Working as a team, especially in such a diverse community as Sauder is always a challenge. Honestly, many people pray to get into good team to escape the need to drag the whole team along and doing all the work on your own. Luckily this was not the case for my team.

Suprisingly team worked as a watch. Of course there were minor glitches, however none of them were too serious to bother. The meetings were regular and the work was thorough and yeildful. All the team members performed differenty of all stages of project due to personal factors. Some were more efficient at one stage, others- later.

Probably the most comprehensive task was to find the meeting time that would fit everybody. Planning meetings last year was much easier, however now everyone has various extracurriculars, work, homework, more courses etc.

However we always eventually managed to find time to meet. A few meetings did not happen and we had to work online in the facebook group.

Overall this team was quite efficient and I believe is a good example of a well-balanced team that manages to produce higher overall level of efficiency than every separate memeber of the group would on their own.

Ever wanted to amaze your customers?
Looking for a way to make the world speak about you?
Want to make something fun and viral?

Yeah. Just put  a giant LV box in the middle of Red Square in Moscow, Russia.

This thing looks kind of weird, and the fact that such a company as LV has put it on the main square in one of the most LV buying cities in the world makes it even weirder.

Im not sure if I have to mention this, but the box has driven russians nuts.

However, was LV at all wrong?

Lets analyze simple facts:
LV has a brand presense on the major cities’ main square.
And this happens during Christmas rush.
And everyone is talking about LV.
All around the world, really. All of a sudden everyone is talking about LV.

Im just curious to look at LVs selling graph in Russia for November-December of 2013.

After all this looks like one crazy PR stunt that may end up in HUGE sales for LV. 

A week ago i got struck by the marketing genius of this company and these guys.

When we think about marketing research we usually get into surveys, analysis, market 1segmentation and all the other expensive and complicated techniques that are used to determine what the people want and what they expect.

All of those complicated techniques can be made on the kickstarter-the crowdfunding platform. It is now widely known and people like to use it. Therefore these guys, by just posting their ideas there know straight away how much people value their idea. This “how much” actually being a monetary equvivalent, something that traditional marketing research techniques rarely manage to do.

At the same time producers receive pre-orders. So without spending a penny (theoretically) they already know their demand, responsiveness of customers to changes in design, price (campaigns on KS are customizable after they reach initial goal).

Considering most “donators” are actually connected to KS through Facebook or Google+ it appears possible to track who are the companys’ customers. So the companies can actually go and see who bided instead of making a survey or an educated guess of who the customer really is.

So as I said- welcome to 21th century! Some things become horribly complicated, and some, like marketing research, may appear to be too easy.