I am very passionate about photography and snow. They are two of my favorite things so in my search for a picture to describe me I found this one from Jeff Maion. He has an awesome website and some unbelievable pictures http://www.maion.com/photography/index.html
Here is another example of his work. I am also really intrigued by stars and I’m taking an astronomy course so this picture has found a soft spot in me. Here are two more of his photos below.
I was really interested in one of my lectures on social enterprise. I found a really interesting for profit social enterprise called Daily Challenge http://www.dailychallenge.org/The site basically gets members to challenge each other with daily acts that are in kindness or the benefit of society. The group also challenges communities to get involved. It is easy to join and they even have a few corporate sponsors.
Groups like this are changing the world, slowly but surely. Targeting the online market and making it accessible through Twitter and Facebook opens up a vast and young generation that will shape the future. Here is an awesome short movie of one of their events https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYBsIVT373w&feature=player_embedded#! I love the positive attitude encompassed by this organization and many social enterprises. To me social enterprise is about making a positive change, whether that change is big or small it makes a difference and out world could use some positivity. If I were to create a social enterprise I would initiate something for the downtown east side. I have handed out food, clothing and Christmas cards for two years and there is an evident problem. Make a change!
The biggest problem in hiring people is finding people that are excited to work for one’s company. Too often today
people are trapped in jobs they hate and so they work less effectively and provide a negative atmosphere for the company. If I were to own a company and a person approached me and said, I have looked into your company and I am really excited at the idea of working for you; I would be very motivated to look at the person’s credentials and potentially hire them. Intrinsic motivators are so powerful. As long as one is able to sustain them self and meet Maslow’s physiological and safety needs, they will be much more motivated to work hard if they are doing something they love. My ultimate goal is to find a job that I love so that I can wake up every day, with a smile on my face, rather than dreading the drone of my alarm clock.
On a side note, my original search for my marketing post, I typed “women’s shampoo company” into google. I found an article on a new marketing campain for the new Pantene Pro V2. The article seemed very controversial so I searched everywhere for such a campaign but to no avail. Upon examining reviews of the website hosting the article I discovered that http://www.theonion.com/ is a site that spoofs popular news and creates their own news. If you want to see the article that I found, go to the site and in the top left corner there is a search bar, type in “Pantene”. It is the first article.
I picked a company which doesn’t interest me a whole lot and decided to check out their website to see if I could identify some of their marketing and whether it was effective or not in hooking me even if I wasn’t looking for their product. Pantene hair products for women was my choice. Basically the site was well laid out and easy to access. There is a personalized product finder section that gives a quick survey. Then it provides you with the most appropriate products they offer to match your results and reviews of these products. Pantene has a lengthy list of awards labelled and offers a total guarantee on satisfaction.
I really found that the website is classy and markets their line of products very well, especially to the individual. The general sense of branding I get from the site is that they are selling a product that is going to fit your specific needs, completely satisfy anything you could imagine and if you are unhappy they will refund you to ensure quality service and satisfaction.
Our lecture with the founder of the newly established company Energy Aware in Comm 486G got me thinking. We were to analyze the company and asked to look for improvements. Energy Aware provides the “Power Tab” which measures the usage of electricity in your home and tells you how much it is costing you. Myself and a friend discussed and came up with an expansion plan for the company.
We feel that the company should approach energy efficient manufacturers of appliances in homes with a proposition. Energy aware gets to use the “Power Tab” to measure the efficiency (measured in dollars per hour) of each individual appliance to give customers more knowledge on how much each product will cost to run in their home. In return Energy Aware would provide advertising of the most efficient products on their website.
Many customers wish they had more knowledge on specific costs in their lives and Energy Aware does provide that now but could take it one step further. We also feel that they should approach large companies with information on the cost the most efficient appliances and the amount of savings the company would have from using these appliances.
My father owns a small specialty foods store called Greco’s Specialty Foods (Check out the Greco’s links for more information). As a small business owner he has to deal with the accounting somehow. For the first 10 years that he owned the business my mother did the bookkeeping, all the journal entries and the balance sheet, cash flow statements and so on. Eventually with the combination of my moms frustration and an expansion of the business, he went to a bank and hired an accountant to do the bookkeeping.
I was curious as to what the next step might be if his company expands further and so I found an article called “Choosing the Right Accountant for your Business”. It suggests that the next step from a part time accountant would be a full time accountant working for the company rather than through a different firm. I am really pushing for my dad to get into the online business. If I succeed the company will expand further and I feel that getting an accountant to track online sales and retail sales will be one of the first steps to successful expansion.
http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=110965725586481&ref=ts
http://www.freewebs.com/grecos/
http://www.inc.com/guides/2010/04/choosing-an-accountant.html
Here we go again, another one of my passions, snowboarding. In grade 10 I developed a fantasy company and I have been tweaking it ever since. I developed a name, slogan, logo, mission statement and I have a creative idea on how to make my outerwear unique. Basically I have a good idea in place but I am terrified to expand on it. Vancouver is a great place for me to start this company because snowboarding is popular with such amazing mountains all over B.C. Barriers to entry are high competition that is well established, companies such as Burton, Rome and Lib Tech are just a few brands that have been well established in the industry. To overcome this I would have to promote my company really well and I feel like to do so I could mix three things, snowboarding, film and marketing. If I made an awesome snowboard movie and sponsored young people that others could look up to then I could kick start the company. I would have to either make this awesome movie and then get investors or get “love” money to get operations running. Simplex, watch out because it’s coming.https://www.youtube.com/user/burtonsnowboards?blend=1&ob=4[/
Technology changes so quickly. Management information systems is a field in which keeping up to date on the current technology is a must. Today with the number of hours that young people spend on the computer, on phones, on an Xbox and on other devices is absurd. It would make sense that a technology job in the field of MIS would be popular but guess what? It’s not. Microsoft recently went to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (ULAR) to promote jobs in MIS paired with gaming. I love video games as many young people and a job with a gaming company would be fantastic. MIS has jobs paired with marketing, finance and accounting so there are lots of options to choose from. The reason it’s not a popular option is the lack of awareness. Before this class if you asked me what management information systems was I would have looked at you like you had three heads. This field needs some more advertising geared to students and then it would become a popular option.
One of my biggest passions is film. The film industry has a standard supply chain, movies are manufactured, then distributed to warehouses and then the DVD’s sold in retail or rented at stores. The issue is illegal downloading. People can access virtually any movie they would like online. It is cheap and fast and so it has become greatly convenient for many. In order to target this audience the movie industry needs to further promote online rentals from places such as iTunes and Zip.ca. These sites offer movie rentals at affordable rates and either give you online access or ship the DVD to your mailbox. The convenience factor remains but without the guilt factor of illegal practice. Rental kiosks located in high traffic areas are creating more convenient supply chains for consumers. These highly affordable rental kiosks remove the cost of a store with overhead while keeping customers happy. Technology is constantly changing and the supply chain in the film industry needs to stay as up to date as the public in order to survive.