Ok...One more

So I know the last post was my last official entry in here.  But I couldn't end this after seeing the new Kraft zesty Italian salad dressing commercials.  They have been getting a lot of buzz already.
See article below about it. 

http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/shirtless-hunk-heats-kitchen-krafts-ads-zesty-italian-dressing-148279

The Today show today also mentioned how it may not necessarily be appealing to their target demographic here.  I'm not so sure, it makes me want to try it... see clip below. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLqci6rTi6Q

Week 11!

Welcome to the final week!!  This time we are changing things up a bit and doing a high level overview of marketing.  I’d like to explain marketing how I’ve learned it so far.   A lot of the conceptual information comes from Cohen’s book on Drucker and everything we have discussed regarding Drucker’s marketing ideas. 

Marketing is more than just creative advertisements and promotions.  Marketing is a focus on the consumer and markets of those consumers.  One of the most important lessons I learned during this class was that the consumer really drives the products on the market, not the companies that are making them.  If something does not appeal to the purchasers, they don’t buy it, and if they don’t buy it, the company can’t afford to continue to make the product.  Companies need to constantly review their product lines and see what stage of the product lifecycle the item is in and assess whether there will be future sales.  Drucker mentions that we cannot predict the future, but we can use the data we have to make an educated guess on forecasts. 

So although markets promote and advertise, it is really the consumer that makes the ultimate decision on whether an item will be a success or failure.

One of the key focus areas for marketers is the market for their consumers.  Rather than look at the product, they should look at the market they will appeal to and make decisions based on that.  By looking at demographics and market landscapes, marketers can decide how to establish the right promotions and advertisements.  For example if a product really appeals to an older generation without as much computer knowledge and access, an online promotion probably isn’t the way to go. 

 

 

 

In our Pharmasim world we did a cold medicine scenario.  If we had research shopping that young families do most of their shopping in the grocery store for cold medicine and young families are our main buyers, we should gear our strategy to a special promotion in the grocery channels.  Marketers should focus on markets. 

Another big part of marketing is developing a strategy, or plan, and looking at various research and data to support that plan.  There are a lot more numbers in marketing that I would have originally imagined.  Without an overview of your return on marketing spend, your marketing efficiency, and your net contribution model, a strategy would be really tough to develop.  Marketers need to know their product demand, product potential, and targets before moving forward.   With this also comes knowledge of competitors.  Those in marketing need to know what their competition is doing before being able to make a fully educated decision on where to take their product.  Important information includes pricing, promotions, and sales.  In the instance where a given market has the estimated potential for 100 million units and demand of 70 million units, a marketer would need to know how many units the competition is currently selling before determining if branching out into this market is a lucrative move.  If the competition is selling 65 million units, well, there’s not a ton of extra room to move in there.  If the competition has only recently broken into the market and is only selling 30 million units, there may be a good opportunity. 

Marketing is more than just looking at price, promotion, product, and placement.  It’s looking at the consumer needs and demands and how to reach those consumers.  Adjustments to strategy should be made based on the consumer and the competition.  Strategy revisions should be done often, and products that are not reaching their full potential should no longer be sold.  New products and innovation should be constant.  Without marketing and innovation, companies will not succeed according to Drucker.  Focusing on profit more than consumers will not lead to results, but rather a focus more on consumers will lead companies to produce profitable products.  The constant review of product lines and strategies allows for companies to not rest with status quo and to adjust for the future. 

Marketing has been a great learning opportunity and has allowed me to think about things in a new way.  I hope after reading this you will look at marketing in a slightly new way as well. 

Misc Marketing

Since JCP has been a focal point for marketing strategies during the last year or two, I had to add this article.  It looks like more are jumping ship from the department store.  I recently saw a commercial advertising the JCP Home store.  Not sure how that strategy fits into the recent changes, but interesting enough. 

http://www.buzzfeed.com/sapna/exclusive-jc-penney-marketing-department-hit-by-two-more-dep

Week 10 Blog

Almost the end of class!  We are working on wrapping up the team simulation this upcoming week.  So far we have completed through period 7 and are finalizing the strategy revision memo for the next 3 rounds.  It's been quite a journey, and the process has been an interesting one.

I think one of the biggest changes was going from an individual assignment review of the market to a team strategy.  The original strategy as a team seemed much more difficult than the revision.  I think since we were just getting to know what each person found in their individual assignment and making a whole overview of where we wanted to go that it took quite a long time to decide as a group.  For the revision, it seemed to go faster as we had the original starting point.  The overall process was time consuming and there was so much information to look at; as a team everyone really looked at all sorts of various things so compiling it made it easier since one person didn't have to do every analysis. 

