Business Plan Pitch - Week 7 EOC

Winds of Freedom

This fragrance is focused towards the man who has discovered the winds of freedom whether it is within the deep experience of quiet, or in the thrill of adventure he discovers the forces of life, the forces that drive him the forces that are within him, the essence of who he is. He is determined to leave the hectic side of life behind, the city, the noise, the busyness of life's daily expectations being cooped up inside a building. As his adventures bring him in touch with life, and the forces that drive him, he becomes a part of everything around him and everything around him becomes part of him.

This fragrance captures the essence of the force that exists within each man. It is a musky scent of man and warm earthy curry, tobacco and tanka bean with an edge of fresh rosemary, a hint of mint and lemon verbena, earth, wind and smoldering fire. This fragrance blends with the chemistry of each man to become different on each wearer, the fragrance becomes a part of a man's identity, his unique force that no one else has, the force that is within every man, but unique to every man. It is a close fragrance, a smell that is captured by another when someone brushes up closely against the man wearing Winds of Freedom.

Week 6 EOC - Campbell's Hearty Tomato and Chunky Cheese Soup

    My favorite Campbell's soup has always been creamy tomato soup. I love to have it in the fall with a grilled Velveeta cheese sandwich made with slices of fresh tomatoes from my garden. I would dunk the grilled cheese into the soup and the melted cheese would flow out of the sandwich and mix with the soup. It has always been my favorite ever since I was a kid.
    A brand new flavor of Campbell’s condensed soup that I would like to see would be a hearty, chunky tomato soup with Velveeta cheese chunks: “Campbell’s Hearty Tomato with Chunky Cheese Soup.”
    “Campbell’s Hearty Tomato with Chunky Cheese Soup" would have the taste of a homemade chunky tomato soup made with tomatoes that could have been picked fresh from your own back yard garden on a beautiful fall day. Picked right off the vine and at their fullest flavor the tomatoes would be sautéed with fresh herbs, onions and swirled with chunks of cheese. This soup would be the closest thing to eating fresh tomatoes right out of your garden. It would be easy to make, just open the can, add some milk and heat it up. Not only would it be good, but it would also be good for you. “Campbell’s Hearty Tomato with Chunky Cheese Soup" would be low in calories and sodium, full of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants that you can only get from fresh tomatoes.
    Fresh tomatoes off the vine are available out of the garden for only a short part of the year. However, with "Campbell's Hearty Tomato with Chunky Cheese Soup" you can have the taste of fresh garden tomatoes any time of year that you wanted.

Week 5 EOC - Super Bowl 2010 Commercials

    Out of all the commercials I watched during the Super Bowl the one commercial I remember most clearly is the Budweiser commercial with the young colt and the young bull. When the two were young, they ran side by side on separate sides of a fence. Then they meet again running side by side and at the end, the bull crashes through the fence. Two men are standing there drinking Budweiser’s and one says, “Nothing comes between friends," and the other finishes the thought by saying, "Especially fences." Targeting the baby boomer, using geodemographic segmentation, this commercial touches on the things that people would consider important to them and what they value most in life. Remembering their old neighborhoods where they grew up, friendships and their belief in other people. No matter how long they had been apart, they will always remember the good times.
    Another commercial that comes to mind it the Doritos commercial where a man comes to date a young boy’s mother and as she walks away the boy observes the man looking at his mom’s butt. Then the man, sitting in the living room with the boy, takes a Doritos chip. The young boy slaps the man upside his head and tells him "Keep your hands off momma, and keep your hands off my Doritos. I found the humor is what made me remember this commercial. The young boy puts the same value on the Doritos as he does his mother. I think this commercial target the family life cycle (FLC) segmentation.
    Overall, I think there are social factors that influence the effectiveness of these commercials; selective distortion and selective retention play a big part on what each of us hears and remembers. The advertisers throw so much external stimuli at us within a couple of hours that it becomes difficult to distinguish wants from needs.

Week 4 EOC - Mad Men

    The series, Mad Men is set in 1960s New York. Mad Men is a sexy, stylized and provocative AMC drama that follows the lives of the ruthlessly competitive men and women of a Madison Avenue advertising, an ego-driven world where key players make an art of the sell. The series revolves around the conflicted world of Don Draper (Hamm), the biggest ad man (and ladies man) in the business, and his colleagues at the Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency. The series also depicts authentically the roles of men and women in this era while exploring the true human nature beneath the guise of 1960s traditional family values. (http://www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/about/)
    In this episode of Mad Men, Draper is trying to come up with an idea on how to market Lucky Strikes    Cigarettes. Studies had just been recently released on cigarettes being linked to lung cancer and because of an article in Readers Digest, society started viewing cigarettes as evil which effected the sales of cigarettes. Draper had to counteract this view and became involved in a marketing research process.
    Draper hired a doctor to collect and analyze secondary data. Seated in a bar one evening, Draper starts a conversation, collecting primary data, with an older man asking him open-ended questions about his cigarette smoking. This was a survey research approach, in which he interacts with a person to obtain facts, opinions, and attitudes of people who smoked. As he continued sitting in the bar he used ethnographic research the study of human behavior in its natural context, involving observation of behavior and physical setting. He also spoke with his mistress asking her questions and sharing ideas.
    Draper used SWOT analysis, trying to identify internal strengths and weaknesses and examining external opportunities and threats as he questioned the owner of the cigarette company. After finding how the cigarettes were processed and made, Draper decided to use a societal marketing orientation that states that an organization exists not only to satisfy customer wants and needs and to meet organizational objectives but also to preserve or enhance individuals' and society's long-term best interests. His idea was that the cigarette company was making a product that was toasted so the cigarettes were not toxic like the cigarettes that the competitors were trying to sell. Draper used this fact as a competitive advantage.

