International Marketing: Assignments for September 20

Hi there,

Please find below the topics for your reaction papers:

Democracy for sale

Breast-feeding: A Philippine battleground

Top 10 Super Bowl Commercials of All Time

Every Content Marketer Needs an EditorRethinking the 4 P'sThe New Mad Men Of Advertising Are... EverywherePublic Relations in the Philippines: It’s a ‘love’ thingSecrets of the Superbrands

The Silent Killer of New Products: Lazy Pricing
7 awesome QR code marketing campaigns
How to Market Test a New Idea

For the rest of the class, please find below your team assignments:

As mentioned last Saturday, September 20 is our last class day. September 27 should be devoted for the preparation of your paper. Guidelines have been posted and can be viewed here.

See you.

Countdown to Finals

The semester is about to end, so here is how we are going to end it: an international marketing proposal for a company based in the Philippines.

This is a group assignment.

To begin your writing process, you need to choose a company or a product to market in an international jurisdiction. Coincidentally, this weekend, 22-24 August is the 10th Global Pinoy Bazaar where Filipino-made products will be displayed in an exposition at the World Trade Center in Pasay City.

You may follow @YabangPinoy on Twitter and the official Facebook event page to get more information about the trade show.

Instead of conducting our regular class on Saturday, I enjoin you to drop by the 10th Global Pinoy Bazaar anytime from 23-24 August to choose from among the exhibitors what you think is the most promising product from the most interesting exhibitor at the expo. The Bazaar is open from 11AM to 9PM.

ALERT: For the 8:30AM class, we will hold class session for your International Marketing Debate on Saturday, 23 August. You may visit the bazaar after class or on Sunday.

Admission fee however will be collected at P100 per person. If that will be a problem in your group, you may just assign 2-3 people to attend the bazaar to scout for your paper topic. Group members can chip in for the admission fee of those attending. Those not attending may be assigned other tasks related to completion of your International Marketing Proposal. In other words, make teamwork work for you.

But if you want to get additional exposure and experience, I strongly suggest you to be there.

Here is what you will do at the Bazaar:

1. Look around for what you believe is the most interesting and most promising product to introduce in an international market.
2. Mingle around, talk to the owners, ask questions. Be genuinely interested.
3. Test the product as much as you can. If it is a food and there's a free tasting, grab the chance. If they sell shoes, try it. 
4. Ask for calling cards - and the product/company's Twitter/ Instagram accounts
5. Take a photo with the product that you liked. Post them later on Twitter/Instagram. Tag the company and the organizer @YabangPinoy plus #MARK109
   and #YabangPinoy
6. Tell them you are a Marketing student and you are interested to help them devise a marketing strategy for the product's entry to the international market (as part of your International Marketing course). You may tell them after the event (via email or Twitter) as the owners will be understandably busy with other customers at the bazaar. 
7. Pick at least three products/companies. Your group will later decide which one is most interesting/promising.

Check out the Guide to Writing an International Marketing Proposal for the complete instructions.

We will meet on August 30 with our regular class assignments (to be posted later), and the result of your mid-term exam. 

Class Card Distribution on Wednesday

First, congratulations to the following students for getting a score of 1.00 (or equivalent to 98-110 points) in the Final Exam:

1. Jacklyn Maute 
2. Jesa Alysa Pita
3. Patricia Ann Claridad
4. Joana Marie Desabille
5. Louie Ericson Pascual

Class cards and exam answer sheets for all sections will be distributed on Wednesday, 26 March 2014 at 8:00 in the morning. We can meet up first at the vicinity of CME office then look for any available room at the 3rd or 4th floor of Gusaling Lacson. Kindly spread the word.

There are some of you however who doesn't have grades yet from the Panel. These are the groups that were late in submitting their Strategic Marketing Plan. Hopefully I can get your grades from the panel by tomorrow (March 25).

Allow me to say that it was a great experience for me to be your instructor in this class, despite the limitations and shortcomings. Whatever your final grade will be, please always remember that learning does not stop in school, and grades are not the sole determinant to success- but it matters!

Finally, let me leave you with a few words from Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain- American author and humorist who wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called "the Great American Novel.

See you around!

Final Exam Announcement

 

This is to inform everyone that the "mini-seminar" on Digital Marketing is already cancelled due to unavailability of a large room at the university.

 

Therefore, the final exam will take place on Saturday, 15 March 2014 during your regular class schedule. As I have mentioned last Saturday, you will be required to analyze a case and draw up a marketing plan for a fictitious company. This is an individual exam on various parts of a marketing plan with 10 bonus questions about your group marketing plan.

 

Each of you should bring at least 5 pages of writing paper and a ball pen.

See you, and please spread the word.

Creating the Table of Contents Using Microsoft Word

Hi guys,

Based on the submissions so far, I've noticed that you are having difficulty formatting a Table of Contents. There is an easy way and I'm sharing the video tutorial with you below.

Hope this helps.

