Final blog #11

It seems I haven't been blogging in 3 weeks. I am finishing up my semester at BU 214 Marketing. We had a very busy couple of weeks. Our 2 culmination projects were due and were organizing for the final in a few days. Our new shoes simulation rocked. We (the new shoes company) started out pretty poorly compared to other class groups, but ended in second place overall and maintained the highest income ratio.  My new shoes team then had to present a business journal on our overall success. The class then had an assignment that had no precursor, we were given just one class period to receive a project idea, formulate the presentation, and present. It was a very interesting pressure assignment.

Then our video project was due. If you haven't seen it, fix yourself and go watch it here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM6LbwpFCms
Our video project we decided to make a serious topic have some humor so it wasn't so cut and dry. That proved to be difficult because we didn't want to make light of a serious subject either. We ended up going with a new cast team that our approach was funny, but we still kept the information accurate. In the end I enjoyed the video that we made, we also learned some new techniques on video editing.

Our final thank God is not a cumulative one. I don't like cumulative finals. This final, which I haven't taken yet, seems to be discussion based as well as multiple choice. We have to read information, then we quiz over it and finally we discuss it.

I learned from a professor a few semesters ago to reflect on exactly what I did learn in a class, so I'm going to continue that for you today.
In marketing the cornerstone idea is the 4 P's: Price, Product, Promotion, Place. We did go more in depth on different strategies to promote the 4 P's, but everything still stemmed back to them. I learned how to operate excel at a much higher capacity. The excel that we were required to complete for our new shoes simulation was intense. We had roughly 7 pages (its not a lot for some people) inside the excel document. The first page was raw data, we would enter all of our new shoes information there. That information was 70 rows and we had approx. 9 columns across. Then we had the other pages to create were purely formula. Ratios, forecasts, totals.... to name a few. We created graphs from formula's that were grabbed throughout the first page. Some of you may have done this, others not. This was very new to me, so I am happy I was able to learn it. Finally I solidified that having a good team is paramount. In college AND in the work force you sometimes are tasked to do group projects with other people. I was very fortunate to have other team members who cared and participated in every step.

BU 214 is a good insight to marketing. Those who want to pursue any type of job in marketing probably should take this course to have an overall grasp on things.

7's tournament #11

ADvertising!

I am down in Brockton Mass. (when the mass people pronounce it it sounds like prockton). I showed up this evening to do medical oversight of the 7's tournament that the men's St. Mikes rugby team is in tomorrow. This is all volunteer based, and its located in Stonehill mass.

The drive down I a ton of advertising, not only in magazines and on billboards, but also the signs showing what is coming up on the next exit. I thought this was pretty clever, because the advertising here for highway sign probably costs a pretty penny. Some companies that may be smaller might be fortunate to be near a Mcdonalds because they will have the signs and the huge arches, and if you were small time you just need to be near them for extra customers.

I'm sitting in my hotel room typing this blog and looking around for ad's. I am surprised to find so few. I think that may be in place because holiday inn already knows I'm staying here, and they only have a few things showing holiday inn. The shampoo/conditioner, pens, note pad. Other than that were staying in a hotel that is just a comfy room. I wonder why they have so few branding around, or why other companies have not tried to break into that. Either way I am happy I don't have to sit here and see so many ad's while I'm trying to get ready for bed.

We will be on the campus all day at stonehill, too bad this blog is due before that, it would be nice to see the branding of another campus besides St. Mikes.

Go St. MIKES!!!!

Branding or Advertising? #10

Marketing is in so many places. A lot of times I don't even notice an Ad or labeling, because I am so accustomed to seeing it. Last night I decided to take a look and see the advertising.

I went out and had an event downtown. My friends and I did what we call "pub golf". Where we go and have beer at a few places and we had teams. It was pretty fun just to hang out with my friends after a few weeks not no seeing them.

First thing I noticed was branding. It was everywhere: it was on our clothes, it was on the beer glasses, the mirrors, the neon lights, it was in window signs/banners. Branding was just a huge portion of last night from what I noticed. I also think that makes it easier. If you just use branding some people are loyal to that, also many people were drinking so any complex advertising may not work. Is there a huge difference in advertising and branding? I'm pretty sure they overlap a ton. First you need a brand, and you have to advertise for it, then once your brand is established you can use that logo in so many places and people will know what it means.