Week 4 EOC - SuperBowl Commercial

    The Super Bowl is watched by millions of people every year making this event a great opportunity for advertising a product. Making a commercial that is not only entertaining but also speaks to the people it targets, the different types of people who would be watching the Super Bowl, is extremely important. This is what I saw in the commercial, "Bridgestone: Taters". This commercial is funny and is targeted towards the male population.
    When I saw this commercial, I had to laugh, I could absolutely relate to it the whole situation that it portrayed. Right away, I recognized its demographic segmentation of the middle aged, married, working class male. Being married for 21 years, I saw my husband and myself in this commercial. I think that is what makes this commercial effective. It uses aspects that this group can relate to and they have seen themselves in this same situation before. The use of Mr. Potato head, the real life humor of the man/woman relationship, and being the man behind the wheel of a sports car racing down the road, stopping just in time to avoid imminent danger appeals to a man of this group.
    Even though women are said to make 90% of the buying decision, buying tires for a car is something that most women leave to the men to do. This makes this a perfect commercial for the Super Bowl whose majority audience is male.

Bridgestone: Taters



I just saw this commercial and thought it was great. 3-24-2010.

Week 3 EOC - Great Customer Service

    It was the Tuesday after Memorial Day weekend. I remember this day because it was the day my 15 year old cat died. I was so upset while I was cleaning the house, that I hardly heard the banging in the ceiling. At first I thought it was my other cat, because she often spent time in the ceiling. But as the sound got louder and harder I looked out the window and the hail was coming down bigger then golf balls. It broke through all the windows on the south side of the house as it thundered down for about what seemed like an eternity but was really only about 10 minutes.
    I do not think I had ever been this terrified in my life. I was waiting for the roof to get torn off by a tornado like what you see in a movie. After it died down I called my husband, who was on his reserve weekend in Louisiana, telling him he had to come home NOW!! Of course, he could not. I called the police because I did not know what exactly was going on and what to do. They told me that there was a tornado warning for the next couple of hours. They said the safest place to go is into the bathtub if anything else happened. The unfortunate part of that is that my husband had recently replaced the bathtub with a glass enclosed shower stall. I was living in New Mexico where nobody had a basement because, according to the real estate agent, New Mexico does not have tornados. The only other thing I could think of was to call my insurance company.
    I had no idea what I was supposed to do and I was still terrified. The customer service person, Nancy, was the greatest, most caring person. The first thing Nancy did was she made sure that I was all right and not in any immediate danger. Then she talked me down from being terrified. She had me go around the house and tell her everything that had been damaged. Her patience and concern made all the difference in the world to me that day. By the end of our conversation I had thought I was talking to a good friend.
    When I called the insurance company I was expecting someone to give me a list of things I had to do. I thought they would take whatever information they needed and then wish me good luck. I think I received such great service because Nancy knew to ask the right questions and she had empowerment to make certain decisions. She never once had to put me on hold to ask another person what to do. This insurance company has a societal marketing orientation; they do not just sell insurance they care about their customer's well being. They have niche competitive advantage. Their target is military personnel and their families and because of this, they can effectively serve a small segment of the market. This made me feel like I mattered. I was the only person on Nancy's mind at that moment and she was going to make sure that I had everything that I needed and that I was all right before she got off the phone with me.
    Within two days of talking with Nancy, an inspector came to the house. We had over $19,000 dollars worth of damage to the house and my car. While other insurance companies were giving their customers a hard time about covering this or that because the storm was classified as a micro blast and not a tornado, we had a check in the mail in a week and were already repairing our house

Week 2 EOC - My Demographics

    The Baby Boomers generation is to me a generation of rebellion. It was a generation born between wars and involved in a war of breaking out of social norms. Being born between the years of 1946 and 1964 I am considered part of the Baby Boomer generation, however, being born at the end of the generation I felt a bit of an outsider. I was too young to be part of the "the movement", Vietnam, Woodstock, protests, drugs, which probably was a blessing in disguise.
    My childhood reflects the Baby Boomer generation; a household with two parents, my father worked and my mother stayed home and took care of the kids and household. There were five children in my family. In my family, the two eldest, my sister and my brother, were encouraged to continue school, but the rest of us, girls, were considered not smart enough to continue school and were encouraged to get jobs and get married, hopefully, in my mother's eyes, to a rich guy. This was what my parents did it and we were expected to follow in the their footsteps.
    But that did not work for me. The Baby Boomer generation seemed to be a generation that became aware, aware of our environment, aware of our health, aware of our spirituality, aware of what was going on in our world. We were not satisfied to live life as our parents did. We did not want to follow traditions just because our parents followed traditions and we were not afraid to let the world know what we wanted. The world around us was changing so quickly and I know I was looking for more meaning to my life.
    In general, Baby Boomers are associated with a rejection or redefinition of traditional values; however, I think values and ethics are very important to my generation. We are a hard working and dependable generation and we expect others to be the same. We expect quality, quality work, quality products and we are willing invest in quality and to spend money on quality.
    I do believe that the average Baby Boomer is active and affluent because of the values we hold. At an age where most of us are settled, with grown children, we are able to consider middle age a new start on life. We have seen our world go from an industrial society to one of technology that opened many doors of opportunity. I feel that at my age I have started a new life. Having the opportunity to go back to school and keep up with the changing technologies is exciting and opens up many new avenues to in my life.