Hi group!

As you may know my team is in the sales department this week and I have done my second ride along yesterday but this time we had to observe people working inside the office so it was less exciting but interesting too. We spent 3 hours observing 3 different people making calls, trying to convince clients to chose their web site or their newspapers to put their ads on and we saw clients coming too to the human resources office. I think that we are going to change on monday and go in the content department and that it's going to be more work because during this week we didn't really have something to do except giving our impressions about what we have seen ! I don't know if one of your team have heard about the event of the end of April because I thought they were supposed to give us their final plan with all of our ideas combined and we haven't talk about it with them since our presentations..

Anyway I hope you're all having a good week ! Have a good week end !

Hi I am SO sorry for blogging so late! seriously went from UT to class to the library to work on a group project. I finally now am able to get to my own computer.

we were given monday off to work on your content project. I was able to finish my article over the weekend after I attended the Busker Festival at Seaport Village. I personally had a BLAST doing this. I had a different outlook doing into the festival knowing that I has certain moitives and tasks to complete such as tweet, take picture and be extra observant. I was able to act like a "news reporter" and talk to the performers who were more than happy to give insight about their experience especially after I told them I am writing an article about them. When we reviewed all of our events, I was so proud of everyone! There were so many amazing event people went to. I thought it was interesting how they told us they could tell by our tweets we were marketing students. Many of our tweets seemed like we were marketing the event and trying to draw and audience rather than report about an event which they were perfectly okay with!

overall I had a great time. I am excited to be able to present this experience at future job interviews.

content week 2

This week my team continued to work in the content group.  Last week our group learned about journalism and reporting and this week we put it into action!! Each of us had to choose an event to report on, while also tweeting and taking photos at the same time.  At first it was a bit difficult to multitask all of these things, but as the event went on it got easier to get information, as well as inform the public.  For my event, I went to the grand opening of the store, Graffiti Beach.  It is located in South Park and supports emerging designers and artists.  They decided to open this past weekend because there was an annual spring walkabout, which attracted a ton of attention to the new opened store.  Many of the designers in the store take an eco friendly approach, such as Beatrice Holiday, who supports riding bikes whenever possible, and makes all of her jewelry out of the inner tubes of bicycle tires.  There next event will be held on April 7^th, so if any of you would like to check it out feel free to ask me any other questions :)  Hope you all had a great week!  I think my group moves to the marketing department next week… yayy!! 

3/28 content

Hey everybody this this week was really fun. I had a great time going to the event and writing the article. i admit that the live tweeting was a little more difficult then i expected. i was told today during our presentations that me tweets were to factual and didn't show enough personality, which is true i tried to just report facts it didn't even occur to me that people would never follow a reporter that was not at least some what entertaining. I know that a couple of other people in the two content groups also express some difficulty in getting the hang of live tweeting. Over all every body did a great job on the presentations today, Keala did a awesome job on the video of the Filipino cultural clubs play.  All in all it was a great experience to learn about how journalism works in the modern era. I really enjoyed that they let us do some time in the content department, even thou we are all in business i felt that i learned a lot and it would of been a shame to intern at a news paper not knowing how to actually report. I'm excited to go to the marketing department next week and see how my years of learning in the class room stacks up to real life professional work.

Sales Section

This week was informal for our meeting times in the sales rotation. However, each of us will be working one on one with a sales professional. On Friday, I will be attending a multiple hour conference call discussing a sales event. The ride along did not work out with my sales person due to a scheduling conflict, but I am grateful for the opportunity to attend a "real life business conference." We will reconvene together as a group on Monday to talk about what we learned and the experiences we were fortunate enough to encounter. - I will update you guys after Friday!

Marketing Department - week 2

This week we presented our pitches for our products that we were assigned. As I said before, I was assigned to the Padres iPad App. (that technically does not exist). In order to complete the U-T's marketing strategy for this app, I had to do a lot of research on other apps that had surfaced in the same niche market. These apps includes, MLB "At Bat 12" and "San Diego Baseball Live". Both of the apps were well put together and would be stiff competition for the U-T.

In light of this, I told them that what they need to do is differentiate the App as much as possible from its competitors. It needs to become a "go to" spot for all padres fans that live in San Diego. I told the U-T that their strength was in the content that they already had access to due to the nature of their business and they needed to capitalize offering a one-of-a-kind experience for the user.

Lastly, I offered up the idea of the U-T iPad app annexing the Padres app. If you guys saw TJ's post below, the app is set up like a checkerboard. I think that if one of those squares could be dedicated to this digital magazine about the padres, it would drive a lot more downloads to the U-T app rather then forcing people to download another app that they would have to check for information. Also I thought this would somewhat prevent a potential failure in a market that is already full of baseball apps that are credible and well thought out.

Overall, it was cool to investigate this product market and I also learned a lot about what a good presentation looks like. It needs to be short, simple, to the point, and incorporate visuals so that the listener is not bored.

I'm excited to start sales next week!

Em

Marketing Dept, Group 2

Today we gave our final presentations to the marketing department! These presentations were marketing plans for the products that were assigned. Mine was on the UT San Diego website. After doing a practice presentation for our group on Monday, we were given a little bit of feedback to fine tune things before our presentation today.

In researching the UT San Diego website, I focused on a plan that tried to draw in more visitors, more page views per visitor, and a younger demographic. I presented an overall theme that included repositioning the website as "Your Website", a resource for people to go to for anything and everything they wanted to know about San Diego. It used more individual recommendations, personalization, and integration with social media to create a more individualized and connected experience for the users.