Regards, Arnold

Gentle Reminders

Hi folks,

Please be reminded of the following, as agreed in class last Saturday:

1. Each group needs to upload the most recent version of your paper to Google Drive. We need to make sure that all your papers are fit for final printing and submission to CME. Please also use new file naming convention: MARK 106[Section] [Company Name] [Final]. All updated files should be uploaded on or before Saturday, 1 March.
2. Deadline of submission is on Saturday, 8 March. Printed on a hard bound black cover.
3. It should have an Approval Sheet right after the cover page, and right before the Acknowledgment page. Your Page 1 is the Executive Summary. All pages before the Executive Summary, are counted as i, ii, iii, and so on. To illustrate:

Page A: Hard Cover (same with Title Page)
Page B: Inside front cover (blank)
Page C: False cover (blank)
i. Title Page
ii. Approval Sheet
iii. Acknowledgment (optional)
iv. Table of Contents

Page 1: Executive Summary
...and so on.

The Table of Contents (ToC) starts with Executive Summary. All the rest are preliminary pages and should not be included in the ToC.

A sample of an Approval Sheet is shown below (click to enlarge).

Online consultations continue especially for those who were required to revise their papers. My communication lines are always open to you. Just let me know in advance should you need real time feedback. I'll be on the road on a business trip most of the time this week so please bear with me.

That's all for now.

Cheers!

Recap: Panel Presentation

Congratulations to each of you for surviving the panel presentation last Monday and Tuesday. You all did a good job, really, considering the limited time that was given to you to prepare and submit your Strategic Marketing Management Plan. Good job!

Before we started the panel presentation last Monday, I gave a short opening remarks addressed to you- my students- and to the members of the panel to set the tone of the panel presentation. Here is a screenshot of my notes (there might be some changes of a few words or phrases during actual delivery but the essence remains the same) for those who were not there to hear it. 

In summary, 9 groups passed the oral defense while 3 groups were not as lucky. For those who were less successful, don’t fret: we are here to learn, and failures are part of the learning process.

“Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. Most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”

Here are some of my observations from the whole exercise, and I hope you’ll use these as valuable lessons (you may also add your own list of ‘lessons learned’ in the comments section below):

1. Unfavorable comments from the panelists stem from your lack of understanding of your industry and even of your company. 
2. Most papers were not supported by a simple consumer research, even as simple as asking your family or classmates about your chosen product.
3. People notice it when you Copy-Paste what you are writing in your paper. Stop that habit. Do not plagiarize.
4. Experience what you are writing about- see, feel, taste, smell it so you can have better credibility.
5. Read. The quality of your writing and speaking reveals your lack of grasp of what's happening around you. 
6. Improve your presentation skills. You should learn to engage your audience, and not just read from the screen or from your notes.
7. Improve your writing skills.   

Lastly, I’d like you to read Steve Jobs’ graduation speech at the Stanford University given on 12 June 2005. I’m sure many of you have encountered this before in one way or another, but it is important to be reminded again by the powerful words of this one great man.  

Or watch the video. (Better yet watch the video while reading the speech- or turn on the subtitle).

See you again on Saturday, 22 February. I'll post soon our agenda for the next meeting.

Cheers!

Break a leg!

Here's to wish you good luck on your oral presentation tomorrow and Tuesday!

And for some useful tips to effective public speaking, remember these:

1. Know your material very well. Mastery of your topic- industry, market, company and strategy- is half the work done.
2. Practice. Practice. Practice. There might not be enough time to practice, but you may start thinking of what you will be saying by organizing your thoughts on every opportunity.
3. Relax. This is part of your learning process. Your panel wants you to succeed. What can't kill you will make you stronger. But if you are not hurting, you are not growing. So pain is a friend.
4. Don't be defensive. Some of you call this exercise the "oral defense", but the best way to survive this is by NOT antagonizing your panel. Be friendly but not cutesy. Be serious but not snobby. Take all in, calmly. Thank your panel for each of their suggestions. Explain briefly and plainly.
5. Support each other. Speak as a team, work together as a team. 

Cheers- Arnold

Strategy

By now you have already gone through assessing the factors that affect you firm- from the general environment (PESTEL) to the market forces (5 Forces) to the firm level (SWOT, VCA, Competitive Advantage).

You have found out how your industry works, discovered what the industry is comprised of, learned of the level of competition within the market where you operate. You have also profiled your customer base- who buys your products, where are they from, when are they buying, why are they buying, and to some extent, why are they buying your competitor's products instead. More importantly, you have also identified the need that your product/service/company aims to satisfy. This is what you are trying to offer to the market. It is what you are trying to sell.

You have also dissected your firm's inner systems, and found out where you are best at and where you need to improve in order to survive.

Then you set your objectives or goals for the next 3 years. The goals are consistent with your company mission-vision and core values.

You are now ready to embark on the next chapters of your paper, in fact, the heart and soul of a marketing plan- the marketing strategy.

First, the definition: a marketing strategy is a game plan to reach target markets and the enumeration of value propositions that will be offered based on analysis of the best market opportunities (Kotler).

Here is an example of target segments and corresponding features/benefits for each segment (Kotler):

There are in fact several marketing strategies that you can employ. Your choice would be dependent on what you want to accomplish (objectives), what you are capable of doing (competitive advantage).

You may use the following frameworks to choose the most appropriate strategy.

1. The Product/Market Opportunity Mix

2. Segment-Target-Position

3.  Market Positioning

For detailed discussions, read your textbook: Part 4 and Part 5.

Then proceed with specific strategies for each of the 4Ps in your marketing mix: Product, Price, Place (Channel/Distribution), and Promotion.

Next up: Implementation.