Self Reflection

(1) I think I'm doing... okay. Well, not really. I get all of the projects done and all of the work, and I understand what I'm supposed to be getting at. The problem is, I haven't gotten service learning yet, so I can't really focus on a specific angle of marketing, especially since I jumped into this topic blind. I'd probably give myself a low P, because I'm not sure of what I'm doing yet. I can only blame myself for not being able to find service learning sooner, but it's difficult when there are certain types of marketing  I want to stay away from, one of them being product-based marketing. Hopefully, one of the two places that I have been able to communicate with will take me in and be able to teach me a lot. Speaking of learning, I definitely need to change my EQ. Hopefully that can change once I begin service learning. Same with the science experiment. I don't think I will be able to build something physical, but I hope it will still be just as rewarding.
(2) I've gotten better at responding to people professionally via email, as well as "play phone tag" with them. It's been getting easier for me to reply to adults working in the field, and I learned a lot during that failed venture I attempted during Science Fair Research. Because of that, I learned where to find a companies' customer service line.
(3)  I'm at a complete standstill right now when it comes to this project. Hopefully, I can get service learning to push me forward and get started on something. That would probably be what I would work on- getting something done. I can't help but feel as though I'm running on a little bit of luck....

Science Fair Proposal

1. If the typography of a company brand is in a sans serif font, then consumers will believe that it is a trustworthy professional company and will take their business there.
2. Dependent Variables: Which company the consumer will take their business to.
   Independent Variables: The various fonts used for a brand
   Control Variables: The company name and purpose.
3. This project will help me answer my EQ because the way that a company/firm is perceived affects how consumers will approach the brand. Since many people are visual, they tend to associate what they see (the brand) to what is in front of them (the business).
4. Materials: Profiles of different types of businesses (technology, retail, food, clothing, supplier), different print-outs of logos in different fonts, 25 volunteers
• Come up with a pseudonym for each business and print out the brand name in different fonts (one font from each category: oldstyle, modern, slab serif, sans serif, script, decorative. one of these fonts must be of or similar to the font of the original business).
• Have volunteers come in. Display all of the different styles of the brand name to them. Read to them the profile of the company. (Include: what kind of products they sell, mission statement, objectives, philosophy and company values)
• Have them rate each font on  a scale of 1-5 (5 being the most positive) based on how well the font matches:
• what kind of products they sell
• their company philosophy/mission statement/ objectives
• their company values
• Allow room for volunteers to give three words as to what the font reminds them of, and to comment on any other aspect as to how the font and brand mix.
• Repeat for other businesses. DO NOT use the same font used with the other business profiles (to prevent bias that may have been already formed during the experiment), but pull from the same font category.
5. This experiment will fall under the Behavioral/Social Science category.

What I've Learned So Far

1. Since this senior project has begun, I've learned how to take better research notes from textbooks. I am not the best note taker in the world, so I'm willing to any suggestions for note taking strategies. At first, I did all of my notes using alternative note taking skills that we learned in the beginning of the year. But the method that I was using slowed be down greatly, and didn't help me retain what I learned. I was a reader, not a writer, and this style of alternative note taking was torture to myself and my bad handwriting. I switched to Cornell note taking, and I can now finish my thirty page chapter in 1.5 hours, and retain a large portion of what I read.
2. Before and after of my notes [Pictures]
3. If it wasn't for my text book "Principles of Marketing", then I wouldn't have been forced to figure out how to do these notes. It's a standard school text book, and learning this skill will train me to read chapters even better to pick out all of the important information- a useful skill when I go off to college. Also, the Physics website helped me a bit in figuring out what Cornell Notes are exactly. (I originally thought that alternatitve note taking- or the way that I was doing notes- were Cornell Notes. Yep, I'm not the best note taker.)
   

Independent Component 1 Plan Approval

1. For my first independent study component, I will be attending a Introduction to Economics (Microeconomics) class taught by Prof. Amrik Dua for the fall 2011 quarter at Cal Poly Pomona.
   