The very little advertising I did notice was coupled with the branding. I did see a lot of companies that use larger companies to get their product across. An example would be a coca-cola sign with your companies name on it. That way you still are able to get your own name out there, with the help of larger companies.

This is an example. I got this image from the web, because I didn't have my camera on me last night. These types of signs allows for the company to get their name out, and also a way for coca-cola to advertise/brand.

All in all, I found mostly branding as a part of a night on the town. There were street ad's, something like a poster or small billboard, but I know I didn't stop to read them. I think branding has it's great place to be able to reach and get into people.

Spring break in Scotland and Ireland. #9

Besides the fact that my trip with my wife was completely awesome, I honestly was looking for marketing stuff the whole time. It's like a completely different country over there (that's a funny).

The first picture I found was in Frankfurt, Germany in the airport on the way over to Scotland. It was the first ad that surprised me and made me take a second look, which I think is the point.

This was in the men's restroom, and this is the hand dryer next to the sinks. This is a LCD screen that rotates ad's. Not like a tv, it's not a video, just images come up more like a picture frame that we have in the states.

This made me turn and look a few times, I thought this is exactly what marketers want. This was a niche that had been created. You can't help but see this spot, even if you don't wash your hands its on the wall as you're walking out.


The second one was almost 1 hour later right after the first. I was on the plane flipping through the duty free magazine and bam. Cigarette ad's, but not like the ones you see in the states. This one has a bold identifier on it.

Directly on the center of even the ad there was "Smoking kills" in bold letters on every single cigarette brand. This I thought, well this is obvious because of regulations, but this was still bold and out in the front. I hope that whomever got the laws passed are pleased because their message was loud and clear and someone else paid for it.

I saw small ad's everywhere. On a car registration where if you were outside the vehicle you can see what year/ whatever other info. On the inside (this was a taxi) it was an ad for some local restaurant. I wish I had gotten a picture of it, but I was kind of running around and enjoying my vacation.

Here are a few photos I took with my ipod while running around.

That is a bowl at Newgrange, a place that was built before the pyramids.

Dunnotar Castle.

New Shoe #8

For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, read last weeks blog. I introduced all of this as a topic.

I'm pretty excited about this week. So far we have been just in the middle of the pack, because we have been doing some spending that other 'companies' (my classmates) have not been doing. We currently are in 4th place overall (out of 13 teams). That's OK, but not for us. Fortunately we have been sticking to our original game plan to put maximum amount of money into product development. This means that our shoe product is already at level 3! We are about to be able to enter into the foreign market.

Tim, and Kt have been great as partners. I'm glad that when I have to rely on 20% of my grade it'll be with people who want to pass with flying colors. The first 2 decisions were relatively quick, they were within 4 days of each other. We have to wait for this week's decisions to close out on Monday evening.  I am fairly certain that we will get closer to the top team on income. We pulled out all the stops and went more aggressively to reach level 3 on our shoe development. We WILL have access to the foreign market (as I said) and this will expand who we can reach. We will be able to sell more shoes. More shoes is more profit, and we should be the first team to make it to the market.

In a different set of news we also put in contract bids. That is where we just try to sell our shoes that won't have our brand on them, we sell them for just a little bit above break even costs. Fortunately our break even is low, so hopefully the other companies didn't out bid us. We won't know until Monday.

Post # 7 New Shoe Simulation

Our class has this simulation that is worth 20% of our grade called "New Shoe Simulation". It's pretty different from other simulations that I have done for St. Mikes in the past. This you are pretty much a marketing person for an athletic shoe company. The last guy was fired because he/she couldn't produce so they hired me. I have control over much more than marketing though. The simulation guide goes into detail about a home, domestic, and foreign market. I can develop my product (put money in and get a better shoe). I deigned the COMPANY logo, not just a shoe, so I pretty much created a brand.

