week4

This week we talked more with Paul on monday about the experiences we had with a UT salesperson each of us were assigned to.  Though I didn't get to do an actual sales call/meeting, the experience was very interesting.  It was nice to see the interaction the employees have with each customer, and that they actually care about having a personal relationship with them.  What really shocked me was the price of advertising! I knew it was expensive, but not that expensive.  I was able to see the different layouts available as well as the different cost strategies used.

Throughout the week I was trying to come up with more ideas for our big event, but today we found out that we will be working at the UT booth at the art walk in Little Italy.  Each of our teams has to pitch an idea in a few weeks, which I'm very excited about! We really need to choose a great theme and target market that we think is most ideal to the event.  With this we hope to gain more exposure to both the UT San Diego brand as well as discoverSD.  I don't want to give any of my teams ideas away, but I think we all have some great ones that will hopefully come together to form one WINNING presentation! ;)

Have a great Spring Break!!!

Hello All,

This past week I had the opportunity to work with the UT San Diego's Marketing Department. As a marketing major, this was an extremely interesting opportunity. My specific task was to develop a marketing plan for their Night and Day section. This publication focuses on promoting and reviewing various events occurring in San Diego. There is both an online portion distributed through their entertainment section on the website and a weekly print edition issued on Thursdays. I focused on three main aspects they could update: layout, content, and developing a mobile app. I really enjoyed breaking down the aspects of the Night and Day section and coming up with creative new approaches for them. Within the layout, I thought they should work on their branding to sync the online and print editions of Night and Day. For their content, I came up with the idea of organizing material by interest and developing both a weekly calendar of events and a family guide for families planning their outings. For their mobile app, I proposed a "Plan my Weekend" app that would allow users to easily target events within San Diego via their interests, location, and price range. After presenting my marketing plan, hearing the feedback from people within the field was very valuable and I really appreciated their enthusiasm.

Hi group !

My team is leaving the Marketing department to go to the Sales department after the Spring Break, I hope it will be exciting too ! We have realized one project which was a marketing plan about something we had to chose among daily deals, mailing, event, Iphone app, Ipad app, discoversd and others things the company wanted to improve with our ideas and we made our presentations on monday. We had to find information about the competitors, the target, the promotion and the communication to make younger people interested in the brand.
I had to work on the event for the marketing plan project but as it has changed I think the survey they ask me to create won't be very helpful !

I think that the idea of making all of our group find ideas is pretty good and I hope that everyone will come up with great ideas to make it a very cool event !

I look forward to seeing the presentations !

Have a good Spring break !

Week 4 - Event Planning

Monday Group 2 received feedback on our stories that we reported on. I was pleased with my assessment of the Surfrider Foundation beach clean up and was given constructive feedback about my work. I am looking forward to working in the Sales and Marketing departments in the coming weeks.

Today we discussed ideas for the event coming up in April. I like the idea of capitalizing on the art walk instead of completely creating an event from scratch. I just don't think we would have had the time. I think it is effective to have each group make a presentation of concepts for the event. That way, we can pick and choose from each if we would like, or just use the concept that we think will be the most successful.

Our group has already met preliminarily and we have some good ideas so far. We've emailed a couple references and plan on developing our ideas further over break. 

2/29

               Hey everybody! hope you guys had fun in your sections, I know that i had a great time in sales but I'm excited to explore the other parts of the company after spring break is over. I thought that today's meeting was really productive. We received an assignment to create themes and events that will drive subscription to the paper, promote the brand, and spur internet traffic on the daily deal. Each team gets to make up a presentation and the team with the best ideas will be chosen. I love competition so this project is right up my alley. My group and I already have some great ideas, I'm really excited to see what all the other teams come up with.
               After spring break my group and I come back and join the content department. I'm not really sure what to expect, but I'm excited to see what reporting is like and learn something new. Hope you guys have a great vacation, see you on the 12th.
    

Feb. 29,2012

On Monday the everyone in the sales group met. We shared our experience about our ride-a-long, it was fun to see what everyone else did, and the different things they learned. UT asked us what we thought, what we learned and then asked us to evaluate our experience with their staff members. Today we all met as a group- it was good to see everyone's faced again! We talked about the big event- which has changed, we are now planning UT's booth at the Art Walk. They have done this before however want to take a better, more planned approach to it. We are each, in our groups, are to propose an idea for the walk and have a 10-15 min presentation the week after spring break. I am very excited to see what our group will put together. It is a short amount of time especially because of break but I think we can do it! I very happy that the big event is all planned out or at least we have a place and date figured out. 

Sales Week

This week we wrapped up our time in the Sales group. On Monday we met with our entire group that was in Sales (I believe it was about 10 of us total). We discussed what we learned and encountered on our "ride-alongs" with the salespeople last week and continued by filling out a paper about our experiences in the sales department. Overall, it was interesting to see all the different aspects that are conquered through the sales team. Today we met with our entire class to discuss the end event. The UT mentors came up with the idea to showcase our work for the UT through the event they are sponsoring in April called the ArtWalk which takes place in Little Italy. They will have numerous booths there and want us to come up with an over-arching theme for the booths and to entice people to subscribe to either the newspaper or one of the email lists (whether it be Daily Deals, Discover SD, etc.) As a group of 5 we will present our concept to a panel on Wednesday March 14th where the UT panel will then decide which idea they like best. Our group plans to meet hopefully once over Spring Break and then again on Monday and Tuesday when we return back to school, as we'll be presenting on Wednesday. We've already come up with a few good ideas and I look forward to where this event will lead.

-Sarah

2/29/12 Art Walk

This Monday, we all met as a large group for those that are in the sales rotation. We completed the sales rotation by sharing our experiences and reflecting upon what we learned while we were on the rise-a-long. They asked us what we thought of the experience, and to evaluate the staff members that we shadowed. I really enjoyed hearing about what other people experienced last week in comparison to my own. Today we discussed the event. The plans have changed- we will be planning the booth for the UT at the Art Walk! Out proposals are due after spring break, and I am looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with. This will be a great way to utilize our groups! I am looking forward to the presentation but realize it will be a lot of work! Happy Spring Break and good luck to all of the teams!

