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After identifying a need in the market for a simpler way to manage prenatal nutrition, three Darden classmates develop an idea for a subscription e-commerce business that provides a monthly box of nutritionist-approved prenatal snacks, recipes, personal care products, and information for expectant mothers. To determine the best name for their product, the women run Google AdWords campaigns and choose the one that performed best. But was this the right decision, or should they rerun the test with the two best-performing names? And was this the most important business decision they needed to make at this point, or were there more pressing matters to address?

In November 2013, the 301 Inc. division of General Mills, Inc. jumped into the emerging "subscription economy" with nibblr, a personalized snacking service. Customers utilized online tools to select and rate their deliveries. The nibblr team reached these consumers primarily through interactive marketing. It was a completely a new approach for the company: a small entrepreneurial team learning as it worked, direct response mechanisms of the consumers, technology that enabled product delivery, and lots of experimentation. In the first four months, nibblr wasn't acquiring customers as quickly as it had hoped. The 301 Inc. team was considering a number of other marketing ideas for getting the word out about nibblr, but which ones would succeed? This case has been used in Darden's required marketing course.

This case is used in Darden's "Digital Marketing" course elective. It explores the experience of a niche search firm whose founder attributed her ability to open her recruiting firm to LinkedIn and the new model of recruiting it created. LinkedIn Corporation had been one of the most successful companies in the digital media space, with more than 4,000 employees and a market capitalization of over $25.5 billion in August 2013. But few people knew how LinkedIn had grown and how it had become profitable. LinkedIn had multiple unique aspects to explore: its focus on professional--not simply personal--social interaction, the company's B2B components, and also its marketing positioning from user experience to targeting and growth strategy.

Ohio Art is shifting its advertising and distribution strategy for a new line of construction toys aimed at adults called nanoblock. Distribution is focused on toy and hobby outlets, avoiding mass merchandisers, but Amazon.com also stocking and selling the nanoblock line. Digital marketing strategies are being developed for both promotion through Amazon.com and social media. In the midst of its efforts to shift marketing to new media, management is distracted by the media storm over an aide to presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, who commented that Romney's platform is "almost like an Etch a Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and we start all over again." The case describes a number of digital marketing strategies, including temporary price reductions implemented through Amazon's "Gold Box" deals. The case is a sequel to the A case, which describes more traditional advertising experiments for toys distributed through mass merchandisers.