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| Photo Shoot for the new Northeastern MBA brochure |
(June 4 -10)
This week proves to be one of mounting work responsibilities.
On Monday, I get into the office early and manage a couple of hours of meeting-free time to get some work done. Then, from 11:00-12:30 pm I have a monthly Brand Marketing Meeting where the Brand Team shares the status of projects they are working on and other interesting work-related anecdotes.
After lunch that afternoon, I have a meeting with the Marketing Manager in charge of a new Craisins® packaging initiative. The meeting is to discuss special requests made by individual retailer accounts and how Marketing and Sales handle those requests.
Once that meeting is completed, I rush over to Human Resources to continue my discussion from last week regarding how to get the new hires onto the intern training program. The HR Manager and I manage to get the training list and dates and I promise to set up appointment alerts for all the new hires so that they can attend. We also discuss professional development books and the potential for a company-wide book club to read and discuss said books.
When that meeting wraps up I head straight to a workmate's cube to learn how to move plugs in SAP (one of our Financial planning software programs). You see, when invoices are coded incorrectly, they go into a 'plug' in SAP. When that happens, Marketing, as managers of our budgets, has to go in and move the 'plugs' into the appropriate account. Since I had never done this before, it was quite confusing and I definitely needed my fellow Assistant Marketing Manager's help.
That night in my Marketing in the Service Sector class I have to submit my Flying J case write-up. Flying J is a chain of low-price gas stations facing the critical decision of whether to raise prices or not. I'm a bit nervous as I hand it in because it's worth 1/3 of our grade and is our first 'official' submitted assignment. Yikes!
Tuesday is a day of catching up on work. I arrive early to get some productive hours in before our 10:00 am meeting on employee engagement. The employee engagement meeting is great and the entire marketing team spends the next hour and a half having some amazing discussions about ways to improve employee engagement, training and communication. People provide some great suggestions on ways to improve some of our company offerings and initiatives such as more inclusive team meetings, opening training opportunities to all staff members and more.
When noon rolls around it's time for my weekly Ocean Spray buddy lunch. My buddy and I enjoy Cranberry Cafe salads and catch up our respective weekends.
The rest of my afternoon is spent working on my numerous assignments, punctuated only by a 2:00 pm conference call with an outside account manager who has been able to secure a free promotion for our Ocean Spray Cranberry sauce this fall. Yes!
In my Consumer Behavior class that night we enjoy a presentation on "How the Brain Buys" which includes a great grocery shopping re-enactment and some Ocean Spray shout-outs. Woot! We also get to work in groups on creating a new advertising campaign for an existing brand. Not surprisingly, considering my slight addiction to the brand, my group selects Dunkin' Donuts for our exercise. We wrap up the class session with a final group exercise on a vignette from our book about a young man who spends more than he would like when purchasing a used car and how consumer behavior drove that purchase decision.
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| Monsoon-like rain: Just part of living on the East Coast |
One of the good things about getting into the office so early is that I get a solid amount of time to focus, un-distracted. I'm also able to respond to a data request from our Director that require a quick turnaround. That morning I also get some good news in the form of approval for all of the new hires to attend the intern training sessions that run all summer. I am particularly interested in the Finance 101 session, Contracts Management class, the discussion on a case study on international expansion at Ocean Spray and a visit to Arnold Communications!
My first meeting of the day gives me the opportunity to learn, first-hand, how to enter a new product/package idea into our stage-gate type process. I'm helping out another Ocean Spray employee who doesn't have access to the system. Fortunately, with the gracious help of an Ocean Spray Commercialization Manager I am able to successfully enter the new request into the system.
I spend the next several hours working on a deck for some new Craisins® package options, reviewing graphics for these packages as well as responding to what feels like a million other one-off tasks.
At noon I break for lunch with our new intern, an MBA student from Boston College. I'm super excited to have her here for the summer and working on the foods team!
After lunch I rush off to my weekly meeting to discuss the new Craisins® packaging I was talking about earlier. The team is trying to ensure we have all the information we can to prepare a sell deck for a customer meeting next week.
After that meeting I have a couple of precious hours to get some more work done before a graphics review meeting, which I'm super excited about! It's my first official graphics review meeting and I totally love getting to pass on some design inputs (it harks back to my days as a newspaper page designer).
I round out my day with a meeting regarding a special customer request for new Craisins® merchandising vehicles and cramming as much work as possible before I have to leave at 6:00 pm to get to class on time.
In my Marketing in the Service Sector class we discuss a case on BT, a British telephone company struggling through a move from a government-owned monopoly over their industry, to a public market.
Thursday morning I get in to the office early again to try and get some work done before a weekly Marketing huddle at 9:00 am. I have plenty to work on including managing the budget, gathering the legal approvals I need for the free Cranberry Sauce promotion, preparing my deck for the DMT (Decision Management Team) presentation I will give next week and more!
In fact, I have so many projects in the air right now that after the huddle meeting, my boss and regroup to discuss my projects statuses, even though my weekly 1:1 with her is tomorrow.
Lunch today is with my boss and the Director of Cooperative Communications. As part of my personal development plan, I am trying to find ways to leverage my past experience and skills to help the cooperative. One idea that came up was for me to look into an Ocean Spray blog (either external or internal). I was, of course, super excited about this idea and enjoyed the working lunch to discuss the potential of such a blog.
Right after lunch I rush upstairs for another meeting with HR to further discuss the viability of an employee book club, training initiatives and more.
After that meeting I have just a few minutes before I join a meeting that pertains to cranberry sauce. One of the Marketing Managers in Special Markets is exploring options for cranberry sauce, foods, etc. in numerous different capacities and I asked if I could hop on the meeting. It was super informative and enlightening to see marketing from the different perspective of sales and special markets, rather than marketing directly to consumers.
My busy day wraps up with a conference call with another CPG company who wants to partner with Craisins® for a promotion. The proposition sounds great and is one that would fit in nicely with our brand strategy and messaging but some of the logistics will have to be ironed out.
In Consumer Behavior that night the class was tasked with bringing in photos of how Nestle Crunch bars make us feel. It was highly entertaining to see how varied the photos were and what emotions people associated with them. I was just happy that I had an excuse to eat chocolate!
Friday's are always hectic days, now that work lets out at 12:30 pm. When I get into my cube I immediately set about preparing for my 1:1 with my boss. I update my project status list and gather all the documents I need for her to review.
When that meeting ends I have just a little bit of time to work on other projects before a review meeting for my DMT deck with the Commercialization Manager for the project. I want to make sure the deck is perfect, as I'll be presenting to senior level management for the first time. I gladly take notes on the suggestions and comments I receive and set about making the improvements.
Alas, today I don't have the luxury of staying too late as I have to book it back to Boston for a photo shoot for the new Northeastern MBA brochure. I can't help but laugh a bit to myself that this will be the third professional photo shoot that I've done during my two years at Northeastern. Fortunately, the photographer is one I worked with previously so the session is fast and wraps up just as the skies open and it starts to rain.
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| A little graduation bling, courtesy of David Yurman |
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| Glad to know Happy's Bar + Kitchen opened up right by my future apartment! |
It's a good thing I had a nice Friday because the rest of my weekend is spent in Snell Library. Ugh. I finally face my Consumer and Brand Audit assignment that was pushed back two weeks, complete my consumer interview for my Consumer Behavior project, write my portion of my Service Sector final paper/project and more. The only thing that keeps me going is knowing that I have less than three weeks left of my MBA!
*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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