Tag Archives: Teaching

The 10 best Marketing cases I have ever taught

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As the new academic year rises on the horizon, I thought about the cases (in Marketing) that I have taught in past few years and listed the top ten. My best teaching experiences – taking into account the best learning experiences of my students – took place while teaching these cases.

The list is slightly inclined towards marketing strategy, and does not include the good old work-your-way-through-it numerical analysis cases as these are required but do become somewhat boring at times. I have listed only the interesting cases, which really connect with students and sometimes even divide the class!

Most of these cases can be taught across programs and years (perhaps a few are not suitable for the first-year basic marketing course, and many are unsuitable for undergraduate courses) with a little flexibility, creativity, and improvisation from the faculty. Then again, you can’t have a course of just these cases – these are best consumed as the laddus in a diet that otherwise consists of good old dal-chawal-roti-subzi, in my view.

These cases are tried and tested for that ideal combination of fun and learning (in the 750-odd hours that I have taught with cases so far with full-time MBA, executive/online MBA, in-campus MDP, and online MDP participants). Of course, all bets are off if students have not analysed the case prior to the class discussion.

Here’s the list, in the order of most interesting first. Complete case titles are provided at the end.

  1. Whatsapp Payments – where to play, how to win, and do so in a market evolving so fast that the where and how keep changing – I hope the managers from UCO Bank have not forgotten our discussion yet!
  2. Tanishq – a tad dated, but this case is a hit because you have to choose – the rural customer who wants something which is not the same as what the urban customer wants, but rural is a big market and needs its own positioning – a juicy dilemma of the highest order!
  3. Maggi – students’ love for Maggi translates directly to life in the class – this case spreads all the way from crisis-handling and regulator relationship to competitive strategy and social media management – the case can be built upon using the recent (~March 2024) McDonald’s fake cheese almost-crisis.
  4. Herman Miller – this one is tricky because the pre-class reading (in terms of page length and case details) is on higher side, but discussing this case is like solving a puzzle – not your simple Rubik’s cube but a really confusing cube that reveals new colors every time your twist it. Need I mention that the case is on sustainability?!
  5. Paez – this one is about footwear (!), and not luxury footwear but a home-grown South American brand in a product category rarely seen in cases – the case is on positioning and actually gives students a few options, but if you do your analysis well, all options are bad! What more can you ask of a case?!
  6. TiVo – new product marketing for a really, really new product – but this case requires careful handling and pre-discussion prep as television is not something the current generation can relate well to – the context can then segue into Apple Vision Pro, foldable phones, and most new tech products such as smart watches and Alexa.
  7. Starbucks – spend $20 million on additional employee hours, or not? Increase customization of drinks, or not? Rely on market research, or not? And beyond the case, questions like: add masala chai and filter coffee to the menu, and dilute the brand but adapt to the Indian market, or not?
  8. Puma’s Maya – Virtual influencers are the craze these days, but in the early days when nobody knew what a virtual influencer was and whether it would work, a little-known company in South East Asia decided to build one for Puma – a fun case that can build towards all things virtual, including customer experience and customer engagement, and the growing role of AI in all things martech.
  9. L’Oreal Paris – the title might be a little off-putting but that should not deter either the case facilitator or the students – L’Oreal has been doing digital, and quite well at that, for several years now, and it’s great fun to see how they decide on new products using social media listening (and planting).
  10. Commerce Bank – this bank, in the case at least, has unique way of trading off a lower interest rate against fun activities (think jugglers and walking soft toys) in the bank branch. Unbelievable and rightly so, but the case gets students thinking – why should finance and banking be boring and tiring to customers?
  11. Bonus: Real events –interesting real incidents and decisions not formally written up into cases – the absence of a structured set of facts and a story ready to read is usually compensated by the freshness of the incident – how Budweiser faced the last minute problem in selling its drinks at the Qatar World Cup through the #BringHometheBud campaign, how the same Budweiser dug itself into a hole with an influencer, and how they dug themselves out of the hole by reinforcing their positioning through advertising…

To case teachers reading this, I hope this list is useful and makes you revisit or reinforce your own favorite cases. Am eager to hear and learn from you about your case experiences. Write to me at npriya(at)iimk(dot)ac.in. Equally eager to hear from students!

Complete case titles for the cases above:

  1. WhatsApp: Creating and Communicating Value for WhatsApp Payments
  2. Tanishq: Positioning to Capture the Indian Woman’s Heart
  3. The Maggi Noodle Safety Crisis in India (A)
  4. Cradle-to-Cradle Design at Herman Miller: Moving Toward Environmental Sustainability
  5. Paez
  6. TiVo (first version dated 2000)
  7. Starbucks: Delivering Customer Service
  8. Puma’s “Maya”: Southeast Asia’s First Virtual Influencer
  9. Ombre, Tie-Dye, Splat Hair: Trends or Fads? “Pull” and “Push” Social Media Strategies at L’Oréal Paris
  10. Commerce Bank

From the gallery to the well: A Wimwian’s reflections on the journey from student to teacher

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© Priya Narayanan, Assistant Professor of Marketing, IIM Kozhikode. Views are personal.

