teachthe4ps.com - teaching the 4 ps

Hello Returning and New Readers of Teach the 4 Ps.

We have been writing this blog for almost 10 months now — and it features more than 240 posts.  With a new semester right upon us, we write this post to highlight a “Top 10″ list.  These always seem to do well at other blogs.  The list features some past posts that you might find useful going into the new semester.  [New to the blog -- click on the gold type to link through to the original post.]

1. It is always fun to have some recent award winning advertising to show in class.  Well, this past summer the Cannes Ad Festival was held – so be sure to check out “The 18 best commercials of 2009-10 as chosen by the Cannes ad festival.”
2. For more entertainment, viral campaigns are always fun.  We try to give you a little background on a campaign so you can show the video and discuss it intelligently in class.  The hottest campaign of late is Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.”  We have posted on it several times, see “Old Spice Campaign Smells Like a Sales Success, Too.”
3. An oldie but goodie (in viral video old goes back more than six months) is the “Coca Cola Happiness Machine.”
4. Are you planning to use more video in your classroom?  Are you embedding video directly into your PowerPoints?  If not, you might find this post helpful – “Embed YouTube Videos Directly In Your PowerPoints.”
5. Do you want to talk about the economy’s impact on consumers?  See our post on “Schizophrenic Consumer Behavior” which links to a recent BusinessWeek article.
6. It is not all fun and games — in your class or on our blog.  There are links to tons of relevant content and examples you can use in class.  One of the great features of the blog is the ability to click on “Categories” (see list to the right of this article).  If you want to talk about social responsibility in one of your first class sessions, you could click on “Social responsibility” in the list on the right and link to all of our posts with this category from the last year.
7. What about Facebook?  What will it do next?  They are certainly trying to monetize the more than 500 million Facebook users.  Try being a text book writer – by the time you write something and it comes out in print, Facebook is being used differently.  So we post a lot on Facebook.  To keep up on Facebook and marketing, see the tags to the right and click on Facebook to see all related posts.
8. Perhaps you are looking for print ads to use in class.  If so, check out “30 Funny Print Ads that’ll Make You Laugh.”
9. Sometimes students think marketing is so easy.  So why not talk about some of the “9 Poorly Conceived Marketing Campaigns” – all developed by experts.
10. One of our first posts is still one of my favorites, see “Seeing Store Shelves Through Senior Eyes.”

Come back to visit the blog often.  Oh, and consider making comments on some of our posts — or send us feedback.  Sometimes it is lonely authoring a blog and text book — let us know if we are connecting with you, if you have suggestions, or comments.  Thanks.

Have a great semester!

Just today, August 1, we launched our new blog for marketing students.  Like Teach the 4 Ps. Learn the 4 Ps aims to call attention to up-to-date articles, stories, blog posts, videos, websites, and television commercials – but Learn the 4 Ps is written for students.  Many of the links you see here, will also be posted at Learn the 4 Ps, too.  We will let you know when we post here and there.  There will also be content unique toLearn the 4 Ps . Our posts on Learn the 4 Ps will emphasize social media (because no text book can keep up with the pace of change there), developing a personal marketing plan (one of my goals for students), and career planning in marketing (always a hot topic — but especially now in the down economy).

So check out the new blog.  Tell your students about it.  Encourage them to get involved by making comments.

Over at The Teaching Professor blog they suggest the benefits of having an mid-lecture “break” – “Let’s Take a Break” (July 8, 2010).  The post offers some suggestions about how to make the break useful and fun.  I might try this in the fall.  Any other ideas about how to use these breaks?

I found this resource – the Educator’s Reference Desk -  in my web wanderings.  Only a few of these links deal directly with higher education, but you may find it worth a look and as an addition to your bookmarks.

This long article, “An Open Mind,” (The New York Times, April 8, 2010) discusses online higher education.  I know that many of you are dealing with this challenge.  While we all wish we had the $30-$40,000 Yale spends on each online course, it still helps to see what others are doing in this medium.  Click here for links to 10 example courses from across a variety of disciplines.

I know that I need this reminder once in a while.  Check out this short summary over at The Teaching Professor of “Characteristics of Good Teachers” (March 2, 2010).

Occasionally we need a reminder like this: based on a thorough literature review, Paul Ramsden, a noted researcher on teaching and learning, along with several co-authors offered this description of good teachers.

Seth Godin is great and I always enjoy following his blog.  In this blog post, “The brand, the package, the story, and the worldview,” Godin offers advice to African chocolate maker Madecasse on how putting a story on its package might help its sales.  Could be a good example, or turned into a mini case for discussion.

I am becoming more and more a believer in the power of stories.  I think they help in marketing and for teaching marketing.  If you are interested in learning more about stories, you might read Daniel Pink’s book “A Whole New Mind:  Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future” (this morning I listened to the “Story” chapter on my way in to work) or the Heath brothers “Made to Stick.“  I know we all use stories (extended examples) to supplement our teaching, but what I am reading has me thinking about how I can develop better stories.

Do you want to add vintage ads to your class presentations?  Or do you want to buy posters of vintage ads?  Or just like to look at old ads?  If any of these appeal to you, go to the Vintage Ad Browser.

Hello and welcome to “Teach the 4 Ps” a blog for marketing instructors and people interested in reading about marketing.  The blog came about after Bill Perreault and I (Joe Cannon) developed a newsletter (Teach the 4Ps) for instructors using our text books – Essentials of Marketing and Basic Marketing.  The newsletter is designed to give instructors current articles, websites, viral videos, and online advertisements – with comments suggesting how they could be used in teaching the introductory marketing course.  We all know our students like current examples, so Bill and I want to provide more for users of our books.  We received many positive comments on the newsletter – so we decided to share our ideas with anyone teaching marketing or interested in marketing.  We hope you will share back – and give us comments and ideas on the blog.

For several reasons, this resource is even more valuable in a blog:

• It makes the newsletter interactive – we hope you will offer comments on our posts.
• We post almost every day – making everything that much more current.
• The blog format makes it easy to find J.I.T. (just in time) examples for your classes.  For example, say are you teaching pricing this week – click on “Price” in categories to the right and you will have a listing of only those blog posts that have something to do with price.

So, please take a look around.  We are kicking this off with more than 80 posts already up.  Let us know what you think?  Do you have ideas about how we might make this resource even more valuable?  Click on the headline above and add your comments (or read those of others).

One of the primary objectives for “Teach the 4 Ps” is to give you ready access to examples you can use in your marketing classes.  Most of us teaching marketing know the value of well-chosen examples.  If you visit our blog to get ideas for examples, you might appreciate this post from The Teaching Professor on the “Power of Examples” (December 2, 2009).

“Examples are instructional workhorses: they carry a great deal of the burden of teaching and learning. They help us dig into ideas and plow the land of the abstract. They help us transport information and ideas from one person to another and from one context to another. One way to improve teaching and learning is to improve the examples we use so that they more effectively communicate difficult concepts.” (Deyck, 1994, p. 40)