teachthe4ps.com - teaching the 4 ps

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?

Method has been a very successful brand — showing that a small firm can compete with the P&G and Unilever’s of the world.  Brandweek interviews Method’s founder, Eric Ryan about Method’s controversial viral video and a new laundry detergent.   See “Method Co-Founder Offers Spin on Viral Video, Laundry,” Brandweek, January 9, 2010.  If you decide to show and talk about the controversial video – perhaps from a social responsibility or ethics perspective — this article will give you a bit more perspective.

Check out our previous post on the controversial Shiny Suds video being pulled — you can find the video there as well.

From Wall Street Journal Video, “CES 2010: Lady Gaga’s Deal With Polaroid” January 8, 2010).  This short (0:50) video highlights publicity and trade shows.  If you can’t relate (and my 11 year old told me about Lady Gaga as I drove her home from ballet last night) our students probably know this pop star.

Lady Gaga makes an appearance at CES to promote Polaroid on Thursday. The iconic brand has tapped Lady Gaga to be creative director for a specialty line of products.

Here’s a current and very hot viral advertising campaign. This article talks about the campaign (“A Stairway to Marketing Heaven,” (scroll down for article at BusinessWeek.com, October 22, 2009) but the fun occurs at TheFunTheory.com website. As of this writing, there are three different viral videos (the stair video is shown below), each of which ask the question: Can you get people to change their behavior and do the right thing by making the right thing more fun? The viral videos are sponsored by Volkswagen and they will eventually tie into an online advertising campaign that features VW’s environmentally friendly cars. For 10 years (until earlier this year), VW’s “Drivers Wanted” campaign implied that driving a VW was fun. This new campaign is a natural extension to that positioning. You could use it to discuss positioning, viral video promotions, or promotion objectives. The campaign is also a good example of publicity; it’s received considerable attention from the press. Besides all that, these viral videos are fun to watch.

I know that I am trying to figure it out and get a handle on it. These two presentations have helped me.

I’m not sure if these presentations are better used in the classroom (do our students already know this?) – or our offices (do marketing faculty get it?). I showed the first one in class and my students appreciated it. The “Social Media Revolution” (top one below) has data that really can be a surprise. While I cannot vouch for the accuracy of any of the data presented, I did not find people on the web arguing with the numbers. Usually the web will “out” any bad data. The second video is more a tutorial — but still very helpful if you are not up on social media.

Do any of you have other online video slide shows that do a good job with this topic? (click on comments in the gray banner below to share)