Week 14 in Review

Getting down to the wire in marketing!
   
     This Tuesday we started off with a gallery walk.  We had previously noted in our blogs that the concept maps are getting harder as we no longer have the structure of the book to guide us.  I didn't find this map too hard because I was able to look at my situational and market analysis to help guide me and help me find terms to use.  Next week we should plan to do a cumulative concept map that will have us pick 6 really important marketing concepts and put them on the map.  After talking about the maps we started looking an equations sheet that was handed out to us.  We talked about the fixed and variable costs a company has as well.  We reiterated that fixed costs are something a company pays every month and it is exactly the same where as a variable cost is a cost that changes from one price to another.  We talked about sales revenue too and we were regaled with a story of how a senior marketing major had no idea how to calculate sales revenue!  It's very simple I think I even knew it before I took this class it's just the unit sales multiplied by the price per unit.  We also talked about contribution margin because it is important to know because it looks at your overall business performance.  We then moved on to talking about the simulation.  We started off by talking about price elasticity and we looked to see if our simulation was price sensitive.  Doctor Spotts had printed off a paper that showed the changes in the price of a product.  In order to see if a market is price sensitive, we needed to see if the lowest priced product had the highest sales.  It did not so that is a good indicator that the market is not price sensitive.  On the paper we got, it showed the price of a product going up and down.  When the price was increased, the unit sales went down but the total revenue increased slightly.  At a 10 percent increase sales went down and revenue began to fall.  This was the same for every price increase after the three percent increase.  When the price is lowered by 20 percent thereis a 19 percent increase in units but a decrease in revenue.  The decrease in revenue does not start until you drop the price by 20 percent.  This happens because when you lower your price, the margin gets smaller and smaller.  Since we are a cold medicine company, we need to be aware of our prices.  Our consumers will only buy our product if they are sick.  This is not a product you stock up on as medicines expire.  If we were to raise the price very high, people would either tough out their cold or go with another product.  We need to find a price that matches up with our consumers level of need for old medicine.  After talking about this we continued working on our marketing plan and we worked on our objectives.  These objectives will help us determine and check how well we did in the simulation.  We were advised to give our strategy a couple of periods in order to see the full effect of our strategy before changing it.  If it works, there's no need to change it and we can just tweak it in order to get the maximum effect of our strategy.  The performance dashboard will be used to keep a record of what we did and how we did it so we can stay organized and so we can look to see if we need to change anything.  For Thursday, we needed to finish our strategy and make our first period decisions.

     Before Thursday, Jon, Julia, and I made our decision.  We clearly did something right as we ended up in first for the first period.  I don't want to disclose what we did in case anyone from the class reads my blog this week.  We learned in class that day that net income is not something we as mid level managers should be worrying about and we should really be focused on the contribution after marketing.  We then looked at our objectives to see if we met all of them.  We ended up meeting all of our objectives except for our profit objective.  We wanted a 2 percent increase in profits and instead we got a negative 7 percent increase.  What ended up happening was because we dropped our MSRP price by 90 cents and increased our promotional allowance, a lot more money made its way to the ads and we also had a smaller margin.  We were able to tweak all of that and we found ourselves maintaining a constant stream or revenue, profit, and contribution.  We saw either slight decreases or slight increases in the 3 periods we did in class with our last period being our best one yet.  We have to do period five for class on Tuesday and I really hope we find ourselves in first place again because right now we are hovering around second or third behind the Matt team.  We missed an opportunity to reformulate Allround in order to make it non drowsy.  The Matts capitalized on this and their revenue and unit sales skyrocketed because of it.  We need to find a way to match their massive growth in these next few periods.    

