Blog #14: One Final Blog

                  Over the past semester in my marketing class, I feel as though I learned a lot about marketing, and also a lot about myself as a student. This class certainly pushed me and required me to put in more effort than I had for any class before. I do think, however, that all of the effort I put into this class has paid off. I have come out of it at the end of the semester having learned about the concepts of marketing and have learned how to be a better student.

                  The largest course objective I think I grasped was to address how marketing can have an impact on environmental sustainability. We spent a lot of time discussing this concept in class and were assigned to read articles on the topic. The article that I think helped to reinforce this the most for me was about the sustainable practices of Disney World. There was also an entire chapter in the textbook about various sustainable marketing practices. Chapter 16 discusses some of the social criticisms about marketing; which include high prices, deceptive practices, high-pressure selling, harmful products, planned obsolescence, and poor service to disadvantaged customers. Learning about how marketing can affect social responsibility is important, I think, because it is good to know how your practices are impacting the environment around you.

                  Another objective that I think I will take away from this class is to have the opportunity to put marketing into action via team and individual projects, research, reports and presentations. I think that I took away a lot from the NewShoes simulation. I not only learned about the practical uses of marketing, but about working in a group and also about myself. By changing the price of the products, it truly impacted how many shoes we were able to sell. Gaining this knowledge through the simulation will be useful in my future career and I can apply other various concepts in the future.

                  I was also able to get many things out of the learning objectives assigned for the course. One of the largest learning objectives I grasped was to appreciate the integrated role of marketing in business decisions. The activity that helped to reinforce this concept the most for me was the NewShoes simulation. This was because every decision that we entered for each period affected everything about the company, from the Cost of Goods Sold to the Net Income.

                  Another learning outcome that I feel the simulation helped me to achieve was to incorporate key concepts to make business decisions and evaluate outcomes. The simulation was able to reinforce this outcome for me because we were required to create excel spreadsheets to evaluate the various outcomes. For each decision we entered, the spreadsheets we created would tell us about how well we were performing as a marketing department and we used these spreadsheets to predict how we would perform in the future. I feel as though I now know how to use marketing to make essential business decisions.

                  The final learning outcome that I feel the simulation helped me with was using written and oral skills to persuade a target audience. The final step for the simulation was to present to the class as to why we should be the group to continue on and sell shoes. While we didn’t win this challenge, I think that my group was able to present a good case to continue on. We spoke about the successes of our group, but also about our mistakes and how we can learn from these mistakes and grow as a company. I think that the idea for our shoes would have been successful if we had been able to continue on. Our oral skills and the way we presented our successes, failures, and ideas proved to our audience how well we were able to work together. I truly feel as though I was able to learn a lot about the concepts of marketing and myself as a student through this class.

Blog #13: The Future of Marketing

                  People are constantly thinking about the future and what it will look like. We love to speculate about new kinds of technologies, such as cars, cell phones, and other advancements that will affect our daily lives. People love to dream about the future and all of the magic that it holds, but we often only think of the whimsical aspect of life. We don’t dwell on details such as what wars we will be fighting or who will be the president at the time. In fact, when we think about the future, we don’t usually focus on details at all.

                  One detail about the future that I, for one, have never thought about is how the practice of marketing will have evolved and what it will have become. I recently took the time to watch a video on the American Marketing Association’s website about the future of marketing. This video focused primarily on what marketing will look like in the year 2024, so ten years from right now.

After clicking on this video and waiting for it to load, I took some time to think about what I thought marketing would look like in ten years. Some initial thoughts that came to mind for me were that marketing would become more dependent on new advancements in technology, and more focused on customer feedback. Due to the fact that marketing is so specific to each company, it was hard for me to put my finger on exactly what I thought marketing was going to look like in ten years.