This article narrates the story of my academic journey, and my admiration for my teachers at IIM Ahmedabad, and was first published in Writing on the Wall (Issue 5, May 2023, page 53), the annual students’ magazine of IIMA. The full magazine is available at IIM Ahmedabad’s LinkedIn post here.

Caution: The article contains an inordinate number of references to I, me, and my, and is best suited for fans of Priya Narayanan!

Late in the summer of 2009, I officially became a Wimwian by enrolling in the PGP and received the keys to my room in the “dungeon” of Dorm 3, where the sun hesitates to enter and a sweater is needed even at midday in the peak of winter. What followed was a hustle of classes in the gallery seating of b-school classrooms – for the first time ever in my life, I was not on the first bench! – and a life packed with activities and placements. Later, the place felt home enough to return for a second stint, this time for a doctoral degree in a topic that had become my favorite over the years, consumer psychology.

Now, as I (try my best to) patiently ignore the sleepyheads in the classes I teach, I find a renewed respect for the faculty of IIMA. In my MBA students, I see myself – eager, anxious, frustrated, capable, enthusiastic, bored, creative, jaded but curious – and I feel a sense of responsibility. More than anything, I realize now the relief and pleasure when students laugh at a teacher’s jokes!

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In the second year of PGP, despite the usual RGgiri, RCP, and the boredom of soporific classes, there were some academic discussions which caught my attention. And Wimwi was a place where you explored whatever seriously interested you, be it cricket or music, or even research. I plunged into independent projects, exploring two topics that seemed to pose an endless set of questions – why did corporates have so few women moving to the top? And how could ecommerce managers engage customers both online and offline? (this was before Amazon and Flipkart, and well before TikTok!)

With the PhD degree came the power and responsibility of teaching, of having others listen to my words merely because I had moved from the gallery to the well. And so, every day I find myself dipping into the store of teaching styles and techniques that I had unconsciously picked up over the seven years that I spent at IIMA. There were teachers who excelled at orchestrating case discussions, at board-work, at connecting personally with students, at clearly explaining difficult concepts, and often, at all this and more.

Growing up in the midst of these teachers could be why I took to academia like a duck to water! Today I run original courses – one of which is titled ‘The CMO’s Playbook’ – which reflect both ideas and independent thinking that I must have first picked up while at IIMA. Today my research examines questions that are both highly practical and highly conceptual, largely related to consumer decision making and brands. In my research, I am also inspired by the several IIMA PGP alumni who occupy impactful positions in academia worldwide.

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Coming from IIMA meant that when I chose to sign up for a PhD, I neither looked elsewhere nor asked myself whether PhD was the right choice. After all, a good doctoral degree is never easy, either intellectually or emotionally. But the process is rewarding because a good PhD teaches you about yourself and gives you space to reflect about meaning and purpose, making you (feel) fit to provide intellectual leadership in your chosen domain.

Of course, being a teacher is as much about learning as it is about teaching. My confidence as a teacher and curiosity as a learner stem in large part from the years spent at IIMA, helping me in my attempt to be equally comfortable in the gallery and in the well. While the field of management education is evolving rapidly and the role of an educator becomes uncertain, the responsibility is not any less and I am grateful to my teachers. I hope one day to possess the generosity and humility that the best of teachers at IIMA so effortlessly convey.

Towards The CMO’s Playbook – A reflection on teaching and learning marketing strategy

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Two months ago, forty-seven eager young minds started on a quest for “the CMO’s playbook” – a journey to understand strategic decision making in marketing. An equally eager but not so young mind (yours truly) joined them, mainly to prove that fun and learning can go together. It was a tall ask from all of us, but we managed to pull it off!

Finally, it was the student teams that prepared their original playbooks for CMOs, and I might have merely orchestrated the journey – a journey through a mix of simulation, business cases, discussions of real life marketing, and minimal reliance on pre-cooked frameworks.

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To My Students – Soar High and Fly Far!

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© Priya Narayanan, Assistant Professor of Marketing, IIM Kozhikode. Views are personal.

There’s a glorious joy in standing next to your peers, wearing the black robe, and receiving the degree. There’s a sense of two tumultuous years of struggle, fun, excitement, boredom, stress, success, and learning, all trying to bundle themselves into a few joyous moments.

On this convocation, as my first set of students graduate, it is no exaggeration when I say that I feel the same joy as I did over a decade ago. Of course, this time round, my joy is for all of you, my students, who made me a teacher. Because you created every moment that I have been a teacher.

You made me think, you made me laugh (and cry, believe it or not!). I doubted myself, then conquered those doubts, only to have other doubts come up. I became more empathetic, inclusive, confident, perceptive, all through your relentless training. And by now I have forgotten how I have also been irritated and desperate!

Thank you for everything.

Whatever you did as a student, whether you prepared or not, spoke up or not, turned on your video or not (!), I hope you gave your best. Because to give our best is all we can really do.

Soar high and fly far! The sky awaits with promise.

The sky on convocation eve at god’s own Kampus!

P.S. When you come back to campus, all grown up, do say hi because I fondly remember every one of you!