2. I go to class twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Each class is 2 hours, and there are 20 total classes that I have attended/will attend. I also have to complete 4 assignments, 3 tests and one final for this class. It takes me about half and hour to complete an assignment, and an hour or two to study for the test. Total= ~42 hours (rough estimate.)
   
3. My independent study component relates to my EQ, because Economics is the study of how people satisfy their wants by using their limited means to obtain whatever can give them the most satisfaction. Moreover, microeconomics is the study of how the individual person spends and why they would spend the way that they do. Part of marketing, no matter what type of marketing it is, is researching your target audience, and if you know how they spend and why they spend the way that they do, then you could easily market to them to satisfy their needs.

Defining the Essential Question

1. What is the most important factor in successfully marketing a service?
2. Words to define:
• marketing- the process of creating consumer value by interacting with the consumer and exchanging a certain good/service/idea/product that satisfies their needs in return of some sort of object of value to the business.
• successfully- Reaching out to the right consumers so that the business is making a profit. If the buisness is struggling, usually, the marketing department gets most of the blame [even if it isn't the department's fault.]
• service- I'm going to be honest- I've been struggling with what this last word should be. Not only because I can't pinpoint a specific service, but it's because I've been playing around with the idea of marketing 'goods', 'brands', 'businesses', or 'services'. Although all can be sold to the customer, there are differences between each one [even though I sometimes use some terms interchangeably]. A good [or product] is something that you see- it's physical. A service can't be seen, but it can be felt. A business is an organization set up to sell for a profit. And a brand is an image with which you associate one of the previously mentioned three with. Right now, it seems to be a toss between 'service' and 'business', but I'm hoping to figure that out this week.
3. Possible Answers:
• Knowing your brand and business, inside and out
• Research your services' target audience and demographic
  
• Having a solid mission statement
• Staying true to your core consumers
• Making sure that every employee is aware that they are also responsible for the marketing.
• Having a complete and through marketing plan
4. As of right now, my most important source has been the marketing textbook "Marketing: An Introduction" by Philip Kotler and Gary Armstrong. Yes, I will admit that it is sort of outdated [fourth edition, '97] and that some references are not as relevant to today's world as they should be, but it still has the main principles of marketing and outlines them in a very detailed manner, and they are still applicable in today's world.

Second Interview Questions

This week, I’m trying to look for different marketing or and departments to do my service learning with. When I’m trying to decide between places, some of the basic questions I may ask them will include:

1. Do you focus more on brand/product management, promotion, research, or advertising?

2. What companies/groups have you previously done marketing campaigns for?

3. What type of marketing do you focus on? Traditional marketing, or new media marketing?

4. How often do you have to work on marketing campaigns?

5. If I were to do my service learning for your firm/ company, what would I be doing that would help me learn more about the marketing business?

Once I decide on a place, I want to ask them the following questions, to learn a little bit more about them.

1. What are you responsible for in the marketing department?

2. What did you major in, and how did it help you get into this position?

3. What work experience did you have in business/marketing prior to your current job?

4. How is you marketing department compared to those similar to you in the area?

5. What Is your goal when you try to market a good/service?

Presentation Reflection

1. During my first interview, my interviewee had mentioned that part of marketing has to be with something that you like and/or believe in, so that you can enjoy working with that product and come out with the best result possible. While I was online, that Contagion billboard kept popping out at me, and I realized that the people who worked together to create and make this marketing campaign must have really believed in the success of this movie, and wanted to express this enthusiasm to the public by doing something out of the ordinary, like how they thought this movie was. In order for me to do this presentation right, I had to do it on something that I liked/ thought was interesting; i.e. I couldn’t present it on a marketing campaign for gold buying, because I’m not into that type of stuff.
   
   
2. I think what stood out about my presentation was that it was about a marketing campaign that was aimed for the demographic that we [as high school seniors] fit in. It’s a film that actually appeals to us, and makes the marketing campaign much more interesting. Also, things that are gross tend to attract attention, and I was hoping to present about how effective and cool the billboard was while grossing them out a little bit. [Side note: I think that it’s funny how my presentation about bacteria preceded a presentation about vaccinations.]
   
