teachthe4ps.com - For instructors of marketing.

In our books we classify social media tools like blogs, Facebook pages, and Twitter as forms of publicity.  Inc. magazine regularly surveys members of the Inc 500 (fastest growing businesses — so generally small businesses).  A recent survey found a decline from 2010 to 2011 in the number of firms using business blogs – falling from 50% of respondents to 37% of respondents.  The decline appears to be because new firms to the list are not using blogs and not because firms are dropping blogs — among those blogging 92% reported the platform was a success.  This short article, “Where Have All the Bloggers Gone?  Business blogging on the decline” (Inc., April 3, 2012) also includes data on Facebook and Twitter.

This article might be useful to provide some current data on social media usage when you cover that in class and/or if you like to give special attention to entrepreneurship or small business.

It is nice to have examples from around the world — especially when they are good examples.  This short video describes a campaign by Russian window maker Rehau.  The advertising told Russians how their poor quality windows let heat escape — it was like throwing money out the window.  The ads show money flying out the window, but Rehau then literally threw money out the window, which generated lots of publicity and media coverage.  This video describes the program.  Just in time for winter weather, this could be a ice example to use for publicity, promotion, or international marketing.

My students love Nike — when I survey them about their favorite brands it consistently ranks #1.  My point – Nike examples play well in class.  Of course any example should be relevant to marketing and this one could work well with a discussion of segmentation, new product development or advertising.

Nike is aggressively going after youth action sports like skateboarding, snowboarding, surfing, trick-bicycling and others – see “Nike Tries to Enter the Niche Sports It Has Missed” (New York Times, June 1, 2011).  Nike’s tactics in these markets are in many ways similar to those it has used in other markets — employing top athletes in each sport to endorse the brand and support it ith dynamite advertising that appeals to its target market.  The video below was released on Facebook (where Nike has specialty pages for various sports) even before it launched on network TV (during the NBA finals).  Nike created the Nike 6.0 sub-brand (see its Facebook page here) just for the action sports market.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

I love Yelp.  My family just returned from vacation and we found Yelp enormously helpful in identifying restaurants and activities.  We would simply pull out the smartphone, click on Yelp, type in what we wanted to do (“restaurants seafood” or simply that we wanted to eat) — and a list of restaurants would appear in order of how close they were to our current position.  Plus, most of the restaurants included a collective rating and individual reviews.  Yelp steered us right and we discovered some great local places.  We also used TripAdvisor.com to help us identify activities and hotels before our vacation.  I rely a great deal on reviews in my buying process.

These sites rely on the wisdom of crowds — but are all these reviews “real”?  Apparently there is a growing market for posting fake reviews — good ones for your company and even bad ones for the competition.  Our text books include an ethics scenario addressing this exact issue. Sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor rely on our trust in these reviews — so they are concerned about this trend.  This article “A Rave, a Pan or Just a Fake?” (New York Times, May 21, 2011) gives you a bit more insight into how this works and how Yelp is trying to fight it.

In our books we discuss reviews in a new publicity section which covers a wide range of social media.  The article could provide some background when you discuss the ethics exercise in the first promotion chapters in our books — or when you cover reviews and social media.

Facebook’s image has always bounced between good and evil.  Privacy advocates have complained about the company.  It turned out that most users didn’t much care about privacy.  “The Social Network” did not paint a very pretty picture of founder Mark Zuckerberg.  Then this week we start off with a very favorable cover story in Bloomberg Businessweek that lauds the company’s COO and #2, see “Why Facebook Needs Sheryl Sandberg,” (May 12, 2011).  Bad timing for Sandberg, because now Facebook is getting more bad press for more bad actions “Facebook Admits It Hired PR Firm to Smear Google” (Adweek, May 12, 2011).

