The American Marketing Association Presents...

Guest Speakers:
1. Ellie Sanchez - T3 (The Think Tank)
2. Kristian Schwartz - Tribal DDB
3. Karen A. Bell, Executive Director- Fisherman's Wharf Community Benefit District
4. Mike Sanchez, Senior Brand Strategy Manager - Cisco Systems, Inc.
5. Lesley Beatty, Director of Marketing - Spongefish.com

Happy Cyber Monday

The fact that there is such thing as a "Cyber Monday" in addition to "Black Friday" goes to show how much of a trend e-commerce really is.

Google group pic + HTML

img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIKDocA5nEkjyLyWVyr8xqPsVULofla7By5mVg5IrBKwH24pTULw-eL7aORXJ4fY6-IKz78FS-efDv6RNc_ChNLIRPz8TMfpf9of6zJMSI-RHGH2Jz3Di-xUaGJyg5x9NG9SQJxirVjJ8/s320/HCP+group+by+limo.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5134424793577851810"


Thank you to JP for teaching us HTML, I am proud to announce that I made my first Web page EVER during our last class : )

Org SIM

Today Clarissa, Stephanie, Bank, Mai, and I joined HCP '08 in a business simulation.
As I read the materials for "FoodCorp International," I realized how I could implement some of the concepts we have learned so far in JP's class. As President and CEO of the company, I decided to focus on areas that were filled with muda including the distribution process. I saw a lot of potential use fo JIT and 6 Sigma, but did not have enough time to go over these aspects of the company because we only had 5 hours to solve multiple problems ranging from employee turnover, to acquisitions, to sales mix.
I failed to implement any plans for databases, but I will admit that Mai, being on the other team, introduced a great idea for one. I especially liked the idea of having something that send e-coupons to phones when people get in a certain range of the grocery stores and products.
It was great to see how we might utilize our classroom knowledge in the real world.
Well done Sim participants! Thanks for making it a successful day.
PS- even though my team won, we would have kicked ass if we had all been on the same team : )

Web Site Creation

Before today, I pretty much had no clue how to create a website. I have always wanted to know how you register a domain name and how it works...and now I do. I thought the readings made the process and IT lingo easy to understand. IT can be intimidating if you don't know anything, but it is not as difficult to learn as one might think.
Of course, I would stick to standard Website hosting.

I also liked these tips of things to avoid when deciding on a domain name:
-dashes
-phrases that look confusing in lowercase
-names that don’t match your business
-settling for a .org or .net, over a .com

Additionally, I would like to add that intranets are very useful. I have used one at my work since I started 1.5 years ago and can't imagine what we would do without it. Although it is underused when it comes to people posting interesting articles and such, it is a great place to put company templates, hr documents, and a link to Deltek (our database that includes timesheets used by all) It is the homepage for everyone in the company.

FACE AIDS and Paul Farmer

On Saturday, Mai and I went to a FACE AIDS conference at Stanford and saw Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners In Health. During this day, I was able to apply a lot of concepts that we have learned about so far in Systems in Orgs.

I immediately thought of JP when Paul Farmer mentioned that they had to develop their own software to keep electonric medical records and develop e-medicine (ie: scan and send x-rays). The reason they created their own was so that it could be open source (of course he admitted that he added this fact in to satisfy the techies from silicon valley)

In addition, he stressed the need for efficient and effective supply chains. Supply chains are key when medicine and food is what is keeping these people alive. PIH is a non-profit, so minimizing costs in these areas is imperative because the more money that can go to pay doctors, nurses, etc, the better (due to recruiting and retention issues).

For a majority of the day, I was also wondering what FACE AIDS and PIH were doing to actually get to the root cause of the pandemic. It seemed to me that they were primarily just treating the disease, but I learned that they are taking a holistic approach and, in fact, focusing on that root cause. PIH supplys local poverty with jobs and teaches them how to support themselves and sustain hospitals or clinics. They also provide education to children who would otherwise be working and potentially getting injured or sick, like a ten year old boy that picked up a landmine while hearding cattle. Of course, the only cure to hunger and malnutrition is food, so they supply food and clean water to help these people recover as well as simply treating them with medicine.

Tesco - come to the US!

Excellent strategy: Don't cut prices on items that everyone purchases (ie: bananas) because then even those not hunting for a bargain will get one.

EDLP strategies are not the way to go. It works for Wal-mart, but only at a price. The only way to maintain ELDP is to puch the burden to suppliers and cut overhead, both of which are not the most ethical ways to do business.

ClubCards rule. They are great for business and customers! As a customer, I love great deals and rewards for shopping. As a business owner, I would love to know exactly what each customer purchases, when they purchase certain items, and how much they are willing to pay for those items. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.

Some additional info on Tesco ClubCards courtesy of Wikipedia.com:

When shopping at Tesco or using Tesco services (such as services from Tesco Finance), Clubcard holders receive 1 point for every £1 (€1 in Ireland) they spend, holders can also get double points on special offers and receive 1 point for every carrier bag they reuse (UK only) as part of Tesco's green initiative. These points are stored and built up and 4 times a year the holder receives vouchers to the value of points they have saved (1p/1c per point). Vouchers can be spent instore on shopping or used on Clubcard Deals where they are worth 4 times the value.
Clubcard holders are also entitled to free access to the clubcard clubs which include: wine club, baby and toddler club healthy food club, food club, Christmas club.

"outdated and inefficient" = Bankrupt!

Wal-mart prevails once again.
I have never cared to know so much about Kmart and now I know why. Kmart is a horror show when it comes to technology, beign innovative, and keeping up with the times.
No wonder why the Kmart near my home went out of business when internet was just becoming a norm.
I think that the only good idea Kmart came up with was Bluelight.com and offering free internet to cutomers. It was proven effective when millions subscribed and they found that people purchased more items than on other sites. Of course, this went bad fast since they aquired Spinway, who was losing money. The idea and creativity was there, it was just not implemented properly.

All of this goes to show that a succesful company needs a vision and must be willing to change.
Success is all about real time data and utilizing available technology to improve business processes.