Week 11 Blog Post

Final Blog Post: Convincing Coaches that the Key to Success is...Marketing?

We have finally made it to the conclusion of the course, and our last posts are intended to take a look at marketing from a "macro" perspective.  This might be a stretch, and if any coaches ever come across this, they may come for my head, but I am going to try my best to tie this in to my profession as a college football coach, and wrap up my semester long attempt at the relationship between college football and marketing.  My final post will attempt to educate my colleagues on the broader picture of marketing, that marketing is not just about advertising, sales, and the 4 Ps, but marketing is more than that.  In fact, it is the main component to all businesses, including the success of all college football programs.

As in many of my posts, when looking at this case, the Western New England University Varsity Football Program will serve as the business, and the players and prospects will serve as the customers and potential customers, respectively.

Preseason camp is approaching in just over a month, and soon all the coaches will be arriving on campus, about a week before the players arrive, to begin preparations for pre-season camp as a staff.  Undoubtedly, as we go through our team goals, the head coach will proclaim, in some form or another, "the key to our success this program's success is determined by the number of wins and losses."  Having just recently taken marketing management, I will interrupt him and say, "No coach, the key to this year's success is dependent  on how well we market the program."  This is when the rest of the staff looks at me like I have 3 heads and the head coach tells me to leave and never return.

This is when I enlighten them of my madness:

The key to any business, including Division III Football, is dependent on 3 basic principles:

1. The purpose of a business is to create a customer
- The customer is the foundation of a business and keeps it in existence.
2. The business has two - and only two - basic functions: marketing and innovation.  Marketing and innovation produce results, all the rest are costs.
3. [Marketing] encompasses the entire business.  It is the whole business as seen from the point of view of its final result, that is, from the customer's point of view.

I would remind the staff that the purpose of the program is not the number of wins, but that certainly helps with marketing our program.  The purpose of WNE Football is to create customers, that is, to recruit players that eventually decide to deposit and play football at Western New England University.  I would argue that the players are the foundation of our program's success, and that they are the ones who ultimately generate the wins and the losses.

Some of the coaches might actually agree that our players are ultimately the ones who determine the outcome of the game, they may argue that they are the ones responsible for it, but ultimately, they are the ones executing the schemes, so they may be on board with what I am saying up to this point.

My next challenge will be to convince them that the purpose of our program has two, and only two, basic functions: marketing and innovation.  As employees and stakeholders of the program, it is our responsibility to market the program to our customers and our prospective customers, get our name out there, relay the message that we are the perfect program for them and the benefits of being a Golden Bear.  In my past posts, I have discussed the ways in which we do that, which is not important at this time, all that is important is convincing my fellow coaches that marketing is key to our success at this time.  The challenge will be to convince them that innovation is the only other function of our program. I would tell them that it is our job to be innovators in every aspect of our program: our schemes, our practices, uniforms, game-day setting, study halls, off-season programs, everything!  It is our job to be innovators, to find ways to set our programs apart from others and get quality players to attend our institution.  That is the key to wins and losses.

A few more coaches might be following along at this point, but our head coach will most definitely still have a scowl on his face, so it will be important that I really bring home my last key principle.  Marketing encompasses our entire program.  It is the whole program as seen from the point of view of its final result, that is, from the customer's point of view.  Ultimately, I will challenge the staff to think about how our players and prospects view Western New England Football.  Is it the program they want to be at?  Is it the best program in the Northeast?  Is it where they want to spend all 4 (or 5) years of their college career?  How do our players view our football program, and do more players want to be a part of it?  This, ultimately, comes from how the program is run and what the players get out of it.  Are wins and losses a part of this?  Undoubtedly.  But wins and championships and not the purpose of a program.  Instead, they are a utility, a marketing tool to keep the program running at a successful rate.

Now, will my head coach be on board with me at this time?  We shall see come August...