The video that I watched on the AMA website interviewed three men in the business world about their opinion on the topic. The first was a man named Jonathan Becher, who is the CMO of the German software company SAP. Becher thought that “a brand will look like a publisher and a publisher will look like a brand”. Becher went on to elaborate what he meant by this, saying that brands will have to be entertainment content, or basically self-sufficient when it comes to marketing themselves.

The next man interviewed, Rohit Bhargava, is a professor of Global Marketing at Georgetown University. Ten years from now, Bhargava thinks that crowdsourcing reviews will be seamless and easy, so that marketers can offer reviewers incentives. He sees the marketing world turning towards a bartering system, with the value coming from social profiles.

The final man interviewed, Pete Blackshaw, is the Global Head of Digital and Social Media at Nestle. Blackshaw see that marketing will become more transparent in the future. He believes that there will be more customer control, and that marketers will work harder to meet “unmet and unarticulated needs”. Blackshaw thinks that there will be new forms of data analysis led by customers, and that this will lead to marketing precision.

After watching this video, my original thoughts on the future of marketing seem pretty accurate. Most of the men interviewed believe that the consumer will have a greater opinion in the marketing process. I think that seeking out more customer opinions and using advice will be very important to the success of the company.  I’m very excited at the prospect of working in this future marketing world!

To watch the video, click here.  

Blog #12: Working For A Better World

Sustainability is becoming increasingly more important in our world’s culture today. A huge emphasis is being placed on how environmentally friendly the product or service being offered is. Because this is such an important characteristic to day’s customers, people are willing to spend more money for a product or service that will somehow benefit the environment. The most recent assignment for my marketing class is to make a video that highlights the sustainability of whatever you want to focus on. This assignment has taught me the importance of marketing towards customers who value sustainability.

One of the world’s largest theme parks knows just how important sustainability is to their customers. A few months ago, we read an article for class that discusses the different ways Walt Disney theme parks are environmentally friendly in their practices. The article was about a study that was conducted in order to decipher how companies face the environmental issues that they face.

The study described the following ways that Disney works towards being more environmentally friendly. Disney sees itself as pioneering ways to look after the environment, with Walt Disney himself focusing on the issue. Starting in 1990, Disney established a department that was focused on sustainability efforts, called the environmental policy department. The company also trademarked the term Environmentality, meaning having an attitude and commitment to think and act with the environment in mind, and who’s sponsor is Jiminy Cricket. By adopting this slogan and environmentally friendly practices, Disney is taking into consideration not only the environment, but also the interest of their stakeholders.

Disney wanted to keep their environmentally friendly practices to themselves for some time, and did no public campaigns or release any information to their stakeholders. After some time, Disney released a corporate social responsibility report, which discussed its achievements and goals and targets regarding the environment. Since then, Disney has been much more open about their practices concerning the environment. By establishing an Environmental Council, Disney aimed to implement long-term strategies so that they could minimize their impact on the environment. They planned to measure and reduce waste, the use of fossil fuels, and greenhouse gas emissions, and to work towards protecting the eco-system.

Disney works hard to include employees and cast members in their efforts towards sustainability. An example of this would be a contest held among the custodial staff to see who could collect the most recyclable bottles. The collection resulted in the pick-up of over 425 tons of bottles between the years of 2000 and 2005. Another example took place in Germany among the main performers. They were assigned the task of biking to work, and were able to cycle over 11,000 km between May and July of 2010.

The various efforts made by Disney show that it is a company that cares about more than just making money off their customers. By taking into consideration their environmental impacts, Disney is working towards a better world. They are marketing themselves as a company that wants to do right in the world and give back to the environment. These characteristics are essential in a company today because it takes more than just an efficient business plan to be successful in today’s business environment.

Blog #11: Are Women Taking Over Advertising?

While scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed recently, I came across this article that one of my friends had shared. Now, usually I mindlessly scroll through my newsfeed until I find some activity that involves one of my close friends because, to be honest, I don’t care that a distant friend of a friend was tagged in a photo album. A distant friend posted the article that caught my eye but, after reading it, I’m glad I didn’t just keep scrolling.