I proposed a couple ways to complete this goal. One was to design the website in a way that had bigger, bolder headings that attracted people to browsing areas of the website, particularly in areas of the site that competed with advertisements. I also suggested more linkage and recommendations to articles next to different features of the site to increase visitor's tendency to click around more. Because UT San Diego is going to move to an online subscription program, which charges frequent users as opposed to generating revenue entirely off advertising, I really focused on wanting to make sure people stayed on the site, grew accustomed to the site, and got to the point where they relied enough on the site to want to invest in a subscription.

Other ways I recommended doing this was by further integrating social media and taking advantage of it to bring users back with different articles of interest. I also suggested a few more tips on making the website a little more personable. Overall, this was a really great hands-on experience; the feedback of the department in terms of our ideas and presentation skills was very valuable as well.

St Judes Letters

For the content section, I covered the USD greek week letter writing event. At UT today they critiqued us on our live tweeting and photos. They mentioned that many of us tweeted very promotional tweets. They were amused how market oriented we are, which makes sense because many of us are marketing majors. I was fortunate enough to have tweeted in a journalistic manner and have covered the event fully from beginning to end. They really liked how I had a clear timeline of events. However, some of the other students did a much better job at including @ tags of performers or other people at the event. Overall, we all did a good job at the tweets. Personally I did find it difficult to tweet and get the info I needed for my write up. I felt like I was so focused on tweeting and taking good pictures that I did not have enough time to talk to as many students about the event as I would have liked. A few other students like Emily also mentioned that they felt this way in class today. It was a good learning experience to have to do all three at once though!

I really liked the critique on our pictures. I have personally taken a few photo classes and was very into that part of the assignment. My photo of the 6 year old cancer survivor, Gavin Ambrose, tye-dying a shirt at the event was well received by Michael who was in charge of our pictures. He said that they would definitely send that in to use. I also really enjoyed Anchal's pictures. She did a great job at using the grid they explained to us in her shots.

Concept week 2

This week we were still working with the concept team. They gave us Monday off so we could finish up our event report and finalize our photographs and everything. The event I covered was the 6th annual Seaport Village Busker Festival which took place on Saturday March 24-Sunday March 25 from 12-5pm. I mainly focused on the Kamikaze Fireflies act which was 2 performers who did stunts such as fire hula-hooping and fire juggling and kept the crowd entertained the whole time. I really enjoyed the concept part of this rotation, it was fun being able to act like a reporter for a day and tweet about the event, cover it with the photographs we submitted and to write an article about it. It was very informative and I learned a lot about live tweeting and how to capture the moment with memorable photographs that represent what was going on at the event. I look forward to the marketing portion next week

Project presentation- Content rotation

Today we presented event project in the content rotation. There were 3 components to the project:

1. Live Tweets: We were to tweet seven times over the course of the event we attended. I found this aspect of the project to be very useful. This is a skill I could definitely see using later on at a job. It is also one that need practice! I learned how much focus on detail as well as overall understanding the event. It is was very difficult to ignore what we have learned as marketers and promoters in order to provide objective tweets from a journalistic perspective.

2. Photo Journalism: This was my favorite aspect! I love taking photos, and it was very interesting to see what a news paper is looking for in terms of photos. It is important to capture the over all feel and scope of the event, as well as important details that provide insight into the way the event was run or what happened at the event. I enjoyed looking at everyones photos and finding out what sort of angle the took to the events.

3. Last was to write the article. This was difficult to do in the time frame they provided. past articles I have written require weeks of preparation in order to interview the right people and get the necessary details to be prepared. I am interested to see how they grade the articles based in the short notice we were given (one weekend).

It was great to see everyone's work today. I think everyone did a fabulous job, and I am very excited to begin the marketing rotation!

TJ's Marketing Week 2

For my presentation, or "pitch", I did a PowerPoint product SWOT analysis for the Union Tribune's iPad app. I'm looking for a way to post PowerPoint's online so you guys can check it out and see what you'll be doing in the Marketing rotation (if you haven't already gone through it) so if you're interested check back in throughout the week! Basically, here is what I found:

Union Tribute iPad App
Strengths:
Content- very straightforward, app's "bread and butter", scroll through navigation
Weather Bar- accessible from any section, surf report included, covers entire week
Pictures section- looks great on HD display, showcase for photojournalists, simple captions
Weaknesses:
Ratings- only received 2/5 stars, negative comments
Layout- different than websites layout, disorganized, not user friendly (all user comments)
Interface Difficulty- checkerboard layout too much too soon for older demographic
Opportunities:
Layout=Easy fix- people appreciate simplicity when it comes to the news, use WSJ's app ideas
Threats:
News Channel apps- not many newspapers have surfaced apps yet, but news channels certainly have, and they have the advantage of posting videos whereas we only have content. (channel 6 news, KUSI)

Sales Ride Along

Hello!

On Monday I got to go on my first sales ride along. The name of the person who I accompanied is David and he focused on Auto sales. Since I'm not much of a car person I was a bit concerned about how much I would really get from the experience, but I turned out to be pleasantly surprised with how things went. We started out in the UT office where he explained some of the logistics about selling ad space. After we discussed the process, we got in the car and headed to our first client.

The first sales manager we met with was from De la Fuente Cadillac. David told me how the sales manager here was very old fashioned and it definitely showed both in our interaction with him and with the overall look of the dealership. We discussed ways to draw consumers for their upcoming tent sale and in the end came up with an informal design prototype and a set of dates to publish the ads.

