20SMF Episode #70 - MBA Spin QnA

by Jared on February 26th, 2008

Answering questions related to getting your MBA including admissions, full time vs. part time, and what it’s like “on the inside.” Also, answering a deep backlog of other viewer mail.

• 20SMF’s MBA Spin Series
• Kindo - Cool Family Tree Building Site (Sent To Us By Daksh)
• Amazon.com - 20 Something Manifesto by Christine Hassler
• Christine Hassler’s Web Site

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Technorati Tags: 20-Something Manifesto, Christine Hassler, mba applications, mba full time, mba part time, Kindo

The Real Genius of Marketing

by Jared on February 25th, 2008

Cross-Posted From The Marketing Diner

One of the highlights of this last MOD was a chance to run a full-scale, two week business simulation game. In it, teams of five business students were pitted against each other, charged with running a company by controlling all aspects of its strategy including finance, operations and yes, even marketing.

I can tell you that from my perspective, the marketing component was far from rocket science. It only allowed for basic sales and promotions planning around different customer groups but it did bring up an interesting conversation. Yes, this was a game and our “customers” were nothing but sophisticated algorithms, yet I did find myself defending the finer points of marketing to my finance counterparts.

The kicker was that we only started doing well when my group members started allowing the marketing department to drive integrated operations and production planning. Frankly, without demand forecasts produced by the sales and promotions outlays (don’t ask, it included a large and annoying spreadsheet we created for the occasion), the company produced way too much and caused my team to pay much more in holding costs than we would, otherwise.

At the end of the simulation, it wasn’t that that our marketing department had more vision than any of the other marketing departments out there. Nor did our sales and promotions budgets have a greater effect on the end result of the game. What happened was that our marketing department helped translate our companies’ vision into a tactical plan that touched everything from operations, to finance to HR. In the end, it was the teams that had marketing-centric planning that proved most efficient and profitable.

As you can imagine, this was only a simulation. However, it doesn’t take a venture capitalist to see that it has implications for those interested in cracking the code on succeeding in a world where technology renders a lot of competitive advantages, moot.

Plainly stated; the biggest lesson any of my marketing comrades or I learned from this simulation is that great marketers have to move beyond being just great creative minds, but we also become great office politicians.

Oh, and in case you’re interested in the outcome of the game: we only took 9% market share our industrey but our pricing and promotions strategy garnered our products an average of 47% on margins.

Catch Up w/Jared - Now on Twitter!

by Jared on February 12th, 2008

Despite the ever-growing workload I have here at business school, I have found a new way to keep in touch with people….Yes, I have finally gotten on the twitter bandwagon.

Whether you’re on twitter or not, you can keep up with regular musings about social media, marketing and business school via my twitter page at http://twitter.com/marketingdiner. It’s an exciting prospect to be able to get that much more engaged with people through mini-bloging but I think it will make a nice compliment for those of you who may miss my regular shows here at 20-Something Marketing.

If you haven’t already discovered twitter, it’s a neat little tool that connects people, 140 letters/charachters at a time. Definitely worth the time to check it out.

Catch you on the twitter-side, marketing fans!

Technorati Tags: Marketing Diner, social media, twitter

Podcasting Reasserts It’s Relavence

by Jared on February 4th, 2008

Reposted From my OwenBoggers.com Blog

After about two years of stagnant growth, podcast audiences are now expected to grow 251% to 65 million by 2012, according to a new eMarketer article.

This news is not that surprising since podcast growth has been on the rise since many mainstream media outlets like CNN, NBC and the BBC have adopted the technology.

What’s really interesting about this is that it’s not the big media guys that are benefiting, financially. It’s the smaller businesses and content producers that are getting the majority of the new dollars being spent on podcast advertising, which is also expected to grow to $435 Million by 2012 (it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of $143 Million right now).

What this means for businesses is that podcasting has reasserted itself as a way to target niche audiences and demonstrate product-area expertise. As a veteran podcaster - and you know I had to mention it at some point - this is a welcome validation of many hours spent convincing executives that the medium was worth it.

Ultimately, I think you’ll see a lot of businesses flock to podcasting as a way to create content in and around their products. I also think that consumers, as the digital music player market grows and becomes even more mobile with the advent of 3G phones, will continue the trend of seeking out more targeted and personal alternatives to traditional radio.

Technorati Tags: emarketer, OwenBloggers, podcast, podcasters, podcasting, podcast growth, strategy