Marketing Club Members, 

Hereby we invite you to the Fall Marketing Club Mixer!

When: Thursday, October 11th from 5:30-6:30pm 

Where: At the Plaza Level (GGU)

What you can expect:

• Networking
• Social Media
• Leadership
• Getting involved in future Marketing Events
• Learn about being a member of SFAMA (San Francisco American Marketing Association)
• Potential recruitment for officers

Please join us this Thursday and let fell free to bring your friends. 

We are looking forward to meeting everyone!

Event Recap: Data Analysis for Marketing Careers

Dear Marketing Club members and fans, on July 13, we had a great pleasure to host two great speakers: Clay Schulenburg, Manager of SEM at WebTrends, and Thimaya Subaiya, Director of Marketing Strategy at Salesforce.com. I have to say that we had full room, and lots of questions for our speakers, so the event lasted almost two hours. Our audience had an opportunity to meet our speakers, and talk about potential job opportunities.

Here are several facts that our speakers pointed out…

Clay Schulenburg has more than seven years of experience in search engine marketing (SEM). He explained the importance of SEM, and how companies can achieve better position and visitation from search engines. They should focus on key words, explanations and relevancy. He also pointed out the difference between SEM and SEO. For instance, for SEM to get a better position in search results, a company needs to pay (it is usually “pay-per-click”). Besides amount of money, there are other factors that affect the ranking among results that Google (or other search engine) organizes. On the other hand, SEO is a non-paid method, results are organic, and depends on relevancy, key words, etc. It is always better to be first in organic, “natural” search results, but Mr. Schulenburg stressed that even paid results are also effective.

Thimaya Subaiya has several years of experience in marketing strategy and planning. In his presentation, he focused on importance of data in any marketing decision. He pointed out that in order to make the right decision, and allocate the budget to different marketing “programs,” marketing manager has to analyze the existing data. In terms of Salesforce.com, he said that its marketing budget goes mostly on PR and online promotions.

Both the speakers emphasized that when they are looking for a new employee, they have several requirements: passion for the profession, certain knowledge and experience in data analysis field, previous experience, etc. In today’s job market, it is also important to have some technical skills, and particularly in data analysis to be very familiar with Excel program.

Event Recap: (Part 2) VALS Presentation "Getting the Right Message to the Right People"

Defining consumers based on level of segmentation

(Broadest) Demographics, Psychological Traits

Activities, Interests, Opinions

Evaluation of Product Benefits

Product or Brand Preferences

(Most Specific) Intent to Purchase

Marketers can make the most impact by connecting consumers' activities, interests, and opinions and evaluation of product benefit.

What happens statistically? Marketers want high level of statistical correlation in predicting purchase.

·       Best predictor: Intent to purchase

·       Worst predictor: Demographics/psychographics (very broad)

o   Different points of ground differentiation go away.

o   Less interested in predicting any given purchase for a product.

·       In truth, most brands’ marketing strategy falls in the middle of the above chart… not too broad and not too specific.

Dividing people by demographics: Marketers can make inferences based on this, but the data can be misleading. For example, can you make inferences based on these information?

37 years old

Caucasian

$100,000 household income

Married

Graduated college

Professional career (manager)

Dividing people by behaviors: Are Bob and Bill in the same segment? They both:

Work out

Own a cell phone

Go on vacation

Spend similar amounts of discretionary income

Interested in the news

Dividing people by behavior AND motivation: motivation differs between people. Take for example Bob and Bill:

Bob:

Works out to stay healthy

Bill:

Works out to look good

Bob:

Owns cell phone for emergencies

Bill:

Owns cell phone for productivity

Bob:

Goes on vacation to learn about different cultures

Bill:

Goes on vacation to relax with family

Bob:

Spends after careful research

Bill:

Spends based on recommendations

Bob:

Reads the New York Times

Bill:

Catches CNN headline news (while shaving)

Takeaway:

·       Within each layer of information hides interesting, important information

·       Companies that assume people fall within the same category will most likely fail at reaching their target audiences

·       People (different demographics/psychographics) are motivated by different reasons.

·       Often times people don’t know why they do different things, which creates a hurdle for researchers

o   Hard to identify causes of action

o   Solution: researchers are forced to infer why people do things. For example, people who buy toothpaste with no fluoride must have some health concerns. Inferences are not always accurate, and it could be hard to make them at times.

·       “Things people do are access point to their thoughts” – David Sleeth-Keppler

 

Event Recap: (Part 1) VALS Presentation "Getting the Right Message to the Right People"

Hey GGUAMA members! In case you missed the VALS presentation by David Sleeth-Keppler, here are some highlights:

Issues marketing professionals face:

·      Businesses have great products to offer, but marketers are sending the message to the wrong consumer.