Most Important Pharmasim Decision

There were so many decisions that all compounded on each other so it is definitely difficult to determine one most important one.  I know my teammates originally said Allround+, but I think Allright has been a better one for us.  I think it was so important as it extended our brand outside of simply cold medicine and into a whole new category.

Market Attractiveness/Competitive Advantage

This analysis came into play during both the implementation of Allround+ and Allright.  We discussed this as a team originally and decided that both Children's cold and Allergy would be good markets to break into based on our individual assessments.  The individual analysis was very helpful in looking into all the markets from new ones to the original markets.  For the original Allround market, we did not use the analysis as much in our strategy since it was the more generic product (all demographics). 

Special Incidents

Throughout the team version of Pharmasim we have encountered 'special' decisions in each round.  One of my favorite ones so far has been the social media incident where there were negative postings on our social media page.  I liked this one because it is such a common thing today where most companies are on Facebook or Twitter or review sites and of course customers are going to go to these places to complain.  Personally, I like to see when a company responds to negative comments on sites.  Just that they are checking them and care enough to address them makes me feel better so we followed that theory in our decision.  I later asked one of my marketing friends (after we decided!) who agreed that would have been the best move. 



The other good special decisions have been related to the site and internet.  I like that the simulation takes this into consideration because social media is everywhere now.  It was nice to make decisions on working with Pharmacists through the website and running an interest ad contest.  Those are serious campaigns and ideas that companies face today. 

Most Important Thing Learned

I remember at the beginning of class, our professor addressed that marketing was not just advertising and really was a lot of numbers and analysis.  I learned that marketing is actually not all that different from accounting.  I have an accounting degree and always looked at marketing as a more creative design type of business degree, but now I can see how much they are related.  It was eye-opening to understand how marketing is using some of the same types of analysis I'm looking at in the accounting world.  It makes me feel like that is something I can use at work and potentially work closer with on our marketing team. 

Apple Article

I wanted to send along this interesting Apple article I found.  I plan on posting a question about it this week so I thought I'd add it here.  I'm thinking we can discuss the strategy behind their original plan here and the ethics behind it.  It seems like those companies Apple attempted to work with here all settled and got out of the way - should Apple have done the same?  Are they know standing behind a bad decision or are they right to stand up for what they did?

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/big-week-apple-e-book-trial-starts-company-163701778.html?vp=1

Marketing Week 9

Pharmasim

This week we have spent a lot of time working in groups to develop the Pharmasim strategy for the next few periods.  Pharmasim has been an interesting challenge during the semester.  I've done simulations for classes before, but never a marketing one like this. The last one I did was an auditor simulation for accounting.  I have learned a lot of different ways to analyze data and the relationships between various data points.  It has been a good experience as a way to try out different strategies with 'pretend' money and see what happens when you make major or minor adjustments or what happens when you make no adjustments at all.
 

One of the challenges was the limited amount of options in the simulation.  Although there are so many different ways to analyze the data and make adjustments, there are also limits on the changes that can be made.  Sometimes there is information that makes you want to change something that isn't able to be changed. 

Another challenge was working together with the team to make changes and move onto the next round.  Just coordinating timing of conference calls around everyone's schedules has been difficult.  Being in a course where everyone has careers and priorities outside of class makes quick turnarounds tough as a team. 

Also this week we read an article about marketing metrics.  The article discussed knowing your market and customer before making any decisions on metrics.  This can definitely be applied to what we have been working on so far within the simulation.  When I first started working in the practice rounds I just looked at random data and made adjustments based on what I thought about as a consumer.  I didn't take the time to really think about an overall strategy and how changes impact the upcoming rounds.  Once we got into a team setting, it was more important to make sure we were all on the same page and begin to work on how we wanted to make decisions.  These metrics became an important part of any decision, especially when you have to convince others that your decision makes sense.  I think we have begun to work on the portfolio and metrics that make sense and will adjust as we continue further into the process.

Other Blogs

This week we were asked to also review another three classmate blogs.  I reviewed Aleena's, Marcin's, and Kristin's blogs. 

I started with Aleena's blog which gave a good first impression before I even started reading because it looked creative and pretty and fun.  And that impression was right!  It was a fun blog that was written in a very casual style.  There were random cartoon or comics throughout and she related the class information to completely unrelated items which made it different and interesting.  I'm glad I picked this one to review this week. 