After this meeting, David didn't have anything scheduled, but decided to visit some of his other clients to talk about how previously purchased ads worked for them and to try selling future ad space. He said putting in the extra effort to meet directly with clients even just to show interest was a key to his success. Doing this helps build relationships and shows his clients how he has their best interest in mind.

We also chatted about a career in sales in general since David has been in the industry since he graduated college. It was really interesting to hear how he worked his way up to the position he currently holds. He also explained some of his favorite perks such as the freedom of not being confined to a desk from 9-5, the flexible schedule, and the overall independence. I never really considered a career in sales, but after this experience I definitely have more interest.

I look forward to reading about everyone's experiences this week!

Week 7

This week I am working in the content section. We were assigned to cover an event that would appeal to a wide range of people, live tweet at least seven tweets from the event, take photographs, and write an article. Like Kelli, I also chose to write about the Greek Week letter writing campaign for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. I thought it would be a great way to show how the Greek community at USD is coming together for a cause.

The event was on Wednesday, March 20th and although this was the third year I've participated in it, it was exciting to look at it from the eyes of a reporter, rather than just a student. I truly paid attention to what was being said, looking for good photo opportunities and people to interview. Paying such close attention to all the little details that I haven't noticed in the past has made me realize what an impact this event has on the St. Jude community.

ride along 2

Today I have had my second ride along with a sales person called Kevin. I have been reading Micheal's description and we did pretty much the same thing, except that in my case we didn't go for lunch and we didn't get to go to vistit any client. He actually had no appointments with any of his clients so it made little sense to go around the city without a goal. Instead, we went upstairs to the UT's cafeteria and we talked about sales and recruitment.

As Michael explained, he also gave me the "Sales 101" lesson which was very useful. It was funny because he asked me to tell him how I would sell a pen to someone and then after that, taught me how it should really be done. He said things that make a lot of sense but sometimes you don't think of. Asking good questions is definitely key if you want to be in the sales business. After knowing about the customer and its needs, you can start providing a (customized) solution that the customer will be happy to acquire.

After that, he also gave me tips about recruitment processes. He told me that it is crucial to have confidence in yourself whenever you are in an interview. He said that we are usually very worried because we don't have much work experience and that we shouldn't be too worried about that since we are students and that is normal. Instead, we should try to focus on the accomplishments we have made in life and sound interested and motivated. Also, we should prepare well the reasons why the interviewer should hire us. Asking good questions is, again, something that can make a difference.

Although at first I was a little disappointed about not being able to do a real ride along, I think it has been a very interesting experience and I have learned a lot out of it.

I hope your weeks are fun too!

Article: content

I attended the St. Judes Letter writing event at USD for the content section. I really enjoyed live tweeting from the event I covered! I ended up doing more then the seven tweets and even added a picture to one of them. I thought It was a good way also to keep track of what was going on all night for myself. Some of my followers on twitter even mentioned to me after the event that they saw all my tweets on twitter and really enjoyed them.

The event went really well. More letters were made then the previous year, so hopefully more money will end up being donated! I had fun interviewing the various heads of the events and the participants at the event. The key speaker was a mother and her two kids, one who had cancer and has overcome it because of St. Judes. The whole event was really inspiring and I am excited to write my article on it!

Sales Ride Along #1

On Wednesday this week, I was able to go on my first sales ride along. I was paired up with a guy named Kevin who is a retail sales executive. I thought we would be driving around seeing a few of his clients, but the afternoon went differently than I expected. First, he took me to a Vietnamese restaurant for lunch where we both had some pho. During lunch he gave me a run down of sales, which he called Sales 101. He started off by explaining that sales is like a V. First, you have to earn the right to speak. Basically, a potential client is a lot more likely to listen to you if have sold your product to well know clients. He said that when you start in sales you may not have a lot of big clients, but you at least have to earn some right to speak. Next, you must find the need. To do this, you ask a series of questions to find out where any potential weaknesses are in the business. Then you build the need based on what information you have gathered at this point. This means that you guide the client towards the conclusion you want them to come to, but you want to make sure they arrive at the conclusion on their own. Finally, make a solution for them and recap. Kevin said the most important part of the process, which is also the most difficult, is asking the right questions to find the need.

We did eventually visit one of his clients, but we did not stay for very long. Kevin was seeing a client who just signed a year contract for a pay per click campaign. She was not thrilled with how the web page looked that was developed for her, but Kevin handled the situation very well. He wasn't thrilled with the web page either, and he told her to send in her feedback about what she would like to be changed and they would do it for her. His client's goal is to generate leads so he also assured her that the attractiveness of web page was not as important as generating traffic to the page. He said that his number one priority was to get quality people calling her about business. Kevin definitely put a lot of items into action that he previously told me about, and this was really cool to see.

After talking to Kevin, sales sounds like an interesting but difficult profession to go into. He said that starting out is the most difficult, which makes sense. Personally, I do not think I would like to go into sales. Kevin said that if a person does go into sales, then he or she needs to be prepared for a lot of rejection. He told me that it was good if a person made 100 calls and three people agreed to meet with him or her. Despite the difficulties associated with sales, I do think it would be beneficial to have experience with sales. A person can use this knowledge to his or her advantage especially to become a better buyer. For example, sales experience would definitely be beneficial when buying a car. You could read the salesman better, and by doing this be a better buyer. Kevin also said that it's easier to tell when someone is being genuine or just feeding you bs. If the opportunity presented itself, I could see myself going into sales, but it would only be for a limited amount of time. Kevin, along with many other people, always tell me to follow my passion. I think this is important if you want to be happy in life. Overall, my first sales ride along was very enjoyable and I am looking forward to my next one.

