSPI claims that Vitaminwater’s health claims violate FDA guidelines.  Each 20 oz bottle of Vitaminwater contains 33 grams of sugar and 125 calories.  Vitaminwater’s health claims may violate the FDA’s jelly bean policy — where you can’t claim that a jelly bean is healthy because is has no cholesterol.  See “Is Vitaminwater Really a Healthy Drink?” in Time (July 30, 2010).  [Note:  Also posted at “Learn the 4 Ps.”

If the “Get a Mac” campaign is winding down, you may want to review it. Over at AdWeek’s AdFreak.com you can see all 66 (as of this writing) TV spots at “Apple and TBWA’s ‘Get a Mac: The Complete Campaign.” The campaign started in May 2006. Here is one of the earliest ads in the series from October 2006.  [Also posted at "Learn the 4 Ps"]

Here at Teach the 4 Ps we have reported a few times on Old Spice and the wildly successful viral video campaign for Old Spice – “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.”  See our previous posts “Old Spice Commercial Goes Viral…” (Teach the 4 Ps, March 15, 2010) and “Old Spice Revitalizes the Brand with Trendy Advertisements,” (Teach the 4 Ps, July 5, 2010).

Here is an update — the campaign seems to be working to sell more Old Spice.  We knew the viral videos generated views and now we know that sales of Old Spice are going up as well, see “Old Spice Campaign Smells Like a Sales Success, Too” (Brandweek, July 25, 2010).

Now Old Spice and its star Isaiah Mustafa have stormed to the top of the Ad Age Viral Video chart hitting #1 with almost 3 million views in one week in July (and more than 11 million as of this post).   The latest viral video is more of the same but different.

That could be a nice video to show the first day of class — at least the young women in your class will like it.  You could show one of the Axe ads (search YouTube for ideas) to appeal to some of the young men in your classes.

Looking for some advertising examples to show on that first day of class?  Here are last year’s best according to Cannes.  “The 18 best commercials of 2009-10 as chosen by the Cannes ad festival” (courtesy of Adweek).  We have featured several of these ads over the last year.  I like to show award-winning ads in class and then ask students a series of questions:  1) Do you like the ad?  2)  Why?  3) Is this a good ad?  4)  What makes for a good ad?

Then I like to turn it around and make sure they realize that in the end, great advertising achieves the advertiser’s objectives.  Just because an ad is entertaining, that does not make it a good ad.  You can tie this into the AIDA model as well.   Believe it or not — as I write this I get great support for that proposition.  I just heard a story on Marketplace Morning and after googling it found this story, “Old Spice’s Viral Ads Got Attention, Not Sales” (Time, July 20 2010) — Old Spice won the Cannes Grand Prix Award — generating Attention and maybe Interest — but apparently not any Action. [UPDATE, July 27, 2010:  Never mind this last comment.  Time has also updated its article -- sales of Old Spice are taking off see my more recent post "Old Spice Campaign Smells Like a Sales Success, Too."  [NOTE:  This post is also featured at our companion blog for marketing students - "Learn the 4 Ps".]

Here at Teach the 4 Ps we often highlight stories on the selling power of online reviews and personal recommendations.  Last year’s Nielsen survey on trust showed that we really trust recommendations from people we know.  But how can they leverage that at Facebook.  If Facebook masters it, they will have the keys to a new direction for Promotion.  This recent Wall Street Journal article “Facebook Touts Selling Power of Friendship” (Wall Street Journal, July 7, 2010 – subscription required click here for a back door link, follow the search results).  The video is 6:52 long, but the most interesting stuff for class would be the first 3:30 or so.  It could be assigned to students or shown in class.  You could show it in class and natural discussion opportunities will follow — there are the effectiveness issues and the privacy issues as well.

We have just finished up the next edition of Basic Marketing which includes our take on this transformation and how it fits into teaching the introductory marketing class.  Look for the book in October.

A few months ago, we reported on this great Old Spice video climbing up the viral video charts.  As a follow-up, you can read about the campaign’s success in this USA Today article, “Old Spice revitalizes brand with trendy advertisements” (June 30, 2010).

Here is a nice little case study.  In “How PepsiCo Refreshed Its SoBe Water Brand,” (Bloomberg BusinessWeek, June 24, 2010) you can read how some great web advertising and a price cut combined to help Sobe sales grow by 85%.

I just love this ad (1:48) for the Olympus Pen camera — PEN Giant. The stop-motion video useds 355 pictures (taken of course with the Olympus Pen camera) blown up to billboard size and arranged throughout city streets. Very cool. This ad is a follow-up to one the Olympus put together last year – The PEN Story– which is quite different but equally amazing.  I especially like the PEN story because it does a great job promoting photography — I am not sure the PEN Giant (below) does as good of a job there.  It also had more than 2.5 million views.  On the other hand, PEN Giant probably resonates better with the more important young adult market.   What do you think?  What will your students think?

As regular readers of Teach the 4 Ps know, I like to bring non-traditional examples into the classroom.  I think it helps when students realize the different types of problems that good marketing practice can help solve.  This Wall Street Journal article “New Ads Try to Shock Men Into Going to See the Doctor,” (Wall Street Journal, June 15, 2010 – note, the link takes you to a search result that should allow non-subscribers to the Journal to access the article through a back door) and the video below discuss the issue and a new advertising campaign.