Students in BUS 346: Principles of Marketing kept the Learn by Doing spirit alive by tackling a client project during the first five-week session of summer quarter. In the course taught by marketing faculty member Susan Bouvette, student teams worked with Sambazon, which produces organic juices and frozen treats with fair-trade Amazon superfoods like açaí.
Sambazon executives kicked off the project by presenting four campaign needs as well as an in-depth company history. Each team formed an agency and tackled one of the campaigns by conducting research and making strategic recommendations using core marketing principles.
On July 26, each team presented their plans to Sambazon leaders Kim Smith and Lindsey Bro. The recommendations centered on how the brand could better bond with college students at Cal Poly and campuses like it. Students pitched holistic event plans, campus ambassador programs, social media campaigns leveraging digital influencers and interactive user-driven giveaways.
Professor Lynn Metcalf Among Cal Poly’s Learn by Doing Scholar Award Winners
Lynn Metcalf, a faculty member in the Industrial Technology and Packaging Area of the Orfalea College of Business, and Catherine Waitinas, an English faculty member, have earned Cal Poly’s 2017 Learn by Doing Scholar Awards.
The annual awards, administered by Kennedy Library, were established in 2014-15 to recognize outstanding scholarship examining Cal Poly’s Learn by Doing philosophy. Winning research projects study the effectiveness of interactive, hands-on teaching methods and make important contributions to scholarly literature. A faculty committee representing each of the university’s six colleges and the library selects the winners, who are formally recognized at Cal Poly’s Fall Conference.
Metcalf received $2,000 in recognition of her completed research, “The Impact of Peer Mentoring on Marketing Content Mastery.” She collaborated with Orfalea College of Business faculty members Stern Neill, Lisa Simon, Sharon Dobson and Brennan Davis to design and test a student-mentor program. Top-performing seniors majoring in marketing management helped students in BUS 460: Principles of Marketing to apply lecture concepts when developing comprehensive marketing projects. Results showed students’ increased content mastery and higher positive perceptions of the class. The research is a valuable contribution to peer mentoring program literature, and the team’s published methodology guide is helping others to develop and improve hands-on peer mentoring programs.
Waitinas received $1,000 for her in-progress research, “Flipping Whitman: Collaborative Learn by Doing in the (Digital) Humanities.” Her work explores how digital manuscripts give students unique historical insights into Walt Whitman’s writing and editing process, comparing Whitman’s drafted manuscripts with his published poems.
“This fresh application of digital humanities demonstrates how new technologies provide innovative opportunities,” said Brett Bodemer, Learn by Doing Award committee chair and College of Liberal Arts librarian. “Waitinas’ research has already received praise from the Modern Language Association and promises to expand applications for other new instruction methods.”
For more information on the awards, visit: http://lib.calpoly.edu/giving/lbd-scholar/. For more information about this year’s award and selection committee, visit: http://lib.calpoly.edu/faculty/learn-by-doing.
American Marketing Association Tours LA Agencies
On Friday, April 28th, Cal Poly’s American Marketing Association traveled with 19 of their members to Los Angeles for their spring corporate tour. The organization was able to visit Saatchi & Saatchi, a global communications and advertising agency network, and their sister luxury brands advertising agency, Team One. Both agencies allowed members to gain insight into the different career paths in advertising, such as account management, strategy, copywriting, creative directing, and marketing. At Saatchi & Saatchi, members were able to tour their office and interview company leaders. At Team One, members were able to tour their AR/VR lab, offices, and hear from a variety of team members. Overall, the tour helped members understand the opportunities in advertising and the steps they can take to land their dream job (hopefully at one of these top-notch companies!)
Hear directly from students on the impact this experience had on their approach to their careers:
AJ Goldberg
The AMA Spring Advertising Corporate Tour surpassed my expectations. I was fascinated by the different fields within advertising and being able to have my questions answered by industry professionals. Specifically, Evan Ferrari, the Saatchi & Saatchi advertising strategy director truly taught me about the avenue of strategy behind the advertisements which is now one of my top career choices. I found the Team One environment very rewarding and it helped me realize that virtual and augmented reality are the way to advertise for the future of luxury products. The tour was planned excellently by the AMA board, specifically Brenna Jensen! It was truly one of the most rewarding opportunities I have experienced at Cal Poly so far.
Elvis Nguyen
Touring Saatchi & Saatchi and Team One was truly a one-of-a-kind experience. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing what the creative side of marketing had to offer through engaging with the speakers of various departments. Besides a short presentation by Ogilvy & Mather during an AMA general meeting, I had no real exposure to the advertising industry. In a sense, it opened up a new career pathway in which I really could see myself working in. My favorite part of the tour was viewing all the storyboards of each firm. It really shows how much work goes into an advertisement that is often taken for granted. That being said, I am very thankful for having the privilege to attend this tour and am even more grateful for being a member of Cal Poly AMA. I look forward to future corporate tours and maybe one day working for such amazing companies.
Bryanna McLoy
On Friday, I traveled to LA with AMA and visited two Advertising Agencies, Saatchi & Saatchi and Team One. I am very interesting in working at an agency after college, so learning about the different positions at the firm was beneficial and gave me an idea of what job I would like in the future. I’m interested in the creative side of marketing, and even more specifically the production side of advertising. I learned that production was a separate part of advertising, giving me more insight about what I should be doing now the will prepare me for an internship later. The best part about the trip was seeing all of the storyboards for commercials and being able to talk to the Creative Director at Saatchi & Saatchi. I would love to be in his position one day, and he gave good advice on how to get to his position.
