Throughout COMM 296 I always tried to tie the more complex material back to one basic point – how can the firm best educate the consumer about a product offering in a rational and reasonable way? The course taught me a lot about marketing: my understanding of what the concept actually means extended beyond TV commercials and broadened to include market surveys, social media advertising, branding, and a host of other related terms. I really think that I came out of the course a better (and more well-rounded) business person. Even though I won’t be specializing in marketing this summer, I am confident that the skills I took away from the course will not be forgotten throughout the rest of my degree, and beyond.

COMM 296 taught me the fundamentals needed to analyse a company and understand how its marketing strategy in particular can contribute to its overall success or failure. It is true that the worth of a company can be measured by the sum of its parts; before I took the course I was discounting a firm’s marketing strategy (mostly out of ignorance), but now I have some tools to better understand its importance. This was aided by working with a team of unique individuals from a variety of perspectives; their different ways of thinking led to the development creative solutions that would have otherwise escaped me. I also continued to learn how to work in a team: gaining more experience managing group expectations, dividing up tasks, and even working with other’s schedules was an invaluable experience that I know I will use going forward.

If I had to take the course over, I would have asked more practical questions throughout class time. It is true that a lot of the material is theoretical, but I felt like Tamar’s real-world experience gave our class a unique advantage in understanding how the concepts are actually applied in industry.

So kids, listen up, ask questions, and enjoy every bit of COMM 296!

Most of us come to business school with one end goal in mind: to secure our dream job post-graduation. Along the way we attend thousands of hours of classes, participate in countless group projects, and hopefully read more than a couple of textbooks. However, at the end of it all, one of the most important pieces required to reach our goal is a brilliant cover letter. As the marketing blogsphere has spoken about, the cover letter is an art that has been mastered by some and destroyed by others. It is the epitome of self-marketing, and while different industries look for different presentation forms, an underlying “mix of confidence and candidness” is extremely important in achieving employment. Recently, Matthew Ross seemed to strike that perfect balance with his cover letter to the boutique investment firm Duff & Phelps. In the letter, Ross explained “I won’t waste your time inflating my credentials, throwing around exaggerated job titles or feeding you a line of crap about how my past experience and skill set align perfectly for an investment banking internship.” He certainly followed an unconventional train of thought as he spoke about his willingness to fetch coffee, shine shoes or pick up laundry.

Ross’s letter was sent to Duff & Phelps at 1:14PM. By 3PM on the same day, the letter had gone viral on Wall Street and a rival firm in Houston, Texas had called Ross to offer him an interview. All of this success begs the question, what do we need to do to realize comparable success with our own cover letters? While the answer to that is not so simple, it is clear that a genuine passion for the position and an ability to communicate that to the employer in an engaging and unique way is paramount. I am confident that our education at Sauder will help to develop, focus, and communicate our passion for business. And, if all else fails, a scented cover letter never hurts!

Social media has proved an immensely powerful driver in recent political campaigns: President Obama’s 2008 run for office organized more than 200,000 events through its website, developed 35,000 volunteer groups, and in the final four days of the campaign three million telephone calls were made via an “internet virtual phone” on the website. President Obama’s superior ability to communicate his platform and educate voters about his vision for the country through social media was without a doubt a decisive factor in his winning the presidency. Because marketing is the act of educating a consumer about a product (or in the President’s case, a service), social media has the ability to act as a catalyst for businesses’, politicians’, and other groups’ success should they use these new information channels effectively. Unfortunately though, there have been just as many social media blunders as there have been successes. For instance, the “Weinergate” scandal of 2011 landed Rep. Anthony Weiner out of office after he tweeted sexual photos of himself to a 21 year-old university student. Other organizations have found themselves in hot water following controversial posts, such as American Apparel which tweeting inappropriate “advertisements” after Hurricane Sandy. My point is this: social media’s increasing prevalence could prove to be a huge asset to almost any member of society if it is used responsibly. This communication channel offers a more direct form of correspondence with consumers and allows politicians and businesses alike a more intimate environment in which to share their ideas. However, with that online proximity and the rapid communication of information that flows through twitter, facebook, reddit and other sites comes a responsibility from both the consumer and the poster to think twice before they hit the enter key.

