Introduction to marketing assignment.

As a way to introduce the marketing topic, I get my students to research and present an example of an interesting and / or innovative marketing campaign. As well as providing some great examples, it gets them thinking about some of the key terms that we will use as we progress through the unit.

To start off with, I show them a couple of examples of an innovative campaign. The first is a campaign for Duracell in which holding hands with someone else in a bus stop causes it to provide heating. The video for this can be seen below.

Another example which is not video based is Google's own campaign for its search app. This can be seen here.

We talk about what these businesses are trying to achieve with their campaigns, who the target market might be and an estimate of the cost involved. I then explain that I want them to find something similar and present it to the class. My only stipulation is that it can't be a TV commercial - I want something a bit different. It could be video based like the Duracell campaign or one or a series of pictures like the Google campaign. The following questions should be answered.

- what did you like about the campaign?

- who is the campaign aimed towards (target market) and what are the likely objectives?

- what are the likely costs involved and how might this compare to a TV advertising campaign?

It is not meant to be a major piece of work, although it could be scaled up as much as you like (for example it could be done at the end of the marketing unit). I work with a maximum of 3 slides on the answers plus whatever they need to actually show the campaign.

Another example that I have used in the past is the Invisible Mercedes, see below.