I love creative marketing ideas — and especially creative pricing approaches. In recent years we have seen subscription models take off. Companies like them because they provide predictable, recurring revenue and generate more information and data about customers. It raises customer lifetime value (see Chapter 2). Of course cell phone service, streaming video, magazines and newspapers have long used this model. But more recently, we have seen automakers (including Volvo), fitness products (Peloton) and now even fast food (Taco Bell) use a subscription model. Read more about the Taco Lover’s Pass in this article at CNN.com. These examples might supplement your coverage of pricing (Chapters 17 and 18) or customer lifetime value.

Some content is delivered much better in an audio format. Take sonic branding — the creation of a sound that becomes associated with a brand. Some of the more well-known examples are Intel, Netflix, and McDonalds (all of those examples came from a longer 11 minute video on sonic branding — which you could assign or show in class if you want). But I found this podcast case study on the development of HBO’s new sonic idea to be particularly interesting. The podcast goes into a lot of depth on the factors HBO thought about and some of the marketing research they conducted. It will be a nice supplement to a discussion of branding (Chapter 8) or maybe marketing research (Chapter 7).

You may have noticed fewer “diet” soft drinks on store shelves in the last few years. Apparently “younger people just don’t like the word ‘diet'” according to the CMO at PepsiCo. Responding to this, Pepsi, Coke, and other soft drink makers have switched product names to emphasize “Zero” or “Zero Sugar.” You can read more in “‘Diet’ soda is disappearing from store shelves.”

The changes in brand names are a reaction to changes in consumer attitudes and behavior. This provides a nice example of the marketing strategy process planning model at work — context (social cultural factors) and customers lead to changes in marketing strategy. This might be a good example to add to your lecture on consumer behavior (Chapter 5) or branding and product names (Chapter 8).