Week 13 in Review

     Another great week in marketing!  This Tuesday we handed in another concept and we did a gallery walk.  These ones were particularly interested to look at because they were what we connected marketing to outside of the book and connected it with the stuff we are doing in class.  We also learned that we can go to the expo if we don't have any classes in the morning so we can help out our engineering companions.  I have classes in the morning but I am going to see if I can be excused from them so I am able to attend the expo.  We also learned that there will be five people from KEEN at the expo that will be going around and observing our designs.  After talking about the SMART project we then moved on and looked at some Dilbert comics.  We haven't done this in a while and it was good to start the class off with some humor.  Dilbert kind of reminds me of some of the engineers in our class who feel we are kinda useless.  We then talked about our executive summary and how we need to have a compelling story that tugs at the heart a little.  We can't just have technical jargon and just what the product does.  We need to garner some fanfare in our summary.  Some of the engineers don't seem to get that but we'll just have to help show them what we mean.  So once we were done with that we began our marketing team simulation.  At the beginning of class, we were put into groups that would be our marketing team.  I was put in a group with Jon and Julia and our team was dubbed J cubed.  I was named the team administrator for the simulation.  This means that I am the only one who can advance the simulation when we decide to.  This way we can prevent any chaos that may arise if we all could advance the simulation.  This also makes me the superior Jon.  We will be graded on how well our team comes up with and develops a plan and how we implement it.  We learned that the planning process boils down to three basic steps.  Objective, strategy, and tactics.  By the end of the simulation, we should have a better understanding of the planning process.  For the rest of class we worked on our situational analysis.  This was kind of like a scavenger hunt for us.  We used this to gather data in the simulation that will help us later on.  We also learned that some data may have been entered wrong so we need to be ever vigilant when we are filling out this table.  It was important that we finish the situational analysis before next class because we were going to start the marketing planning template.  The marketing template will help us find out what we are going to accomplish and what our strategy is going to be.  At the end of class we were asked to email our posters to Doctor Spotts so he could look at the and give us feedback.  On Thursday, Doctor Spotts was caught in a meeting and forgot some papers on his desk.  We then got time to work on our situational analysis while he went and got them.  We worked for about a half hour to finish them.  We then learned what papers he went and got.  They were our marketing templates.  In class we worked on establishing our unique value propositions, our competitive advantage, our marketing mix, and the consumer analysis.  This took the rest of class to finish as we had a lot of information to look for.  For Tuesday we should have our competitor, context, and SWOT templates filled in. 

