Truth be told, by examining how we can improve a company’s current marketing strategy, I learned a lot about how to apply marketing concepts that we study in the classroom to a real company. I personally really enjoy case studies and find them very interesting and constructive. So there is no doubt that this assignment was a very useful and worthwhile homework. However, I was disappointed by the fact that we had to produce a video rather than presenting our marketing plan to the class. Making video takes too much time and is not very useful. In many groups, many members (I was one of them) do not know how to make and edit videos and to be honest I do not see its usefulness for students who do not consider Marketing for their career. As a result, this caused that one student in every group who knows how to use iMovies to work three times as much. At last, making videos for many students is not a transferable skill and I do not see why did we have to spend so much time making and editing a video.

On the other hand, lets consider the upside of conducting a presentation to the class. Public speaking is ranked among one of the most transferable and needed skills in business and many students need to learn how to handle pressure of giving speech to unknown crowds. It takes a lot less time to prepare it and it is more compelling and understandable by the audience.

Overall, although making video is a very useful skill for some students who consider marketing as their future profession, it conveys a lot less value to the other ones.

It was very interesting to read Dragana Milisic’s blog about the “Oreo’s surprising slam-dunk advertisement.” This type of unconventional and out of the blue advertisement really helped Oreo to stand out among other Superbowl ads. The unpredictability and the surprise element of such ads make people smile and admire the company’s brilliant marketing methods.

It’s worth mentioning that although these type of creative advertisements do not cost very much in comparison to million dollar Superbowl ads, they are very risky. This type  of “right on the spot creating” has caused numerous crucial problems for companies in the past. Certainly that is why not many brands have the stomach for such a risky advertisements.

This type of risky marketing method begs the question that why some companies can use such methods and some do not? Let me explain this by an example.

Oreo has been around for a very long time and customer’s know this brand by their delicious product and not by their advertising campaigns. Thus even if their risky ads become controversial, not many customers will stop eating their delicious, now 100 years old sandwich cooky. On the other hand the upside of such advertisements are significant. People like to be surprised and this type of creative thinking excites many potential customers.

So overall, the big question is: Would this type of unanticipated advertising change the marketing world for good? The answer is: It really depends. This type of advertising is useful for established companies who can also handle the downside when their risky ads turn out to be controversial. For new companies and products, this method is very risky. This type of publicity have destroyed many emerging companies in the past.