Sales Week 1

Hi, everyone!

This week my group is working with the Sales department of U-T San Diego. When we went in on Monday our mentors, Paul and Rich, showed us a presentation highlighting the strength an advertisement published with them has compared to their competitors. The data they showed us was very impressive--I can see why so many companies chose to advertise with U-T San Diego! We were also told we get to tag along on sales calls. This will be an exciting opportunity to participate and learn more about what a career in sales involves.  I'm going on my first one this Monday and looking forward to it very much (especially after hearing about the wonderful lunches the first group got to enjoy).

What is it about blogging that I just can't remember/get the hang of?

Anyway, my group is in Marketing this week and it seems like its going to be really interesting. I am doing a presentation on DiscoverSD--talking about the challenges of targeting a younger demographic and some of the opportunities that UT could capitalize on. Essentially, we are doing a SWOT analysis. I am going to highlight some of their strong points, but mostly focus on where they can improve and what might be stopping them from from reaching their goals. For example, they want to target the 20-25 year old age range, but the DSD site is very busy with almost TOO many options. It needs to be condensed in a way that is simple and clean looking.

I know at least one person did DSD for the Marketing section in the first rotation. If you read this, maybe give me some of your ideas! The more of the same ideas and critiques the more likely UT is to implement changes.

Hi group !

My team is in the Sales department this week and today was my first observation day. I was following a girl called "Cortney" I don't know if any of you was with her during the last weeks but she is very nice !! She is working for automotive advertising so basically she sells spaces in UTSD Newspapers so that automotive company can put ads in it. Today she just had to go in some companies to show them the final visual result of their ads that was going to appear in the News tomorrow. We visited Porsche, Audi, Range Rover and Mitsubishi to give them the samples of the ads and it was very cool to be outside and just observing how she works. I hope that I will have the chance to see her meeting clients and negociate next week, I think this could be very interesting ! I realize that a lot of people in UTSD who have as clients people who work in automotive field were women and I think that this is for a good reason..

I hope you are all having a good week !

See you !

UT Sales

Hey Class! This week at the UT there was not a huge update from my team. We began our second rotation and were assigned the Sales division. On Monday we addressed the goals and background of sales at The UT. Our mentors produced a powerpoint to us that earlier they presented to Lexus. They wanted to relay the goal of sales in terms of marketing and different corporations. The mentors showed us physical statistics and graphs on the marketing and sales division success throughout the UT. For the next two weeks, we will each be given the opportunity to do ride alongs of sales calls with the professionals. I am really looking forward to this experience because I currently work in sales. I am excited to share my background experience of past work and learn about new sales tactics of a different corporation. My first ride along should be Monday!

content week1

Both Monday and today we worked in the content side of the UT department.  We learned about the different aspects of journalism, news, and reporting.  Today, what I found interesting was the side to photojournalism.   They want images that tell a story, but basically in picture form.  (I love photography, but this is a different side to what I have ever done before!)  Hopefully through this assignment we can create a story that captures the audiences attention as well as tells a story through our set of pictures.  Next week I know I will have more to write about since we will have to cover and write about an event between now and next Wednesday, but mainly this week we just learned the steps on how to complete our story! I have an idea of what event I’m going to do, but don’t want to give too much away right now ;) Our instructors really stressed ACCURACY and getting all the details.  I think as a group we will be able to produce great stories, I’m excited to see what events everyone decides to write on! Good luck team!!!! :)

TJ's Marketing Week 1

Today we finally received the feedback from our Content rotation and project. It was good to hear that we all did fairly well, I think most of us earned an A or high B. As far as the marketing rotation goes, our project is going to consist of a presentation regarding one of UT's products. This presentation is basically put in place to improve on the existing products UT already owns, operates, and distributes.
I'm excited that I was assigned the Union Tribune's iPad app since I'm interested in technology/social media. Our first assignment was to research our products and find room for improvement. There's a lot to be said about the iPad app, especially considering it only received 2/5 stars on the Apple App ratings.

Pros: The weather and surf reports are customizable and quite useful, you can interact with other readers through comments, there is a lot of content UT has access to, the "todays photos" section looks awesome on the iPads HD screen.
Cons: Bad layout, different layout and content from the website (users want to see some continuity), not very user friendly.

I plan on using a SWOT analysis to present my findings to the managers, more updates to come!

March 21, 2012

This was our first week in the Content group. They assigned us to write a report on an event of our choice and tweet about it, send in pictures, and write a narrative about the experience. We need to search out the Who What When Where Why and How of the story. They taught us about how to tweet with hashtags and get the Entirety, Details, Frames, Angle, of the photos and make it Timely. We learned to not add any embellishments and not write with any personal opinion. What they taught us is an accurate account of what happened, and I am excited to contribute!

Today I did my first ride along with a sales person in charge of the auto business. It was very nice! We went to several car dealers to do some work. The person I was shadowing showed the car responsibles how there ads were going to look and the people working in the car company said wether or not they liked it, if they wanted anything changed, etc. I think it was nice because we got to do something very different than being in class, and especially today that the weather was wonderful. It was nice talking to the sales person in a relaxed way, getting to know what he does, who he likes it, where has he been working previously...Since it was only me and him, we could talk in a comfortable and relaxed manner and say what we really believe.

My next ride along is on monday. I'm looking forward to this one too. I would like it to be with a sales person in charge of a different business than cars, since this is what I have been doing today and I would like to learn more about different sectors.

