Week 6 Hump Week

So this is hump week of our 11 week course, and of course the Geico Insurance commercial with the camel in it playing on repeat in my head. For those of you who may live under a rock, please reference this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWBhP0EQ1lA

Such funny advertising. Anyways this weeks happenings are both a lot and a little. I ran PharnSim somewhere around three times before the Professor reset it for group use. I did fairly well. I really fooled around with different products and changing the ingredients to the medication. I was a lot of fun, and my stock prices usually ended up being double to triple what I started out with. Granted this isn’t the best measure of success, but I was still impressed I was able to do that. It turned out being a lot of fun.

                Then we started out group play. It was a little difficult to go through two periods in four days. Which I was really surprised about, especially since a weekend fell on those two days. For me I had planned a girls weekend with my best friends from high school who I had not seen in over a year and half, so I was very unplugged. It is funny because we realized we are changing as a target market. Target market was not really the word used, we just talked about how our conversations had changed from looking to go out to different clubs to being more home bodies and talks of wedding stuff. (one my friends, her sister is engaged and is planning everything) We even commented how on facebook how everyone is either getting married or having a kid. Which reminded me of how there are very different target markets and there those that are young people, young families, and what not like in PharmSim. Anyways, I have become a bit off point. We were able to complete the two PharmSim periods as a group. We realized as a group after the first period, that we needed to be more specific with what we wanted to change in the simulation. The second round I was able to chat directly with a group member we were able to figure out a lot of things of the details for the next period. We had to figure out a way to cut our budget as we started off the period in a negative. We looked and realized that our advertising was much more than anyone else. So we cut it enough were we would still be leaders in advertising but yet mostly be out the red for the period with our budget. We did a few other adjustments, and by the end we ended up being in the plus by .7 million. So we decided to just spilt the money in promotions between coupons and trial sizes.

                Drucker came back this week in our reading. I was elated as you can imagine. We had to read chapters 10-14.Basically this was an entire section of the book titled “Drucker’s Marketing Strategy”. Chapter 10 was really eye opening. It was all about how we create the future, and certain parts of if can actually be foreseen. Now Drucker didn’t have a purple room where he consulted a crystal ball or anything, but rather he looked through the “window”.  What is meant by looking through the window is that we need to be observant of what is happening around us. Events that are happening now are going to have ripple effect on the future. Think of the baby boomer, as they go through the life cycle of life a company would have to change to accommodate everything. They are all in the process of retiring so adult living properties would become popular and maybe a good investment, or anything else that that they may like. Even walkers and canes may need to up their production to meet the demand that will be coming its way. However, creating the future can be risky especially certain industries. What a company must do is answer four questions when trying to create the future. These four questions according to Drucker are:

1.       What opportunities does the company want to pursue, and what risks is it willing and able to accept?

2.       What are the scope and structure of the organization’s strategy, including the right balance among such aspects as specialization, diversification, and integration?

3.       What are considered acceptable trade-offs for a company between time and money and between in-house execution and using a merger, acquisition, joint venture, or some external means to reach its objectives and attain its goals?

4.       What is the organizational structure appropriate to the company’s economic realities, the opportunities, and it performance expectations?

It is important that companies always be evaluating themselves, their markets, their product ventures, and coming up with contingency plans. To do this a company must know it’s specific purpose and its mission.

                If a company does not know what its business is then it will fail, especially with marketing. Without definition the business could end up spending time, money, and resources on projects that are in apporiobate instead of opportunities that are better suited. Knowing what your business is will help you determine where to apply your business successfully. Once a business knows what it is there must be commitment. Commitment is huge! It proves how important the goal is and are most likely to go more all out for reaching the goal than if it is down played and considered not important. Think of a big game against your rival. You are more likely to go all out verse a game that you know you are going to win against the opponent. Commitment also shows that the leader will not quit. If a leader will not quit then people will follow. When I recruit I often am asked the question if the head coach is going anywhere, and I often tell recruits that she is not as she has a family here and her husband works in the same department. I see this wave of relief on recruits when I tell them this, especially those that have gone through several coaches in their high school career. They want a committed leader that won’t quit. When making up a strategy it most have three aspects. These are physical resources, intelligence or knowledge, and have the correct attitude or moral values. These three aspects must work together for success. There are five proven techniques that will help apply commitment to marketing as it is very important. These five techniques are”

1.       Think through the goals until they are clear and definite

2.       Make a public commitment

3.       Promote your goals and objectives

4.       Expect and deal with the dragons (obstacles)

5.       Adjust your marketing strategy and tactics but not the objectives

Basically it comes down to really know the company, what direction it needs to be headed, accounting for as much as possible that could go wrong, and keep reviewing everything periodically.

                Marketing will always be impacted by what is going on in the world. Some changes will have more weight than others but there are five certainties that every marketing strategy must take into account in the foreseeable future and those are:

1.       The collapsing birthrate in the developed world

2.       Shifts in the distribution of disposable income

3.       New definitions of performance in an organization

4.       Global competitiveness

5.       The growing incongruence between economic globalization and political splintering

When making a marketing strategy a marketer must consider the 4P’s as well as the environmental or situational variables, and then take these five certainties into account.

                What a company must also do is not be afraid of abandoning profitable products. Listen everything has a lifecycle, that was one of the main lesson from Lion King was it not? The whole circle of life thing. Sometimes a profitable product just is not profitable any more. According to Drucker every three years an organization should challenge everything it is about, their products, and just everything to figure out if they would still be doing what they were doing if they were already doing do it. Also, abandonment should be considered an opportunity. When a project is abandoned then resources can be redirected and a new successful product or service can be the champion of the company. Once a product or services is determined to be abandoned a company should come up with a plan. The “how” to abandon is just as important the “what” and should be treated with the same respect. A company must come up with a plane regarding the resources, tools, money, and everything that went to the product and figure out how to redistribute it or how to abandon it.

 

                The last thing that we read about with Drucker was how selling and marketing and could even be considered adversarial. It is often believe that good selling can overcome bad marketing. However, marketing when done correctly can actually help enhance selling at a fraction of the effort. Good marketing can help sellers target the correct market to sell too, verse trying to sell ice to an eskmo. To get back on track Drucker suggests looking at three points:

1.       Strategy first

2.       Strategy determines tactics

3.       Good tactics are not only complementary to each other but they are synergistic

Strategy of a company is really important and it will help determine where a company will go and how to not only market but also sell. When marketing and selling work together on tactics, they will be unstoppable. However if they remain adversarial the company will not reach its full potential. Alright that is all for now.