I was interested to read Nick Parkhev’s blog post about investment fraud among senior populations. While I think Nick hit the nail on the head, so to speak, I also believe that a massive amount of poor investment management occurs every year across a wide range of demographics for one common reason: a lack of customer knowledge. While seniors may be the most vulnerable, their inability to understand the contract that links them to their investment manager or the overall investment strategy of these managers is something that is not entirely unique to the elderly. Enron, Madoff Investment Securities, Lehman Brothers – the list of firms who have caused bankruptcy for a variety of clients in recent decades could fill my entire blog post. My point is this: while the primary job of marketing is to educate consumers, when it comes to ensuring one’s livelihood will remain comfortable for decades to come, I strongly believe that it is the responsibility of the client to understand what types of investments they are and are not comfortable exposing themselves to. With the baby boomers starting to enter retirement, massive institutional pension funds have been flooded with capital over the past decade; the Canada Pension Plan alone has grown from $55 to $161 billion in assets under management in the past nine years. I worry that too much of the baby boomers’ retirement savings comes with a ‘no strings attached’ philosophy as these individuals leave their life savings in the hands of investment professionals and neglect to question or demand changes to their asset mix or company exposures. Nick brings up a very good point that seniors are especially vulnerable to the risky investment strategies of some managers, but I would take that assertion one step further to include any client who does not adequately understand their asset mix or legal relationship with their investment manager. A retiring baby boomer generation dependant on sustained income, the complex and increasing securitization process that few investors truly understand, and a general apathy toward fully understanding one’s retirement portfolio are only a few reasons why I recognize that taking advantage of customers in the investment management space is something that must be seriously addressed in the future by both investment firms and individual clients. Thank-you Nick for your thought provoking post!

In what was one of the best marketing campaigns of 2012, TNT placed a large push button in “an average Flemish square of an average Flemish town” to celebrate the channel’s launch in Belgium. What happened next was filmed and adapted into an online and televised advertisement. To date, the Youtube version has attracted some 42 million viewers worldwide. While the firm admits that the ad was originally intended to gain awareness and attention in Belgium, the international exposure has certainly been a pleasant surprise. It is no easy task to create a viral video, and it appears that even the advertisement’s producers were surprised with its global success. This is something that I hope to learn more about in COMM 296: how can one video garner so much attention in such a short period of time? What was it about TNT’s advertisement that caught the eye of people all over the world? I will admit that it was a unique approach that I had not seen before, but with millions of video posts on online media websites each day, I am fascinated and eager to learn more about how businesses successfully cut through the noise and launch successful campaigns like TNT’s.

The advertisement’s success did not just raise awareness for the firm’s launch in the Benelux region, but it also helped TNT’s bottom line. This past December, only months after launching in the region, Dutch IPTV provider KPN signed an exclusive distribution deal with TNT for its Benelux channel. While a number of factors helped to make this deal a success, many news sources were quick to follow the details of the acquisition by mentionning that TNT’s launch in the region began after an extremely successful advertising campaign. I have no doubt that the viral video helped take TNT in Belgium to a level that made it an attractive takeover target.

Enbridge Inc. has been working to garner public support and ultimately governmental approval for its proposed Northern Gateway pipeline project for years. It goes without saying that politicians will not approve the proposal if Enbridge cannot effectively make its case to citizens and convince them that the benefits of the Northern Gateway would outweigh the environmental risks. The firm has tried to do this through marketing the economic benefits of the project to the public by generating quantitative “evidence” to help its case. For instance, the pipeline’s estimated economic benefits are based off of the firm’s proposal document to the National Energy Board. It has recently come to light however that Enbridge submitted a 30-year scenario that assumed a constant exchange rate for the entire period (this is extremely unrealistic and paints a more positive economic picture of the pipeline’s economic impact). Beyond that, the firm provided no sensitivity analysis in its report and failed to impress industry professionals as a result of its lack of due diligence. Said Canadian energy executive Marc Eliesen: “It is my contention that Enbridge has submitted marketing propaganda masquerading as economic analysis because of the one-sided, self-serving private benefit picture the proponent has presented.”

For a multi-billion dollar multi-national corporation to fail to include multiple scenarios in its economic analysis is shocking. I find it hard to believe that such a large and successful firm would simply forget to include these hugely important facts in its analysis; instead, I think that Enbridge is towing a fine line to convey its message of economic benefits in a way that is hugely skewed in its favor yet still within the law. However, while it may be legal, such a practice is blatantly unethical, and as Canadians continue to learn more about the issue they will appreciate that the plan needs to go back to the drawing board and Enbridge must supply more realistic information so as to allow government and the people to arrive at a more educated decision.