I hope your days were nice too! :)

Marketing Department week 1

Well hello there!
Monday started our first week in the marketing department. Our group was assigned to a U-T product or brand and it is our job to enhance the marketing on those products and give them feedback. My product is the Padres App that U-T is wanting to create for the iPad. They want to create a weekly journal that has lots of visual interest with vivid pictures and would provide information about the Padres.
In order to get a better idea of the product, I looked at other apps and websites about the padres. It was somewhat disheartening to see how many there were, so U-T would definitely be a later starter in this market. The biggest competition they face is the actual MLB app that provides everything and anything baseball related for every type of smart appliance. This app is also advertised on the Padres website. I think that U-T faces many challenges with this app because I simply do not know how successful it can really be with all of these apps on the market.
I think I have a difficult task ahead of me in coming up with a marketing plan for this app. I hope I can think of something creative enough and clever enough to help U-T really differentiate themselves from the competitors.
Thats all for now.
Em

Content

This week, I have started the content rotation. We are learning how to write an article about an event, tweet about the event, and then do a photojournalism project as well. This rotation is very different than the sales rotation. The content rotation is much more organized, and a bit more rigid. I think it will be a good experience and very interesting to compare the rotations. For this weekend, I will attend the event that I choose to cover! The article is due next Wednesday, more to share then about than the event and article process.

Content week #1

Monday was our first day in content. We were given our syllabus and discussed what is our assignment in this rotation. We then when over the basic concepts on what is news, a story and etc. It was helpful because it gave us an idea what they are looking for in our assignment. I never knew there was so much extra thought put into writing a story in a newspaper! And today we went over the twitter requirement, they had two of their reporters explain how to tweet and the basic idea what is expected from our tweets. We also went over how to take a photo and what to capture in a picture. I am excited to right this article but at the same time feel like we are on a time crunch. They want us to go to an event by monday. Unfortunately there is not much going on at USD this weekend and so many of us will have to look for an outside event to report about. I am glad we are given a mentor who we can contact and ask advice! I am excited to see what everyone is going to write about, I am sure everyone is going to do a wonderful job!

Concept week 1

This week we started in the concept group. On Monday we went over the basics of what news was and what makes a story newsworthy, so on and so forth. We went over the idea of relevancy and making sure that when you write a story, that you have all the facts otherwise you (as a reporter) lose credibility and also the source whom you're reporting for (UT) can lose credibility also. We were given a rubric for what we would be doing in the concept portion of our rotation and were told we'd be covering an event and writing a story, tweeting and documenting it through pictures. Today as we t into more derail and

Group 2- Marketing Dept.

This week, my group started with the marketing department. We were each assigned a UT product; my assignment was the UT San Diego website. We briefly listened to some of the different challenges and goals for each of the products. For the website, the main goals that UT SD wanted me to focus on were increasing visitors, increasing the number of pages read by each visitor, and appealing to a younger demographic. We asked some different questions- our group's products consisted of the Contest department, the new SD Padres app, a UT app, and DSD. We got to hear about all of them and ask questions about what challenges they've had. This Wednesday, we brought in a list of challenges with the product that we found upon doing our research. I found some challenges with the overall visual impact of the website. I thought there was too much competition with ads, the headlines weren't eye-catching enough. However, the site is extremely well organized. I came up with a couple ideas to maybe personalize the website a little more so that people browse the site as opposed to reading one article. We are supposed to be reviewing them today, and we will be presenting power points with a proposed marketing campaign for each of the products. I've really enjoyed researching the website so far and feel like I'm learning a lot just thinking hands on about the product.

First Week in Sales

On Monday, we were introduced to the Sales Department. They showed us two power points that they actually used in sales presentations to companies. Both power points were very informative and I learned a lot more about the UT. It's amazing how far ahead they are of their competitors. I think it's crazy that UT's mobile app alone gets more traffic each month than any other media website in San Diego. This gives UT a huge amount of leverage when selling to potential clients. Both presentations were very convincing, and if I was a potential client then I would definitely advertise with the UT.

We also learned that we will be doing two ride alongs over the next two weeks with a person in the sales department. My first ride along is this afternoon. I am really excited to see what a sales rep does on a day to day basis at the UT. I have no idea where I will be going today, but I will find out shortly. During the next two weeks in the sales department, it appears that our group won't need to do much if any outside work, but the time spent on the ride alongs will make up for it. I hope everyone else is enjoying their new rotations. I am excited to hear more about them as the next two weeks progress.

Have a Great Day!!!

Week 6

For the next two weeks my group will be working in the content section of the UT. On Monday, we received a syllabus with an outline of what the editors hope we learn and accomplish while spending time with them. I really appreciated the structure the syllabus provided, and now I know exactly what is expected of me. On Monday we discussed the basic elements of journalism: what is journalism, what is news, what is reporting, and all of the different sources one must consider when writing a story. I think it is very important to learn the fundamentals of journalism before we are given our own writing assignment. Today we will be learning about the integration of social media into reporting and how to use tools like Twitter while covering an event. I'm really excited to use these new skills to write my own story and take pictures!!

Content

Our group moved to the content section this week. The UT team working on content was very organized and had a syllabus and other handouts and a homework assignment for us. This section seems very hands on as we will be covering an event of our choice. I have personally never been involved with anything that has had me write a journalism article, so I am looking forward to the new experience. I loved the last groups blogs about the content section. You guys did a good job at letting us know what the are expecting of us and what type of events they are wanting us to cover. The dog show event sounded like a fun idea. I am currently looking into the events coming up this weekend in San Diego and have yet to find one that really sticks out to me for this assignment but i'm sure I will find one!

