learnthe4ps.com - For students of marketing.

Who is the target market for this Toyota Venza commercial?   What is Toyota’s objective?  Does this ring true to you?  Would it ring true to your parents?

Most students of marketing enjoy seeing examples of creative, clever and successful marketing campaigns.  Well here you go — the background, the case study and at the end, the numbers to show it worked.  Did any of you see this campaign while it unfolded — I didn’t but then I am not the target market and many of you are.

Marketers have always been excited about the idea of turning consumers into powerful Promotion tools for their brands — but fostering word-of-mouth isn’t easy. Now Facebook is hoping they have a strategy that makes it easy for consumers and marketers to work together to promote brands and products we “like” (as in pressing the “Like” button on Facebook).

No one is quite sure where this is going, but many consumers are already clicking the Facebook “Like” button on their favorite brands — or maybe mentioning in a post a recent purchase of the brand. Now it seems that Facebook will mention this ads targeting that customer’s friends. So for example, if I “Like” a brand like Ikea on my Facebook page, an ad could appear on my friends pages that mentions “Joe (and perhaps more of their friends) Likes Ikea.” In theory, knowing that Joe likes Ikea may make the store more appealing to my friends. This short article at Fast Company suggest that Facebook’s sponsored stories work – see “Facebook Sponsored Stories Performing 2 Times Better Than Standard Ads” (July 15, 2011).

What do you think?  Will you be more favorable to a brand if you know that 10 of your friends like it too?  Does it both you that your “Likes” might appear on your friends page as ads?

Nike is a fascinating and powerful brand.  Growing an already large brand can be difficult as often many of the largest opportunities have already been exploited.  Nike has set its sights on the highly fragmented (many competitors) action sports market.

This article describes “Nike Tries to Enter the Niche Sports It Has Missed” (New York Times, June 1, 2011) describes Nike’s latest efforts to sell to participants and fans of youth action sports like skateboarding, snowboarding, surfing, trick-bicycling and others – see. Nike is approaching this market using some familiar tactics — using top athletes in each sport to endorse Nike products, supported with dynamite advertising that appeals to its target market. The video below was released on Facebook (where Nike has specialty pages for various sports) even before it launched on network TV (during the NBA finals). Nike created the Nike 6.0 sub-brand (see its Facebook page here) just for the action sports market.

Many of you are members of these target markets.  Have you seen this campaign? What do you think?  Will Nike make inroads here — or will these customers reject a big corporate brand and remain loyal to the niche brands like Quiksilver and Volcom which are current favorites?  Do you have ideas for Nike?

Here at L4Ps one of our goals is to spark your creativity by showing you great marketing examples.  The Swedish Post (Sweden’s postal service) wanted to increase awareness and educate its customers on one of its products — pre-stamped parcels that allowed them to send almost anything overnight with the green boxes. The clever campaign generated online buzz and awareness across Sweden. What do you think of this idea?  What were keys to its success? 

As social media began to attract more consumer eyeballs, marketing managers were confused about how to deal with it.  Now some best practices are emerging. Marketing managers have a better idea about which marketing objectives different types of social media might help achieve.  This article, “Are You Talking to Me?” (Wall Street Journal, April 25, 2011, non-subscribers click here) suggests five best practices used by companies with some success in social media. Many of the lessons come from “listening” closely to customers via social media. The early heavy users of social media are listening, learning, and adapting.

What marketing objectives do you see social media working best to achieve?

OK, let’s go back to social media.  I know we talk about that a lot here at L4Ps, but that is because our text books (even when just a year or two old) struggle to keep up with these concepts.  Plus, we think that many of you will bring familiarity and comfort with social media to your future employers.  Today, I want to tie social media to models of consumer behavior.

Good marketers understand the path to purchase — and employ different marketing tactics to help customers move down that path. Think about the consumer behavior models you have learned.  It probably begins with a consumer:  1)  identifying a problem,  2) looking for solutions to that problem (potentially a purchase solution), 3) developing a consideration set of alternatives, 4) searching for information, 5) evaluating alternatives, 6) making a choice (or deciding not to buy), and then possibly 7) having an ongoing relationship with the choice (usage and/or future purchases).  Something like this — with possible variations depending on the product being purchased.  See the model from Basic Marketing below.

It is useful to think about specific marketing tactics that could help customers as they move along in this process. This article at ClickZ, “Social Media Uses Content Marketing to Shop,” (March 21, 2011) shows how different types of online content might be used to move customers along in the purchase process. The article is short, but informative and includes good examples.  But this article should only stimulate your thinking — take it the next step.

Think about the purchase process for a product familiar to you?  What could a marketer do at each stage to help customers move along the purchase process?  Think about new media options.  This is the type of thinking you need to do to be a great marketing manager.

Now Guy Kawasaki is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and a big name author in the tech community — I think this is his tenth book. He already has an incredible network. With the publication of his new book – Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions, Kawasaki relied on low-cost forms of social media to get the word out and drive great initial sales. Read about it at Mashable “HOW TO: Launch Any Product Using Social Media,” (March 31, 2011).  The book is already on the bestseller lists at the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. In other words, it worked.

This is a great case study on how to use social media. While the case study looks at the launch of a book by an already successful author, with a little creativity you should be able to adapt many of these methods to other products.  What do you think?  How could this be used to help launch a new restaurant in town?  A new brand of dog food?  Or promote a concert in your town?

Are you familiar with TED? TED (an acronym for Technology, Entertainment and Design) dedicates itself to promoting and disseminating “Ideas Worth Spreading.” Click the TED logo to the left to connect to its website where you can learn more.

This past fall, TED  invited anyone to nominate “ads worth spreading” — with the idea that these ads deserved to be seen.  After reviewing more than 1000 ads, a panel of 24 judges selected 10 winners (click here to see all). We posted one of the winners, the Chase Film (for Intel’s new Core i5 Processor) about a month ago — and another winner was the Chrysler Eminem Super Bowl commercial.

Perhaps the one I like best promotes an idea from the Nike Foundation “The Girl Effect – Clock is Ticking” I embedded this 3:05 video below. This shows you how advertising can support an idea.  Check out the whole list.  Do you have a favorite?  Why is it your favorite?

Coca Cola has been working the “happiness” angle on its positioning for a few years now.  Five years ago it was the “Happiness Factory” ads — click here for a link to a long version of one of them.  About a year ago a Coca Cola video of a vending machine delivering happiness on a college campus went viral.  The video below shows Coke delivering happiness on the streets of Rio de Janiero, Brazil.  I like how the entire campaign creatively reinforces the “happiness” positioning that Coca Cola has been fostering.  Fun.