Week 4

Hello everyone!

We are starting our new rotations today and I am very excited to see a new part of the company. Our group just finished the Content rotation and I really enjoyed it. We worked primarily with U-T editor Jeff Light and North County editor Adrian Vore and they were both extremely helpful. We learned about the various aspects of journalism including reporting, social networking and even a little photography. We all had the opportunity to go out and cover an event of our choice and write a full report with a written story, various tweets and photographs. The event that I covered was a performance by Sailesh the Hypnotist on campus put on by the Torero Program Board. The event actually turned out to be a lot of fun and it was sort of exciting having the chance to act like a reporter for an evening. It is shocking to see how much goes into even one small story like the ones that we were assigned. Although we are all marketing students I also study communication so this rotation was particularly stimulating for me.

We went over all of our reports on Monday and they seemed very please with our work. This rotation felt very much like an actual class as opposed to work and I feel like the whole group learned a lot. I am excited to get into the next rotation and see how our marketing skills can be put to work. I am also anxious to begin really planning the event because I know everyone has a lot of great ideas! I hope that everyone enjoyed their first rotation and learned as much as I did. Looking forward to seeing you all the meeting this afternoon.

Week 4

On Friday I got the opportunity to shadow an account executive in the sales department. It was such a fascinating experience and it was really great to get an inside look at the department. I was very surprised that each account executive works with so many different clients. I also did not expect them to work with such a broad range of clients. The account exec I was paired with managed accounts for huge department stores, restaurants, home improvement stores, and non-profit organizations, including USD. I got to ask him a bunch of questions about the qualities needed to be successful at his job, and he responded that building a relationship between the UT and the client is by far the most important thing. If the client doesn't trust the account executive, there is no reason they would continue business with the UT. Getting to shadow an account exec was really great because it gave me a completely different impression of sales than I had initially come into the UT with. Sales is more about forming a relationship and friendship, than pushing a product on a client.

Marketing Portion Complete

Early this week, on Monday, each member of our marketing group presented our marketing plans on the specific topic that we chose. My presentation was over the daily deals aspect of the UT. In the presentation, I specified a specific target audience, assessed the UT's strengths and weaknesses, and did a competitive analysis. Even though I was a little nervous to present in front of the group, the experience was very rewarding. All of the staff gave us feedback during and after our presentations. Some of the comments will be very helpful for the future. The guidelines for developing the marketing plan were fairly vague, so each of our presentations were a little different. It was hard to judge what they thought of the presentations since our five presentations took up the entire time period at UT.

Dan said our group would be most likely moving to sales the week after spring break. I am looking forward to this new opportunity. It sounds like both of the sales groups have had rewarding experiences so far. Today, Dan said we will be discussing the end of the year project so hopefully we will get some logistics figured out. See you all soon!

week 4 - marketing

This week is being very interesting again. On Monday, all of the members of my group each presented our projects to the marketing department. Each one of us had one UTSanDiego “product” assigned for which we had to create a marketing plan, also giving our ideas for improvement. I was assigned the “Style and Fashion” section, which is actually quite new. I view that as something positive because I felt that my ideas had more possibilities of being applied. They have just recently launched the section and thus, are looking for ways to make it more catching and attractive to the audience. I felt responsible of not disappointing them and tried hard to do a good job.

The fact of presenting a project to a real company is very enriching. Even though public speaking is not one of my major strengths, I actually felt very comfortable during my presentation and I am glad about the results. Also, being able to listen and see all of my colleague’s presentations gave me more opportunities to learn. I could see how they each worked, how they viewed the situation, their creativeness etc. This will be useful for our final project, since each one of us will know what each member of the group is best on. If we take advantage of that knowledge, we will probably work better and more efficiently.

Tomorrow we are all meeting to discuss the coming event. I think that meeting as soon as possible is a good idea because we definitely have to get the organization for the event started. Next week (after spring break) our group will move on to the sales department. I’m looking forward to it too!

Sales Calls

I really enjoyed shadowing April Gingras this week. She is currently the New Homes Account Manager at UT. She has been working in this position for the last few months and has previously worked in the Real Estate Business. She began by going through her section and showed me exactly how the lay out worked with the advertisement space and PR sections that she sells. It was very interesting to see the different prices that the different types of sections went for. I really liked how many of the ADs were right next to the PR articles. She mainly managed her accounts via email and phone calls. She had to respond quickly and with the right lingo to each of her clients to make the sale. One of her key notes was when she is sending them the finalized contract to sign to call it an agreement. I really enjoyed listening her sell not only print ads but working with her fellow employees to get her clients to also buy marketing space online and in the Coastal magazine.

Week 3 - Content

I forgot to make my post last week, but it was quite the exciting week. I very much enjoyed going to the Sales Conference. There, I attended the Strategy and Development workshop. The most interesting topic that was discussed in my opinion was Channel Planning. We received a chart with all different types of media outlets including ad networks, email , video, "premium" targeted ads, blogs and applications. We were to distinguish between which ones were primary objectives and which were secondary according to 3 aspects of channel planning: Branding, Response and Creating High Value Customers. I took a lot from this exercise and can apply it to my current job at the Internet marketing agency.

Back at the office, our group was given an assignment to choose an event during the week and report on it. We needed to utilize Twitter to cover the event in real time as well as take photos that represented the various aspects of the event. After that, we were to write up a report using the key components that we discussed during our meeting last Monday.

I chose to cover a beach clean-up event on Saturday morning at Tourmaline Beach. USD co-sponsored the event with the Surfrider Foundation and I thought that it was a perfect newsworthy story to cover. I learned a great deal from using social media platforms like Twitter to inform people about the event as it was happening, as well as provide detailed coverage in my report that was written after the event had completed.