Today, our group has started working with the sales team. They have explained us what their job consists of via several power point presentations. We have had an interesting and lively discussion about demographics and lifestyles in San Diego, advertisements, ways to target certain groups of consumers, etc.

This week and the following, we will be doing ride alongs, "shadowing" true sales people and learning what they do on a daily basis. We will then have to answer some questions about the activity and give some feedback. This sounds very nice and entretaining. I really feel I can get a lot out of this. Going out to the "real world" is definitely something very different from what we have been doing. I also feel we won't have as much of a work load as we had when working in marketing. The drawback here is that the ride alongs take several hours. We have very busy weeks and this time is not easy to find. Nevertheless, I feel it will be worth it and I'm excited about the program!

Presentations

Hello!

I really enjoyed the presentations. I thought all of us had very good ideas. We all had very professional but at the same time fun and lively presentations. I remeber when we met on monday that some of you were somehow surprised because you thought you were not helping UT San Diego much, while they were teaching you so many things. I'm pretty sure that your opinions changed after our presentations. Those provided many good ideas that they might have never come up with without our help. We provided a fresher, newer, and yonuger point of view. I'm happy about that, since I feel that we are giving them a lot and it is a nice "symbiotic relationship". I'm very excited to see what ideas they are planning to actually implement in the booth! It was funny to see that many of us came up with similar things. It was also nice to have prices! It was a nice surprise. Again, I felt comfortable in my presentation. You all and the UT San Diego people were a nice and warm audience.

Tomorrow my group is starting in the Sales Department. I'm excited to see how it goes and am wanting to learn as much as I can! I hope you all feel the same way.

Good luck tomorrow!!

Presentation Day!

Awesome job on presentations everyone. I really felt each group did a great job and had unique ideas. I like the fact that the panel chose a winning group, but also mentioned they really liked what all the groups came up with and were going to pull ideas from each presentation and make a compilation. I'm hoping we were able to give the staff at UT some helpful ideas/advice to make the most of their booths at the Art Walk and really get their name out there for all audiences to see. I'm excited to see what ideas they choose from each group and how everything pulls together as the event gets closer. I'm interested to see what my group will be working on in Concepts this week. From what we've heard it should definitely be entertaining and very hands-on. Excited to get tossed into a new department!

See you all next week!

Sarah

I think we also need to talk to the people at UT on monday about getting started on the advertisement process of the event! We really need to start getting flyers out to schools and make the facebook event page perfect!

Presentations

Great job everyone!

It was great to hear everyone's ideas about the UT booth at the Art Walk. I think it is smart of their staff to pull ideas from each groups. I thought it was very interesting that 3 out four groups incorporated an art contest. If time permits, I think this would be a great idea. It would not only provide an attraction at the UT booth, but it would also make UT a bit more relevant at the event, given that the newspaper on it's own is not necessarily related to art. I think that the online component to the booth prior to the event will be crucial to the success of the event. I am interested to see how they will choose components of each of the projects.

Presentations

It was a lot of fun putting together the presentation for the artwalk! I was very excited to know that we have a set place and time to where we will be holding the DSD event. Everyone have so many amazing ideas. I am glad they are putting together pieces of everyone's presentation. I am excited to see which parts they decide to implement. I really hope they keep the art contest- which was a common theme. Good job to the winners!!

Presentations

I loved all the presentations and am glad they are going to use some ideas from each! I agree with Breezy that the way group four presented their idea by tying all together with a closing statement was the best way to present. That is indeed a good thing to learn from! I also really liked group 2's powerpoint. I have never seen that website used to create a slideshow and it was much more advanced and business looking. I really hope that UT takes away the social media aspects of our presentations because I do not think they are utilizing Facebook and twitter to there fullest potentials. I think that submitting the artwork to UT via a Facebook page would really generate a lot of traffic to their site.

I really enjoyed hearing the presentations! Our plan was basically to attract different age groups through contests like entering artwork from other colleges to be voted on to win a prize and having kids submit artwork to win seaworld tickets! We were planning on marketing through facebook, twitter and the newspaper to advertise to families and college students. We also were thinking of having a daily deals wheel to win prizes if they sign up for subscriptions, which will help grow the database. I learned a lot about how people prefer presentations to have a plan slide in the beginning and then sum it up at the end - thats what the UT people seem to like so that's good to know for next time. Im excited to see how the event planning goes!

Hi group !

Watching the presentations today was very interesting and as you may have realized, we had a lot of common ideas ! I'm looking forward (like everyone else according to your posts) to seeing all our ideas together for the final event because all groups have done good brainstorming about this and have presented great projects ! As Laurel said, we may have been helped by the fact that we were first in the marketing team and that we already had to do a presentation for them last week but I really don't think that their choice was obvious actually our project had a lot of other groups ideas ! I really liked the idea of the wheel for daily deals and I hope that they will keep it for the final project because it's definitely the kind of things that would make me go to a booth and ice creams too if the weather is as hot as it is supposed to be !

My team is now going to work with the Sales department and I hope it's going to be interesting and fun !

Enjoy your next week ! :)

Presentation Day

It was so exciting today to hear everyone's ideas for the U-T booth's theme. I found it interesting how there were such similar ideas within the different presentations. I really enjoyed coming up with our presentation. My group and I had a great brainstorming session before we began with which allowed us to really develop our ideas as we started making the actual power point. There were several occasions where we started off our sentences warning each other how crazy our ideas were, but in the end we were able to come up with some really creative plans that directly tap into achieving U-T's objectives and allow them the opportunity to work together with their existing clients for Daily Deals as well as an opportunity for attracting new partners within the Little Italy area. I'm delighted we won and even more enthusiastic about the idea of combining components of the other groups' ideas with ours. As the other groups were presenting, there were some interesting points mentioned I hadn't even thought to consider. It will be so fun to all get together and work the booth in April.

week5

Hi guys!

