Hello, my name is Taylor Apsouris. I am a second year BComm student, who has an interest in pursuing the combined option of finance and real estate. Like many others, I am enrolled in this course, as it is part of my STT. Given this, I am still extremely excited for this course, as I can see all the practical applications that it has in the professional field, not just in marketing.
For work experience within marketing, I worked as a sales associate at Sport Chek for five years, from the age of 13-18. As part of my job, I had to have a very broad understanding of products that were available within the store, and competitive products in other stores that we did not have. Also, I had to find a way to persuade the customer, by creating some kind of value for them, to buy our stores products. Looking back now, although this was very basic, I was working on my marketing skills. Besides working experience, like everyone else, I have been on the customer end of the marketing relationship. I have been assisted by many different sales associates, in many different stores, who were all trying to market there products to me in an effort to persuade me to buy them. Also, just like everyone else, I am being constantly exposed to many different forms of advertisements. These may be on Facebook, email, television programs, radio, billboards, buses, newspapers, etc… The list can go on and on. This is just a testament to how entrenched marketing is in our culture. If I were to mention my favourite ad it would have to be from the Nike series. Specifically, it is titled “How Bad Do You Want It”. This advertisement gets me so motivated to run and work out. I am basically bouncing off of the couch after I watch it. Due to this massive interest in Nike, I am a “Nike Junkie”, and therefore all of my active wear, running shoes, and weight training shoes are Nike. A link to a video of this advertisement is below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X38PCf7kao
For something personal about me, when I was 3 years old I had heart surgery. Despite this, it was a completely corrective. Now, I enjoy doing active things such as snowboarding, working out, skim boarding, Long boarding, and running.
I am extremely excited about participating in this class this year, and am very much looking forward to a very interesting semester.