teachthe4ps.com - For instructors of marketing.

Some of our regular readers may have left the blog behind this summer.  So let us bring you our top 10 posts from the summer.

1. Creativity is central not only to marketing — but to business success in general.  So when you get two interesting people talking about creativity, you blog about it.  Check out our post “Conan O’Brien and Seth Godin on Creativity.“
2. Here is one that might get your students talking — what about using brain scans to help write the next hit pop song — “New Product Development — For Pop Songs?“
3. Nike is one of our students’ favorite brands — we bet your students, too.  Nike’s latest strategy has them moving into niche sports, sports where many of our students participate, “Nike Looks to Niche Sports for Growth.”
4. Dan Ariely always has some interesting, theory and research based insights – see “How Online Companies Get you to Share More and Spend More.“
5. A lot of pundits try to question the usefulness of the 4 Ps as a guide to marketing in the digital age.  We believe the model makes even more sense — and Joe made a post this past summer in response to a post by author and speaker David Meerman Scott.  See “Defending the 4 Ps of marketing on the web.“
6. We have posted several different times this summer on ethics — but probably my favorite is “The ethics of sunscreen” — which includes links to both the point and a counterpoint.
7. Here is a good example of personal selling in B2G (business to government) “Flogging Flak Jackets in War Zones.“
8. For some reason you can find tons of examples of marketing in China — but what about its very populous southern neighbor, India.  We have one for you in this article/video combination “The Challenge of Changing Consumer Behavior – P&G in India.”
9. Nothing like a great example from a fast-growing economy – “B2B, Direct Marketing, International – Creative!  What more can you ask for?  Pizza maybe.”  This would be a great video to show on the first day of class.
10. Then maybe our favorite post of the summer is “Great IMC Case Study:  Bing/Decode Jay-Z” — our students are the target market for this very successful campaign.

Regular readers of T4Ps and L4Ps (our sister site for students of marketing – Learn the 4 Ps) know that one of the assignments I use in the introductory marketing class has students write their own “Personal Marketing Plan.”  This plan requires each student to write a plan to get a job (or go to grad school — I also let students who already have a job use it to identify a later career option or to write a short plan for a business).  The personal marketing plan is consistently rated one of the most valuable experiences students take away from my introductory marketing classes.

Are you interested in using the personal marketing plan assignment in your classes?  Here are some suggestions:

• In our text books, Appendix C “Marketing Career Planning” — provides some guidance, though it mainly focuses mainly on jobs in marketing, so…
• If possible, I suggest you involve your career services office.  Orr college’s career counselor loves the opportunity to talk to 180 juniors about career planning.  She also tells me that the marketing plan structure we use in class aligns perfectly with what she wants students to do.  She is thrilled to come to class and I give her an entire class session about mid-semester, when I introduce the assignment.
• Give the students a clear structure and outline.  I have a handout that includes a two-page outline that details the assignment plus a one-page grading rubric.
• I suggest you give them a 4-6 page assignment (I have them use single space and double-space between paragraphs). I also encourage the use of bulleted lists where appropriate as they are easier to read.
• Send your students to Learn the 4 Ps – we currently have 27 posts in the “Personal Marketing Plan” category to give them a lot of ideas for writing a better plan.
• I can also share the PowerPoint slides that I developed with our career counselor — it aligns with the model we use in the text book.

If you would like the handout and PowerPoints I use for the Personal Marketing Plan assignment — just send me an e-mail at Joe(dot)Cannon(at)ColoState(dot)edu and I will be happy to send you the package.  Do me a favor, put “Personal Marketing Plan” in the subject line.

We have mentioned before (skim these posts for more background) how we like to address the challenge of getting non-marketing majors involved in the introductory marketing course.  I like to do it early by showing them now jobs flowing from every major use marketing concepts.

This post over at Harvard’s Working Knowledge site, “HBS Cases:  QuikTrip’s Investment in Retail Employees Pays Off,” (May 25, 2011) describes how convenience store chain QuikTrip delivers high quality service at low cost.  The case shows how operational and human resource decisions made by QuikTrip result in high quality service and reasonable prices.