I was really interested to see what everyone would come up with today and thought they all turned out great.  All the groups had so many creative ideas!  I’m interested to see which ones are actually implemented into the booth at the art walk, and think it will be a great experience for us to actually help with the whole process during the event itself.  I really liked the ideas of holding different contests and having people vote on them, but do realize that there could be an issue with time constraints.  Also incorporating USD into the event was an awesome idea as well.  I know for our group, we really tried to stick with having the artsy creative theme, and it seemed like many of the groups did the same.  I think it would be beneficial to UT to have a bigger giveaway at the end of the event as well as smaller ones throughout, just to keep people involved and interact with them throughout the day.  And we all know people participate more when they are given incentives ;) haha.   

Hopefully all of us can gain traffic to the event by telling all of our family and friends about it!  Maybe we could come up with a flyer to put up around school/local businesses/send out to friends & family??   

Excited to switch rotations next week!!  Should be fun to actually follow an event & write up a story/take pics! :)

3/14/2012 presentation day

hey guys! I just want to say great job to all the teams today. I really thought that everybody had great ideas and i cant wait to see how the final plan for the booth incorporates different parts of the other presentations.
       Coming up with ideas for a actual event representing a professional company and not for some class project is intimidating but i feel that my team did a great job of thinking creatively. i think that the shaved ice cart is a real crowd pleaser and would help bring lots of traffic to the booth. i think that getting kids to participate at the booth is key to the success of the project, having children at the booth will mean that a group of parents and grandparents will be available to sign up for subscriptions and learn about discover SD. I think that its going to be a very successful project thou, all the ideas were great and well thought out.
       I cant wait till next week to be apart of the content department. I'm excited because i heard that you lean a lot there. Have a great weekend  everybody.    
 

TJ's Presentation Week

I was actually a bit surprised to see how well every group did on the presentations. Most of the ideas seemed to impress the judges as well as the students in other groups. I was NOT surprised, however, to find that a lot of our ideas surfaced over and over again in each groups presentation...which I attribute to the collective USD mindset and our similar approaches to solving problems, etc.

I was glad to hear that although my group did not "win" (come on! we even used prezi!), that our ideas would still be incorporated and used for the final product. I'm also hoping that our labeled sunglasses idea will stick, mostly because I want a pair. Im also curious to see how they will have us work on the event while still rotating through the remaining sectors, but I'm not too worried since it has worked out so far. Next week my group and I rotate into the Marketing department, so I'm looking forward to seeing how a marketing department actually operates! (Although I've had plenty of prior internships they were in investment banking, aerospace technology, and real estate respectively).
...I became a marketing major for a reason, so lets roll!

Presentation Week Sean Sales

This week was challenging in the fact that for me and I am sure most of you had a load of work to do. (Also the fact it was right after spring break) Getting together on a consistent schedule was a little difficult, but in the end I believe my group did a fantastic job. Creating new ideas for the Art Walk booth was great. We bounced ideas off each other and developed some new things that UT can do for it's booth. As a group our main goal was to be creative and do something different from previous years. We wanted to show that we were thinking outside the box even if they weren't fully impressed with our ideas. We didn't want to shut down old ideas, especially ones that were successful in the past, but we wanted to see what they would think with trying out new ones. I believe our theme of expressing yourself would be a great fit for the art walk. The whole idea was to differentiate ourselves from other booths and create a welcoming atmosphere to bring in people.  We wanted to make it fun, and still keep with the art theme. I also believe every group did a great job in there presentation with fun ideas that all would work real well. I am glad in the end the decided to take parts of each groups ideas to combine and make an extremely successful both. I look forward to hearing on what they decide, and I wanted to congratulate everyone on a great job! I look forward to next week in switching cycles to content. I worked with previous media groups, but never was the one doing the reporting. I am excited to learn!

Presentation Week

It was very fun to hear everyone's presentations today. I enjoyed hearing the creative ideas that each group came up with and am happy for our winning group.

Coming up with this booth idea was a good learning experience for me because I learned how to use Prezi, which is basically the coolest thing ever. In addition to that, our group had a great time brainstorming and coming up with a clear and concise theme for our booths. The thought process behind our booth was not to make it "gimmicky", we wanted it to be simple yet cute. I definitely think that we achieved that message in our branding of UT and the Daily Deals through "Art off the Press" and "Live. Love. SD."

I will be interested to see how all of our ideas are incorporated into the final product and look forward to the art walk.

UT Presentation Day

Hi Class!

Today at the UT was pretty exciting. I thought everyone did a pretty impressive job presenting their group ideas for the upcoming ArtWalk. I gained a lot of experience and learning myself by hearing other's comments and big thoughts. Our group collaborated on several different approaches to make the ArtWalk enjoyable for several different ages and demographics. I think it helped our presentation a lot that we were  first in the Marketing rotation. We gained learning from the marketing team of how to present the introduction and conclusion in ways that are powerful and enticing to a crowd. Overall, I feel that the combination of multiple groups' big ideas will make the ArtWalk one that is exciting and event for many to look forward to. Incorporating all the universities' students to compete to demonstrate their artwork will be a great way to bring young people into this event. In addition, my group thought that the daily deal incentives can be sponsored by DSD and we can more importantly focus on [active SD (outdoor recreation and local hotspots)] to pull in the younger crowd. With incentives, we can help multiple booths receive exposure by people collecting beads to create their bracelets. Our next goal as a group is to become even more creative with incentives for people to submit their emails. We want to make  sure the three divisions of the UT can also come together as one!

