Wade Young-Jelinek

Learning Goals Reflection 2

In reflecting on my goals for this course, I feel like I have exercised a greater understanding of the larger context in which marketers work. In the group project working with OSLP, I believe I got caught up in the overall organizational, mission, and other issues with the OSLP Arts and Culture Project that it was hard to confine my attention to just that of a marketing consultant. I really was tempted beyond the marketing aspects to try and think of other ways that the organization could remain viable into the future.

I feel like I gained a reasonable idea of the tools used by marketers beyond pamphlets. However, a shower of sprite soda just sounds gross.

I still feel a bit confused about what good and less good marketing plans look like as examples posted on the course website were described by the instructor as ranging in quality from great to less great. It would have been more helpful to examine specific great ones, call out specifics of what was great as well as to call out less great ones and identify just what was less great.

I am quite pleased to have learned that there are such powerful tools built into facebook and email software solutions by which marketers can monitor ongoing marketing operations and make adjustments when things are going off the rails. I remain curious about what other, analog tools might be available.

All in all, I am pleased with the experiences gained in this course, if nothing else in learning that it is generally a bad idea to give a presentation near a room where someone is listening to loudish music. It turns out that that can be very distracting.

Learning Goals

Learning Goals

  • I would like to develop a greater understanding of the larger context in which marketers work and how they influence consumer behavior.
  • I would like to have a better understanding of the tools marketers use beyond posters and pamphlets and why to use them.
  • I would like to have a better idea of what the outcome of a successful marketing plan looks like.
  • I would like to better understand how to create good marketing plans.
    • I would like to learn how to set realistic yet ambitious marketing goals with specific measurable outcomes
    • I would like to learn how to develop appropriate tactical plans to meet goals
    • I would like to learn how to effectively implement tactical plans
    • I would like to understand appropriate benchmarking systems to help determine success/failure
    • I would like to learn how to recognize when a plan is not going as planned and adjust early to ensure ultimate success

 

Learning Goals Reflection

As I look back on my work over the course of this past term, I see that I met many of my stated goals when beginning the term. We did a fairly robust set of work exploring and developing competence in the language used in marketing. The lexicons process highlighted and drew upon the curiosity of the group and I probably learned more about marketing language than I realized.

I also gained a base level of comfort navigating the Adobe Creative Suite. It is clearly a powerful tool that I do not expect to ever gain a complete understanding of. What I found most helpful, was first coming up with an idea, and then googling around until I found a way to make my idea real. From there, I made a lot of mistakes, and eventually found comfort in understanding that I could not know everything, but that there was a robust support community around the internet ready to help my designs come to life.

I did get to exploring Trello as a project management tool. I particularly found the Gantt chart add-ons most helpful. I didn’t really feel like I had a handle on the term’s workload until I put all the term’s assignments into Trello and visualized them in the Gantt chart format. Still, that particular program felt a little underdeveloped, especially in the freeware version. Identifying critical paths seemed more difficult than it should have. It did appear that additional add-ons could bring increasing levels of functionality. Still, it was more than I was willing to pay for a series of partial solutions. In the future, when I’m shopping for my next project management software, I think I will try for something with a more robust and integrated feature set.

With regard to my goal developing of brand awareness, I appreciated seeing more insight into the breadth of logos and marks out there, but I feel like we spent much of our time focusing on logos and design. Perhaps not enough time talking about branding can connect with customers and clients. I hope to explore more of this aspect of branding and the development of focused marketing campaigns in the next term.

I am quite pleased with efforts to concentrate on design awareness and design skill. I feel like I have a handle on several techniques to keep my designs looking generally good. However, I am still quite curious about ways and means of making my designs communicate specific, perhaps intangible things to clients to get them to behave in ways we would like them to behave. In short, I feel like I have a reasonable handle on how to make good designs. I am now curious about how to make effective designs and why certain choices can lead to different outcomes.

In general, I am quite pleased with this course. I look forward to coming back in the winter for part II

 

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