In this 10‑minute classroom‑style lecture, marketing instructor Roy Abdo reviews the essential frameworks and tactics students should apply to presentations and final papers. He begins with Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle (Why‑How‑What), stressing that communicating the underlying purpose before facts drives audience engagement, illustrated with Apple’s messaging. He then introduces the B‑B‑B model (People, Process, Product), explaining how codifying processes enables scalable, consistent products, citing Chipotle and Starbucks. Next, he covers placement/positioning, urging students to aim for either the "top‑of‑top" (premium leader) or "top‑of‑bottom" (value leader) rather than the crowded middle. He emphasizes brand storytelling that makes the customer the hero, using the iPhone as an example of enabling heroism. He advises that the first step in any venture is to identify a genuine customer need, which creates frustration that a product or service can solve. He reviews the productivity quadrant (important‑urgent, important‑not‑urgent, urgent‑not‑important, not‑important‑not‑urgent) and recommends focusing on the important‑urgent quadrant while delegating or eliminating the rest. He introduces the STAR interview technique (Situation, Task, Action, Result) for clear, concise answers. Finally, he outlines the media landscape’s four channels—owned, earned, paid, and shared—and how they fit into a marketing mix. Throughout, Abdo uses conversational, enthusiastic language and real‑world examples to make the concepts memorable and actionable for students and entrepreneurs.
Chapters
Throughout the class, we went through a lot of marketing principles, and we're going to go on an overview on what you've learned and what I think you should take away from me with you for this class. And you're going to be using those principles in the presentation and in your final paper. Okay, so I think one of the first, most important things we learned is the Golden Circle. What's the first thing here? Why? And the second thing? What? No idea. Why, how, what. So why this is important? Because this is what drives people. This is what drives people to behave in a certain way. And if you ever want to get to a job and you want to convince your hiring employee with a message, you want to convince them with an idea, Give them the why before giving them all the facts, because you believe in something. I believe in a product. I believe in this. I believe in that. When you say the word believe, people are driven to listen to you further than just like giving them facts and figures. Okay, and this is what's called— it's called the golden circle. And this is why Apple is successful. I'll give you an example of Apple. If Apple was not a successful company, a marketing message from Apple would sound like this: we make great computers, They're beautifully designed, fun to use, and no viruses. Wanna buy one? Maybe. How actually Apple communicates? They start with the why. They start by saying, everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in making things different. The way we do that is by making our product beautifully designed, fun to use, and no viruses. It happened to be a computer. It happened to be an iPod. It happened to be all kinds of stuff. So remember that messaging system because it's going to help you set your tone. The second most important thing in marketing is B-B-B. What's the first B? People. Second B? Process. Product. So the reason why a company or store stays in the same size or even declines in size is because they keep all their talent in the people, and they don't take the people's head to put it on a piece of paper to make a process out of it. Because once you have the process independent from people, you can create a product without having to rely every single time on people. Think of Chipotle, think of Starbucks, think of all those big chains, because whenever you go to anyone, you have the same quality product that you get. So once the company mastered this domain, what's the second domain after that? What's the fourth P? Placement. And placement is everything. So there are two places in business you want to be in. You guys know what they are? Either you want to be— so either you want to be the top of the top, Or do you want to be the top of the bottom? So you're the most popular product among the least expensive, or you're the most expensive product among the most expensive. Those two people have what? Have the highest shares. So don't try to be in the middle, because in the middle you're gonna get consumed. You're gonna get washed out, you're gonna get bought out, you're gonna get bankrupt and stuff.
So in business, you want to be in two places.
And why positioning is— why placement and positioning is important? Because it sets your tone. Are you going to be here? Are you going to be here? Are you going to be anywhere? How do you make the placement of the company, of a product? We talked about the brand story element, creating the story of, you know, what the frustration of the client is and how you come in and make them a hero. So in marketing, your job is not to be heroes for people, it's to make your client the hero. The reason why people buy the iPhone and they like it is because they look like heroes. They take cool pictures, they send apps, they send, you know, videos to each other. It's not— the iPhone is not the hero, it's making every one of us a hero. It's enabling us to do more. That's why we like it. Okay, if it was just only selling the iPhone what it does, on its own, nobody cares. But the reason why we like it, because it's going to help us become heroes. And we all want to be heroes, right? So yeah, it's all frustration. And what's it— when we talked about starting off a business, I mentioned to you an idea. What's the most important thing in business? If you want to open a company, what you should be looking for first to do before you open a company?
Before opening a company? Funding?
No, research?
For what?
People. Why you want to do research?
Because we need to know what they want.
Exactly, something like that. So the first most important thing in business is identify A need. Okay, once you identify a need, then you can have a business. Because you can just not— it makes no sense to start a company because you don't know what you're going to offer and you don't know if there's a need for it. But go out there and identify a need and figure out, figure out if there's a need for it. When there's a need for it, you can make a business model out of it and sell it and solve it. Because if there's a need, then there's what? There's frustration. Okay, so there's frustration, means you can— what? You can solve this frustration by creating a product, by creating a service, by creating whatever you want to create. Okay, what else we learned that was important? Oh, the quadrant of dividing—
what?
Do you guys remember this?
Yeah, important, non-important.
What's here?
On the top?
Yeah.
Important, urgent.
Important.
Urgent.
And urgent. So here is what? Important and urgent. And here's what?
Non-important.
Near.
Important, not urgent.
Important, not urgent, not urgent, not urgent. Where do you want to spend most of your time? In this one, important, urgent. Browsing Facebook is where? On Instagram? All the stuff meaningless activity is not important, not urgent. So you have to try to delegate what's important, what's important but not urgent, or urgent but not important, and work on what's urgent and important because it's going to set your stone to get somewhere. So that's called the time— that's the quadrant of productivity principle. What else we learned that was cool?
Star.
Oh, the star. OK, the star is good. Anytime you're asked a question that asks you to give an example, keep that in mind. You have to give a situation. After situation, you have to give a task that you did. Then you have to give an action that you took and the result that's there. So this way, you wrap up your answer in a very simple manner so anyone can understand what you're trying to do, and you don't go everywhere. Keep that in mind, you're going to use it a lot. I use it so many times in any other interview, you know, any other job or any other question I get asked. What else was there? Any ideas?
Content marketing?
Oh, there's 3. The media landscape. So there's 4 types of media.
There's owned, paid, media, shared media. What's the fourth one? What's it called?
Media?
Media. I'll share it. Own, earned, paid, own channel, earned media, paid media. Earned, paid, shared, earned, paid, shared, owned. Okay. Owned media is your website, your blog, your Twitter, your Instagram. Earned media is someone talks about you, influencers and such. Paid media is what you buy, the advertising piece he talked about. Shared media is whatever people took that content from whatever and shared it on social network. And your goal is you have control over what? Which side? You have control over this and over this. You don't have any control over this or that. So your job is to have good owned media and good paid media that's going to enable you to further your media outreach and a marketing campaign that you're trying to achieve. Uh, what else we're talking about? Stop. It's over. Yeah, it's full. Well, that was the whole session.