Tyler

TJ's Final Content Week

I'm proud to say that my event went well and I think I reported on it in a successful way, using each of the 5 W's as well as the 7 paragraph structure we were lectured on in class. I also made sure to take a lot of photos and short video clips at the event (The Silver Bay Kennel Club dog show at the Del Mar Fair) so I could compile a video news report of the event as an extra credit part of our project. A youtube link to my report is below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI-54WYE4VE

Feel free to check it out! Also, if you are a fellow student heading into the content section of UT this is the kind of thing you will be learning to do. Mine's a bit cheesy maybe since I chose a dog show, but you can cover any event you want! Cheers,

TJ

Event/Sales

I looked up past events people have put on recently in mission beach. I stumbled upon a Paddle Board Expo that was held  on the grass area on the bayside of mission beach across from the roller coaster area. The event had multiple booths set up and a place for a raffle. I just thought this may be a good area for our event if we look into it more because people could easily walk by it and attended on a beautiful weekend day! I am really excited to go on a sales call this week. Personally I have never experienced anything of the sort and I feel like it will be a good life experience. I want to be engaged in asking questions and really being involved in the meeting if possible!

Week 3

I'm very excited to go with the Sales team on Monday and see how they work in the field! It has been an interesting experience getting behind the scenes with a major company and learning about their business strategies that are actually what I am learning in my other marketing classes at school. They have a broad reach to many different social groups so it is interesting to see how they specifically target them so that those markets are attracted to their product.

week 3 - marketing

This week has been very interesting. We have started working in our projects. My group has been assigned to the “marketing division”. We have been told to choose one of the products UT SanDiego has, and then develop a marketing plan for it. They have given us guidelines in order to help us out. Although the real presentation is due Monday, today we have met in order to see how we were doing and to answer any questions we might have. I already have quite a lot done, but meeting with them has helped me understand better what it is that they are looking for in order to make a better presentation on Monday. Equally or even more importantly, getting to present our thoughts and ideas to a group of professionals and discussing our proposals with them has been a great experience. Again, all of them have been very nice with all of us. I look forward to next week!

Week 3

This week my team is working in the sales division of UT San Diego. On Monday, we received basic training in the different ways in which sales representatives from the UT persuade customers to advertise with them. It was so interesting to see how the sales reps specifically tailor their presentations to match the personalities of both prospective clients, as well as the company they are hoping to advertise. On Friday I am thrilled to have the opportunity to shadow a sales rep and actually get to speak with potential advertising clients. This experience will be invaluable, no matter what aspect of marketing I enter, and I am excited to see what I learn.

Week 3: Sales

Day one of our rotations, I was apart of the sales group this week with Sarah and Emily. When we first arrived we got to meet up with John who introduced us to who we were going to shadow all day.

Sarah, Emily and I were paired with Brooke and Jeff, who took us down in Little Italy. We then split up, sarah and I went with Brooke. We then started to go into businesses and passing out flyers about having a segment in the art walk paper to create awareness of their company. We had a great time! It was super amazing to see how many restaurants  there are in little italy! it was even more interesting to see people's reaction when we said we were from "THE UNION TRIBUNE". It comes to show how a brand name is very important. When then had lunch and talked about many different topics! It was very helpful to hear experienced people's thought and advice on life.  After we meet up with another UT worker, Kevin, and he was able to give us a Sales 101 break down teaching us how to approach people. overall it was a great learning experience and am very excited to go back!

TJ's Week 3, Content

Today we were given our class time to work on our project, which my excitement is mounting for. We are going to be reporting on a local even here in San Diego, and we are not restricted to campus events (as the syllabus says). I am either going to report on the fireman's annual convention in at the San Diego Convention Center, or the Circus that has sprung up in the city this past month. At first this project seemed a bit overwhelming because none of us knew how to write a piece of journalism, but I'm more than comfortable now after last class. They told us, more or less, if we follow the rules and do our best, our pieces will be almost publish-worthy. I plan on adding a video or narrated slideshow as well, which should make the project more fun, plus extra credit!

Week 3- Content

This week my group met with the content department, which was really interesting! We learned about photojournalism, writing an article, and the use of social networking that gets paired with covering a story. We have a story due with our three best pictures, coverage of an event, and tweets during the event by Monday. They suggested we due an USD event, so I am either going to do the "Solutions for Homelessness" talk taking place tomorrow or Grandparent's Weekend this weekend. We were all assigned a mentor, and will be showing everyone our stories Monday. I have really enjoyed learning about the ethics and format that is included in being a journalist, and am excited to work on my article!

Week 3 - Sales

This week was the beginning of our group rotations - which mine was sales to start with. On Monday we met as a group with Paul and went over a powerpoint presentation in regards to their sales approaches, tactics and techniques and how to understand the needs of your client and sway your conversation to meet their specific needs. At the end of our meeting, Paul said he wanted to team us up with some of the sales people so we could shadow them and see what a day in the life of a sales team member was like.

Today was the day I went to shadow the sales team and it was nothing like I expected, in fact, it was far more appealing and fun than I ever would have thought! I figured we would be sitting in the office or listening to our mentor make sales calls all day long; however, I was pleasantly surprised when the account manager Jeff Rankin said we would be going with him down to Little Italy for the afternoon. The purpose of our adventure was to pass out flyers to businesses (mainly restaurants and other small businesses) in hopes of encouraging them to purchase Advertising space in the UT for the upcoming Art Walk that is taking place in Little Italy in April. They wanted to target the local Little Italy local businesses as the Art Walk is expected to bring in a good amount of people and they are hoping that many of the surrounding businesses will want to advertise and get the word out about their company or restaurant so tourists and attendees will drive in attendance and revenue for them. Anchal and I were assigned to shadow and walk around with new account manager, Brooke Lindsay. We talked to managers and some employees about the great offer UT is offering for this advertising space and all of the businesses we visited were very receptive to the idea and said they would definitely look over it and contact Jeff if interested. Anchal, Brooke and I mostly passed these flyers out to restaurants along India Street. We then had lunch as a team with Jeff, Emily and Kevin (another sales representative who deals with much of the online media). After lunch, Anchal Emily and I were left with Kevin where we discussed "Sales 101" as Kevin called it. He gave us helpful advice and tips on sales and assured us that it's okay if we weren't sure exactly what we wanted to do after college. He also answered questions we all had about interviewing, resumes, cover letters, etc. He was very insightful in terms of both the UT and just professional work life in general.

