South Park — White People Flipping Houses

Randy Marsh is a local contractor who flips homes in the area. His TV show, white people flipping homes, has come under bad wrap when local Confederates have decided to use his television show to protest the Amazon Echo stealing jobs in the town. Marsh takes the men to court for damages because viewers negatively associate the local Confederates with the show. He’s asked why he doesn’t change the name of his show, but he lists off a variety of other show titles that were already taken. In a monopolistically competitive market, product differentiation is essential to creating demand. Items must be substitutable, but sellers also must try to convince buyers that their product is somehow unique from the competition.

2018 0

Bud Light — Swear Jar

Normally a swear jar would be used to curb bad behavior (like in this clip from New Girl), but the folks around this office are using the money to buy Bud Light and have incidentally increased the usage of swear words.

2017 0

Stella Artois — The Race

Sometimes a good thing is too good to pass up. The young men could continue the big race or they could sacrifice their chance for a cold beer. They chose the latter.

2017 0

BudLight — Rock, Paper, Scissors

Rock, paper, scissors is a good game to help settle a dispute, but this simultaneous move game has no clear advantage. It helps if you have an actual rock in your back pocket though.

2017 0

Budlight Hitchhiker Commercial

When one party has more information about themselves than the other party, economists describe this situation as asymmetric information. We know a lot about our “true” selves, but we can use signals to send to other parties to either conceal our true selves or hide a characteristic we don’t want to reveal. In this clever Budweiser ad, the hitchhiker is trying to conceal his real intentions by carrying a case of Bud Light.

2017 0

Shameless — Hipsters in a Bar

In this clip you see a bar that’s on the South Side of Chicago. The bar is usually dead but very recently “hipsters” discovered the bar. They thought that the snide Russian bartender and expensive drinks made the place different and appealing to them. This bar serves cheap low end alcohol and in the video you can see price discrimination happening. The prices start to change and become higher when the bar serves the hipsters because they are able to pay those high prices versus the people from south side that can’t. The hipsters are also not realizing they are being scammed when the low end vodka is put in a more expensive brand’s bottle.

Thanks for the clip and summary Fiona Brandman!

2017 0

Thinkbox — Every Home Needs a Harvey

How do you differentiate yourself from the other dogs in a dog shelter? You show off all your skills, of course! Harvey does a great job differentiating himself from his competitors in order to win their business.

2017 0

Axe Commercial

In this quick Axe commercial, we can observe both positive and negative externalities associated with cologne use. The original wearer didn’t realize the (good and bad) impact the second elevator guest would receive from his use of Axe Body Spray, and thus didn’t take that into account when he was applying it.

2017 0

Le Trefle — Emma

Paper products have a lot of substitutes with new tablets on the markets, but those tablets will never be able to replace some paper necessities.

2017 0

Mad Men — Lucky Strike Pitch

The team at Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency has to come up with a new way to sell cigarettes because the government has limited what companies can say about their products. The government has put a ban on advertising such that firms can’t say that their product is healthy. Instead, the men of Sterling Cooper talk about product differentiation and how to make Lucky Strike look special even though it’s the same product.

2017 0