learnthe4ps.com - For students of marketing.

The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto treats kids who have cancer.  The hospital has come up with a creative approach to managing the patient (customer) experience.

One of the important aspects of treatment involves patients keeping a detailed “pain journal.”  Kids regularly going through chemotherapy treatments often feel too tired and weak to provide that level of detail — yet more accurate journal entries can improve their treatment.  Enter a technology solution — an iPhone app.  You can read more at Fast Company’s Co.Create site, “‘Pain Squad’ Mobile App Gamifies Cancer Treatment for Sick Kids.”  The video below provides a case study overview.

This example gives you insight into two marketing concepts.  First, the Product a hospital delivers is complex and includes a large dose of service.  Ultimately, the quality of the service includes many small interactions that occur in the delivery of that service.  Second, this provides an example of gamification – an emerging tactic that many firms  using across a range of practices.

What do you think of the hospital’s approach?  Have you seen other examples of gamification being used to enhance customer experience of another good or service?  Do you have any ideas of other situations where gamification might be used?

The Virgin America press release says it best.

Virgin America, the airline known for reinventing domestic travel, brings its tech and design-driven in-flight experience to life through an integrated multi-media campaign that features some of the airline’s frequent flyers. At the centerpiece of the campaign is a digital experience that brings the airline’s next generation cabins to life with cinematic flair – through the eyes of a few of its most frequent travelers. The campaign highlights Virgin America ‘Originals,’ frequent flyers known for shaking up the status quo in their own fields – including indie film director Kevin Smith, Pandora founder Tim Westergren, Animal and Son of a Gun chef Vinny Dotolo and independent artist/Facebook Creative Strategist Ji Lee. Virgin America also invited these same frequent flyers to curate aspects of the airline’s already unique in-cabin experience – including playlists, film picks and new menu items offered via the touch-screen Red™ in-flight entertainment platform.

You really have to link to the site.  Be sure to allow a few minutes to take in the full experience:  http://experiencevirginamerica.com.

From a marketing perspective, the interactive experience appears to up the ante on airline advertising. Virgin Atlantic clearly went all out here. Airline ads often show how wonderful their flights are — showing images of passengers sitting in a seat, with the seat in an exotic or calming location. These ads try to invoke visions of a pleasant “experience” you are likely to enjoy on a flight (yeah right — maybe if you fly first class).

What is unique about products that are primarily services?  How does a site like Experience Virgin America help sell the airline to target customers?

The financial services industry may have identified a new and underserved target market — women. More than a quarter of all the world’s millionaires are women — and that number is growing. In the U.S., women control$8 trillion in assets with that number expected to grow to $20 trillion by 2020. This Wall Street Journal article “Clients from Venus,” (April 30, 2012 – non-subscribers may need to click here) explains how women investors have different needs than men.

How could a financial services firm adapt its marketing mix to better meet the needs of women?  Think about the firm’s website, its advertising, and its products.  Think about how sales force recruiting and training might be different when women are the target market.

Over the last decade Nike has significantly changed its marketing strategy – especially in product development and promotion.  The Nike+ software and iPod partnership has the firm seeking more digital products.  Nike seeks new services to enhance its offerings.

My generation (I am 51) saw Nike’s great advertising on television.  Now Nike has moved almost completely away from the big screen — moving to the small screens (cell phones and computers) where its core target market spends more time.  There the media placement costs are very low (though production costs for thos 1-3 minute “mini movies” can be high).

Fortune magazine provides an extended article describing changes at Nike – “Nike’s new marketing mojo” (February 13). To read more Learn the 4 Ps coverage of Nike, click here.

Let’s try to learn from Nike — and apply these lessons to other companies in other industries (not just Under Armour or Adidas).  This will require some thinking — because the lessons cannot be copied directly to new industries.  What can McDonald’s learn from Nike’s strategy?  How about the Mayo Clinic?  King Soopers (or other grocery store)?

Twitter’s efforts to build a viable business model have been inconsistent. Now the micro-blogging service appears to have a formula that is working. Advertisers are starting to get on board. Bloomberg BusinessWeek‘s cover story this week offers a closer look at Twitter, see “Twitter, the Startup That Wouldn’t Die” (March 1, 2012). A quick overview can be found in the video below — but read the article to get more insight.

This is a useful story for entrepreneurs as getting the right business model is not easy.  For marketers, Twitter has some real potential, though I believe they need to do more analytics so they can deliver highly targeted audiences to advertisers.  Facebook can do that now.  Do you use Twitter?  Do you think the advertising model will work?  How else could Twitter improve its model?

Marketing managers are increasingly paying attention to the customer’s entire purchase experience. Scholars of the marketing of services have long studied queues and wait times. Smart companies are finding ways to improve the wait experience — and you can read about some examples in this Wall Street Journal article “Fun for the Whole Family: The Long Wait in Line” (August 10, 2011 – non-subscribers may need to click here).

How important do you think it is for a company to manage queues?  For what types of businesses is this most important?  What other ideas do you have — or have you seen other marketers use — to more effectively manage lines?

Marketing students know that the key to good marketing is tailoring a marketing mix to the needs and interests of a specific target market.  This article in the Wall Street Journal, “NBA Game Promises to be a Turkey? Call In the Turks — or the Filipinos,” (January 19, 2011 – non-subscribers may have to click here) shows how some National Basketball Association teams dentified niche markets and tailored their product to sell more tickets.   For example, the Sacramento Kings, one of the worst teams in the league, are drawing big crowds on Jewish Heritage nights in Toronto, Washington, Atlanta, and Boston. Why? They have the league’s only Israeli, Omri Casspi.  Teams have give away yarmulkes and provided kosher foods to further appeal to the Jewish fan.

What other organizations could offer similar special nights? How could they increase their appeal to such a target market?

This article describes a brand extension – where a brand is taken to a new product category.  Tide is known for detergents — and it hopes that its reputation for cleaning carries over to the dry cleaning business.  Tide has found a way to leverage one of its strengths (a well-known and well respected brand name) to take advantage of a great opportunity (strong growth in services, and lack of organized competition in dry cleaning).   Check out “P&G Looks to Franchise Tide Dry Cleaning” at Bloomberg Businessweek (September 2, 2010).

What do you think of Tide’s strategy?  Do you have any suggestions about its target market or marketing mix?  What might be important to Tide’s success?

If you are not familiar with Ryanair’s low-cost business model, this article “Ryanair’s O’Leary: The Duke of Discomfort” (Bloomberg BusinessWeek, September 2, 2010) will bring you up to speed.

What do you think of Ryanair’s approach to air travel?  Does the low service, low price model work for you?  What if the plane’s only had one pilot?