teachthe4ps.com - For instructors of marketing.

Electronic Arts (EA) has been a dominant player in gaming — especially with their live action sports games that are usually played on computers or TVs.  Then, along came Zynga, which offered mobile games through social media like Facebook.  Since this market is relevant to many of our students, it might be useful to keep up with the latest competitive battles.  Now EA is trying to play catch up; EA has a lot of cash to invest into these new markets.  n this “listen” at NPR’s Morning Edition, “Game Giant Forced To Play Catch Up” (May 4), you can hear what EA is trying to do.  The strategy relies on mining customer data and anticipating customers’ behaviors and needs.  While Zynga has been mining customer data for many years, they traditionally monitored customer behavior to decide how to adapt or when to drop current games.  EA hopes that its efforts to anticipate behavior will help it leapfrog Zynga.

We have posted before about Zynga’s strategy which includes a move away from relying on Facebook.  But it is not clear if that strategy is working, see “Zynga Posts Loss, Sees World Beyond Facebook” (Wall Street Journal, April 26, 2012).  We have also posted this in Learn the 4 Ps.

As our previous post noted, a big part of the future of marketing involves data analytics.  When you think about how much information about consumers is already out there — through credit card buys, customer loyalty cards, search activity online, and social networks like Facebook and Pinterest — it is mind-boggling.  In the past, firms were drowning in data — but some are beginning to get a handle on how to use this information to improve marketing effectiveness.  For example, I recently talked to the president of an online retailer.  He was telling me that they send out highly targeted e-mails — and adapt content as they go.  So this retailer might send out 5 different variations on a subject line/promotion combination to 250,000 consumers over a 6 hour period.  They might start with an even amount of each version of the e-mail — but if real-time data shows one version has a higher open rate — the mailing adapts and shifts more customers to receive the more effective message.  Makes sense to me – but not so easy to do.

As we look to the future and how this data might be used, I found this Wall Street Journal article “The Benefits of Data Talking to Data” (April 2, 2012) insightful with some useful marketing examples.

Scott Anthony’s new book, The Little Black Book of Innovation:  How it Works, How to Do It has received great early reviews at Amazon.com (don’t you wonder if those few early reviews are just friends and family?)   Those reviews and his post at the Fast Company Co.Design  blog, “3 Ways to Predict What Consumers Want Before They Know It” have moved the book to my Audible.com library (so maybe you can wait for my review).  The blog post has some great examples which will help you when teaching marketing research or new product development.  The photo accompanying this blog post is of the ChotuKool portable refrigerator a disruptive innovation that targets India’s poorest households — I learned about it in the blog post.  Anticipating customer needs takes a certain mindset, and besides the examples, I like that Anthony offers some practical “how to” ideas.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

You might find this article provides good examples when you teach market research and new-product development — with at least one international example.

We are coming up on Super Bowl Sunday — the biggest day of the year for the NFL ad agencies.  Many advertising agencies will have their success measured by 300 people who watch the Super Bowl with a dial in hand — and turn that dial up and down as they like/dislike the ad as they watch.  Perhaps like many of you, I like to show and discuss Super Bowl ads in class.  I usually spend about 15 minutes my first teaching day following the Super Bowl to show my students 2-3 of the top ads in the USA Today Ad Meter.  I also show one near the bottom of their rankings.  I ask my students if the top ads are better and why.  I use this to try to get them to realize that ads should be tied to specific objectives.  Is being a “top 10″ ad in popularity on the USA Today Ad Meter a valid objective?  An Advertising Age article, “How USA Today’s Ad Meter Broke Super Bowl Advertising” (January 30, 2012) provides me with a bit more meat for my class discussion next week.

Human beings are actually not very rational decision makers — there is a great deal of evidence to that effect. We are subject to predictable biases. Increased computing power and better databases are allowing companies to use analytics and make better (unbiased) decisions. This is sparking the rise of new companies that can analyze data and some new applications. You can read more in “So, What’s Your Algorithm?” (Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2011 – non-subscribers may need to click here).  The article gives one marketing example for Schwan’s – ask your students for their own ideas about how to use big data to make better decisions.  You could also ask them how this might affect their careers moving forward.  I asked those questions at Learn the 4 Ps.