I get to do this simulation as a group project. Very fortunately I got to choose my own team and am working with Kt Copp and Tim Nagy. We got to do 2 weeks of practice simulation. It was pretty awful the first week (in theory) because we went further in the hole. Then the 2nd week we pretty much spent no money on any product development, no money on advertising, no money on customer promotions, no money on dealer promotions, and no money on market research (those are some of the fields we have control over). This simulation then says we did awesome. The only issue I personally had with that is the first week we followed the guide to the letter and went so far into the hole! The "student guide" has money values put on each of the above mentioned categories i.e. don't spend more than 2 million on product development. We put in exactly 2 million but it only hurt us further.

We have to put our thinking caps on because the real simulation starts this week. Our goals are to develop our product quickly and get to level 2, so we can buy into the foreign market. We only start out with home and domestic market capability. We also want to just crush in our own home market, if we can boost and have a solid home market, then that will carry us through all the other markets. We aren't very focused on the domestic market. We got to read one of last semesters simulators and they didn't even get to go to the foreign market. Reading that persons numbers, we see that they could have done very well for themselves. We have 8 weeks of doing decisions and building in our markets. I think collectively we will do just fine. This is worth 20% of our grade, but the rubrics on grading shows that we have to use the tools we learn in class to make this happen. I am confident that us 3 will be able to pass this with flying colors.

Brand Saftey

This week we had a guest speaker who works for St. Mikes and is in charge of social media and marketing for the college. He had some interesting ideas about the value and numerical postings for social media. He has proof that if he posts every day for St. Mikes there would be less following, but if he posts once every 2 weeks there is more traffic to the post. He also had a wonderful story about how to get into contact with a company.

Rewind a few days.

I had to replace my phone last week. I dropped it and wasn't trying to hide that fact. The screen wouldn't turn on in any way. I went over to Verizon and they shooed me out the door saying it was my phone insurance that I had to contact. I get on the website to go through the steps to replace my phone, and it is immediately stopped by the dates of when I purchased my phone, and I get told to contact Verizon. I get back in my car and drive over to Verizon, they assured me it wasn't them and it was my insurance who I have to get to replace my phone. In stead of getting back in my car to head home, I stand in Verizon and make the phone call. I am on hold for 20 min or so and get in touch with a rep who then gets the information that is needed in about 5 min, and sends me a confirmation email. I have to drive back home just to respond. I have to fill out an affidavit and send in an ID. They had a nice little post saying I can take a picture and upload it to an email. The best piece of technology I had to do that was my non working phone. I then have to drive over to the school library to print, sign, and then scan this document just to email it to them. The only beautiful thing about all of this, was I got my phone the very next day.

Back to the guest speaker..

He expresses that brands are always happy when you post about them in a positive manner on social media sites. They have numbers to back up their marketing and are creating brand loyalty. He also told us that if we have a problem with a brand not to call them, but get on social media and just bash away. While this lecture was going on, I did just that. I got on facebook and typed the above paragraph on their facebook page. The 4 hours I spent trying to figure all the phone insurance out the previous night. The 20 - 30 min they had me on the phone directly was just an infuriating process. I post on their facebook and within 10 min I get a private message from a rep there asking to contact me directly. I eventually get my phone and get a direct line to a real person. They helped me with my issues, I told them about their crappy process. In the end I think what happened was good.

I got helped, I got to speak to someone directly, and I got my phone back quickly.

I think if you need help with a company, and you're getting no where. Get on social media and start spewing the wrongful things that are happening. I can bet that someone will get a hold of you soon to try to fix the problem.

Exciting Week, Blog #5 (supposed to be)

Marketing and what I have actually learned

Yesterday marked an exciting day for the St. Michael's Chapter Student Veterans of America. For about 4 months I have been working on a project that will raise awareness of our presence while establishing a corner "market" within St. Michael's. I designed and organized for the Men's and Women's ice hockey teams to wear digital camouflage jerseys. Now St. Mikes has a long history with the U.S. Military, and their story just got deeper. My chapter here now finally has income to start with the retention of the veterans actively on campus. We have been working to get funding for the recruitment of more vet's to come to St. Mikes and get an education, but my purpose now is to establish the groundwork for future vets and current vets to have better retention.

