The final episode of the 20-Something Marketing podcast…sort of. Tune in to hear what’s happening.

Leave us your comments, questions and suggestions on the show notes!
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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.

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

Dollar General; Candidates’ Logos; WSJ News; What’s in store for Marketing Diner in 2008

Join in the conversation and tell us what you think – call dinermail at 202-552-1575.

Episode:

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Technorati Tags: Logos, MBA, Nashville, podcast, political communication, strategy

Podsafe Music: City Skies – Dylan & The Movies

Technorati Tags: 2007, Marketing Diner, MBA, montage, surviving business school, Vidcast, vlog

So yes, if you are asking how things are here at Vanderbilt, I am doing just fine .

Technorati Tags: MBA, Owen Graduate School of Management, Leadership Communicatins, surviving business school

Yeah, its a familiar subject but at least I found one way to make this show work for my career!

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Technorati Tags: MBA, powerpoint, business strategy

Ok, “avoid” may be an overstatement. Ok, I’ll admit that as I was writing this post, I checked my facebook wall at least three times.

It’s not that I don’t like my birthday, it just always seems to come at the most annoying times. Grad school has tempered my expectations of just about everything now-a-days.

For instance, I could be doing a lot of things today but the act that is bringing me the most pleasure is the completion of a marketing research focus group analysis. As long as I am procrastinating however, let’s see if I can’t ping out a couple of the things I learned when I was 26….Click Here To Read More >>

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Yes, we are still alive – we’re just busy. Hear Penelope and Jared rant on their lives and discuss ways you can keep your brands remain consistent, internally.

Show Notes:

Episode:

Download audio file (MD2.3.mp3)

Technorati Tags: Brand Nazi, Marketing, Marketing Diner

I am proud to say that Wendy and I have finally gotten together and squeaked out Episode #3 of the [The Marketing Diner].

This time we are in search of that perfect recipe for marketing ethics and a sustainable show format. Regardless it’s a great show and the commentary, I am proud to say, is really heating up.

Check it out today @ http://marketingdiner.com

Or Just Download It Here:

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