This Week in Marketing: February 26, 2011

This week's highlights (with applicable teaching topics and links to discussion below):

 

Gorilla Glass Beats Its Chest

  • The article: Corning breaks 'Gorilla Glass,' from BtoB.
  • The facts: Corning, Inc., is an integral ingredient in several consumer electronics products (including some mobile phones). It is more scratch-resistant than most glass, making it a good choice for these devices. At CES (the Consumer Electronics Show) last January, Corning launched a promotional campaign aimed at tech-savvy consumers.
  • Classroom uses: Gorilla Glass is an example of a product sold exclusively through B2B marketing, and so this example would fit well into a class or unit devoted to that topic. It is also an example of component manufacturers attempting to create "pull" demand by generating consumer preference, like Intel's "Intel Inside" badges affixed to computers with Intel processors.

Ten Calories and Not for Women

  • The article: Can Dr. Pepper's Mid-Cal Soda Score a 10 with Men?, from Advertising Age (subscription may be required).
  • The facts: Dr. Pepper's campaign for its new Dr. Pepper Ten boldly states, "Not for Women." The article discusses the challenges Coke and Pepsi have faced marketing Coke Zero and Pepsi Max to men, and Dr. Pepper's plans to succeed with this market segment.
  • Classroom uses: A current example of target marketing by age and gender.

More Reasons to Teach and Learn about Social Media

  • The article: How Well is Social Media Fitting into the Marketing Mix?, from eMarketer.
  • The facts: In a recent Duke University/AMA study, CMOs reported plans to significantly increase the percentage of marketing budgets spent on social media over the next few years.
  • Classroom uses: In my post two weeks ago, I covered an article focusing on the growing importance of social media in marketing, and mentioned the implications of this trend to marketing education. This article offers statistics that support this point.

Love it or Hate it

  • The article: Kraft Taps Pauly D and James Carville to Whip Up Miracle Whip Buzz, from BrandChannel. (link to sample ad included)
  • The facts: Kraft has launched an unusual campaign for its Miracle Whip salad dressing acknowledging that it is a love-it-or-hate-it sort of product, combined wih a free sample offer.
  • Classroom uses: A good example of a two-sided ad campaign; could also be useful in discussing persuasion methods in a consumer behavior class, discussing the campaign's atypical frankness. Obviously Kraft hopes that it will interest consumers in trying the product; might it backfire and instead convince consumers who haven't tasted Miracle Whip that they won't like it? It also offers an example of using celebrity endorsers (though the choices are somewhat offbeat).

Google in the News Again

  • The articles: Google Penalizes Overstock for Search Tactics, from The Wall Street Journal, and Testing Google's New Algorithm: It Really Is Better, from The Atlantic.
  • The facts: Google has penalized Overstock.com for what it considers inappropriate use of links to its site from college and university websites (links from the .edu top-level domain are considered to be more authoritative and trustworthy than those from top-level domains such as .com, and so they lend greater credibility to the sites they link to). In addition, Google announced a major change to its search results algorithm in order to penalize sites called content farms, which aggregate content that originated on other sites.
  • Classroom uses: I teach and consult in the area of online marketing, so I do a lot of reading in this area. The debate over content farms has been raging on search-related blogs and websites for quite some time, along with rumors that Google was poised to take action, as they finally did a few days ago. But over the past week or two (including last week's coverage of allegations of "black hat" behavior by JC Penney's SEO consultants), articles about Google's search results have made it into the mainstream press, and that's something I'm not accustomed to seeing. I think it's an indication that businesses are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of obtaining a high profile in the "organic" (unpaid) search results.