Wow, I guess this is suddenly the hot topic.  Yesterday I posted a couple of stories on retail analytics.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell you about a third, but Holly Finn’s story, “Spying on Your Buying” (Wall Street Journal, December 17, 2011, non-subscribers may need to click here and click “view original” in upper right corner if a white screen shows up) and interview in the Wall Street Journal, but she provides a more optimistic view of these analytics with much less fear of the privacy implications.  Plus the video might add some visual effects that might help in the classroom.

A couple of interesting stories about how retailers utilize high-tech analytics to better understand customer shopping behavior.  I heard “The secret life of discounts” (Marketplace radio, December 16, 2011, link to listen or read the transcript) as I drove to the airport last night to pick up my daughter who was coming home from college.  There are some examples about how stores use analytics to try to remain profitable with consumers conditioned to buy only at a steep discount.

In “Big Brother is Watching You Shop” (Bloomberg Businessweek, December 15, 2011), you can read about retailers using in-store video cameras and tracking your cell phone to better understand how you move through a retail store.  Analyzing video from a Miami store allowed Montblanc managers to more strategically locate merchandising, signage, and salespeople.  The result — a 20% bump in sales.  Other retailers follow customers’ cell phone signals to track and map movement through stores.  This of course is raising privacy concerns.

These two stories can be useful examples for marketing research (where we cover dashboards and marketing models), retailing, and in discussions of privacy.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

McKinsey’s Business Technology Office has been tracking business use of Web2.0 technologies (blogs, podcasts, social networks, wikis, RSS, etc.) for the last few years.  Their most recent survey results are posted with a neat interactive feature in “Business and Web 2.0:  An interactive feature” (McKinsey Quarterly, November 2011).  To see the whole article you will have to register at the site, but let me share some highlights related to marketing (there are lots of non-marketing related findings).

• Top 3 tools companies use in “acquiring customers” in 2011:  1) social networking (69%), blogs (39%), and video sharing (26%)
• Top 3 tools companies use in “developing products” in 2011:  1) social networking (61%), blogs (35%), and microblogging (15%)
• Top 3 tools companies use in “gathering insights” in 2011:  1) social networking (69%), blogs (36%), and microblogging (20%)
• Top 3 benefits from customer use of Web 2.0 technologies:  1) increasing effectiveness of marketing (65% of companies reported benefits), 2) increasing customer satisfaction (44%), and 3) reducing marketing costs (41%).

Other trends include rapid growth of social networking — blogs were the leader in many categories just three years ago — now everyone is using social networks.  Marketing is the functional area making the greatest use of Web 2.0 tools.

It sure sounded like a great idea.  The idea, draw attention to global warming and the plight of polar bears.  The bears have been a Coca Cola holiday symbol for almost 100 years — so the actions also fit with the brand’s heritage.  Coke did this by changing the iconic red cans to white for the holidays.  It sure sounded like a good idea.  Unfortunately, the new cans confused consumers — especially Diet Coke drinkers who confused the white can with their familiar silver Diet Coke cans.  This article, “Bad News, Bears:  Coke Pulls Back on White Cans in Holiday Campaign to Save Polar Bears” (brandchannel, December 1, 2011) describes many interesting elements to the story.  For example, by monitoring social media, Coca Cola marketing managers heard complaints early.  This case is also a demonstration of a low involvement product that consumers buy out of habit.   In the end, it probably marks a mis-step by the soft drink giant.  But I would say, if you take chance, you will make mistakes sometimes.  And this whole outcome, like the New Coke introduction 25 years ago, may yet generate positive publicity for the brand.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

This article has examples that can be used in teaching consumer behavior, market research, brand management, packaging, and advertising & promotion.

I don’t find it easy when a student asks “What does a marketing researcher do?”  In this article, “How researchers explain their profession at a cocktail party,” (Quirks, November 2011), you can read a wide range of answers from those in the research profession.  It might provide some insight (or levity) the next time you cover market research in class.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.