All in all, I feel that we learned a lot from meeting with all the Sales account managers today and we were able to get an idea of the work they do with their "territorial clients" in terms of selling ad space in the newspaper and for the online banner they run on the UT website as well. I'm excited to continue in sales and see where it takes us next week!

-Sarah

Sales Training 2.22.12

This week we began the sales rotation. On Monday we met with Paul, the sales director of the classified ads, for a presentation on their overall sales strategy. We learned the basics of their sales team strategy for selling advertising through the Union Tribune, both print and online. Here are a few basic concepts I took away from the presentation:

3 Elements to Successful Advertising:
1. Message
2. Channel of delivery/Audience
3. Frequency

The Bottom Up Approach:
1. Questions/needs
2. Benefits
3. Objections
4. Agreement

Needs Analysis:
1. Their Business
2. Their Customers
3. Their Experience

Buying Styes:
1. Doer/Driver
2. Thinker/Analytical
3. Actor/Expressive
4. Friend/Amiable

Today, I had the opportunity to shadow an account manager in the sales department at UT San Diego. I expected that I would be listening to cold calls and taking notes. To my surprise, we wound up in Little Italy discovering new restaurants, and even riding electric bikes. We began the trip downtown by learning about how the UT uses something like the upcoming Art Walk to generate advertising revenue. This is just one of about 60 events that they use for something like this. I shadowed Jeff Rankin who's territory is Little Italy and Hill Crest (not too shabby!) We delivered flyers to businesses in the area that may want to advertise with UT while they promote the art walk. The visits were intended to be friendly and informative, not pushy.

Next we visited current customers that Jeff works with on a regular basis. I was a little bit surprised to see how well he knew some of the clients. He was greeting with hugs by some, and simply a smile and a hand shake from others. We visited these clients in order to just say hello, check in, and maintain the current relationship.

The last stop we made was to an electric bike shop. Jeff wanted to stop by because they were too late to be a part of the Successful Aging event, but were very excited about it. I listened as Jeff applied many of the sales concepts that we learned about on Wednesday. What is the demographic of their customers? What are their goals and targets? How could the UT help those goals? What does the product do? How much does it cost? The owners main goal was to get a article in the paper. Unfortunately this is not something that Jeff can do. He did however, offer to edit his press release and point him in the right direction. He later explained to me the reason for asking about the price points as well. Since the product has such a high price point, the ROI for one advertisement is huge, even if it only generates one or two sales.

Before we headed back to the UT office, we had coffee with Kevin (I cannot remember his last name). He specializes in the online and digital media and advertising for UT. He gave us a crash course in sales and helpful tips for job search and interviews. Here is the basic out line of the our Sales 101 from Kevin:

1. Earn Your Right: establish credibility
2. Find the Need: Find a weakness and a need
3. Selling your Solution: Match your presentation to their need. Questions give you control
4. Recap 

This week was exciting! Beginning the rotation has been a lot of fun, and  I am excited to continue.

Week 3

My group and I were assigned to the sales department, so this week we learned some of the basics on Monday and then actually got to apply the knowledge today!  On Monday Paul taught us the do's and don'ts to sales, and why it is important to know your client.  Every person has a different style... they can be one of four types: a doer (driver), a thinker (analytical), an actor (expressive), a friend (amiable), or they could even be a combination of these types.  As a salesperson, we need to cater to these different styles, and being adaptable is definitely key in this industry.  

As for today, I worked alongside Linda who works as an account manager in sales.  I was able to shadow her and get a feeling of her day to day activities, both in the office and on the road.  First we just followed up with some emails with clients, and I learned about pricing for different types of ads offered.  We didn't actually get to go through an actual sales conference due to timing, but we went downtown to drop some information with the manager of a restaurant in hopes that he will advertise with UT.  It was good experience, but I hope to actually be able to meet with the clients soon, and experience what Paul had talked to us on Monday about!  

Week 3 Sean Sales

I am really excited for this week getting into sales. I actually really enjoy the concept in sales, and I believe if you want to be good at any aspect of business you have to be good at sales. Sales is major part of business and I look forward with our ride along on Friday with a UT sales representative. We learned a lot in sales at our meeting yesterday with the three buckets, and the different types of clients, and always asking questions to keep the client interested in purchasing a ad spot. I hope to take on the leadership position for my group on the sales side. I also believe that it is going to be important for our class to meet next week. I think we need to sit down and discuss what are plans our for the end of the year event. I believe the sales groups are going to be available next Wednesday, we should plan on meeting.

On Friday, i will be joining my group shadowing sales representatives for a couple of hours. During the power point on Monday we went over the types of costumers personalities and how to tailor your sales approachs to fit the situation. I'm very interested in seeing how this happen in real life. Also from what i understand, asking questions is key to understanding exactly what the costumer is looking for. I look forward to seeing how the UT makes marketing plans to fit the different business. I have been in sales for a couple of years now, but i have never taken such a in depth look at the field, so I'm excited to see if i can improve my skills by learning from some real professionals.  

Week 3 - Content Department

As I said in the last post, our group is working with the Content Department this week. Our assignment has 4 components which are

1. covering an event 
2. tweeting while at the event 
3. writing an article about the event 
4. Taking pictures while at the event 

The event can be anything in San Diego, including at USD. I think that finding the right event that is exciting enough to write an article about will be the hardest part. Plus we only have 1 week to complete the assignment which does not give us a lot of time. 

Although I am excited for the chance to see what it is like to be a journalist. Their life seems so fast passed and detail oriented, I don't know how they stay on top of everything because it is all so time sensitive. 

More to come about how the article turns out. I'm hoping to get some cool photos as well as test out my "artsy" side. 

Good Luck with all of your assignments this week! 

Em

Hi  ! I know I write late but I'm still living at the French hour

I just want to tell you that my team has to work on a marketing plan this week and that I have chosen to work on the event for the end of the year ! I will have to do some research for this and so I will trasmit my results to you as soon as possible !

I hope this will help us, I know that people have already a lot of ideas about the event but I could give you my study about it for the promotion the communication and the others things I have to find for this project !
I am supposed to present my project monday but I don't know if we are going to work on the same project but maybe with a deeper research during the second week !

