The Road Ahead

Wow, I can't believe it's already the middle of November. This semester has flown by- and I can't believe that I only have one more to go. It's been a challenging few months, but I've learned so much about marketing in this short amount of time. It amazes me how much there is to learn about the topic of marketing- especially because it is a field that's constantly changing. What's so different about this semester? I feel like I'm much more passionate about the material I'm learning in my classes. Now that my courses focus on an in-depth look into the marketing field, I'm highly interested in them. I had to get the "boring" courses out of the way (Accounting..Finance..you know, the ones that us "marketing people" just don't seem to understand). But now that I've done so, I can focus on these topics I'm interesting in learning about.

Campaign Planning & Management has challenged me a lot this semester- but in a good way. The course material has caused me to question a lot of what I know about marketing. I've learned that the best way to fully understand something, is to ask questions about it. Through posting preparation questions before class, and engagement questions after class, I have been able to keep thinking about our in-class discussions, and carry them over to form new questions and ideas. Now, we have reached a different phase in our semester. We are no longer holding traditional class meetings, as we have begun our consulting project. Although this project seems overwhelming to me right now, I think it's going to be a really great learning experience. My client is a local accounting firm seeking to sell their business in the next couple years. Our main goal is to help them with reputation management. We will also be creating ideas for promotional materials, including website design, email blasts, blog posts, etc.

This project will be a good way to put our marketing knowledge "to the test". All semester, we have discussed theories and ideas that make up our "Marketing Concept Toolbox". Now, we will be testing our knowledge of that toolbox and using it to assist a client. A big challenge of this project will be helping a client in an industry that I do not know much about. It will take a lot of research and "collecting the backstory" to fully create a campaign plan that will be of assistance to both our client and the 421 team we are working with. As I mentioned above, accounting has never been one of my strengths, but I am confident that my group members and I will be able to succeed in this next phase of the course.