At this point in the year, most of you have read – or at least glanced at, and thought about reading – the Marketing textbook. At first I thought nothing of it; it was great to have the r
eal world examples of how companies are building customer equity, defining a market-oriented mission, or even how they are targeting their market segment.
But then I started noticing the amounts of brands that were actually in the book: Heinz, 7-Eleven, Telus, and SunChips, just to name a few.
A lot of the brands in the book are brands that appeal to a university student; the 18-24 year old who is aware of the environment, and who are technologically literate.
I’m not sure if there are any laws against this, but the ability to market through this textbook is immense. In some cases, there are 1-2 page excerpts (the Marketing@Work stories) that essentially “talk-up” the company’s ability to differentiate their product, their customer relationship management and even their marketing information systems.
Now I can’t speak for everyone, but I know that I have changed my opinion about a number of companies after knowing more about the social work they do, or how they’re making efforts to be more environmentally friendly. This has led me to visit their website, explore and even research some of the products they offer. As a teen, A LOT of the TV ads really don’t appeal to me, and if anything, they draw me away from the product/brand.
By being able to learn about them at my own will, and being able to understand the decisions they’re making, it has helped me differentiate them from competitors.
In the near future, I could see companies looking into marketing through textbooks in order to appeal to the teens/young adults that can be unreachable at times. If not all, the vast majority of the market who reads textbooks (especially marketing books) are in university and will hopefully have the disposable income in the future to purchase high-end products.
A funny YouTube video that you may have came across during the textbook – although this video wasn’t allowed to be aired on TV, it has still received almost 4 million views on YouTube.