Sales Conference

I enjoyed going to the conference today during the Channel Planning portion. It was interesting to see how my other Marketing classes (specifically Advertising) pertained to the content: how they focused on marketing to certain demographs in certain situations (ours was at an SD community college). They also focused on Primary and Secondary objectives within certain channels: ad networks, email, mobile, video, targeted ads, deals, events etc. I enjoyed hearing how they can make each one have a primary or secondary objective depending on the goal they desire, be it awareness to customer loyalty. Each one had a place in the Branding, Response, and Creating high value customer catagories.

They had us pair into table groups to put post-its where we thought an aspect of the channel would fall into one of the three main catagories as primary or secondary. Our results were not too far off! We scored 12 accurate, while other professionals got 7, 15, 17 and 21. It was exciting to see how much we knew and how we probably had more social media knowledge than most of the people in the room.

They also touched on the point that a website can grab the audience's attention better through an interactive video versus just reading words on a page. People are more attracted to interactive advertising, an example being moving banners that they click on so that it is like a game. People remember better through acting than through reading as a sort of muscle memory.

Overall, it was a great experience. It was a trip to see how people of my parents generation are going to conferences to learn about what people in my generation do as easily as breathing between tweeting, instagram, facebook, foursquare and the like.

Week 1

Being on sight at the Union tribune was a great experience! Very exciting to see first hand where the ews papers come to life. Although they are one of the most successful companies they have a lot f room for improvement. I couldn't help but notice how dull the office was and how much the employees seemed completely disinterested in their job. Hopefully, along with making product improvements, we can improve the overal morale an enthusiasm of the group with new changes. I think they really need to stick wih the name DiscoverSD since it is such a well known name already and the fact that it is an easy search engine word to match what they want to offer to the public. Maybe they should consider saying on the web page "discover SD by the Union Tribune" or something along that nature so that both are tagged but discover is primary. That will help with keeping old consumers as well as look appealing to the new ones that we can market to through social media because it is easier to catch their eye and their interest. Another idea they could add that would attract 18-25 year olds is night life attractions: clubs to go to with the kind of music, atmosphere, guest list link and maybe estimated time of waiting to get in in a certain night. Also it could have maybe categorieSs of bars and what the offer, prices and groupon ish deals to encourage people to go to discoverSD and get them. There's a lot of hidden places around San diego people might not know about so maybe we can have a "Destination Exploration" (just throwing that out bcs it rhymed!) tab where people can just kind of sight see places unique to SD: Coronado, seaport village, the midship, Hillcrest, etc. my thinking is that a lot of students are so isolated in their own college communities they rarely have time to get out an see the city much less have the time I know where to go. And just to hit that tipping point of appeal add in Deals to restaurants. For the big event, it would be most efficient to have it on USD's campus just for the fact that since its so convenient people might actually go versus having it off campus. It might be better also to have r a week earlier to avoid all of the hassle with finals... And students might appreciate a fun event right before they start pulling all nighters in the library. Giving away free deals to certain places to maybe the first 100 students that come (or even coupons for a free small meal or drinks somewhere) would attract a lot of people... Maybe even copy what the Shoreclub in PB does and have games they could play to win like a 15$ tab to a certain bar. There's a lot of potential with this company we jut really need to up it into the new generation: twitter deals, Facebook deals, the works an also have give always that appear to this particular crowd... Maybe Ben include discounts to local concert tickets or have an contest to win free tickets if you buy a certain deal. I'm very eager to come into the office more and get behind the scenes since I feel the more we get into the head of the company the better we will understand how to make changes.