Welcome back! and a big thank you…

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Faithful (or occasional, or even first-time) readers of Teach the 4 Ps,

Over the last couple of years I have been pleased to have Jon Firooz as guest editor of Teach the 4 Ps. Jon did a fantastic job providing insightful content and great ideas for teaching marketing. With a lot of other activities on his plate, Jon is unable to continue writing for the blog. Jon was a great help — especially over the last year as I worked hard on revising the 17th edition of Essentials of Marketing. The latest version, which I am now finishing up, will be published this spring. I will drop some nuggets about that in the coming months. That said, having Jon managing the blog during that time was a big help. Thanks Jon!

Let me use that to segue into a welcome back to teaching time. While some of you were teaching this summer, many of us had time away from the classroom. I hope that even if you did teach this summer, you had the chance to get away and re-charge batteries. I don’t usually teach in the summer and when I return to the classroom in the fall I am especially charged up.

As always, feel free to shoot me an email with suggestions or comment on the blog.

Joe Cannon, Professor of Marketing, author, Essentials of Marketing

Video Game Influencers

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Video games, once considered the domain of young kids and self-proclaimed geeks, are growing at an astounding rate.  According to NewZoo’s Global Games Market Report, the industry was expected to reach $138B in 2018.  With that growth and the emergence of esports we’re now seeing gamers stepping into the influencer role alongside traditional athletes.  One of those gamers, Ninja, has teamed up with energy drink producer Red Bull.

Red Bull wants to boost brand awareness in the gamer segment who frequently rely on energy drinks to power through long gaming sessions.  Red Bull’s campaign includes a contest that gives fans a chance to meet Ninja and have a gaming session with the superstar.  You can read more about the campaign in this Marketing Dive article.  The topic could apply to a discussion about segmentation, brand building, influencers and advertising/sales promotion.

Gillette’s Controversial Campaign

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Our society continues to become increasingly polarized and we see that polarization spill over into marketing campaigns as well.  One recent example is Gillette’s campaign, We Believe.  The commercial calls out bullying and harassment, challenging men to rise above the stereotype of toxic masculinity.  According to this MarketingDive article, the campaign was met with 1.1 million social media and news mentions within the first 24 hours of the ad’s launch which represented a 215% increase in brand mentions compared to the previous 24 hour period.  As you would expect, not all of the mentions were positive but overall consumer impressions were very positive (79.6% of survey respondents saying they liked the ad) and the majority of respondents thought the ad was very memorable.

This can be used in a discussion about different forms of advertising (this seems to fit the institutional advertising definition best), it could be discussed in context of evaluating the social environment, and possibly even an ethical discussion – could campaigns like this be viewed as disingenuous or backfire on the company?

IHOP Publicity Stunt

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Over the summer one of the most talked about marketing campaigns was the IHOb campaign.  The International House of Pancakes announced they were changing from IHOP to IHOb and later announced that the “b” stood for “burgers”.  Shortly afterward they admitted it was all a publicity stunt to help build awareness of their line of burgers.  This campaign has potential for a couple of class discussions.  First, was it successful?  Clearly they succeeded in getting people talking about their company but whether it drove sales is more ambiguous.  This article from the USA Today suggests it did not drive a material increase in sales.  Another article from geomarketing.com indicates that there was an increase in male traffic but the net result was negative due to lower traffic by females.

Another angle to discuss is the ethicality of the campaign.  Is it ethical for a company to say “we’re changing our name” when they have no intention to do so?  Does this create a bad precedent or does it cause other companies to push the boundaries of deceptive marketing?  How far is too far when trying to gain publicity?