Case Study for bodybuilding.com

Marketing Case Study

Business being evaluated: Bodybuilding.com

Bodybuilding.com is an American company based out of Boise, Idaho and established in 1999. This company does all their sales online and doesn't currently have a store front were they can sell product from. They specialize in dietary, sports and bodybuilding supplements. They have a wide selection of pre and post workout supplements along with a lot of vitamins and other health related supplements. They have a few clothing products that they sell as well as water bottles, shake cups and things of that nature. They also offer lots of good healthy recipes for the kitchen and meal plans to help you get to your exercise goal. The website also has a multitude of workouts the effectiveness ratings attached to each work out. Currently they have built up a fitness-themed social media where you can connect with other fitness junkies.

I have been using bodybuilding.com off and on now for about eight years and I have noticed some remarkable changes during this time span. First off, they use to never have any meal plans or recipes available on their website. They didn't use to have individual workouts either, they recently developed their social media which is pretty cool, I don't personally use it but I think its an interesting idea. Overall they have an effective marketing scheme by sending out promotional emails, they are all over social media, and they also use famous fitness models to endorse their stuff. Bodybuilding.com's value proposition is stated as:
"Your transformation is our passion. We are your personal trainer, your nutritionist,
your supplement expert, your lifting partner, your support group. We provide the technology, tools, and products you need to burn fat, build muscle, and become your best self."

StateFarm Marketing Campaign

This week I came across an article that was talking about the marketing campaign of StateFarm and how they have teamed up with the NBA to create the StateFarm assist team. The article was talking about how they originally started out with just Chris Paul whio is an All-Star point guard in the NBA, and StateFarm created Chris Paul's twin brother Cliff Paul, who is actually the same person dressed up and meant to be an All-Star insurance agent for StateFarm. They set a storyline of the two "brothers" have being separated at birth, one of them(Chris Paul) went on to be the best assist man on the basketball court in the NBA, and the second brother(Cliff Paul) went on to be the best assist man off the court for StateFarm. This add campaign started a few years ago and is still running, but they have piggy backed on to this storyline adding two more all star basketball players in Steph Curry and Damian Lillard(and their "twin brothers") along with Hall of Famer John Stockton and WNBA star Sue Bird to the StateFarm team. StateFarm ended up putting together a whole team of alter-ego StateFarm agents and created a whole storyline that stretched over the course of a few years. I think that what you can take away from this is that when you find something good in marketing you can really add to it and milk everything that you can out of that campaign.

The Benefits of Being the Cow

When reading "Purple Cow" there was one story that really stood out to me, the short story was The Benefits of Being the Cow. In this section of reading Seth Godin talks about how companies have to be risk takers and have to be remarkable, he kept hammering the point that safe is boring and dangerous. He is saying that if a business wants to be successful that the business has to be the purple cow and stand out. My favorite part in this section of reading was when Seth said that a business has to "milk the cow for everything its worth" and what I found to be the most important part when he said " create an environment where you can invent the net purple cow." This especially stood out to me because so many businesses find that initial purple cow that gets the business of the ground and running, but very few business are able to create another purple cow to keep them thriving. Most people and business stick with what they know and what got them started and play it safe, just as Seth was talking about. I think this is an extremely important lesson that can be used in all aspects of business and especially marketing. In marketing you have to be remarkable to catch peoples attention and get them to buy whatever product that person is trying to sell. The second part to that is that you can't stop being remarkable in marketing, If you find a remarkable marketing strategy you can only milk it for so long before it gets boring and you need to find the next purple cow. For example StateFarm found something remarkable in their marketing when they launched their add campaign of the StateFarm assist using Chris Paul as their main ad spokesman, great campaign and commercials that really turned popular. Now a few years later they added four other athletes to join the "StateFarm assist team" and they have really just played it out way to much.

Durecell Marketing Campaign

I read an article today that talked about P&G's marketing campaign and how they recently signed a deal with the NFL. The deal allowed for multiple P&G products to be sponsored by the NFL like Tide, Head and Shoulders and Vicks. Duracell is the most recent to start being sponsored by the NFL and wasting no time in getting big time athletes like Russell Wilson and Patrick Willis to do their commercials. The marketing challenge here is getting people to associate Duracell batteries with the NFL. I learned from this article that it can be a very useful tool to go out and get a big sponsor like the NFL if you have a big enough marketing budget.

http://attention2ads.com/post/33071049719/duracell-trust-your-power-campaign-the-trusted

brand listening

I decided to see what people were saying about the brand of Meek Mill. For people who do not know about Meek Mill, he is in the rap industry and has recently had some brand damaging conflicts with rappers Drake and more recently 50 cent. I would guess Meek Mill's value proposition would to provide unique and different style of music that separates him from his competitors. A lot of people are posting memes about Meek fighting 50 cent and losing. There have been posts talking about Meek Mill and how he is donating $50k to the flint water crisis, an obvious attempt to get his brand name back up. Thirdly people are talking about Meek's new "dis" track that he recently released. If I was Meek Mill's brand manager I would probably tell him to stop picking fights with big name stars and focus on releasing better music. I would also try and get the media to focus more on his charitable donations and less on the conflicts between the other rappers.

Question #2

As I was scrolling through a bunch of different articles on Forbes one article caught my attention more than the rest. This article was talking about how the landscape of marketing changed throughout 2015. The article also talked about the possible changes to the media marketing world that could happen in 2016. Companies like Facbook are trying to get ahead of the trend by buying up technology for virtual reality, which some experts think that could be the future of marketing. What I learned while I was reading this article was that companies need to be constantly changing updating their marketing plans because each year there is a different way to promote your brand that the consumer will be more receptive to.

First Marketing blog post

I decided to enroll in BA223 because my major is marketing and it is a step towards completing my degree. I hope that by being in this class that I will learn the principles of marketing and gain a better incite into how the marketing world works. Outside of class I enjoy being active and doing outdoor activities. When the weather isn't so good outside I enjoy playing basketball with my buddies and lifting.