Week 10 Blog Post

Pharmasim Impressions and Observations

Since much of our time lately has been spent working on and discussing our Pharmasim marketing management projects, this week's blog will be entirely devoted to that.  The Pharmasim management process requires a much more in-depth analysis in which it first appears.  When I first introduced myself with the program and began exploring it early in the semester, it seemed pretty self explanatory.  While all the information is in the program, you have to make sure that you purchase all the reports you need to make your future decisions.  Again, all the information is there, but your task is to find what you are looking for, decipher it, and organize it in such a way that you can effectively learn from past decisions, interpret what the competition is doing/pursuing, and analyze consumer behaviors.  I have found it essential to organize all the information in Pharmasim in such a way that you can easily find it and make sense of it.  This technique and style may vary from person to person.

That being said, the situation analysis was not only a major tool to create our marketing plan, but to understand Allround's position in the market.  The tasks in the situation analysis really forced you to dive into Pharmasim and pull out the essential information to analyze the market and help make decisions moving forward.  Just as Drucker said, you cannot predict the future, but you can look at past data to help shape the future.  As mentioned earlier, it is critical to analyze your past decisions, competitors, and consumers when developing a marketing plan, and the situation analysis did just that.

Working together in a team has made the project much more manageable, but I believe a much better result would come from larger teams.  The more insights and analyses would make for a better perspective of the market place, and more eyes could find more opportunities and threats within the market.  Out Pharmasim team only has two team members, and our key issues and goals from our situation analysis were essentially identical.  While it seemed obvious what our issues were, it does not mean that we chose to attack the correct things moving forward.  A few more sets of eyes could give more perspective and help find other avenues to pursue if necessary.

The most important decision our team has made thus far deals with our pricing strategy.  As we discussed in class, prices are elastic, and net income is not always related to unit sales.  The challenge for our team was to find that "ideal price".  For some reason, we felt as though we needed to drop the price of Allround during Period 3 to increase sales.  The plan worked for increasing unit sales, but it negatively affected manufacturer's sales and net income.  Our goal and challenge moving forward was to find the right price for Allround that would optimize net income, and therefore implement a premium pricing strategy.  We did so during Period 4, and saw much improved results, allowing us to raise our capacity and open up a new plant.  We then continued to raise the price but watched net income fall again, so we realized we needed to stick closer to Period 4's pricing strategy, and move forward keeping it in-line with the rate of inflation.

Two incidents in which I found most interesting were the social media and increasing awareness of Allround amongst physicians and pharmacists.  I found the social media incident interesting because it is has rapidly become such a huge aspect to marketing now, and throughout the periods, issues seem to arise throughout, making it important to always keep a handle on your social media relations.  The incident in which you had multiple options to raise awareness of Allround amongst physicians and pharmacists intrigues me as well because it was one of our goals for Periods 4-7 to have physicians and pharmacists recommend Alround more than any other product.  We decided on the most expensive option, the clinical trials to help prove to physicians and pharmacists that it was the most effective product on the market.  For some reason, this did not prove effective, and a waste of funds.  I am curious as to the most effective choice of raising recommendations from the physician and pharmacists in Pharmasim, as we still feel it is an important component to effectively marketing Allround

Week 9 Blog Post

Before hopping into the required prompts for this week's blog post, I want to express my disappointment that we were not asked to speak about performance metrics in our personal work settings.  I was going to brag and boast that college football programs have it the easiest when it comes to metrics in the sense that we get immediate feedback regarding performance in the form of game statistics, both internally and externally.  By the Monday following a Saturday game, we know how well we performed statistically compared to competitors within our conference and on the national scale.  Also, specific corporations (teams) focus on specific metrics for their dashboard.  For example, team built around their ability to control the clock will look more at time of possession, while a spread offense built around throwing the football will look more closely at passing efficiency.

Just wanted to touch on that briefly, now onto our required topics.

