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!