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?

Are these the “50 Best Places to Work in the U.S.”?

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qt1This Fast Company article “The Top 50 Best Places to Work in the U.S.” could be used by students writing their personal marketing plan. This data comes from anonymous feedback from real employees that was posted at the site Glassdoor.com (a site your students may want to know). The short article gives students the names of some companies and some of the criteria they may want to consider when deciding where to work. Yes, this is another list with Google at the top, but there are some unexpected names — like Quick Trip (a company we have posted about before) and In-and-Out Burger.  We have also posted this at Learn the 4 Ps.