I will let you know and I hope that all your teams are having fun or at least are not unhappy with what they are doing!

I don't think I will see you on wednesday because now we work in teams so we don't really meet each others so have a good week !

Marketing Assignment

After being assigned to the marketing aspect of the UT last week, we finally got an overview of what we will be doing for the next couple weeks. Our first assignment is to develop a marketing plan. Each member in our group was assigned one aspect of the UT to develop a marketing plan for. I will be developing a marketing plan for Daily Deals. The other parts of the UT that were assigned include: Night and Day, DiscoverSD, Events, and Style and Society.

Five members of UT gave us and overview and gave us basic guidelines for coming up with a plan. The first aspect of developing a marketing plan is to determine the marketing objectives. Therefore we need to answer the following questions; what are the goals of the plan and how will they be attained? Next, we need to figure out who the target audience is and what these consumers are looking for. Then we will do a competitive analysis. We need to figure out who the competitors are in our specific area and we need to analyze their strengths and weaknesses. Finally, we need to determine the most effective marketing channels to attract the target audience.

On Wednesday they want us to come in with a draft and they will give us feedback. Then we will present our final marketing plans next Monday. This is our first weeks project, and I am excited to get started. I think it is awesome that we are getting real world experience, and at the same time UT can gain a fresh new perspective. I am anxious to hear about all of the things going on in the Sales and Content Department.

Sales Conference

I enjoyed going to the conference today during the Channel Planning portion. It was interesting to see how my other Marketing classes (specifically Advertising) pertained to the content: how they focused on marketing to certain demographs in certain situations (ours was at an SD community college). They also focused on Primary and Secondary objectives within certain channels: ad networks, email, mobile, video, targeted ads, deals, events etc. I enjoyed hearing how they can make each one have a primary or secondary objective depending on the goal they desire, be it awareness to customer loyalty. Each one had a place in the Branding, Response, and Creating high value customer catagories.

They had us pair into table groups to put post-its where we thought an aspect of the channel would fall into one of the three main catagories as primary or secondary. Our results were not too far off! We scored 12 accurate, while other professionals got 7, 15, 17 and 21. It was exciting to see how much we knew and how we probably had more social media knowledge than most of the people in the room.

They also touched on the point that a website can grab the audience's attention better through an interactive video versus just reading words on a page. People are more attracted to interactive advertising, an example being moving banners that they click on so that it is like a game. People remember better through acting than through reading as a sort of muscle memory.

Overall, it was a great experience. It was a trip to see how people of my parents generation are going to conferences to learn about what people in my generation do as easily as breathing between tweeting, instagram, facebook, foursquare and the like.

First time on sight at UT SD

Being on sight at the Union tribune was a great experience! Very exciting to see firsthand where the news papers come to life. Although they are one of the most successful companies they have a lot of room for improvement. I couldn't help but notice how dull the office was and how much the employees seemed completely disinterested in their job. Hopefully, along with making product improvements, we can improve the overall morale an enthusiasm of the group with new changes. I think they really need to stick with the name DiscoverSD since it is such a well known name already and the fact that it is an easy search engine word to match what they want to offer to the public. Maybe they should consider saying on the web page "discover SD by the Union Tribune" or something along that nature so that both are tagged but discover is primary. That will help with keeping old consumers as well as look appealing to the new ones that we can market to through social media because it is easier to catch their eye and their interest. Another idea they could add that would attract 18-25 year olds is night life attractions: clubs to go to with the kind of music, atmosphere, guest list link and maybe estimated time of waiting to get in in a certain night. Also it could have maybe categories of bars and what the offer, prices and groupon-ish deals to encourage people to go to discoverSD and get them. There's a lot of hidden places around San Diego people might not know about so maybe we can have a "Destination Exploration" (just throwing that out because it rhymed!) tab where people can just kind of sight see places unique to SD: Coronado, seaport village, the Midship, Hillcrest, etc. my thinking is that a lot of students are so isolated in their own college communities they rarely have time to get out and see the city much less have the time I know where to go. And just to hit that tipping point of appeal ad in Deals to restaurants. For the big event, it would be most efficient to have it on USD's campus just for the fact that since it’s so convenient people might actually go versus having it off campus. It might be better also to have r a week earlier to avoid all of the hassle with finals... And students might appreciate a fun event right before they start pulling all nighters in the library. Giving away free deals to certain places to maybe the first 100 students that come (or even coupons for a free small meal or drinks somewhere) would attract a lot of people... Maybe even copy what the Shoreclub in PB does and have games they could play to win like a 15$ tab to a certain bar. There's a lot of potential with this company we just really need to up it into the new generation: twitter deals, Facebook deals, the works an also have give always that appear to this particular crowd... Maybe even include discounts to local concert tickets or have a contest to win free tickets if you buy a certain deal. I'm very eager to come into the office more and get behind the scenes since I feel the more we get into the head of the company the better we will understand how to make changes.

Week 2 Sean Sales

This week has been great in gaining a lot on new knowledge. On Monday my group was assigned Sales as the first rotation with one other group. We were given a presentation in which we learned a little basic on sales at U-T San Diego and learning the market of San Diego. This was a great way to see and understand all the wants and needs of the greater San Diego market. This will help us decide on what people are wanting to see and have at the event. With studies and info they found that San Diegons like drinking, exercising, and having fun. That seems pretty awesome to me! I also have planned to meet with USD Radio on contributing to the event. USD Radio would be able to have the resources to get a band, artiest, etc. to maybe be able to perform, as well as USD Radio be able to present to run ticket give aways and free merchandise. Yesterday was a great day at the seminar that they had presented for U-T San Diego employees. It was a great way to mingle with the employees. We also collaborated and presented a creative new way for a landing page advertisement!

2/16 post

My group is involved with the content department for our first round. I am SO STOKED to be covering a story and writing an article for it. We are working with the editor of the North County section and the Editor-in-Chief of the paper which is quite an honor because they are clearly good at what they do. Our first 2 sessions will be training sessions on how to write an article and cover it and for the rest of the time we will be covering the even through social media updates and then writing an article.

