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.

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).

I guess this campaign is more than a year old now — but it is fresh and new to me.  John St is an agency based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.  It is hard to call any agency an “ad” agency as most — like John St do all kinds of promotional efforts.  The clever video below demonstrates a wide range of its services in a cute way.  It actually fits as a B2B and B2C example at the same time — and it also demonstrates integrated marketing communications.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

An emerging technology is augmented reality (AR).  Wikipedia defines AR as “a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data.”  It won’t be long before shoppers are using AR to help them make buying decisions.  I just read about AR in National Geographic, “Revealed World” (January 2012) – be sure to check out the photo montage to get an idea about how this will work.  The article suggests that what you can now see on your smart phone is moving to specialized glasses and in a few years may be embedded in contact lenses. National Geographic used the technology in a shopping mall to promote its cable TV channel — see below.

For another example, see what Krystal did with a smart phone app below.  I don’t think this really shows the full potential of AR, but it does show a low-cost way to generate some buzz around a brand.  I applaud Krystal for dabbling in the new technology.

I think there is something to this technology — it sure seems like potentially useful information for shoppers — at least if you consider what it will be — not what it currently is.  For that view, look back at the National Geographic article.  It might be interesting to have students read that article or view some examples and ask them, “What could marketers do with this technology?”  I do ask those questions in the post for students at Learn the 4 Ps.

Human beings are actually not very rational decision makers — there is a great deal of evidence to that effect. We are subject to predictable biases. Increased computing power and better databases are allowing companies to use analytics and make better (unbiased) decisions. This is sparking the rise of new companies that can analyze data and some new applications. You can read more in “So, What’s Your Algorithm?” (Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2011 – non-subscribers may need to click here).  The article gives one marketing example for Schwan’s – ask your students for their own ideas about how to use big data to make better decisions.  You could also ask them how this might affect their careers moving forward.  I asked those questions at Learn the 4 Ps.

The Wall Street Journal asked some advertising execs what they see coming in 2012 — and you can read about it in “*&%@#! and Other Ads Trends for 2012” (January 4, 2012 – non-subscribers may need to click here) — or by watching the video below.  There are more trends in the article. It might be fun to ask your students — as I have over at Learn the 4 Ps — to choose one of these trends and evaluate its impact on their career planning.  I think it helps for students to learn to scan the environment and watch the future.

The impact of technology on B2B selling has probably been less dramatic than what we have seen in B2C markets.  That may be because B2B has traditionally relied more on personal selling than B2C.  But B2B marketers are looking for ways to sell more efficiently.  This article at Mashable “8 Ways Digital Will Improve B2B Sales in 2012” (December 30, 2012) offers some ideas about specific trends.

Happy New Year!  Many blogs and magazines like to do some sort of year in review article or issue.  We think this is a good idea and thought you might like to see our highlights from 2011.  So we looked back on the 199 posts we made in 2011 and chose our “Favorite 25 Posts.”  The primary criteria for selection was usefulness as you go into 2012 — we hope that some of the examples from last year remain relevant for you and your students.  We also posted some timely and timeless teaching tips and higher ed issues.

One of our objectives at Teach the 4 Ps is to provide another avenue to help you stay current.  This past year we looked at the evolution of daily deal sites in a series of posts, the most recent being “Can LivingSocial Differentiate Itself From Other Daily Deal Sites?” (1).   Of course we also continued to cover social media, which moves much faster than text books coverage.  So we had posts like “Best Practices in Social Media” (2), “Consumers Combine Search, Social Media For Purchasing Decisions” (3), and “Facebook – Big Brands Like its Reach and Its Cost” (4).  Consumers are increasingly turning to online customer reviews for buying advice – but should they?, see “A Rave, a Pan, or Just a Fake? Online Reviews.” (5).  It doesn’t hurt to get advice from a leader like P&G, so check out  “How P&G sees the future of marketing,” (6).  Another trend has been the increase in point-of-purchase promotion, often referred to as shopper marketing, see “In-Store Marketing on the Rise.” (7).

Many of our readers like the timely case studies we help them bring to class. We posted some short video case studies that included a discussion of a strategy, its execution, and the results.  Someof these studies highlighted creative marketing practices from around the globe:  for example this one from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, watch “A Nissan Dealer’s “Accidental Test Drive” (8) and from Brazil a B2B case study – “B2B, Direct Marketing, International — and Creative! What more can you ask for? Pizza maybe” (9).  Click the international category to the right for more international examples — as of today there are 55 posts in international.

We try to post some video case studies that resonate with students and work well in the classroom:  “The Story Behind Coke’s ‘Happiness Machine’” (10), “Great IMC Case Study: Bing / Decode Jay-Z” (11) and “Proof that Advertising Works – Minivans are now cool!” (12).  Three of our favorite articles from last year were case studies as well, “How Carrots Became the New Junk Food” (13), “Revitalizing a Mature Product: The Case of Philly Cream Cheese,” (14) and a B2G example in “Flogging Flak Jackets in War Zones” (15).  We have also found that our students learn well from analyzing marketing mistakes, so we posted “Learning from Mistakes – How Faulty Marketing Has Stalled TV Sales” (16) and “Coke Pulls White “Save the Arctic” Cans After Market Confusion.” (17)

Students seem to relate to ethics with contemporary case studies, which provide nice classroom discussion fodder – see “Professional Selling Ethics…,” (18) and “Updating ‘The ethics of sunscreen’” (19).

We continue to believe that hte 4 Ps are a robust organizer for marketing activities — and help students better understand marketing.  We feel it is dangerous for students to ignore some of the P’s as the provocative posts of some bloggers advocate.  We replied to one blogger in “Defending the 4 Ps of marketing on the web.” (20)

We also tried to help you with your teaching.  One of our most popular posts was on one of Joe’s assignments, “The Personal Marketing Plan assignment in the Principles of Marketing class”. (21)  We have plenty of teaching tips for teaching both in the classroom and online:  “Teaching Tip: “Strategies for Facilitating More Effective Classroom Discussions” (22), and  “The Underbelly of Online Teaching” (23).  For many more articles on teaching, click the “Tips for Teaching” link under “Categories” to the right of this post — as of today we have 40 links in that category.

Finally, many any of you are interested in trends in higher education more generally, so we shared posts on “The Debate Over Academic Rigor in B-Schools” (24) and the “National Survey of Student Engagement 2011” (25).

Retailers and packaged goods makers are responding to a shift in consumer shopping behavior.  According to a study by ESPN (yes the sports channel, which may have a vested interest here), 31% of men nationwide are the primary grocery shopper — up from just 14% in 1985.  So how have retailers better appeal to this new grocery shopping man?  Some are creating “man aisles” that put all that “man stuff” in one aisle instead of having is spread across several aisles.  Read more examples and details in ”More men taking reins of the cart” (Chicago Tribune, December 27, 2011).

Internet marketing research firm, comScore, has just published a new white paper, “It’s a Social World: Top 10 Need-to-Knows About Social Networking and Where It’s Headed” (December 21, 2011).  The report is a free download, although you need to surrender some personal data (name and contact info) to get access.  The research cited in the report really shows how prominent social networking has become in the online experience — all across the globe:  “Social networking is the most popular online activity worldwide accounting for nearly 1 in every 5 minutes spent online in October 2011, and reaches 82 percent of the world’s Internet population, representing 1.2 billion users around the globe.”

I have copied a couple of charts from the report below.  The first shows that usage is high (basically 80-85%) across all age groups — and growing.  The second chart shows the average number of hours per month per visitor.  Download the report for more information.