Next I looked at Marcin's blog.  It also included some cute little clipart related to the push and pull strategy.  I learned right away that Marcin works at an accounting firm, which was relatable as I previously worked in public accounting.  I agree with all the comments related to the accounting firm strategy having had experiences in that industry as well.  There were also interesting simulation comments in there that had lead to some ideas for analyses in my own group for the next couple of weeks. 

Lastly, I looked at Kristin's blog.  Turns out last week she had reviewed mine!  It was nice to see some good feedback on my own blog and some comments there.  She takes the Pharmasim analysis and relates it to Drucker readings and ties everything together.  She mentions that she might not be that good of a marketer yet, but I think she's probably better than she thinks since she's tying things together from all different aspects. 

Week 8

Marketing 640 - Week 8

It has been a busy week!  There were some class prompts I'll start with this time around. 

One we began to talk about in class was Drucker's suggestion that the customer ultimately determines marketing decisions and what a business is because they are the ones buying the product.  I believe that there are some businesses that do not follow this thought process, but unfortunately I don't think they stay in business very long.  Not focusing on what customers want is ultimately setting yourself up for failure.  Sure not everything that people want can be achieved, but if there are many requests over and over again companies would need to seriously consider these and reach out for feedback.  Strategies like focus groups and customer feedback forms are helpful ways to address this and coincide with Drucker's suggestion.

Another Drucker discussion was on the ability to predict the future.  Drucker knew that strategic analysis could not predict the future - so the question was asked, why would you focus on historical data to predict buying habits if this was true?  I think this question somewhat relates to the one above.  Although we cannot know all the factors that are causing decisions in the future, we can use historical data to the best of our ability.  By looking at what customers want and their buying habits and trying to make decisions around that seems to be the best possible approach.  Ignoring information would be less helpful.  So even though we cannot predict everything that will happen we have to use the information we have as best we can.

One last Drucker prompt related to his '5 Certainties' of the future and whether these will change in the next 50 years.  These Certainties are:

1. The collapsing birthrate in the developed world.
2. Shifts in distribution of disposable income.
3. New definitions of performance in an organization.
4. Global competitiveness
5. Growing incongruence between economic globalization and political splintering.

I have to say for someone who mentioned we could not predict the future, Drucker seemed to nail it. In all honestly I can't imagine any of these changing in the next 50 years.   His prediction seems to be that things will change, and since I can't imagine we go stagnant all of a sudden I believe he is right.

Other Blogs

This week we were also asked to look into 3 other blogs in class.  I looked at Christine's, Mindy's, and Kenny's blogs.

I'll start with Christine's blog.  I really liked her in depth look into the Pharmasim assignment.  It made me think about how our team addressed the first round and it seemed to very different from what their team did.  I also like her comments on how Pharmasim decisions are not entirely like real-life because you can't adjust certain things, like her example of the dollar value associated with training sales staff.  I think this is a great point, there are many things that you could change in your decisions in real-life that you can't change in the simulation.  It seems like their team had a good plan going in and really went for it.  She also addressed an interesting article she found.  I think adding interesting articles helps classmates get to know each blogger a little better.

Mindy's blog was the next one I read.  She also addressed a lot of the Pharmasim areas.  In her blog she used specific reports that her group liked, and that it helpful to hear what other groups are looking and using to make decisions.  She also went on to address the 'try this' strategy of push/pull marketing.  That is one of the things I looked at in making our team decisions in the first round too.  In the week before she mentioned JC Penney and I've found their recent marketing decisions interesting too.  I think I had previously discussed them in one of my earlier blog posts, they seem to be having a lot of trouble trying to decide what customers want.  I think it took a lot for them to try something new and now address it's failure and go back to the old way.

Lastly,  I looked through Kenny's blog.  He started discussing how the class relates to his construction job and that was really interesting.  It's nice to hear how others relate to the things we are learning in class.  He also addressed the 'try this' like Mindy did, but he related it more to his job instead of the Pharmasim simulation.  It makes sense what he discussed about having to use the pull strategy in his career.  By not being able to relate completely to the simulation makes it more interesting and allows for a different view point of what we are talking about related to marketing.

Pharmasim

This week Pharmasim was all about analysis.  Since we had our individual assignment due for the situation analysis there were no decisions to be made or tried, but rather just looking at how all other decisions have worked so far.  It was good to take a deep dive into the information and really get to know the reports better.  Putting together all the information and considering all the various ways to look into everything turned out to be very time consuming, but helpful in learning.  It will be more interesting to learn what teammates came up with and whether or not any of our ideas of key focus areas were in alignment.