World Changing Ideas – New Product Development at Its Finest (#M4BW)

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I always enjoy Fast Company‘s innovation issues. This year’s “World Changing Idea Awards honor the businesses and organizations driving change in the world.” There is always an emphasis on new products and services that make the world a better place — a natural connection to our Marketing for a Better World (#M4BW) theme in the most recent edition of Essentials of Marketing. Winners included:

  • Abbott Labs which made a tiny implant that keeps babies’ hearts healthy (see video below)
  • Carbon Lighthouse which uses AI which adjusts businesses energy consumption by up to 30%.
  • Invest Your Values (I love when the brand name tells you what the product is) is a digital tool that helps employees invest their retirement money in companies that share their values.

These examples can be used across a number of chapters — but may relate most closely to Chapter 8 (goods and services) and Chapter 9 (new product development). The video below (first 2:20) features a few of these companies and might be shown in class.

 

Critical Thinking for Students – What businesses are harmed (helped) by the pandemic?

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OK, life gives you lemons (or worse, far worse, a pandemic), how do you make lemonade. Because the pandemic is everywhere these days, we might use this current event to get students to think about the impact on various types of business. You might ask your students questions like…

  • What types of products (or companies) are likely to do particularly well (or poorly) in the pandemic? And more importantly why?

Many of their answers can be tied back to consumer behavior changing. This gives them the opportunity to see how understanding customers influences business. For more interesting examples you might share with your students, consider these articles: “Puzzles, hair dye, yeast: Companies thriving during COVID-19,” and “Early department stores were incredibly innovative. What happened?” to find less obvious examples.

  • How should companies engage in promotion during the pandemic? Why? 

Again, more examples from successful and less successful companies. See these articles about advertising “We have hit peak pandemic advertising, and now they’re just annoying,” and “Brands With Strong Twitter Personalities Stay the Course During Covid-19” (you may need to sign up to access that last one — you can get three free articles a month after signing up).

Time for Fun – Emoji Brand Quiz

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Brilliant Ads put together a fun “Emoji Brand Quiz“. They have 60 brands in emojis (examples and brands included below). See also this one (with different emoji/brand combinations) at Buzzfeed. This could be a lot of fun to show in class. I might create a little contest to kick off class in the fall. It might also work well when you cover brand names.

 

 

Patagonia supports activist short film, “District 15” [#M4BW]

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Patagonia lives by its strong environmentalist values. Now it has produced a new short (23 minutes) film, “that outlines the fight undertaken by the Communities for a Better Environment group as it lobbies city council and Mayor Eric Garcetti to establish a 2,500-foot distance between oil drilling operations and Wilmington’s schools, hospitals, and churches.” (Fast Company, February 27, 2020) The film differs from many of Patagonia’s typical outdoor images — as this one focuses on the challenge to a community in Los Angeles that is home to 479 oil wells. It might be interesting to watch or assign the film to your students and ask them why Patagonia does this? If you know Patagonia, and watched some of its previous promotional efforts, the answer is not immediately obvious. They really do it because they support the environment and they believe this is the right thing to do. It does burnish their brand and it is authentic, too.

Is this the dark side of Amazon? At the center of plenty of channel conflict

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I know, I know, we always seem to be using Amazon as an example. Well the company gets plenty of press–both good and bad. This probably falls better into the latter category. The article, “More brands are leaving Amazon, but the strategy could backfire,” (CNBC, January 11, 2010) describes how some bigger brands–including IKEA and Nike–have stopped selling through the online giant. These brands have become frustrated with Amazon’s failure to police counterfeit products or are concerned with competition from the retailer or its third-party sellers. The brands might leave, but because third-party sellers still offer the brands, their departure does little if anything to harm Amazon–and may do greater harm to the brand. A bit of a catch-22 for large brands.

This situation provides a good example of vertical conflict (between Amazon and the brands) and horizontal conflict where third-party sellers are competing with brands trying to sell direct through Amazon. It also offers an opportunity to discuss how a brand can lose control of its strategy when third-party sellers set their own pricing and messaging. Thus, it has relevance to Chapters 3 (competition and Amazon chapter-opening case), 8 (branding), 10 (channels of distribution and channel conflict), and 12 (retailing). With that much relevance I couldn’t hold back.