Week 12 in Review

     Another awesome week!  This Tuesday we walked into class and there was another wonderful buffet left for us.  This time it was from the Marketing Club.  A chocolate chip cookie before class is definitely a great way to start!  We started off the class by talking about concept maps and our assessment.  We were told our assessments went well and we have a clear understanding of the four P's.  In terms of concept maps, we have moved away from the book and we should now focus our maps on our SMART projects and the simulation.  We should apply the terms we learned and structure them into our maps.  We then talked about our proof of market reports.  Our drafts were due Thursday but Doctor Spotts wanted an advanced copy the night before.  He wanted it to make suggestions to us so we were ready to present it to our engineers on Thursday.  We then took some time to talk about our 90 second pitch.  Doctor Gettens wanted us to structure it similarly to the senior class his engineers will be taking.  The instructions are on Kodiak and we reviewed it in class.  What the engineers don't know is, pretty much everything they are going to say at the expo at the end of the year will be written by us!  There's a chance we won't even be at the expo so this proof of market paper really needs to be good because it needs to prepare the engineers to talk about the market.  I would really like to go to this expo so I'm hoping I can be excused from my classes in order to help out at the expo.  After talking about the SMART projects, we then moved onto the marketing simulation.  I had already ran through the simulation once and I feel as though I didn't do too well.  The stock price fell by a lot.  In class we got a worksheet.  This worksheet had decisions 0-3 and we made decisions for these periods on the paper.  Doctor Spotts gave us information for these periods that we filled in to see what happens.  We then recorded our results at the bottom of the page.  When we finished recording the results, we were asked to look for patterns or trends in the data.  Luda and I learned that we were simulating a push strategy.  We significantly increased our sales forces while totally eliminating our promotion budget and significantly lowering our advertising budget.  What we found was we had a 2 dollar decrease in stock, a slight increase, and then another increase.  I feel as though the push strategy is not working because our revenue is constantly going up and down but it does not vary by a significant amount.  I feel if we changed nothing else for the rest of the simulation we would not see another increase in revenue because we have minimal advertising and promotions.  We then presented our findings to the class.  When we presented, we learned that our net income took such a hit because our promotion allowance was increased 7 percent.  Next Tuesday we will be put into teams and we will be starting the simulation in a team format.  Can't wait to see what my group accomplishes! 
      On Thursday we met with our engineer partners in Sleith.  Things started off smooth I realized I left the proof of market paper on my desk so I had to e-mail myself the paper to print at the end of class.  We started off by talking about our market and concept in the proof of market with the engineers for about 20 minutes.  I showed them our proof of market concept and they liked what they saw.  They had no questions for me or Mike.  The engineers then showed us how our product is coming along.  They have a totally wired slab of concrete that is a little rough.  We plan to sand it later in the week to make it smoother.  The entire thing is ready to it just needs to be wired up and tested!   From here we started talking about our expo pitch.  We started with a video from Dragon's Den, the Canadian equivalent of Shark Tank.  The video taught us about what makes a good elevator pitch.  We have to start by laying out what problem we are trying to solve and how our product solves the problem.  The format for our elevator pitch starts with a compelling story.  That should take about 30 seconds.  Then name the product and its benefits for about 25 seconds.  How the market will buy should be talked about for 25 seconds and then next steps for 10 seconds.  We then saw how our expo poster will look like.  We were given a poster to practice what our expo poster will look like.  We also worked on our elevator pitch for the next half hour.  We worked on our pitch and Brady said the whole thing in a minute.  This means we need about 30 or so more seconds to add to our pitch.  We didn't have enough time to tweak it as the random pitches started up.  I went second and read our pitch.  I only took 45 of the 90 seconds to read our pitch so for next time I have to add a more specific description of the target market into the pitch.  In regards to our poster, we need to add visuals along with staying away from bullet points.  We are so close to finishing this project and I'm so excited to see the results!

Week 11 in Review

     Another week down in Marketing! 

     We had quite the week this week.  We are no longer working out of the book.  We've gotten everything out of it that we could and it's time to move on.  From now on these blogs won't be so book heavy and I now have to start connecting my newly acquired marketing knowledge to the outside world.  This Tuesday we had to present our concept maps.  Because we no longer are using the textbook, this concept map had to do with a previous chapter and applying it to the outside world.  I must have missed the memo on that because I just did a regular concept map like the last few.  What I should have done was apply the marketing topics to last week's shark Tank episode on Pork Barrel BBQ.  But I didn't and that it is that.  We did our usual gallery walk and then started class.  We talked a lot on promotion Tuesday.  I learned that attitude is important.  Attitudes are made up of a set of beliefs.  These are beliefs an individual holds and your evaluation of those beliefs makes up your attitude.  Companies look to change your attitude.  They do this through persuasion.  Persuasion is changing a person's evaluation of a belief by adding a new on or taking one away.  To start, we have an attitude towards a certain brand or product.  Our attitude and social norms play into whether we have any behavioral intent.  Behavioral intent would be our intent to purchase said product.  The price and location of the product also play into our behavioral intent.  If we have a positive attitude towards the product or brand, we will have a positive behavioral intent which means we will exhibit a positive behavior and buy the product.  If our attitude is negative, we have a much higher chance of not buying that product as we will have a negative behavioral intent towards buying the product.  An example of this would be Apple products.  I have a positive attitude when it comes to their products.  I would buy this product because I already have a positive attitude towards their brand/ products.  If I had a negative attitude towards Apple, they could try and persuade me and change my attitude of Apple.  They could do this through things such as ads that show the positives of buying Apple products.  Although it is important to remember just because we have intent to buy something, does not mean we are going to buy it.  At the end of the class, we presented our posters for Pork Barrel BBQ.  Matt and I went with a simple approach for a poster.  We had a push strategy so we had to make the consumers interested so we can push our product through the market.  We suggested in the poster that people should try the sauce and played on the Patriotism that comes with Pork Barrel BBQ products by adding an Uncle Sam vibe to the mascot.