The article describes and links to several Harvard Business School cases you could read for even more depth and other examples.  Our text books have a cross-functional chapter where this example could be integrated into class discussion.   The example could also work when you cover quality (we get to that in the product chapters) or retailing.

I am always looking for tips to get my students actively engaged in the classroom.  In this article, “Tips for Creating a Participatory Classroom Environment,” (Faculty Focus, May 23, 2011) Professor Alice Cassidy, PhD offers five activities.  I would love to hear what you do to stimulate participation in your classes.  Click on the “Comments” link below and add your ideas.

For many of us, classtime is moving partly or completely online.  Whether we have full-fledged online classes or simply add online discussion to our traditional classrooms, it is important how we respond to students in online forums.  If this describes you, you will appreciate this short article by Errol Craig Sull, an expert in online instruction, “Creating Effective Responses to Student Discussion Postings” (Faculty Focus, June 2, 2011).  Sull offers several ideas you might find helpful.

We have talked about this issue before here at T4Ps — how do we keep the non-marketing majors interested in our principles class?  I have tried two approaches that have demonstrated some success.

First, I want to show my students how marketing interfaces with other functions in a business.  I want to get the non-marketing majors engaged early.  So, during the second week of class, I have students read the cross-functional chapter in Basic Marketing (chapter 20: “Managing Marketing’s Link With Other Functional Areas”)  which describes how marketing strategy requires cooperation with human resources, production, finance and accounting.

Second, I try to show students how knowledge of marketing will help other majors to do their jobs better.  So I add articles from the popular press and sometimes with guest speakers that show how marketing principles help people in other functional areas to do their jobs better.  I will be using this article, “In Hiring, Firms Shine Images,” (Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2011 – non-subscribers click here) next fall to show how human resources uses marketing tactics to recruit the best employees.

Here at T4Ps, we try to direct you to articles and videos that might be useful for student assignments, in-class examples, or to facilitate in-class discussion.  This brief article at Faculty Focus, “Strategies for Facilitating More Effective Classroom Discussions” (May 2, 2011) gives you a few ideas about how to better manage classroom discussions.

Often the principles of marketing class is taught in a large classroom.  Here are a few tips for teaching in this situation — “Tricks of the Trade:  Teaching in Large Classrooms,” (The Institute for Learning and Teaching, Colorado State University).  Do any of you have tips for teaching in large classrooms?  Click on the comments button below and add your $.02.

I will be surprised if you have not already seen the scathing review of B-Schools in, “The Default Major:  Skating Through B-School” (New York Times, April 14, 2011).  This article blasts business schools for their lack of rigor — and light college load.  It is especially critical of marketing and management.

I must confess, we have shortened our books over time and removed some content; we hear from the market that students don’t want to read so much.  Of course the opportunity to add rigor and give students a variety of marketing activities can be achieved by integrating our cases, online homework exercises, other online activities, ethics exercises, end of chapter problems, the Marketing Plan Coach, and many other extras.

So how did we get here?  Is it because the primary method for evaluating our teaching comes from end of semester student evals — and we figure that being rigorous in class will lead to harsher student evaluations?  Is it because of time pressure from research, service, and higher teaching loads?  Do these additional responsibilities and expectations result in dumbing down what we do?  Do they make us reluctant to assign homework and written assignments?  Are there other reasons?  What do you think?

Are you looking to add some rigor to your classes?  For more general thoughts on this topic, I will direct you to another reading, “What Can Be Done to Boost Academic Rigor?“  (Faculty Focus, April 11, 2011).  For a more specific answer, I offer one suggestion from our text book package.  Our books have recently added Connect Marketing homework exercises (click here for more info).  We have found them to be popular with students and add rigor by asking them to apply concepts their read about.  Connect assignments are self-grading to keep instructor workload at a minimum.  They require students to do some critical thinking and more complex reasoning.

“Four Characteristics of Successful Teachers,” Faculty Focus, March 29, 2011.  While these characteristics are not a surprise, it sometimes helps to be reminded.