The Consumer-Advertiser Battle Continues

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Marketing managers have to acknowledge, most consumers are looking for ways to avoid advertising. While there is more advertising these days, there are many more tools to help us block or skip advertising or pay for ad-free content (e.g., Netflix). So advertisers need to get more creative to figure out how to deliver their messages.

This article and video from the Wall Street Journal, “Advertisers Try New Tactics to Break Through to Consumers” offers some great examples. I will show this video in class to stimulate a discussion on this topic and to introduce a new chapter in Essentials of Marketing 15e, “Publicity: Promotion Using Earned Media, Owned Media, and Social Media.”

What’s Now? Chapter 13 – #ThisGirlCan integrated marketing communications campaign spurs UK women to exercise

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While UK women participate in sports to a lesser degree than men, research shows that more women want to be active. So why aren’t they? This case study, “Case study: How “This girl can’ got 1.6 million women exercising,” (campaign, May 18, 2016) details the research and subsequent integrated marketing communications campaign that helped move many more British women from the couch to the pool, or court, or track, or…

Chapter 13 discusses integrated marketing communications. Describe the different elements of this marketing communications campaign. What different promotion methods were used? Give examples of each. 

Amazon Dash Makes Sure Customers Don’t Run Out…

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Is Amazon’s Dash brilliant or a future failure? What I love about Amazon is they keep on trying new ideas. Some of these ideas fail (think Amazon Fire Phone) while others soar (Amazon Prime). This company is not afraid to fail and  that is one reason why it succeeds.

An interesting discussion could follow from the timing of the introduction — the day before April Fool’s made some question whether Amazon Dash was for real. This article at AdWeek suggests that the timing was a stroke of genius. Do you agree? Either way it is a fun new Amazon feature to discuss when you cover online retail or public relations. We have also posted this at Learn the 4 Ps. 

Caterpillar Uses Viral Video in “Built for It” Campaign

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Many of the most creative campaigns are for consumer brands — so I really enjoy seeing a B2B brand do something creative. Caterpillar (the high quality, premium priced tractor and heavy equipment maker) has been running a campaign for about a year now: “When you choose Cat®, you get what you pay for — durable and reliable equipment, and long-lasting relationships. Discover what we’re built for…” They have released a series of five (so far) clever videos that demonstrate their products in action. The videos are great two minute stories. Any one of the videos could be used to motivate topics as diverse as B2B, product quality, premium pricing, promotion — even international. One of my favorites is this play on the old game of Jenga but using 27 blocks that weight 600 pounds each:


We have also posted this at Learn the 4 Ps.

Creative Campaign Helps Financial Services Company Gain Awareness

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Willis-Resilience1We don’t usually think about insurance and reinsurance markets — but risk management is an important behind the scenes, B2B business. Seeking to increase brand awareness, the Willis Group out of London, got into sponsorship . The resulting “Willis Resilience Expedition” (article at B2B Marketing, December 23, 2014) shows that careful planning can generate significant publicity. While this case study provides some details about the campaign and the media results, it is unclear what it cost. Consequently it is not possible to know the efficiency of the approach — but the impressions generated appear to be pretty significant.

This is a nice example of publicity in a non-traditional B2B market.