     Thursday was a bit slower than Tuesday.  We had to take an assessment on the 4 P's of marketing.  Every marketing 200 class has to take this assessment and we were no exception.  I did not find the quiz to be particularly hard, but I still felt challenged.  I felt like I didn't write enough for certain parts of it but we'll have to see when I get it back.  The assessment took up a majority of the class time.  and we did not have much time left.  Once everyone finished, we started talking about the simulation we are starting this week.  We had a worksheet with the 5 C's on it that we filled out using the simulation briefing.  Once we finished talking about that, we got a template to help us with our proof of market paper that is due next Thursday.  I found it to be very helpful and hopefully we can get the paper done in a quick manner of time!

Week 10 in Review

     Another week gone in marketing class!  This Tuesday we talked a lot about promotion.  We talked a lot about how politicians today are getting a lot of earned media.  We learned that Donald Trump has had an exorbitant amount of earned media.  Trump will make an outrageous statement.  This statement then gains traction on social media.  People sharing his statements try to get other people to be as outraged as the sharer.  This then puts the spotlight on Trump.  Now when he explains himself, there is a much bigger audience to see what he really meant by what he said.  There is a bigger crowd because of all the outrage his statements make on social media and other platforms so there are more people listening to see if he does it again.  Instead he brings up more rational points which is seen by a larger audience which potentially converts people to his side.  Trump is a master at getting himself earned media which is really helping him garner support for his presidential campaign.  We talked a lot about how different kinds of media add to the promotional mix.  The two other types of media, owned and paid, are obtained by the business itself.  Owned media is when a brand creates its own media.  This would be anything the company creates on various media platforms such as blogs, websites, and social media accounts.  The idea of owned media is the company owns what its brand is putting out into the world while keeping the customer's needs in mind.  Paid media is a lot more similar to traditional advertising.   And traditional advertising usually sticks to the traditional media types.  This would be your newspaper and magazine ads, radio ads, TV ads, Internet ads, and outdoor and alternative media.  Newspaper ads are classified as cooperative advertising.  Cooperative advertising is when the retailer and the manufacturer split the cost of advertising the manufacturer's brand.  TV ads have the traditional commercial advertisements that are seen in between TV shows but they also have a special kind of advertisement called the infomercial.  The infomercial is a thirty minute or longer advertisement that is typically used to present a product that has a lot of complicated information along with the product.  Internet ads I feel are similar to billboards.  They are basically banners across websites that are in the background for the most part.  Although the use of advergaming makes ads a little harder to avoid.  These kinds of ads are placed right into a video game where the ads will pop up in the middle of a game.  These are honestly horrible and ruin the games they are placed in for the most part.  I'm closing an ad more than I am actually playing the game.  We then looked at a company on Shark Tank who had very little promotional presence.  The company was Pork Barrel BBQ and they sold BBQ sauces and rubs.  After watching the segment, I was paired up with Matt A.  Our job is to create a marketing a promotional mix for Pork Barrel that fits their specific market.  We also have to draw a point of position for the company.  I have a few ideas already but I don't want to say any here in case anybody tries to steal my ideas!  Next class when we present should be fun.

     This Thursday we finally met with the engineers again.  The past few weeks I have heard groups voicing their unhappiness with their engineers.  Mike and I are lucky enough to not have any problems at all!  This class we presented our research to other members of our group and began to organize our data.  We extracted data such as common stuff that was said in our interviews.  We also looked for thoughts and feelings that were similar in each interview.  We also looked for insight that our interviewees gave us  We had to write down the insights and then derive some needs from them.  After that we did a how-why chart that helped us analyze a problem.  We then discussed our Proof of Market paper with our engineers.  Mike and I will be writing this on our own so we had to get as much info from our engineers as we could.  It may seem like we didn't do much this class but we got a lot of thinking done and that takes time.  I can't wait for when we have to present this project I feel as though we are doing very well.