I want to say that our ideas for the event sound great so far. A health type fair at the beach could be pretty cool and maybe we could sponsor a beach volleyball tourney with it too? I think the key to this event is getting our ideas down quickly and then dividing up the work.That way all of our vendors will be set and we can start marketing around San Diego.

I hope you all had a lovely day at the sales training!

Em

HI !

Hi everyone !!

I couldn't go to the event today but it seems that it has been very nice because everyone is posting very good opinions about it ! I feel too that the team we are working for is very understanding, open minded and happy to have us with them and that we are going to learn a lot as if we were in several internships instead of being in class and I think this is really great !

My team will work in the marketing department during these three first weeks and I hope we will enjoy it because the presentation we had on Monday was not very explicit about what we are going to do !

For the event, I agree with Carla, if the weather is good, it could be very interesting to make it on the beach but  we can't know right now how the weather will be .. Maybe people who have been living in San Diego for a long time know how it is during May and could forecast it but we can't be 100% sure ..

I was wondering too if we need to create an online page for the event like on facebook or something like this to make people aware of it but not too early or they will forget about it !

See you next week and enjoy your week end !

Today was probably the best day of our internship for me. It was really interesting and exciting to have a whole room of professionals discussing actual marketing strategies and problems that they face everyday.  I was only able to attend the Creative Development talk but i really wish that i could of been at the morning talks too because i heard that they were worthwhile also. I'm glad to be done with the info sessions and finally get to work. Monday my team and i will be joining the sales force. I'm really excited to see how all the marketing that the UT does translates to sales. It was a great week and i cant wait Monday. 

Sales Training and Beyond

Hello Everyone!

This first week at UT has been great so far. Our group has been assigned to the marketing department, but  if I didn't know any better I would think that our group was the third sales group. Therefore, I am excited to see what they have in store for us on Monday.

I also attended the Sales Training today along with many of you. I think it is awesome that UT allowed us to attend. I definitely learned some valuable information today that I don't think I would have learned in a classroom. I also liked the fact that we were always included in the activities.

On another note, I know that most of the class is excited about the idea of having the end of the year project hosted off campus, but I wanted to share some information with you first. When Devyn and I arrived at the Sales Training this morning we got the chance to talk to Mike Hodges before we got started. He asked how the event planning was going, and we said we were trying to nail down a date and location. After telling him about the Wave House idea, he said that he would rather have the event on the USD campus. He felt like having the event on campus would provide a better connection between UT/DiscoverSD and USD. He also mentioned the event he planned while in college and how it was a huge campus event. On the other hand, he also said that he would not be opposed to a different location if we could pull off an incredible event. I know there are many drawbacks to planning an event on campus. I just wanted to share this information with you because it is definitely something to think about.

Have a great night!

So far, attending the UT's sales conference has been my favorite thing we've done. Learning about the various marketing strategies was really interesting. I liked seeing the real world application of the concepts learned in class. One point that one of the speakers (Karin) made was how we should expand the four Ps of marketing to five: Product, Place, Price, Promotion, and Participation. The idea of participation ties into both social media marketing, for example getting consumers to like your facebook page or complete a survey and print ads such as getting a consumer to clip out a coupon from the Sunday savings section of the UT. Coming up with ideas on how to engage the consumer is something we'll really need to focus on both within our individual group projects and for the big UT event in May.

Another part of the conference I really enjoyed was working in a group with members of the actual sales force team. My group got to develop an advertising campaign for Alonzo's Carpet Cleaners. We came up with solutions to identify the channels, develop creative content, determine and meet objectives, and design the landing pages for our company. It was really fun interacting with professionals and we both seemed to be feeding off of each others ideas. This made me really excited to continue working with the UT Marketing team next week.

Tyler Week 2

I am even more excited today to get to work at UT. Today I went to one of the sales trainings that talked specifically about different channels of communication in targeting your audience. We discussed primary and secondary methods of targeting including video, email, search and applications. The point of the training was to make sure to utilize the proper channels depending on who your market is, and what your product or service is.

For the first 3 weeks, my group will be in the Content department. So far, we have discussed what reporting and journalism are and next week we will be assigned to our own stories. We will be responsible for reporting including video and on site reporting. I am looking forward to learning more about content writing and journalism.

TJ's Week 2, Content

We have finally been divided by our groups into the different subsections of the firm. I am excited to be in content first, since the Union Tribune is primarily based on content and its newspaper. I think we will be more efficient going into the marketing and sales side of things with a basis of knowledge in content and how the newspaper actually works. Can't sell it unless you know how it works (unless you are a sales wizard of some sort). 

Our bosses/instructors are Jeff Light, UTSD Editor and Adrian Vore, North County editor. They jumped right in and we received handouts and a syllabus explaining how we will be spending our time with them. I was excited to see that we will actually be doing some "reporting"of our own! The final project is an article written by us and "published" on twitter, extra points for media (pics/vids). First principle of journalism? The who, what, when, where, why and HOW. Then sprinkle in the color (description/flavor) on top of your basic and necessary facts. 

Week 2

This week I have been researching more on the two websites and trying to brainstorm more with people about event ideas.  I really like the idea of having the big event at Wavehouse... I think it will attract a younger audience and why not do it where lots of college students are living already.  If it were to be done on campus, I think having it before finals time would be better, just for attendance rates in general.  I think it would be cool to have some sort of band there if we have access to something like that.  I also like that we might be leaning towards the healthy aspect for the event!!

The training meeting was great today, wish I could have stayed for more! I went to part of the creative development seminar and it was great seeing how all the employees interacted together/what new ideas they had.  And I actually saw my old neighbor their who now works for UTsd (I had no idea..kinda funny!! haha)  I look forward to breaking into our smaller groups next week... YAY sales team!! :)  

Week 2

I was very excited this week to be broken up into our groups and to start working with departments. Our group was assigned the content department, and we had an interesting class discussing journalism with a couple people from the department. I am really excited to cover an event with them, and learn about the process. I was especially interested in our discussion of the high moral/ethical standards required by journalists, and how the number of PR Consultants is now catching up to journalism. This makes ethical and accurate reporting even more crucial now than ever. We attended part of the sales seminar today as well, and they established that we would have a meeting weekly on Mondays with everyone from all the departments. I think this is a great idea so we can start moving forward with our event.