Yikes, lots of stuff here.  The Sheryl Sandberg story in BusinessWeek provides a neat profile of the COO and gets you up to date on some Facebook initiatives — like advertising and whether the firm should enter China.  The more interesting issue is the ethical lapse by Facebook.  It also makes you wonder about a PR firm that would take on (or maybe even suggest) such a tactic.  Neither looks very good here.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

Great scenario to use to discuss ethics in class.  How does a PR firm – even a big, well-known firm like Burson-Marsteller say no to Facebook?

Air New Zealand’s creative agency, .99, put together a funny pre-flight video that took off as a viral video.  Within a few hours of posting the video it was the ninth most tweeted about video on Twitter.  It features Richard Simmons — many of our students may wonder who this guy is — so maybe it won’t work in class without a bit of a history lesson (click here for Simmons’ Wikipedia entry to learn or refresh your memory about the fitness guru.).  It could be fun to show in class.

I wondered if the quirky humor fits Air New Zealand’s personality.  I didn’t know much about the airline’s positioning, but one of the “Guiding Principles” at its website indicates:  “Our workplace will be fun, energising, and where everyone can make a difference.”  Their This suggests that the video may fit and reinforce their positioning.  Then I read about the airline’s risque and fun “Nothing to Hide” advertising campaign — featuring real employees in body painted uniforms.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

“I wanna make a film all about product placement, marketing, and advertising, where the entire film is funded by product placement, marketing, and advertising.”

This new film “POM Wonderful Presents:  The Greatest Movie Ever Sold” is a documentary by Morgan Spurlock.  This is the same guy who took down McDonald’s in Super Size Me.  The movie opens April 22 — and I don’t think I will wait for the DVD before seeing this one.  This film is about our business — so we should probably try to get on top of it.  To help you with that, there is an article that gives you some background over at Fast Company – see “Morgan Spurlock:  I’m With the Brand” (March 24, 2011).  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

Now Guy Kawasaki is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and a big name author in the tech community — I think this is his tenth book.  He already has an incredible network.  With the publication of his new book – Enchantment:  The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions, Kawasaki relied on low-cost forms of social media to get the word out and drive great initial sales. Read about it at Mashable “HOW TO:  Launch Any Product Using Social Media,” (March 31, 2011)

The book is already on the bestseller lists at the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.  In other words, it worked.  This is a great case study on how to use social media.  While the case study looks at the launch of a book by an already successful author, I think that with some in-class discussion, you can see how the ideas can be applied to other product launches.  It might make for an interesting exercise to ask students how these ideas could be adapted to launch a new dog food, hip hop band, or snow board.

This example could be used when talking about marketing strategy planning, promotion, publicity, or social media.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

OK, we don’t intend to turn this into a Coca Cola blog.  But as I searched around for more information on the “Happiness Machine” (see previous post below), I came upon this great interview at Mashable, “How Coca-Cola Created Its “Happiness Machine” (July 21, 2010).  Meaghan Edelstein interviewed Coke execs and creative folks at Definition 6 the ad agency behind the original “Happiness Machine” on campus at St. John’s University.  The interview is great and filled with useful insights on how Coke and Definition 6:  1) came up with the idea, 2) executed on the idea, 3) put it all together, and 4) got the video to go viral.  What a great classroom exercise — show the video and discuss it in class.  Then give students this additional back story to show how creative ideas are brought to life.

Maybe this article is a bit too much “inside baseball” (defined as “Matters of interest only to insiders” at Wordnik) and a bit long.  But “The Future of Advertising” (Fast Company, November 17, 2010) is a must-read for marketing professors who teach advertising — even if only for a week in the intro course.  It gives some insight about changes in the advertising world.  It is not like this is the first article on the topic — there have been many good articles and books describing these changes. The current trends actually create great opportunities for our current students who are much more web- and social media savvy.  “There’s never been a better time to be in advertising, and there’s never been a worse time,” said “Aaron Reitkopf, CEO Profero.  Opportunities abound, but you have to be flexible and creative.

File under advertising,digital media, publicity, and promotion.