Week 9 in Review

     Spring break was nice but it is nice to be back in class again.  This Tuesday we talked a lot on chapter 16 and we also watched another Shark Tank episode.  The product being pitched was Balm Chicky Balm Balm whose thing was the "Friend End" of the stick for other people to use.  The Sharks determined that the product would not fair well in the market because the product really only had a market in the adult novelty category.  We used this episode to help us with our SMART Project to determine market research.  We then started our discussion of chapter 16 by writing down questions.  We then placed these questions in a hat to be randomly asked to our peers.  Because I came in late, I was on the chopping block as one of the first people to draw a question from the hat.  I ended up going second.  I actually drew my own question which I found funny.  I picked Stephanie's name out of a cup and she answered my question.  Luckily she knew the answer because I really had no clue.
     On Thursday, we started with the questions again.  Some of the topics covered were advertising, paid, earned, and owned media, and why companies who are on top spend the most money.  Proctor and Gamble, for example, spends 5 billion dollars on advertising which works well for them.  I feel as though spending large sums of money on advertising works for big companies but smaller ones can't keep up the big spending.  Smaller companies need to do the most advertisement so early adopters start buying the product.  Using social media is a good way to get your product out there.  Facebook and Twitter are good ways to get free advertisements and companies can even pay a small fee to have their company advertised on social media.  After talking about this we started talking about the communication process.  We then got a paper and watched Pepsi commercials in order to find out how they communicated to drink Pepsi.  We even watched a foreign commercial and it was very easy to see the message despite being in another language.  We also watched a Coke commercial to look how Coke communicates.  We found that the Pepsi commercial was aimed towards women who are in there 20s and 30s and the Coke commercial was aimed towards couples and young people.  Thanks for reading!    

Week 8 in Review

     Finally Spring Break is here!  All I have to do now is tell you all about how my week went.  On Tuesday we had another mind map gallery walk to do.  Instead of having a specific chapter assigned for the week, we had to encompass everything we have learned so far in marketing.  I thought this one was a bit easier as I didn't have to learn any new concepts!  In our last blog, we had to take a look at the Southern Culture Artisan Foods video and do some calculations for break even and margins.  I for whatever reason did not include this in my last blog and put it in my notebook instead.  Probably a force of habit but you won't see it happening again!  I'm also kind of glad the calculations weren't in my blog because I learned in class my calculations were very wrong.  But you live and learn and that is what we did.  We learned about how a wholesaler will buy products at a certain price and the manufacturer's margin will come from that while the wholesaler will sell the products to the retailer and collect a margin from that.  We didn't factor in a wholesaler when we did the math for Southern Culture Artisan Foods.  After Tuesday's class I feel I have a much stronger grasp on these concepts.

     On Thursday we started to talk about what we learned from chapters 14 and 21.  We were asked to watch the Shark Tank episode on the product fresh patch and we talked about the type of distribution channel the company had.  We learned from the book that there are four types of distribution channels.  The channels are direct, retailer, wholesaler, and agent/broker.  We also learned about channel intensity and how it relates to product type.  A specialty product is distributed on an exclusive channel.  A shopping product on a selective channel and a convenience product on an intensive channel.  When looking at Fresh Patch, it was determined the product went through a distribution channel.  Fresh Patch is a specialty product and customers can only get it from the company's website.  Once someone places an order for a Fresh Patch, it is shipped from the distribution plant straight to the customer's doorstep.   When a deal was made between Fresh Patch and the Sharks, one of the constituents was that Fresh Patch had to sold in retail stores.  This should help increase his market because the product will be seen by more people.  He also wants to build a distribution plant on the east coast using the Shark's money which would help keep the Fresh Patch fresh for east coast subscribers.  This will hopefully help his consumer retention rating because it is currently very low.  I can't wait for this break to be done to talk more about Fresh Patch and its new margins!