teachthe4ps.com - For instructors of marketing.

This Wall Street Journal article/video combination is really two stories.  One is the remarkable success of Doug, Ford’s spokespuppet.  Doug’s YouTube channel has more than 3 million upload views.

On the other hand, focus of the article, “Big Brands Like Facebook, But They Don’t Like Paying,” (November 2, 2011, non-subscribers may need to click here) describes a business model challenge for Facebook.  The company’s $70 billion market value is based on the idea that the social network giant will produce revenues and profits — largely from selling targeted ads on the site.  Big brands love the eyeballs their Facebook fan pages attract, but those pages cost little to produce and generate no revenue for Facebook.  And many firms, like Ford, are spending for other media — in part to drive customers to Facebook.  While Americans spend 15% of their online time on Facebook, the social network giant only attracts 6.4% of all online advertising.  The video below interviews with the author of the WSJ article.

The article has insights for teaching about advertising, media selection, and social media.

Marketers have always been excited about the idea of turning consumers into powerful Promotion tools for their brands — but fostering word-of-mouth isn’t easy.  Now Facebook is hoping they have a strategy that makes it easy for consumers and marketers to work together to promote brands and products we “like” (as in pressing the “Like” button on Facebook).

No one is quite sure where this is going, but many consumers are already clicking the Facebook “Like” button on their favorite brands — or maybe mentioning in a post a recent  purchase of the brand.  Now it seems that Facebook will mention this ads targeting that customer’s friends.  So for example, if I “Like” a brand like Ikea on my Facebook page, an ad could appear on my friends pages that mentions “Joe (and perhaps more of their friends) Likes Ikea.”  In theory, knowing that Joe likes Ikea may make the store more appealing to my friends. This short article at Fast Company suggest that Facebook’s sponsored stories work – see “Facebook Sponsored Stories Performing 2 Times Better Than Standard Ads” (July 15, 2011).

Why could it work?  Because Facebook users are trusting people.  There is evidence that social networks foster trust.  You can read more about it in another Fast Company article, “Digital Oxytocin:  How Trust Keeps Facebook, Twitter Humming” (July 18, 2011).

These short articles epitomize one of the original motivations for Teach the 4 Ps – how can we keep our customers up-to-date when books only publish every few years.  So many new things are happening in marketing — so the blog is designed, in part, to help you stay current.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

Facebook’s image has always bounced between good and evil.  Privacy advocates have complained about the company.  It turned out that most users didn’t much care about privacy.  “The Social Network” did not paint a very pretty picture of founder Mark Zuckerberg.  Then this week we start off with a very favorable cover story in Bloomberg Businessweek that lauds the company’s COO and #2, see “Why Facebook Needs Sheryl Sandberg,” (May 12, 2011).  Bad timing for Sandberg, because now Facebook is getting more bad press for more bad actions “Facebook Admits It Hired PR Firm to Smear Google” (Adweek, May 12, 2011).

Yikes, lots of stuff here.  The Sheryl Sandberg story in BusinessWeek provides a neat profile of the COO and gets you up to date on some Facebook initiatives — like advertising and whether the firm should enter China.  The more interesting issue is the ethical lapse by Facebook.  It also makes you wonder about a PR firm that would take on (or maybe even suggest) such a tactic.  Neither looks very good here.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

Great scenario to use to discuss ethics in class.  How does a PR firm – even a big, well-known firm like Burson-Marsteller say no to Facebook?

Social media is getting less confusing.  Best practices are emerging.  Marketing managers are better understanding how which marketing objectives might be best addressed with social media.  This article, “Are You Talking to Me?” (Wall Street Journal, April 25, 2011, non-subscribers click here) suggests five best practices used by companies with some success in social media.  Many of the lessons come from “listening” closely to customers via social media.  The early heavy users of social media are listening, learning, and adapting.  Anyway, the article has some good examples of using Facebook and Twitter that you can bring to a class discussion about Promotion, social media, and market research.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

Is the future location of retail in Facebook?  Maybe it is one more channel for many retailers.  This article, “Fashion Retailer Asos Sets Up Shop on Facebook,” (Bloomberg BusinessWeek, February 17, 2011) describes one retailer’s efforts to target “moppers” (mobile shoppers).   Online fashion retailer Asos has a store in Facebook with a smartphone app on the way.

In the new edition of our book, Basic Marketing (which published last week – hurray!) we emphasize the role of useful content as an element of online promotion.  Branded content ties a brand to some form of entertainment or useful information.  It goes beyond sponsorship because typically the content is “found” when customers search online — or it is passed along to friends (think viral ad).  See our new book for more. Levi’s gives an example of branded content when it brought rock band Nada Surf live to the Levi’s Facebook page.  Levi’s picked up 45,000 new “Likers” with the promotion.  As you may know, after a Facebook user indicates they “Like” a brand, the brand’s content appears on the user’s Facebook news feed — and can be seen by the user’s friends.  Read about it in “Levi’s Rocks Facebook With Branded Content,” (ClickZ, October 29, 2010)

Duh!  Not sure I find this very surprising – “For ‘B-to-B’ Companies, Finding Facebook ‘Friends’ Can Be a Struggle,” (Wall Street Journal, October 20, 2010 – non-subscribers link here and click on article).  While I believe there are some opportunities for B2B communication via Twitter and Facebook — and this article offers a few success stories — I think there are other social media vehicles that work better.  At this point most people use Facebook for personal connections and possibly to keep up on brands they enjoy as consumers — not as business buyers.  That may change.  What do you think?  Where are the opportunities for social media with B2B?  Some discussion of this might fit in when you cover social media in a class on Promotion — when offering for B2B examples.  Note:  also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

Regular readers of Teach the 4 Ps know that one of our favorite topics is Facebook.  One of the reasons we write this blog is to help instructors stay up to date.  Many marketing practices are changing quickly — too fast for our text books to keep up.  So here is another update on Facebook.  This Bloomberg BusinessWeek cover story “Facebook Sells Your Friends” (September 22, 2010) gives you the latest on how marketers use Facebook.  All this just in time for the new movie about Facebook’s founders- “The Social Network.”

I am not yet convinced about mobile commerce.  But we are seeing increasing experiments in this area – particularly in Asia and Europe.  Toys “R” Us, which apparently does pretty well in Hong Kong , has launched a new multimedia campaign that utilizes QR codes, vidoes, and rewards.  The toy retailer has 18,000 Faceboook members in Hong Kong and its YouTube channel (HKTOYSRUS) is one of the 10 most viewed in Hong Kong, and there are more than 700,000 Hong Kong members of its Star Card Loyalty Program.

The article, “Toys “R” Us unveils multichannel mobile CRM tactics” (Mobile Commerce Daily, September 9, 2010) offers a good example of integrated marketing communications that utilizes a variety of new media in a foreign country.  One element of the campaign is an iPhone app — the video below shows how that works.

One of the primary reasons for this blog is to keep you up to date with the latest happenings in marketing — like how marketers are using Facebook.  This short (3:57) video from the Wall Street Journal explains how the “Like” button is working.   While many firms are jumping into the fray, it is not clear if Facebook pages deliver results.  [Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.]