Week 11 - Semester Wrap Up

What a semester in Marketing Management 640.  While signing up for the class I expected it to be purely academic, 4 P’s, etc.  However, looking back, I can say that I appreciate how we focused in other areas.  Reading Drucker’s ideas were a new take on Marketing that I have never experienced.  Additionally, I would have never thought I would be a brand manager for a Pharmaceutical business, although it was a simulation, so I could work with others to take in what we’ve learned and apply it to this 10 year business simulation.

My favorite part of the course was definitely the simulation.  I work closely with Brand Managers where I work, however I was unaware of the financial decisions they had to make.  Also, it was stressful maintaining a positive stock price.  This was something new to me because LEGO is a privately held company, so there is not stock price or worrying about investor’s thoughts/decisions.  I certainly appreciate the efforts of my team throughout the whole process.  We were able to make better decisions throughout the simulation as we presented ideas, but bounced them off of each other and our marketing plans to make sure we were following suit.  Also, looking at our Period 10 results and how we finished, I’d say we did a good job managing the business overall.

Lastly, I can say that I have already taken things from this class an applied them in situations while working with my Marketing counterparts at work.  I can make better decisions and recommendations with my Sales colleagues after taking this class.

Cheers!

Adam

Week 10

The final stretch is upon us.  We had the chance to revise our original marketing strategy to fine tune decisions for Periods 8-10.  Thankfully we had this opportunity because as we progressed through Periods 3-7 we certainly realized where our strategy could improve or areas of our plan that were lacking the necessary detail.

Our team was able to put together an improved marketing strategy memo based off of our experience using what we’ve learned this semester as well as experiencing the outcomes of our initial plans.  We analyzed the SWOT for Allstar coming out of Period 7 and spot how the SWOTs have changed from our first marketing plans.  The key issues that were identified were over side effects, maintaining a good relationship with the channels, continuing to build market share in the children’s cold market, and overcoming and recovering from the downturn in the market.

By having a second chance at revising our marketing plan will allow us to make better decisions for the future periods.  It will be interesting to see how well our revised strategy works as we have incorporated both what we’ve learned throughout the semester as well as the real examples from Pharmasim to improve the plan.