Week 2

Our work at UT San Diego has definitely progressed since last week already. After getting the tour, the building feels a lot more comfortable and much easier to make our way around. Getting our badges also made it that much more official. This week we got broken up into our groups and we'll start group work next week on Monday. My group will be starting with sales and progressing from there. I'm looking forward to working with our mentors to see exactly what they do day in and day out. We also talked about the big event at the end a little bit more. We came to the conclusion that it may be too difficult to manage doing the event on campus at USD just because of the time frame we're working with and law finals as well. Regardless, we came up with an alternative idea of having the event off campus - maybe somewhere down in Mission Beach at the Wavehouse to attract a variety of people..not just students and the close community of USD. I feel this would be far more effective. I also feel we should focus on getting the word out about DiscoverSD since this is more in our generation. Hopefully on Monday we'll have a better sense of the event and be able to gather more details as it is going to creep up on us quite soon! Anyways, all is going great. I'm excited to start in our groups next week and see what kind of projects we'll be working on.

-Sarah

week 2

Hello!!

I enjoyed the meeting we had on Monday at UT San Diego. Again, I could feel how all of us, both USD students and UT San Diego workers, were very excited with the project and had everything well prepared. I liked the presentation about the San Diego market. I’m sure it helped us understand the characteristics and major trends of people in San Diego. This will be of great help when doing our project but also as a general knowledge to better understand the city in which we live.

The training today was also great! I enjoyed it a lot. Especially because they combined lectures with interactive activities that kept us all focused, having fun and learning at the same time. I was lucky to do an activity within a group composed of some USD students and some UT San Diego workers. Getting to work with them, understanding how they think, building up on their proposals, and preparing a presentation with them was very enriching. I must also say that they were all very nice with us and treated us as if we were at their level, asking us for our opinions and taking into consideration all of our proposals.

With respect to the event, I think that doing it off campus around the beach would be great. We will definitely attract more people from other universities if we do it there and the landscape is very pretty and very “San Diego”. I know of a place called “Fiesta Island” in mission bay where USD organized a bonfire some days ago. I couldn’t go but they told me that the place was nice so maybe we could also check it.

I’m looking forward to next week!!

Week 2

This week has been a great way to really get a feel for the goals of UT San Diego. Over the weekend I attended the Successful Aging Expo. It was so interesting to see the large volume of people the event attracted, the demographic it appealed to, and the vendors that came out to support them. Despite not being in the expo's target market, I thought that the give-aways at the event were relevant to any age. Something for us to consider as we plan our end of semester event is to definitely include as many free products as possible, as they are more likely to attract college students than things you have to pay for.

Today I went to the Sales Conference and was very impressed by the interesting, pertinent information that was presented. The Creative Development seminar was thought-provoking and I really enjoyed the interactive aspect of it. It was actually fun to get to design a marketing plan for an fictional company and try to address the marketing issues they might encounter.

I'm really excited to break into our groups next week and work more closely with smaller segments of UT San Diego.

Week 2

Hello everyone!

This second week working with UT has been great. I feel like we're really starting to get into the swing of things and I'm excited to put all of our ideas into action. On Monday during the meeting it seemed that there was a general consensus that we will be hosting the end of the semester event off campus. I commented that the Wave House might be a good idea and one of the women also suggested Mission Bay Park. I think both of these would be great options because it is an area that is highly populated with USD students and we could also attract the general public.  We obviously need to get a decision made about location and date pretty soon here so we can get started on all of the other elements of the project. Everyone seemed excited and filled with great ideas and I think if we all work hard we can make this event something very valuable for UT.

I attended one of the Sales Training workshops this morning and it was really interesting. I felt like I was actually learning about the process and everyone was eager to hear our ideas. They were definitely excited to have "fresh minds" (as they called us) in attendance and seemed happy that we took the time to show up. They included us in all of their exercises and I think we did pretty well. They were helpful and encouraging and they even seemed impressed at some of our ideas. It is wonderful for them to be so inclusive and really show that they value our input. It is a true sign of how much potential we have to make a difference for UT as a whole and I am eager to see how we live up to it.
One final note is just a reminder that we need to remain professional when we are in those situations. They are giving us a great opportunity and it is vital that we give them the respect and attention that they would expect from any of their employees.

Happy hump day! Hope you all have a great rest of your week.

Week of 2/13/12

Hope everyone had a fabulous Valentines Day! 

I thought the trip to the UT office this Monday was very helpful. I particularly enjoyed the presentation about the markets in San Diego. It is amazing how much San Diego has to offer. I thought it was interesting to learn about the high connectivity in San Diego, and various other high national rankings. I think it was also helpful to learn that the UT San Diego audience is mostly affluent and well educated. It was helpful to get an idea of how San Diego stands out from other markets and how UT San Diego uses that to attract new customers including national companies and brands. Here are a few more notes I took that I think will be helpful for planning the event, and for starting our rotations this week:

Overall Goal: Transition advertisements to online

Sales Goal: How can we connect our customers to their desired audience?

They asked us to think about the Purpose of the Event- Here is my vision:
Purpose for UT: Promote the Discover SD brand to a younger audience
Purpose for Vendors: Exposure to a young demographic living in San Diego
Purpose for Audience: Learn about Discover SD and what is has to offer as well as find out about other companies that may have something they are looking for.

I really like the idea of having the event to promote Discover SD. I also like the idea of having the event focus on a healthy lifestyle. We could have vendors with healthy food options, local gyms/yoga studios/ restaurants and more.

I am excited to begin our rotation this week. Hope to see you all at the luncheon today!

Week 2

Hey so I am super excited to start our rotations with UT next week! Getting our badges makes it seem so much more official!

 I mentioned in our meeting yesterday I contacted one of the members of students affairs who responded back to me with a list of questions that needed to be answered by today! However UT seemed to not be worried and knew that could not be done. Therefore, they said we will have to take another route to get the event passed- which they have done in the pass. If not, the event will be held off campus. Also, we got approval from MKT CLUB on campus just in case we need to be affiliated with a student organization.

