Weekly Reflection Post 1/21

Week 1 Reflection (1/21/18)

This week we had our first client intake meeting with various members from the College of Business. In order to get the most out of our hour with the client, I created questions prior to class based on the readings we were assigned. Then used the information gleamed during the meeting to generate a better understanding of the goals of the campaign.

The first article that I looked at was "The Elements of Value." I had a bit of difficulty translating the information in this article into succinct questions for the client, but I was able to create a few and this article got me thinking. I began to make a list of the elements of value that the College of Business would offer to their target market.  I used the elements of value pyramid. For example, the CoB fulfills the "self-actualization" value since higher education allows a student to realize their talents and potentialities. Additionally, it gives value through "affiliation/ belonging". Not only does a student belong to the WNE community, but they also belong to the CoB community as well as the elite group of students who attend ACCSB accredited schools. Some other values that I thought applied to higher education and the CoB were "provides access", "rewards me", "quality", "informs", "reduces cost", and "makes money".

I was able to get a more specific and in depth view of what values are most relevant to students attempting to pick a college to attend (one of the CoB's main target consumer groups) through dialogue with the client during our intake meeting. The client mentioned to use the top three things that incoming students look for during their college search in order of importance; (1) quality of education, (2) quality of facilities, and (3) return on investment. It was also mentioned that if the first two factors were very high, the school was deemed more valuable and therefore the return on investment was still considered to be very high regardless of the cost of the school. However, cost was still taken into consideration when picking a school, which is why WNE offers various scholarships in addition to federal aid. In "The Elements of Value", the authors picked five most important elements for various industries, so I decided to do this for the CoB. As was expected, since it was one of the top values in all industries in the "The Elements of Value", "quality" was of utmost importance. I also think that "affiliation/ belonging" is an important value for multiple reasons. I believe this is important because it contributes to the quality of the WNE education. For one, the CoB has the ACCSB accreditation, which only 5% of business schools have. In addition, the CoB's extensive network of employers and successful alumnus also greatly increases the quality of education because it connects students with opportunities they may not have otherwise. Finally, a sense of belonging adds personal values to students and therefore improves their experience. However, I think that "provides access" could be interchangeable with this value as well. This is something I will have to discuss at greater lengths with my teammates. In relation to finances, which are still an important factor in the decision making progress, I think "reduces cost" is very relevant, which is why scholarships are so important. The final two values I selected were based on the idea of return on investment, which was stressed multiple times by the client. The first is "makes money". The majority of students go to college because they expect that a degree and a high quality education will result in a high paying job. The second is "rewards me". This is a more broad value, but arguably even more important. This aligns directly with the idea that students want a return on their investment in the CoB. They want to get something from all the time and money they have put into their education. This doesn't necessarily have to be monetary, although this is an important reward to most students. Research has shown that Millennials and younger generations are very concerned with jobs that give them purpose and are considered meaningful. Getting a job like this could also be considered a reward from attending WNE.

The Elements of Value Pyramid (Source: "The Elements of Value")

The next article that I looked at was "The Consumer Decision Journey". I used this article to build on the information I had learned from "Brand Media Strategy". The article talked about focusing marketing efforts on the stage of the consumer decision journey that makes the most sense for what your company is attempting to do. The first step was determining what the CoB's main goal was for the campaign and then deciding what areas were most important to tackle. I used "Brand Media Strategy" as well as insight from "The Consumer Decision Journey" to put the Consumer Pathway into terms of the CoB prior to our meeting with the client, so it would be easier to discern which areas the client wanted to target. Here is what I came up with:

Consumer Pathway (College of Business):

• Awareness: Awareness of Brand
• Involvement: Improved perception/ increased relevance of brand
• Active Consideration: Higher customer consideration of brand (making a students short list)
• Purchase: Increased enrollment
• Consumption: Student Experience
• Relationship Building
• Advocacy: positive reinforcement for brand from users

Consumer Pathway (Source: "Brand Media Strategy")

The bolded sections were the sections that I believe the client wants to focus on based on the client intake meeting. When asked, what the main goal of the campaign was, the main answer was higher enrollment (purchase). However, it was also mentioned that the CoB would not only like to get on the radar of those who didn't know who they were (awareness), but also wanted to change the perception that many people have about their brand (involvement). Western New England University has been a university for quite a while now. However, they are still widely know as WNEC, the college they used to be. They want to escape this brand image and represent themselves as a premier business school that rises above its main competitors whose names and reputation currently give them a competitive advantage over the CoB. These main competitors are the 3 B's (Bentley, Bryant, and Babson) and Umass Amherst, in addition to various other competitors that WNE is up against. The CoB wants to re-brand themselves to fit with their newly updated vision and mission statement. The Dean reinforced this idea when he said "we're premier, but we need to start acting like it and branding like it." For these reasons, the first 4 steps of the Consumer Pathway seem to be the most important for this campaign.

The client intake meeting was also a good source of information to begin filling the flowchart we received on the first day of class and beginning to hash out a strategy for our campaign. We already have a lot of information on Foundation Key Issues, such as competitors and competitive advantage, and Marketing Plan Basics, such as target markets. Our position and tagline workbook will help us to make more progress in the Marketing Plan Basics stage. Additionally, we have gained knowledge about what the key messages are that the CoB hopes to portray to its target markets, which will help us begin to develop a Central Communication Platform. We will have to narrow down the information the client has given us and determine which insight is the most important and valuable to the target market. We will then build a tagline around this concept and begin to create marketing content that will build upon this idea. We have been given no budget for this campaign, so we will have to be creative in our tactics for spreading our client's message. This may include the use of social media and other free marketing venues.

Creating a Campaign Flowchart (Source: Class Powerpoint)