The jerseys are pretty sweet.

I chose to have the colors be St. Mikes proud (not traditional military colors), but also reflect the military uniform. The American flag on the right shoulder and all of this was on hockey jerseys. I knew I wouldn't want people who haven't answered the call (joining the service) to wear traditional colors, and some of my fellow vet's felt the same.

Here is where the marketing came in. All of these jerseys were sold with a $20 markup. We needed to sell 45 out of 60 to make even on our investment. Basically we had the pressure of having to sell jerseys or be out even more money. Very fortunately about 30 of the jerseys were instantly bought by the players. We told them that were going to try to do the jerseys every couple of years, not every year. We didn't want to flood the market. We created more than a demand, we created a need because they won't be around. I had as you see in the photo people walking around wearing the jersey (even if they haven't been bought by that individual). I also positioned the table to where we were the very first thing you see when you enter into the arena. There were very brightly colored poster-boards with a main message, and a lot of subtle hints. The poster 

This was a 2 fold purpose; we needed to sell for us to carry out our future plans, and we tugged at a bit of patriotism to accomplish this.

This whole project ate so much of my time, because I didn't know what I was doing, nor what to expect. I even missed last weeks blog because of it!! NO! Now we have the goals met for this fundraiser, and we have prospects for the next 3. St. Mikes basketball wants to do it with us in the fall, lacrosse in the spring, and possibly soccer in the fall or spring! This is the backbone we needed to continue operations. Now that this part is settled I can focus my attention to the retention of our local veterans.

Super Bowl Ad's

Super Bowl! ADS?!

The first ad that really shined out over others for me was “puppy love” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQB7QRyF4p4). The advertisement itself was a simple video of a puppy who seemed to always go run off to find a horse. The puppy escapes about 3 times and each time he is with this horse when the puppy is found. Then the puppy is sold to another person completely and the horse sees the puppy being driven away, so the horse chases after the puppy. I think this ad was wise because of how little you see the Budweiser icons themselves. Not everybody associates the Clydesdale horse with Budweiser. Then the ad also pulls on softness and makes you smile. Many people enjoy puppies and associate them with feeling good and happiness.

4 P’s for this ad;
Price: Wasn’t even mentioned, but this was trying to sell more Budweiser.
Product: Beer
Promotion: This ad promoted friends, which if you “grab a bud” also is a play on words where you grab friends
Place: The ad took place in my home, but the ad showed a beautiful horse stockade.

The next ad that shined to me was the coke a cola commercial “America the beautiful” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrvcnbSoz-c&noredirect=1). This ad struck a stronger cord with me than maybe others. I was very proud to see “America the Beautiful” song sung in many languages throughout because that is what makes up this country. We are America strong only together and once everybody realizes it doesn't matter the color of your skin or sexual preferences all it matters is we stand united then America itself will be a better place to live. This ad had coke icons throughout but not in bold in the front in your face. This ad showed many beautiful iconic places across America that many people would agree as to pretty scenery. The muli languaged song was still sung on key and I thought it was a nice recreation.

4 P’s for this ad;
Price: The price of a coke
Product: Soda
Promotion: Loving America? Also consuming coke
Place: This ad showed many places throughout America

The last ad that really stuck out to me was “Wings” by Volkswagen (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ns-p0BdUB5o&noredirect=1). This commercial made me laugh or at least smile. When my friends and I were over talking about stuff and joking we referenced this commercial the most throughout the night. I really enjoy driving Volkswagens, 2 of my friends that were over have Volkswagen's to this was an ad for a butterfly (me). The ad itself was pretty funny where this man is driving his daughter and he is proud his car reached 100,000 miles. She does the typical teenager “so what” and he promptly says well every time a VW reaches 100,000 miles a German engineer gets his wings. Then it shows some factory where these people start randomly sprouting wings, in odd and funny places.

4 P’s of this ad;
Price: A new OR Used VW
Product: A car
Promotion: Helping get a VW to 100,000 meaning keep your car longer
Place: It only showed a random street and a factory.

