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Here at Teach the 4 Ps we are always looking for good B2B stories — and they can be hard to find.  We have reported before on B2B and social media — but admittedly not too often.  Yet there is growing evidence that B2B marketers are big users of social media.  This post at the Hubspot Blog, “9 Common and Costly B2B Social Media Marketing Mistakes” (January 17, 2012) provides some guidelines you might want to offers your students.  Hubspot is part of Inbound Marketing, a consulting firm that has impressed me with their book of the same name and from a talk I saw by Brian Halligan.  I highly recommend the book.

You might find this article useful when you discuss marketing strategy, B2B, or social media in promotion.

Unilever has produced some memorable campaigns – it is behind the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty and those wild Axe ads.

Now Unilever’s using its marketing expertise to change behavior in the developing world — hopefully making its growth more sustainable.  For example, it has had to get creative to promote hand-washing in many parts of the world (see poster used in Indonesia).  Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan aims to cut its  products environmental impact in half while doubling sales.  You can read an interview with the Unilever CEO and better understand how its creative priorities have changed as it tries to change consumer behavior in many ways  – see “Unilever CEO Paul Polman On The Packaged Goods Giant’s Creative Shift” (Fast Company, Co.Create, January 12, 2012).

Harley-Davidson’s sales of premium motorcycles  have suffered in the recession — falling more than 40% from its 2006 peak.  Harley cut costs with more efficient manufacturing and labor cuts.  It has also carefully adapted its marketing strategy.  For one, the company is trying to broaden its target market — trying to lure women, minorities, young adults and people outside the U.S.  It must target these new markets with caution; Harley doesn’t want to dilute its carefully crafted macho image.  Harley’s marketing chief notes, “We’re not trying to be everything to everyone, we’re trying to be our thing to more people.”  So Harley has adapted its promotion and products to appeal to new segments.  This is not an easy task — and your macho image might be lost when riders look around and see a growing number of women riding Harleys.  The article provides a nice example to use with marketing strategy planning for product or promotion.  You could ask students for other ideas about how to adapt the company’s strategy for these new target markets.

You can read more about Harley’s efforts in this Wall Street Journal article, “Harley, With Macho Intact, Tries to Court More Women” (October 31, 2011, non-subscribers may need to click here).  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

Sometimes marketers just shoot themselves in the foot.  Such has been the case for consumer electronics firms trying to reinvigorate the television market.  As prices for HDTVs plummeted, they foisted 3DTV and web connectivity on us — creating mass consumer confusion and delayed purchases.  This article, “How Faulty Marketing Has Stalled TV Sales” (BusinessWeek, January 20, 2011) provides lessons from these mistakes.

Many of my students enjoy sports — and examples of creative marketing by sports teams tends to capture their attention.  This article in the Wall Street Journal, “NBA Game Promises to be a Turkey?  Call In the Turks — or the Filipinos,” (January 19, 2011 – non-subscribers may have to click here)  shows some classic target marketing efforts by the National Basketball Association — and they seem to be working.  For example, the Sacramento Kings, one of the worst teams in the league, are drawing big crowds on Jewish Heritage nights in Toronto, Washington, Atlanta, and Boston.  Why?  They have the leagues only Israeli, Omri Casspi.  Teams have give away yarmulkes and provided kosher foods to further appeal to the Jewish fan.

You might want to show this video in class, and then ask your students what other organizations could offer similar special nights?  How could they increase their appeal to such a target market?   This was also posted over at Learn the 4 Ps.

We have always enjoyed how Harvard Business School professor Youngme Moon things.  We have read her articles in the Harvard Business Review and used some of her business cases in our classes.  I am looking forward to reading her new book, Different:  Escaping the Competitive Herd, which is getting great reviews at Amazon.com and over at Bloomberg BusinessWeek “To Hell with the Herd,” (August 12, 2010).  We think breakthrough products come from thinking different and look forward to reading some of Professor Moon’s thoughts on this subject.

KFC has found itself between a rock and a hard place.  Following general trends toward healthier fare, the company has developed and more aggressively promoted some of its healthier fare (read grilled instead of fried chicken).  On the other hand, many franchisees are upset with the new emphasis and feel the strategy confuses customers.  They don’t want KFC to turn its back on its fried heritage.  Interesting marketing strategy questions to raise in class — see “Why KFC Franchisees are Squawking” (Bloomberg BusinessWeek, August 12, 2010).

We have a boxed teaching example on “freemium” in one of our pricing chapters.  Freemium refers to “giving away service to users and making money when some opt to pay for additional features.”  Evernote, a suite of software and services used for taking and storing notes, has used the freemium business model with great success.  This Fast Company article, “Evernote CEO Phil Libin’s 3 Steps to ‘Freemium’ Success” (July 1, 2010) describes how it works with real number examples.  [NOTE:  This post is also featured at our companion blog for marketing students - "Learn the 4 Ps".]

Indonesia is a good example of a fast-growing developing economy. This Wall Street Journal article “Brands Bet on Indonesia as Spending Booms,” (April 7, 2010 – if you don’t have a subscription, click here to learn about the WSJ “back door”) provides some interesting data on buying power growth and how some Western companies are positioning themselves in the growing market.  I really like that this video has some great images of Indonesia.  Many of my students are not familiar with Asia and this video lets them get a better feel for the country.

This is the first of ABC’s Good Morning America series, “Secrets of America’s Favorite Stores.”  This one takes you “Inside Costco,” (5:10, March 29, 2010).  As with others in the series (see following posts), you learn some of Costco’s marketing strategy decisions.

One idea for using this video series would be to have students watch the videos (in class or outside of class), and then ask them to identify specific decisions that each retailer makes for each of the 4 P’s.  In our book we categorize retailers around the strategy decisions they make.  This exercise reinforces their understanding of the 4 Ps and also reminds them of the variety of strategy decisions that retailers have to make.

A special thanks to regular Teach the 4 Ps reader Stephanie Bibb (Chicago State) who brought this series to my attention.