Marketing and I…

So it’s super late at night/early in the morning.

I’ve procrastinated through my entire day to at least start ‘studying’ and I never did, so this is a wonderful and effective way to allow me to go to bed with the comfort in knowing that I did something today.

Now, right to the point. I have a low GPA.

Judges of life: “WHY?”

Judged Riki: “Well… I do work almost full time…”

Judges of life: “YOU SHOULD QUIT”

Judged Riki: “um, No.”

The reason I say no, is because I firmly believe that experience > transcript, just as Tamar talked about in her first lecture (about not being asked for transcripts, ever!).

So what do I do?

I’m currently a Pricing Manager at Old Navy (a brand of Gap Inc.). No, I am not a trained economist and do not decide the prices of our 1000+ different merchandises we carry. I’m actually responsible for what we call at Old Navy, the “marketing” aspects of the store. This encompasses in broad terms… the execution of marketing and pricing strategies set forth by the company. Although at times I do make my own decisions on the way to execute these tasks, my job is mainly structured by the marketing department down south in San Francisco head office.

The main tasks I perform are:

• Posting marketing elements in-store, such as window decals and posters, and using social media/mall websites to extend the reach.
• Weekly posting of in-store signage for promotional prices (averages around 150 different promotional prices for varying merchandise every week)
• Price reduction (markdown) of an average of 4000 units every week and devising strategies to display/organize clearance areas to effectively sell through these low profit margin items

So, in essence, I’m pretty much covering the marketing mix, or the 4 p’s while doing my job, except I really don’t decide the Product or Promotion, I’m simply setting up in their Places and carrying out the Pricing strategies… At the end of the day, to be honest I’m not doing this job and in turn taking time away from school, to perform these tasks. I’m doing it more for the experience of being a “manager” in a multi-billion dollar company, meeting amazing people, and getting the sense of what it really takes to work in the real world.

Now this may not seem like the typical “marketing job” you would think of after taking Comm 296, but I mean, someone has to EXECUTE the strategies you devise in your office chair right?