The article was featured in the Boston Globe and entitled Top of Boston’s ad world a male bastion no longer. This article discusses a shift that the advertising realm in Boston has seen in recent years. As recent as the 1990’s, it was frowned upon for women to have pictures of their families and children on their desks because they feared that it would make them seem less devoted to the job and more devoted to their family. Recently it has come to be that women run the four biggest advertising firms in Boston, so clearly times are changing.

These women have worked tirelessly to get where they are today. They don’t, however, take their responsibilities for granted or think that they were given the position just because it has become popular to put women in the corner office. These women work to prove that they have the talent and ability to handle the responsibilities that they have been given.

Barbara Goose, who is the 44-year-old local head of DigitasLBi, was quoted in the article as saying “I tell women to try not to think about being a woman, just think about doing the best job they can… Other than following men into the men’s room, I try to be part of every conversation possible”. For women like Goose who work to even the playing field in the business world between men and women, taking a position that is usually held by men would be a victory.

Another woman featured in the article, Kristen Cavallo, is quoted as having said, “It didn’t occur to me that the rules can be rewritten… Now I will always try to rewrite the rules”. Cavallo is an example of another woman who isn’t willing to accept defeat. She worked hard to reach a compromise over the terms of her position at Mullen. Now that she knows it is possible for her to “rewrite the rules”, she will continue to work towards changing the standards in the advertising business.

To me, this article was really interesting. We hear a lot about the strides being taken by women to gain equality in the business world, so it was nice to match four faces of women up to the stories.

While steps are being taken towards equality between men and women in the business world, the article closes by saying there is still work to be done. While more and more women are taking leadership roles in advertising, they are still underrepresented in the creative aspect of the industry, with only three percent of creative directors being female. The industry might be in an era of women, but full equality won’t be reached until beer ads respect women.

Read the article here.

Blog #10: Marketing Aborad

                  One of the things I’m most excited about when I think about my future career are the opportunities that I will have to travel. I think being able to travel to foreign countries for business would be really fun because you get the opportunity to experience the culture and daily life through the eyes of the working class. One of the scary aspects to me, however, would be the culture shock. How do you know what that people of that country consider good etiquette? What are topics that they would consider unapproachable?

                  The chapter that we discussed this week in my marketing class was about international business and the different ways companies are successful when they enter into the foreign market. One of the research librarians came in to talk to our class about the different resources that the library at Saint Mikes has to research international business.

Probably the coolest resource to me was called Global Road Warrior. Using this website, you can look up any country from a list of dozens. Global Road Warrior comes back and tells you pretty much everything you could possibly want to know about this country, such as things like their education system, recipes, music, and ways of transportation.

There is also a pretty interesting tab that talks about the business culture in the country. The information discussed here would be extremely helpful when traveling internationally for business. Some of the information given here discusses the country’s business experience, decision-making and negotiating strategies, meetings, attire, women in the workplace, and the workweek.

Playing around on this website, I decided to look into what business is like in Australia. It is correct business etiquette in Australia to greet someone with a firm handshake, and from then out refer to them as “mate”. Australians don’t use professional titles such as “Professor” or “Doctor” because they are deemed as showing an excessive amount of honor, and rarely use the titles Mr. of Mrs. in the workplace as well.

While Australians tend to dress similarly to Americans and Western Europeans, there are still some striking differences when it comes to business attire. Workplace dress in very modest, and therefore women keep their attire modest, often times not even bothering to put on makeup. For men, it is acceptable to wear slacks and button down shirts, and suits only on formal occasions. Australians are also extremely casual and tend to dress down for events such as an opera or theater event.

Knowing the business etiquette about a country you will be traveling to beforehand is very beneficial. Instances where you are unsure of how to dress, act, or what to say can be detrimental to a business deal. Being prepared for situations where you are unsure in essential, and Global Road Warrior is an extremely useful tool in these circumstances.