   
3. The most challenging thing for me to do was actually finding a campaign that I liked, that the class would be interested in, and that they probably had never seen before. I did see the billboard for Contagion pop out a bunch of times, but it never hit me that it was a good marketing campaign until I had to scrap my first idea for my five minute presentation. Also, I was trying to get something that I probably wouldn’t use for my two-hour, and Contagion was such a good example that I wasn’t sure that I wanted to teach about it for my five-minute. I also had a little trouble stating the connection with my senior topic into much clearer, spoken words [the ‘A’ in LIA].

Senior Project Presentation 1

Objective: Students will be learning about the basic concept of the exchange/trade process. [I will mostly refer to it as the exchange process]

Procedure:

-Begin by asking the students what the term 'trade' means to them, then introduce what the exchange process is [the process where several parties exchange something of value with each other]

-Explain that each time this happens can be called a transaction [a unit of measurement whenever there is a trade of values]

-Explain the different steps of the exchange process:

• For the exchange process to begin, two or more parties have to be involved.
• Each party must have something of value to offer to the other.
• Each party must want to deal with each other.
• Each party has the right to accept or to reject the offer.
• Each party must be able to communicate and deliver on the mutual agreement.

-Check for Understanding

-Conclude with how it ties to the main subject of marketing [pushes past the process and makes sure that both parties can benefit more from the exchange]

Check for Understanding: (including the introductory question)
[After explaining the marketing process, ask the students]
How many of you have recently had this type of exchange?

[Call on someone for an example, answer will most likely be actual bartering, and not buying something from a store. If no one brings it up, ask them the following question]
How many of you went shopping or bought something at the store recently?

[Call on someone else for an example]
What did you buy? What did you want? What did they want from you? [Show how their example fits into the process]

Resources/ Materials: I will be using a (small collector’s edition Hot Wheels) car and one (collector’s edition Barbie) doll to help the class better visualize the exchange process.

Interview Check

1. I am going to try and interview Andrea Haupert, a sales representative from Herff Jones in Colorado. She was my color group instructor for the “Business of Yearbooks” class I took at yearbook camp. She also spoke about the different ways of promoting and marketing a yearbook to the school by taking advantage of the many things found on the internet. I want to interview her because that class was the one that sparked my interest in the first place. Prior to, I had no idea how much work was involved in basic marketing. Since marketing is still a broad topic, I want to hear the input of someone whose job mixes a lot of the different aspects of it, and see where to go from there.

2. Along with the five required questions, I am hoping to ask her:
-What do you think marketing is?
-What exactly is your job and what does it entail?
-How and why did you become a sales rep?
-What prior experience did you need to become a sales rep?
-Why is a business manager’s job so important to the yearbook?

Senior Project Topic

What is your topic?  Why? And what do you hope to accomplish after studying this topic all year?

My Senior Project will be a business-related topic. When I went to Yearbook Camp this past summer, I took the “Business of Yearbooks” workshop to prepare for my editorial position this year as well as to gain more knowledge to share with the other editors. Through the activities and ideas introduced to us, I was able to see an appeal to business for the first time. I saw that there was something more to business than just trying to make money. There are many components to it- you have to know your audience, balance a budget, and make records of your activities (to name a few).

Business is such a broad topic that I have narrowed it down to Marketing or Accounting- accounting because I am really comfortable with numbers and I originally wanted to go with something math-related for my Senior Project, and marketing because there was something interesting to me about planning sales campaigns and actively engaging the people you are trying to market to. At this point, I may end up doing marketing because of how much depth there is to it, but I am still torn because accounting sounds just as interesting to me.

No matter which specific topic I go with, I hope that, through this project, I will be able to get an understanding on how the world of business works. I have never given business a second thought, since I personally do not know a businessperson and have never cared for it. But in these tough economic times, it might be useful to know the basics. I also hope to figure out whether or not I should pursue a business- oriented career, or any career that will force me to constantly step out of my very small comfort zone.