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| Just another beautiful Boston afternoon |
(May 14 - 20)
Monday I start my morning with a great training session with the Senior Manager of Commercialization Projects at Ocean Spray. She has offered to train me on our Product, Package, Price Change Authorization system ( PPPCA) which is used for chartering and getting new projects through the stage gate process.
After my training, I head downstairs for my HR benefits orientation. Since I'm now officially full-time I get the benefits of, well, all the great Ocean Spray benefits.
After the orientation I get a few minutes back at my desk before meeting my boss for lunch and store visits. I'm super excited for this lunch and learn. We head to Panera for some grub before stealthily perusing the aisles of Shaw's and Walmart to scope out our Craisins® products and our competitors. It was very helpful and provided some great insight into what the dried fruit market looks like.
After my fun lunch session, I meet with a logistics manager to discuss all the potential merchandising vehicles for Craisins®. As part of my project to streamline these different shippers, clip strips and more I figured I'd meet with an expert to get his input.
The rest of my afternoon is spent getting a good amount of work done before heading to class.
On the itinerary for my Marketing in the Service Sector class tonight is a discussion of Aussie Pooch Mobile, an Australian company that pioneered a mobile dog cleaning service. Among the issues facing the company are whether or not they should continue their franchise internationally and how to handle a slew of new competitors.
Tuesday morning I start my day getting some work done before a training session for NCH - a company that handles many of our coupon offers. Since I recently submitted a Craisins® coupon request through NCH, I'm particularly interested in this training session so that I can learn how to review the redemption rates of these promotions and use that to help track my budget and how well the program did.
After the training session I have a half-hour meeting with a Marketing Manager to get a grounding on two new packaging projects I'll be helping her with. I think both are great ideas, but one in particular I'm super excited about and can't wait to help out with.
After lunch I meet up again with the same Marketing Manager and her entire team for a weekly meeting for the packaging projects I just learned about.
After that it's off to another new product meeting, this time for a new foods item. I'm loving being a part of all these innovative new Ocean Spray products!
Next is my weekly 1:1 with my manager. She gives me tons of awesome new projects to work on, including digging deep into Nielsen data to analyze some new competitors and working on setting minimums in our new merchandising vehicle ordering system by looking at past order volumes.
In my Consumer Behavior class that night I have to give my Topic Talk! How Topic Talks work is that I am responsible for finding a current news article (less than one year old) that directly pertains to our reading and lesson plan for the day. I am able to find an awesome article on how touch impacts consumer purchase behaviors. We also get to share our experience with interviewing a friend or family member on what is in their 'medicine cabinet'. I interviewed my Mom and had some great insights from her choice of makeup, face washes and shampoos.
Wednesday I get all morning to work on my projects before my first meeting at 11:00 am. I've been invited to a session put on by Brand Connections, a vendor we have used in the past for Craisins® sampling. We learn all about their capabilities, including ad placement on airplanes, cruises and more.
After the meeting I get several more hours of work in before another Meet and Greet with our Insights Manager. She gives me the low-down on what her group does and the OSCAR system on our intranet that houses nearly all of the consumer research Ocean Spray has done for the past several years. When I have the time, I totally intend to go through and read as many of those documents as possible. I imagine it would be an amazing way to learn about the company.
In my Service Sector class that evening, we actually discuss the Shouldice Hospital case, which I did last year for my Operations class. It was neat to look at it from a very different perspective (service sector marketing versus operations).
Thursday is a busy day of meetings. I start out with a weekly marketing team huddle in the marketing lounge. I love these huddles because it gives the group a chance to get together in a casual setting (couches and plush chairs in the lounge) and share what everyone has going on in their respective businesses.
After the huddle I head to my meeting with an Associate Trade Marketing Manager to get a sales perspective on my effort to try and reduce Craisins® merchandising vehicles.
I spend most of the rest of my day in meetings to continue this effort. I meet with a Marketing Manager who performed this same task several years previously and followed by another meeting with the person in charge of ordering the trays, stickers and clip strips for Craisins®.
My work day ends with an awesome introduction to consumer affairs at Ocean Spray. The Consumer Affairs Supervisor graciously set up an hour-long introduction to how we handle consumer complaints, requests, compliments and more. It was really fascinating.
As I'm leaving work and checking my e-mail, I notice that a classmate of mine was kind enough to send over a recent article in CFO magazine featuring Ocean Spray's very own CFO! How cool (and how cool of her!). Check out the article here http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/14638244/c_14639338?f=magazine_alsoinside.
That night in my Consumer Behavior class we discuss the Cyworld case. Cyworld is the South Korean equivalent of Facebook. We had a large case write-up on it due as well where we had to decide how the company should proceed in the face of growing member defect rates and a loss of interest in their paid digital home page decorations. Here's the U.S. version of the site http://us.cyworld.com/.
Friday is a great day! I start off my day with a Craisins® meeting where we discuss business insights such as key account performance and past research conducted by consumer insights.
I also get the opportunity for two amazing meet and greets; one with the Director of Marketing and one with the Director of New Business Development. It was awesome to speak to two women who have been so successful in the organization and have seen the business change throughout the years. Amazing!
The day wraps up with lunch with my Ocean Spray buddy and another meeting with demand planning to look at the Craisins® merchandising vehicles.
My Saturday morning starts, how else, but with the day in the library? I roll into Snell Library at 10:30 am and spend most of my day working on my team's paper and PowerPoint for our article presentation on Getting Brand Communities Right. It was great because we actually covered this article last semester in Brand & Advertising Management so it really helped me dive deeper into it's meaning.
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| Cafeteria: makers of glorious burgers |
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| Beautiful! |
Once my friend arrives we enjoy cocktails that smoke with dry ice, an appetizer of fresh cinnamon donuts paired with nutella mascarpone and raspberry jam followed by my entree of red velvet french toast topped with cream cheese icing (yes, you read that correctly: red velvet french toast!). Oh, and did I mention that all of this was served by a wait staff dressed in superhero costumes!
After our embarrassingly decadent brunch my friend and I head to the library for some serious studying, which includes a ton of reading, case preparations and more. At least I have the sugar rush to keep me going!
*The views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Northeastern University, Ocean Spray Cranberries, either entity's staff or affiliates.
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