·      The turnover rate in brand management is very high (brands change their images all the time).

·      How can marketers craft the right message and get it to the right people?

Why do these issues persist?

·      There’s a lot of diversity among people, and it’s hard for marketers to keep track of people’s activities and preferences.

o   Marketing guru provides insights to different types of consumers.

·      Brands have different personalities:

o   Brands that are energetic and exciting make it in American market, and marketing gurus encourage their clients to create exciting brands.

o   However, statistics show that only 12.7% of consumers want excitement, and 22% want energetic brands. Thanks a lot, gurus!

·      There’s a disconnect between facts about what consumers want and the fiction that marketers believe. This is why marketers need good data in order to make good decisions.

Solution: develop specific markets for their products/services.

This is where segmentation comes in.

Segmentation: smaller chunks of the market, easier to control, more manageable. There are different types of segmentation, which will be covered later in the presentation.

·      These segments are identified by similarities shared by consumers within the market. Consumers in a particular group maintain similar interests and behave more like each other in comparison to the rest of the country.

·      Key to segmentation: know what you’re selling.

o   Marketers must analyze product characteristics and find consumers for whom the product is a good fit

o   By knowing your product (value proposition, what’s good about your product) you can predict which group of consumers may be interested in the product.

o   Marketers can develop the right message to convey about the product by knowing the right information to talk about.

o   Marketers cannot assume that the product has a universal appeal.

Developing the markets (segmentation):

·      Three steps:

1.     Identify the benefits derived from a product and purchasing barriers, which vary from person to person.

2.     Target identification must be based on understanding your audience.

3.     Advertising the product to the desired audience.

*ISSUE: Marketers may follow step 1 and 2, but the message does NOT get to the right people (step 3) because there is a disconnect between businesses (who understand their products) and ad agencies (who execute creatively based on a loose focus on what the product is all about)

·      Useful/effective segmentation should:

o   Describe groups of people

o   Estimate the sizes of these segments

o   Cover population of interest (your product hasn’t reached everyone you want to cover)

Event Recap: Building a Brand Through Sustainability

When the Holiday Season approaches, retailers get their chance for a second birth: stores get crowded with holiday shoppers, USPS and Fedex deliveries triple in size, and monthly sales of clothes skyrocket. Nordstrom, Macys, Saks Fifth Avenue, and other big department stores bring thousands of new inventory items that will be sold during Black Friday only. Then the Holidays come to an end, stores get new inventories, and in two months it all goes on seasonal clearance again…and the cycle goes on…

The question is: after being sold, where do all of these clothes end up? It turns out they either pile up in closets or end up in landfills. Poor quality clothing that wears out after the fist hand-wash become abandoned by the owners since it's no longer considered valuable. The numbers behind the scene of retails are completely devastating: the amount of clothes used by individuals increases by 21% each year and majority of these clothes are made from fabrics that are not biodegradable.

This is when the sustainable fashion steps up. Connie Ulasewicz, the keynote speaker of EFACTOR's event Building a Brand Through Sustainability, described sustainable fashion as the one that meets the needs of present without compromising the needs of the future generations. Sustainable fashion is more than just using recyclable, organic fabrics for clothing: it's about creating social change on a global scale. Connie's model is built upon 3 interconnected elements: people, process, and environment.

San Francisco, as a center of green movement and a pioneer of sustainable practices, is home to many local organizations that have started embracing sustainability as a part of the global change (PeopleWearSF, Global Action Through Fashion, SFFAMA, Fashion Group International Inc, The Innovative Fashion Council). These organizations and alliances support change on the local level and inspire the movement of sustainable fashion in economical, social, and environmental levels.

Creativity is a must for a sustainable fashion. That's why individual designers inspired by new ideas also step up to support the change. Have you ever thought that the leather from your old car's interior can be transformed into a fashionable vintage jacket? Guess what, Dustin Page turned this dream into reality with his Platinum Dirt jacket collection.

Never imagined that you could be wearing a designer hat from the real fish skin? Well, Jasmin Zorlu employed a variety of innovative materials that include fish skin, abalone shells, and crinoline with fruit gas to create her futuristic headwear.
Another great example of local sustainable brand is EcoCitizen, owned by Joslin Van Arsdale, and exclusive boutique on Polk Street in San Francisco. Joslin's business philosophy is to keep it simple, keep it clean, keep it green.

All of these young and extremely talented designers shared their thoughts on how to build the brand through sustainable practice of making a high-quality non-toxic recyclable clothes.

So if you're in love with fashion, live in San Francisco, or just planning to visit it someday - make sure to stop by and see what other creative and sustainable solutions these designers came up with!

To learn more about this event please go to http://www.efactor.com/fashionsf