Managing the Marketing Metrics Portfolio: A Second Look

This week we were asked to take another look at the article Managing the Marketing Metrics Portfolio, specifically how it applies to Pharmasim.  As mentioned in the article, I think one of the most important steps to managing your metrics portfolio is by first understanding your business model.  This may seem obvious, but if you lose sight of your served market, you may be looking at the wrong metrics.  When it comes to our Pharmisim cases, we must define who are customers are, what do/will they want, who are our competitors, how do we create, communicate, and deliver value to these customers, and how do we make money in the process?  If we lose sight of our served market definition, we may begin looking at the wrong metrics.  For example, if our served definition is the cold market, our metrics should not be based off of the cold or allergy market.  Although it is a simple concept to understand, it could cause disastrous results if we begin acquiring the wrong information, or even not enough information.

Another important concept that stands out in the article is that the decision on which metrics to include depends on the information needs of each audience.  Since we are acting as the "higher-ups" in our Pharmasim projects, its important for us to understand the same key elements as those in the "C-Suites," as described in the article.  It is essential for us in our Pharmasim projects to understand how marketing efforts are translating into important financial outcomes, the enthusiasm (or satisfaction/awareness) of our customers/end users, and the health of our brand equity and capabilities.  We can find this information in metrics such as market share, marketing productivity, ROI, and many of our survey reports geared towards consumer awareness and satisfaction.

When it comes to our performance metrics established on our dashboard for class, we have decided to come up with the following scoring system:

Cumulative Manufacturer's Sales (10%)
Cumulative Unite Sales (10%)
Gross Margin Percent (15%)
Average Marketing Efficiency Index (25%)
Cumulative Return on Sales (15%)
Share of Unit Sales (25%)

While all of these metrics were agreed upon by the majority of the class, and undoubtedly important metrics within our Pharmasim projects, this is a perfect example that not all companies need to follow the same set of metrics.  While many of the metrics may be viewed as important by all companies competing within the same marketplace, some may be more important to others.  For example, our group dropped the price of Allround and experienced a steep increase in the number of unit sales this past period.  We have since decided to incorporate a premium pricing strategy to Allround, which will undoubtedly lower the number of unit sales, but will hopefully increase net income.  Therefore, cumulative unit sales and share of unit sales will not be as important to us moving forward.  Consequently, manufacturer sales may hold more weight for our group as opposed to another.

Blog Reviews

This week I decided to look at Aleena, Christine, and Andrew's blogs.

Ironically, while I really enjoyed Aleena's blog, from the style, creativeness, depth, insight, and knowledge presented, judging by the fact that her last post was April 24th, I would guess that she is either really struggling with the class or no longer a part of it.  That's too bad because I thought she did a really good job with it.

Christine does a very good job at presenting what was asked of us in class.  What I found interesting with hers was when it came to her sharing her opinions of the Pharmasim project.  Her insight was in terms of how well her team worked together, which was very different from mine as I focused on our performance thus far.  Obviously this is not just an exercise of how effective of a marketing manager you are, but also a real life example of teamwork, which Christine did an effective job at reminding me of.

I thought Andrew did a good job analyzing other people's blogs and sharing his insights on them.  I would have liked to hear more about his insight into Pharmasim and course material, as he brought up some good points, but I would have enjoyed it more if he expanded on them a little bit more.

Sharing Some Pharmasim Secrets

The title of this section may be misleading to most since we are not at the top of the leader board when it comes to the class' balanced scorecard for Pharmasim, but I guess learning what not to do can always help others.

I must say that when you do not get the results you were hoping for, it does make it easier to see what to do and what not to do.  Our biggest struggle thus far has been our pricing strategy.  I realize we went over this in great detail during one of our Pharmasim discussions, that high unit sales does not guarantee profitability, and in case you didn't believe Professor Spotts, take my word for it as well.  We have done a great job at satisfying our consumers with our product, and we have since learned that it is time to accurately price Allround in relation to its effectiveness.  Hopefully Pharmasim will take into consideration that since we had so many unit sales, those who purchased Allround will be happy with the product and will continue to purchase it in the future, even if the price increases.  Wishful thinking? We will soon find out.

I will say though that while the Situation Analysis was very tedious, it was a very useful tool at compiling information and giving us an overall view at our company and the market.  While our performance metrics are not where we want them to be at the moment, the Situation Analysis really helped put everything into perspective for us, as each of our team members all found similar information and came up with similar key issues.