We have been given some "homework" to attend the interactive sales conference which will be very interesting to see today!

-Anchal

Perhaps you all can use this in your conversations with the UT San Diego people as you help them whittle their facebook pages and make one that is more full of impact.

How to build a fan-worthy facebook page

UT Expo

I attended the Union Tribune's Successful Aging Expo today! The event was much bigger then I expected. Not only did they have multiple rooms with various speakers all throughout the day, but they also had a ton of different vendors. The Grand room was set up with all of the various booths to walk through and learn about the various products and services. For example, the different booths had things such as food to taste test to massage tables. I really liked the set up of the booths and the multitude of choices. The people at the event were very engaged and involved with the different vendors.
From this event I took away that UT most definitely is able to help provide us with the resources we need to make an amazing event. We should definitely get many people to participate in having a booth. It will be a great way for the different advertiser and daily deal people to get their products and services out to students. I also really liked he stage set up. It was a great way to present certain products to the people walking around and to do raffles.
What did you all take away from the event?

Mgilchrist Week 1

The tour of the UT offices was great! I feel like we are starting to get a good feel for the project ahead and I am excited to get the ball rolling. The facilities were different than I thought they would be, but it was awesome to see the reality of how a large media company like UT is structured. It was also really great to see how happy some of the employees were to have a group of young people coming in to help out. During the meeting in the board room it was encouraging to see how excited the executives are to start working with all of us. They seem to be placing a great deal of trust in our abilities and I am looking forward to making a difference for the company as a class.

Everyone seems enthusiastic and eager to start planning the event for the end of the semester and there were many great ideas put on the table. I think that having the event off campus could have great potential. They made a good point suggesting that we involve more than just USD students. I think that if we work hard to promote and find a venue that is appealing to our age group we could manage a sizeable turnout. I have spoken with the heads of USD Radio already and they would love to be involved and help promote in any way that we might need. I can’t wait to starting work with our groups and I am anxious to see what we can all do with this opportunity!

Day One

Hello fellow interns! The tour was an awesome start to our up incoming experience we are embarking on at the Union Tribune! The entire staff seemed really pumped to have us and very organized. They are definitely excited to work with us and not only teach us valuable lessons in terms of being a member of an important business team but seem very open to hearing our ideas and trying to implement them in their company. I am now really excited to see what they have in store at their event this weekend to get an idea of what we can do with our event.
One idea I wanted to throw out on the table was to possibly do our event off campus like they mentioned. This might be a good idea in order to get the students at the other colleges surrounding our area involved as well. We could potentially even host it at a venue such as the wave house? I just think that we are totally capable of getting not only USD involved at this event but UCSD and SDSU as well! Looking forward to our first official day in our groups on monday.

Visit to UT San Diego: 2/8/12

I really enjoyed the visit to the office yesterday. I think that this experience will be fun, but more importantly, I think it will be very valuable to me. I really appreciate how seriously the UT staff takes this project, it makes me excited to work with their team. They seem to have put a lot of time and effort in developing the program for us. I also really like how prepared they are for us to begin working. It seems that they have put a lot of effort into creating worthwhile projects for us to undertake. They have also left us room to be creative with the group project. I am very interested to see what each group comes up with.

This weekend's event  "Successful aging" will be a great opportunity for us to see how they produce events, and will provide a larger scale example of what we might plan at the end of the semester.

I think it will also be interesting to see how classes we have taken, and things we have learned in school up to this point will help us through this process. I have already thought about which classes and projects I have done have set me up with a solid foundation to begin this experience. I am very excited to see how this semester plays out.

See you all at the event this weekend! 

TJ's Week 1

Upon yesterday's introduction and tour in the UT San Diego building I have come to the conclusion that the company is definitely in flux. The DiscoverSD.com offices are nearly finished and there is plenty of extra room for more offices and/or storage. I am excited to see how the company continues to evolve, especially since we are all going to partake in that process. The downstairs lobby had more of an investment bank feel than that of a newspaper, except of course for the ancient printing machines arrayed by the doors. Something to note: the young model-esque secretary in the lobby who was being trained by her much older predecessor seemed to allude to UT's rebranding strategy (in my opinion).

The human resources manager who showed us around seemed to have worked for the company for a while, since he knew just about everything about the building (what used to be here, what's going to be there). Another thing to note was the sheer excitement and willingness to listen that the managers possessed. It seems as though this class is going to play a big part in the company's marketing efforts while they move forward with the new changes taking place. I look forward to attending the event this weekend to see how UT San Diego appeals to their aging market, it will help diversify our experience since we will be honing in on the young adult category.

Oops! I accidentally posted on the wrong blog, here's what I said earlier this morning:

I picked up one of a copy of the UT San Diego newspaper yesterday to do some investigation. I like how they structure the overall layout of the front pages for their various sections. I feel like the bold brightly colored headers make it more aesthetically appealing at a glance, specifically for readers within the 20-25 year old age range, especially when compared to a more "serious" paper like the Wall Street Journal which has more of a black and white look.

When looking through the paper, I didn't see any mention of their facebook page(s) or anything really about discoverSD or their daily deals program. The closest thing I saw was an advertisement mentioning how you can opt to have their Sunday ads/coupons sent to your cell phone, or view them online.One section that seemed somewhat related and would probably be the best place to target 20-25 year olds was the "Night and Day" Weekly Guide,where they discussed local events dealing with food and the arts.

Week 1- Sean Sales

This is a very exciting opportunity that we have for us, and as in everyone else I am excited for it. It was a great day getting to look at the Union Tribute offices and see everything from the boardroom to the printing room. We have a lot to learn, a lot to gain and as well a lot to give from this opportunity. I really enjoyed meeting all the directors, presidents, etc. during the end and have the ability to hear what they are excited to gain from this experience. You can tell that they are really looking forward to working with us. Their excitement makes me want to do my best this semester for them and work hard. As most of you are saying we should get this project started ASAP and get the dates and stuff going. We should look into meeting real soon during class hour to sit down and see what the best day/time/area/etc. would really work and benefit UT San Diego. Other then that, I look extremely forward to what’s ahead!