Week 5

I was really excited when Dan announced that our final project for the UT had been changed to involve the Little Italy Art Walk. The Art Walk is an event that I personally would love to attend, and I thought that the idea of having each group come up with their own idea would be much more efficient than having twenty people try to come up with one cohesive plan. My group decided that we wanted our booth to have the theme "Express Yourself". We thought that attendees of the Art Walk would be inspired by the art around them and we wanted to give them an outlet to express themselves. Having the walls covered in white butcher paper would be the perfect place for both children and adults to doodle. We also thought they could get their picture taken in front of their artwork, with the UT logo in the picture. Along with the picture, which would be printed instantly as well as uploaded to the internet, we would have white magnetic frames that could be decorated. We thought this would be a wonderful way for them to remember the UT and think of us every time they looked at the fridge and saw the frame and photo. Another way to attract people to our booth would be giving away free shaved ice. We were thinking that in order to receive the shaved ice, the person would need to give their email address using an ipad to ensure legibility. We also came up with a puzzle contest to include a more interactive aspect and ending in the raffle of a Bamboo Create, a tool we believe patrons of the Art Walk would be interested in.

It was great to hear all of the other groups ideas and so exciting that we all came up with such unique ways to promote UT SD. I can't wait to get started working on the booth!

Presentation Week

We definitely had a fun time coming up with a comprehensive idea for the UT San Diego Booth! Our group's focus was to maintain two separate booths in case they were separated, and also to reflect the different demographics and ideas that UT San Diego could portray and mean to different people. This is why we chose to come up with our two different booths, Art Off the Press and Live. Love. SD. For me, I learned a lot just having to practically applying the objectives of the Art Walk booth to a creative idea. It was a very hands-on experience in what it truly means to design a promotional event that is not only fun and engaging, but markets the brand that is sponsoring it. I was so impressed by all the presentations today. It was reaffirming in a way to see some different ideas overlap between groups, and also fun to see what original ideas each group came up with. Congratulations to Group 4 for having such a great theme!

Since I forgot to post on the blog prior to spring break, I also wanted to briefly mention how my experience in the Content department was. It was really interesting to be able to try and cover a story, complete with photos and the incorporation of social media. It was something that as a business major I had never had exposure to. I chose to cover Grandparent's Weekend at USD. As I began my project, you could very quickly see the concepts that the UT had taught us about at work. I had to worry about things such as the comprehensiveness of my story, thorough coverage on a Twitter account, and saw the challenges of carrying out ethical and accurate reporting. The staff at UT USD was very supportive of the results we came in with, and were very sympathetic to a lot of our challenges. It was a great and hands-on way to learn something new.

Class

I hope everyone enjoyed our classroom meeting.

Sales Week 1, Spring Break

Hello Everyone!

I hope all of you are enjoying your spring break! I have started thinking of a concept/theme for the booth, but I will only disclose those ideas to my group. I am really excited that we are doing this project instead of designing our own event. The hardest part about organizing our own event would have been making sure the logistics were sound. Now that we get to run a booth, it allows us to be more creative.

Spring break has already gone by fast, and in one short week all of us will be presenting our themes. I am really excited to see what all of the groups come up with. Once we get back from break, my group will be moving to sales. Based on the blog posts discussing the sales portion, I think it will be a great time. Enjoy the rest of your break, and I will see you all soon!

Week 4

First off, a big thank you to the men of the content department; they were wonderful teachers and mentors for the last few weeks. As I said before the content department had us covering an event, posting on twitter, writing an article, and taking 3 pictures at the event.

I covered An American Night: Ballad of Juan Jose, a play at the La Jolla Playhouse. The play was great but covering the event was harder then I expected. It was intimidating to take pictures of people at the play that I did not know as well as ask them questions about what they thought. However, I got through it and actually had some fun. The article was more difficult to write then what I was expecting because in college we are so used to analyzing everything and this was an assignment that required us to write strictly the facts. It was challenging and I am not sure that I succeed at the assignment. I guess it just takes practice.

I really love that we are designing the UT booth at the art walk instead of putting on our own event. I think that this is a great opportunity to real show off our creative skills. I am so excited!

Em

Week 4 Sean Sales

Last Friday I was introduced to Linda who I shadowed as a Sales Rep. This was a great way to see how the sales of Ads were done. Linda explained a lot to me of things I had no idea about. At first she showed my there new Cherry Picking concept. This concept I believe is going to be real successful in getting clients. Cherry Picking is the idea of using other medians of online media that people in San Diego use to advertise. How this works for example is that if some person reads The LA Times everyday online, UT would be able to sale online Ad space to local San Diego businesses to be shown on LA Times web page. I thought this was a great concept. Though the day Linda was showing me how she works with her clients, and I was surprised to see the great relationship she has with all clients. I was lucky enough that she received a call for a new client and I got to observe her process of working with them. Other then that it was a great way to see sales for the Union Tribute. Next round we will be switching to content. 

Prep for Event

This week I was able to go with the Sales team to go behind the scenes and see all that they do. I was suprised at the relaxed atmosphere and the friendliness of the staff. They also had a great relationship with their clients. On Wednesday we discussed the event. I think its a much more practical idea to have booths at an already existing event than try to create one. Im excited to bring marketing ideas for the UT SD booth at the Little Italy Art Walk in late April and hear everyone's sales pitch! It should be exciting incorporating ways to bring the USD community out to participate.