B is for Bureaucracy

Bureaucracy : a system of administration based upon organization into bureaus, division of labour, a hierarchy of authority, etc: designed to dispose of a large body of work in a routine manner.

[According to the World English Dictionary]

The last time I talked about the American Marketing Association, I told about how my co-president, Chelsie, and I had completely restructured the group and strategy. Since then, we've gotten so much accomplished. We've done more in these first couple months than in the previous years that I'd been involved.
This is how we restructured the group to increase organization, focus and incentive:

1. We decided to implement a point system to measure and reward attendance to meetings, events and participation in fundraisers. At the end of each semester, we'll award the 'Member of the Semester' with a $25 gift card. At the end of the year, the 'Member of the Year' will receive a $50 gift card. The point chart will also be used to determine the allocation of our group funds for the trip to New Orleans for the International Collegiate Conference.
2. We also decided to have each officer keep a log of each of the activities/work that they did each month in their position for the group. This would not only measure which positions were doing more/less work than others, but it would give us a Transition Booklet to be used for reference when new members are elected into officer positions for the next year. These logs would also help us decide how to reorganize the executive board for next year, if need be.
3. Chelsie and I decided that both our group and officer meetings needed to be more routine and set into a schedule. We  keep everyone involved and interested in staying in the group if we met more than once every few months.
• I created a calendar for the year, marking each of the general and officer meetings in the schedule. This would allow members to know before-hand when we would be having meetings to schedule around them. Our semester schedule was also included with holiday breaks and special events, fundraisers and more.
• We decided to hold our meetings bi-weekly, with our officer meetings every other Sunday from 8:30-9:30 PM and our general meetings the following Wednesday from 7:00-8:00 PM. The schedule really seems to be working out well for us this year.
4. Finally, I completely re-created our chapter's website, since it was last updated in 2006 (not okay). You can check it out here at ONU's AMA Website.

We kicked off our year with a booth at WelcomeFest, where all the freshman are able to walk around our field house and check out all of the campus organizations and sign up if interested. AMA incorporated an interactive game into our booth and gave away prizes to get the interest of the students, and it was really successful. Our Kick-Off Barbecue, a few days after WelcomeFest, actually had a record number of attendees and interested students. We did typical introductions and ice-breakers, asking why they would like to be members to get ideas for later meetings and provide valuable experiences for our members.

Marketing Week was held October 17th though the 23rd, where we had a booth set up all week in the college. Monday we kicked off marketing week with a marketing research taste test where we had students use french fries to taste both Heinz ketchup and an off-brand label. The results were interesting though. With 70 participants, we had 53% voting on Ketchup 1 (Heinz) as best-tasting and 47% voting for Ketchup 2 (Off-Brand) as the best-tasting. Next for marketing week was having three teams of five people participate in the St. Jude's Up Til Dawn Letter Writing Event to raise money for the hospital. We also had a booth set up all week to gain donations, which went towards our New Orleans trip for the Collegiate Conference by being able to pie the professor whose jar collected the most money at the end of the week. We even had an incentive that if you donate money, you get a raffle ticket and a chance to throw one of the three winning pies! For the first time holding this event, we had a great turn-out. Finally, to end marketing week on a high note, our club took a trip to Cedar Point's Halloweekends to ride some roller coasters, learn a bit about the marketing efforts of an amusement park and enjoy the spooky atmosphere with the group.

Most recently, our group joined with the local Mexican restaurant to promote their business, encouraging the community and students to eat at the restaurant on Halloween, and in return, AMA would get 10% of each of the bills for profit. We also hosted a costume contest during the specified hours of 5-9 PM, where the winner would receive a $25 gift certificate. Our club made over $100, so we hope to hold the event again later this year.

-~- B.

B is for Boredom

Boredom: the state of being weary and restless through lack of interest.

[According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary]

So a few months ago I was hearing all this buzz about a site called StumbleUpon and I really wanted to know what all the hype was about, since you know, I like all things social media and whatnot. Well anyways I checked it out and basically you pick and choose a bunch of categories that you're interested in from their selection and click the [Stumble] button.

I love this site!! 

So if I ever happen to be super bored, like when there's nothing new on Facebook, I just head over to StumbleUpon and click away. It brings me all kinds of new material from these little unheard of websites with content that I want to see. I get all kinds of craft DIYs, quotes, articles on life and whatnot. Sometimes it'll even come up with some marketing things and tips for life after college or the real world and job searching tidbits. 

I think the reason that I like the site so much because the material is always new, and thats pretty refreshing since normally you just look at the same social site's feed with some occasional new pictures or whatever. It's great and I really recommend checking out StumbleUpon if you're looking for new things on the internet to keep yourself occupied.

-~- B.

Marketing Must-Haves

So here we are, not reading books like normal people from the start to the end. We're making it back to the first few chapter's of Scott's New Rules of Marketing and PR. The sentence that stuck out the most to me was, "When I arrive at a (web)site, you don't need to grab my attention; you already have it!" I think that this is such a great line and that anyone with a website should follow it. Like Scott says, customers and people browsing the web don't want to be bombarded with ads and obnoxious  headliners, they just want information, which is why they're searching the web in the first place. If you're going to have a website for your company or products, I think that it should be filled with information that would be useful for people who are searching for your company/products. These things could include:

customer reviews and testimonials
hours of operation and contact information
product offerings and pictures/descriptions
an easily accessible and clean layout
interesting facts and information to keep attention
a way for people to receive updates and news
an interactive component

links to other relevant content

So these are just a few things that would be good for a successful website to include, and though I know there are many more, I think that these are probably some of the most important. People don't want ads and one-way company propaganda shoved down their throats, they want and need relevant and helpful facts and information; that's what you should give them!