teachthe4ps.com - For instructors of marketing.

Fast Company magazine often takes an idea and pushes the boundaries — but I find their observations are usually prescient.  They point out that the business world is becoming increasingly chaotic — making career planning darn near impossible, at least in the long-term.  This brave new world  rewards the agile and opportunistic.  This article, “This Is Generation Flux:  Meet The Pioneers Of The New (And Chaotic) Frontier Of Business” (January 12, 2012) introduces you to seven people — representing a broad demographic cross-section — who are thriving in this macroenvironment.  The article suggests the skills that may be needed as well.  A companion article, “The Four-Year Career” describes a 28-year old woman’s early career path (Fast Company, January 12, 2012). The idea here is that our students should probably be career planning for relatively short time horizons — four years as opposed to twenty.

For another perspective on career planning, read “To Find Happiness, Forget About Passion” (HBR Blog Network, January 13, 2012) the author suggests that young people should be focused on problems they can contribute to solving.  Reading the comments (189 and counting as of today) — will give you a much richer perspective.

These articles have also been posted over at Learn the 4 Ps — since they are most relevant for your students — especially those developing a personal marketing plan.

Here in Fort Collins we are proud of the success of local craft brewer New Belgium Brewing.  Driven by the popularity of its Fat Tire brand, the company has grown to be one of the top 2-3 craft brewers in the United States.  The company has largely eschewed television advertising and focuses a great deal on events and print advertising.  The company’s culture and commitment to sustainability are admirable — and make it the dream job of many locals.  So it was great to see the local brand get some national publicity in this article in Bloomberg Businessweek, “New Belgium and the Battle of the Microbrews” (December 1, 2011).  The article provides some background on the craft brewing market and provides a nice example of a woman entrepreneur, Kim Jordan.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

I have a new post for your students over at Learn the 4 Ps.  The post “How to use social media to help your job search,” is part of our ongoing efforts to promote student development of a personal marketing plan.

That post reminds students that employers look at Facebook profiles and refers them to an article at Social Media Today, “How Social Media Will Help Your Job Search” (September 18, 2011).  The post also provides links to one person’s rather extreme efforts to get a job at Google through social media.

One of our favorite companies here at T4Ps is Zappos.  We also feature them in our text book.  The online retailer is always innovating.  Now they are using their own employees in online videos — they have produced 58,000 short videos of employees (not professional models) showing off its shoes and other apparel.  The use of employees can build trust — and seeing someone actually using a product can increase its appeal. Zappos also conducted an experiment – showing the same products with and without a video.  They found sales averaged 10% higher when a video accompanied the item.  Check out “A New Sales Model:  Employees” (Wall Street Journal, March 17, 2011 – non-subscribers may have to click here).

This example would be helpful when talking about marketing research, retail, or promotion.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

combination

You may have read that the New York Times will soon make its content a bit more difficult to access.  Readers will be required to pay a pretty hefty subscription fee to access more than 20 articles per month.  We were initially concerned here at Teach the 4 Ps and Learn the 4 Ps.   We like to read the New York Times online and often refer our readers to its articles.  Fortunately, at least for now, the paywall is pretty porous.  Articles accessed through a search engine (like Google) or from a blog (like our blogs) will not count as one of a 20 article limit.  From a practical perspective, if you assign your students readings from Learn the 4 Ps, they will not suddenly have to pay just to read your assignment.  For more on this, see this Adweek article, “The New York Times’ Paywall Isn’t, Really” (March 18, 2011).

As regular readers know, we already use a “back door” to get all of our readers access to any Wall Street Journal articles.

China represents a huge potential market for all kinds of companies — vehicle sales in China grew more than 32% in 2010 to more than 18.1 million (more than in the U.S.).   As the average Chinese gains more disposable income, many are in the market for a new car.  At the low end of the market — less than 50,000 yuan (about $7500) — three out of four cars sold are domestic Chinese brands.  These brands — like the Tianjin FAW Xiali pictured here — don’t have a great reputation for quality.   Volkswagen, GM, Nissan, and Honda see an opportunity and are responding with lity with lower cost models.  So this is what many of these car makers are trying to do with stripped down variations of traditional models — with new brand names. This article “Foreign Carmakers Try Brands Just for China“  (Bloomberg BusinessWeek, March 3, 2011) provides a good example of international product adaptation.   The decision to use new brand names — instead of the more well-known Western brand names could also be discussed.

When we teach students about exchange rates, it helps to have some good examples of how the changes impact consumer buying power.  This article, “Japanese Splurge on Imports, Foreign Deals” (Wall Street Journal, November 28, 2010 - non-subscribers may have to link here).  In Japan, the yen has become very strong of late.  Consequently, many imported goods now cost 20-30% less than even just a few months ago.   This article offers examples useful in teaching exchange rates related to price and exporting.  It might also be a good example to use when discussing the economic dimension of the external market environment.

Just wanted to offer a brief apology and explanation for the lack of action here at Teach the 4 Ps over the last couple of weeks.  Among the end of semester rush, putting together the December issue of the Teach the 4 Ps newsletter, and a family health emergency (my brother had successful heart surgery last week) — the blog fell down on the “to-do” list.

We are back and active with a stack of great links for you to check out.  Over the next couple of days expect to see a lot of action — we hope to give you some fun material to read and watch over your holiday break!

This article in the British newspaper, The Guardian “Unilever unveils ambitious long term sustainability program” (November 15, 2010) describes Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan.  The company outlined a 10-year plan to cut its carbon footprint as well as the water and waste impact of its products.

Interestingly, this comes at a time when there are questions about consumer interest in sustainability.  An article in Advertising Age, “Has Green Stopped Giving?” (November 8, 2010 – you may need to be a subscriber to link through) notes:

In recent months, sales have begun to slow in categories such as green cleaners and grow in not-so-sustainable ones like bottled water as shoppers decide they may not be worth the tradeoff. And a September study showed big swings in the number of consumers who believe environmentally friendly alternatives are too expensive, don’t work as well as other products and aren’t actually better for the environment — all of which seem to add up to what Timothy Kenyon, director of the GfK Roper Green Gauge study calls “green fatigue.”