Student Perspective: Augmented Reality is the Next Era of Marketing
Marketing student Molly Keenan talks to Cal Poly Professor Joachim Scholz about the rise of augmented reality (AR). AR is taking off, with 33 percent of marketers in a recent survey planning to incorporate AR into their marketing strategies. Hear her perspective on the movement that will forever change the marketing industry:
Marketing has seen some changes over the years. As technology has developed, marketing has evolved from traditional to digital to social. The next big transformation to take the marketing world by storm will be augmented reality.
Augmented reality, AR, is a new emerging technology that places digital content over real world spaces.
Traditional marketing is all about expanding a brand’s reach and conveying a specific message. Social media marketing is about maximizing interactions with consumers and embedding a brand into conversations.
Augmented reality marketing, on the other hand, does all of the above.
Dr. Joachim Scholz, a Marketing professor at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and AR marketing expert, believes AR allows marketers to create a stronger, more meaningful connection with their consumers by having the brand embedded into their physical, everyday lives.
This new space of AR interests Scholz because it gives marketers the ability to interact with consumers on a whole other level.
“Everything you have around, like a desk, billboard advertisement, tree, suddenly becomes a surface for interaction, a user interface in a way, which is why very early on I thought this would fundamental transform how marketing works,” says Scholz.
Seeing the value AR can provide to marketers, Scholz and his co-author, Andrew Smith, published the first paper ever written on augmented reality marketing in the March 2016 issue of Business Horizons.
In their paper, “Augmented Reality: Designing immersive experiences that maximize customer engagement”, they provide a framework of how to use AR and guidelines for marketers to follow when creating a successful augmented reality campaign. Their paper won Business Horizon’s “2016 Paper of the Year.”
Shortly after their paper was published, augmented reality became a hot topic with the release of Pokemon Go and Snapchat’s AR selfie filters.
It has been an exciting time for augmented reality. Just a few weeks ago, Facebook, at its F8 conference, announced that they want to make AR its next major platform. Facebook is opening up their platform’s AR studio tool kit to individual developers so they can easily create AR content.
Other big companies like Apple, Alphabet, and Snap Inc. are continuing to develop this technology as well in terms of AR content and hardware like spectacles.
Right now hardware is limited to cameras on smart phones, but good content needs to be developed first. “Consumers will not buy a $500 device they put on their head if there is no real content out there,” says Scholz.
Companies embracing AR have recognized the need for great content and they are developing ways to make content creation easier for developers. Over the next couple years as content creation becomes easier to develop, it will make AR more fun and useful for the consumer. This will increase their willingness to pay for AR spectacles.
Once consumers adopt these AR glasses, Scholz believes it will kick AR into a whole new level. These devices will provide a direct channel into consumers’ lives where companies can serve content that is interesting and entertaining for consumers.
The future is bright for augmented reality marketing, which is why Scholz and Smith have developed an online blog called Marketing Squad. This blog is an online platform that provides an in-depth analysis of current AR campaigns and generalizing those examples to be applicable to all marketers on how to use AR and MR, mixed reality.
This platform is a space where they, their colleagues, and their students can share ideas about augmented reality marketing as well as other topics. Currently, Scholz teaches the only undergraduate marketing course in the nation that focuses on augmented reality.
In this course, students acquire first-hand experience in content marketing and become thought leaders in AR marketing, which are valuable skills for the job market. Throughout the quarter, students go through a multi-step drafting process of their blog on augmented reality marketing with guidance from Dr. Scholz in the hopes of it being published on Marketing Squad.
Students who provide the best blogs are invited to publish their piece on Marketing Squad. For example, Can Augmented Reality Revolutionize Nonprofit Marketing and How to Boost Customer Engagement with Augmented Reality are articles written by Cal Poly students.
Marketing Squad aims to be one of the best sources online for marketers to understand how to use AR and MR in their own marketing in order to better target their customers and create more value.
Currently, Scholz is working on a paper to help marketers make sense of AR and MR. His point is marketers need to change their marketing approach when using augmented reality.
“Marketers who are trying to apply the old same framework they are lugging around since 1980s will have problems,” says Scholz.
Just as social media marketing is completely different from traditional marketing, AR marketing is a whole new way of thinking.
Integrated Marketing Senior Project Course Returns to Host Entrepreneurship Festival
Pictured above: BUS464 students at last year’s Rational Middle screening event.
Marketing Professor Joan Lindsey-Mullikin and Cal Poly alumnus Doug Klein of StudioGood are working with a group of marketing seniors to plan, promote and execute a landmark entrepreneurship event in San Luis Obispo. The event, slated for winter quarter 2016, will be the culmination of Mullikin’s BUS 464: Integrated Marketing Senior Project course.
According to Mullikin, the event will be “part TED conference, part Shark Tank, and part crowdfunding festival.” It will bring together a mix of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and community members in a place where students can share their startup projects, learn from industry experts, pitch ideas, and gather funding for new endeavors.
Marketing students participating in the senior project class will research and execute the best format for the event, focusing on elements such as collection of event sponsors, creating interests in the venture capitalist community, acquiring industry speakers, ideal location and time of year, and adopting practices from similar successful events, such as the OneSpark event in Jacksonville, Fla. Students will also create and push the promotional content on social media and other channels.
Last year’s BUS 464 students went through a similar process to develop an integrated communications plan to host a film screening and panel discussion for the Rational Middle, a video series on energy sources sponsored by Shell Oil. The group of 25 students was able to meet and exceed all of the goals they had set for the event, including attracting more than 200 students, faculty and staff to the screening for a spirited discussion on energy consumption, policy and the environment. The team presented a final report on the event’s impact to Shell in December 2014.
Mullikin hopes to see similar success in this year’s class, and is excited to help put San Luis Obispo and Cal Poly on the entrepreneurship map.
For more information about the senior project course and the event, contact Professor Mullikin at jlindsey@calpoly.edu.