Blog 2: Marketing and Children

I missed Tuesday's class because I was uber sick, and the wifey said no bueno I gotta stay home. The class on Thursday was pretty interesting at least for me. We watched this documentary on advertisement to children. The video started out pretty informative giving a solid background to this field of advertising. First there really wasn't much money spent on advertising to kids, in the 50's and 60's there was a little bit with marketing towards toys, but that was about it. Then in the 60's and 70's there was a growing trend of more marketing towards kids. That was roughly about the time the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) went and set it out that you can't market to under a certain age (I think it was below 8 years old). A lot of companies went to congress and was like.. hey man that’s not fair or legal to tell me I can't market to kids. Congress agreed with the companies and removed that power from the FTC, and that’s when the flood gates opened up.

Oh man did it just skyrocket, I think the statistic was roughly 2.2 billion spent annually towards advertising to kids to around 400 billion today. That is extremely nuts. The companies that advertise to kids are having the mindset to start advertising before birth. They want lifelong loyalty because that means more dollars in the long run. There have been ridiculous long studies on different age gaps and how to tailor an advertisement towards them. Apparently if you’re below 4 you don’t like straight lines, so nearly all of the commercials are filled with circles i.e. tickle me Elmo and his huge round eyes, round head, round body, round legs and arms. The “tweens” are a huge gap anywhere from 14 down to 6 years old. They’re the ones who are begging their parents over and over again to get a specific item.

Its not just commercials that are reaching kids. Just think of all the different ways that our technology has allowed our youth to be reached. Lets follow one product line. A kid see's a commercial on a sponge bob plush toy, a parent buys that toy. The toy has within the box a redeemable code to where you can gain “special” access to their online game. When that kid goes on to that website, they’re required to make a profile that the kid gives up information and depending on the age/location/gender different ads will show up in the bars along side the game. Now more and more kids have cell phones with access to the internet and are playing these games, and advertisers have direct contact to the kid. They could offer a secret text message code to gain access to another secret squirrel hideout on the web site or cell phone game.

To me I didn't realize how much of this was going on. Honestly I see an ad and I have enough cognitive function to differentiate between a need and a want, kids don't. I am very torn on the issue. I may have painted a negative picture, but that is also how the documentary was shown. I don't have any kids, but I plan having them. I am at least informed more about what is going on, and now so are you a bit!

I'll get the name of the documentary and post it when I get that from my Professor. I want to cite correctly where I got almost all of this information.

First week of Marketing

What Did I Learn This Week in Marketing?

Marketing is a very different mindset it seems to me. I thing that so far, it is about latching onto an image or slogan and anchoring your product to that. After time when customers identify that product with the slogan or image then you can branch it a little bit. I think a great example is McDonald's "I'm lovin' it". When that slogan came out, many people already knew of McDonald's, but now they can just do the sound that goes with the song and people can recognize that is "I'm lovin' it". There are a few other slogans that ring off the top of my head... Volkswagen "sign and drive" event. "More saving, more doing, that's the power of home depot".

I also am feeling I have to retrain how I used to think marketing was. I think if I go in with the mindset of what I already thought it was, then I will just be left in the dust. I should probably just wipe the slate clean and go from step one to accomplish whatever mission/assignment I have set before me. I know I can't follow the notions I get from Mad Men! That archaic chauvinist way of thinking will not get me anywhere. Retraining the way I think marketing was seems to be the only logical thing.

In other news this week our class is piloting this new web product for our school called "Canvas". For those of you who don't know my school puts out and receives information largely web based. We have classes, then we get our assignments from the internet, and return them in the same fashion. That program title that was/is used is called "E College". Now we are using this Canvas thing and so far its been a forced cluster. There are probably great things that Canvas uses/creates that E College doesn't, but there is still a learning curve that was forced too early. On the first day of class we had assignments due on Canvas before we knew how to work the program.

The first week of classes so far seem to follow what I have had the last 3 semesters. The professors talk about EVERYTHING that we are probably going to go over, and it seems daunting, then we start just completing things. Before you know it our semester is already over, and we've learned something. Every semester just piles on the work first day, but I have known for a long time you can't complete everything all at once. You have to work slowly and diligently towards your goals.