It's not easy being green...

We had 6 hrs of marketing class today. And to be honest, I didn't feel bored.Instead, I enjoyed the subjects. The professor(Louis Gialloreto) teaching us this subject is so good that you tend to think a lot while attending the lectures. He has style, humor, knowledge and content in his lectures and knows the art of teaching. The Professor has a rich academic and corporate experience. He is the president of Stowe & Breton Ltd., an international consulting firm which specializes in executive training, customer relationship management, brand development, innovation, marketing planning and competitive marketing strategies. Prof Louis has over 20 years of industry experience in airlines, wholesaling, retailing, and financial services, and has consulted to over 50 organizations.

The Internet has become a powerful weapon in this marketing age. So, a lot of discussion revolved around that. We also talked about how blogs can be used as a powerful channel for market communication. I also quizzed him on how a company could work towards recovering its brand if it got damaged ( I was prompted to ask this question as Pepsi and Coke brands have been hit in India because of pesticides issue !).

Marketing is a lot to do with numbers too. He briefly discussed the quantitative portion of marketing too. He shared his experiences while working on different marketing products and talked about the three market communication techniques – Funnel, Pipe and Cone.

Some of the articles that we discussed in the class today:

Ads that actually sell stuff:
Brand Tailing-The concept is to first uncover the underlying reasons why people don't buy (at all or as much as their clients would like) and assist their clients in addressing those issues. Then they build call-to-action campaigns and use tracking software to determine what ads have resulted in sales.

Live-action advertising
They represent the launch of a new ad medium--part TV, part billboard, and all Internet in its network sophistication.Even the most ad-resistant consumers are considered good targets. Digital displays give advertisers something else they crave--the ability to precision-target different audiences by the hour.The digital signs allow ads to be changed immediately

The future of advertising:
The average American is subjected to some 3,000 advertising messages every day With an annual budget of more than $4 billion, America's Procter & Gamble (P&G) is the biggest advertiser in the world.

Best Buy's giant gamble
Figure out which customers make you the most money, segment them carefully, then realign your stores and empower employees to target those favored shoppers with products and services that will encourage them to spend more and come back often.

The best thing since the bar-code
RFID systems are made up of readers and “smart tags”—microchips attached to antennas. When the tag nears a reader, it broadcasts the information contained in its chip

And the Coolest New PC Is Made by ... Best Buy?
Best buy came out with a computer that was labeled as a “ machine a geek would like to build himself, if only he had the time”. The "vpr" in "vpr Matrix" stands for value, performance and reliability.

There were other articles too..but I cannot find the web links for those..! If you are looking for web based market communications such as Pop ups, Superstitials,Skyscraper etc, check out this site

BTW, a few folks in the earlier Marketing class had noticed that the Prof has a fetish for green color.So, the class today had decided that it would be funny if everyone in class came in green and so did we. When the Prof asked us, we said it was "pure coincidence".
We had a good laugh. There were green shirts, tops, jackets. !!

Enjoy the pics below of the Mena and Women in Green.