The 6th - Enterprise Week activities

During November last year, the marketing students participated in this event and I think it was good for everyone as it got the students to meet outside people from the industry who we normally would not get to meet. The chance to speak to all these people is a good experience and many people would have enjoyed it.


The events which I was able to attend were 'Telling it Like it is' and 'Transmitting Information is easier than creating understanding'. We went with friends so there was less listening and more talking and drawing on books. But there was some very useful information which came out of these events. I think the best event will have to be the 'telling it like it is' because there were people from leading companies their and they helped to show us what it is like working in these companies and how did they get their. They were ex-students of the Uni so they had a viewpoint of the audience so it was easy to understand.
Here is the people who were at the event;

1.) Sue Elms - She is the Executive Vice President of Global Media Practice Millward Brown
http://www.millwardbrown.com/Home.aspx

2.) George Hutchinson - He is the Chair and Managing Director of Public Affairs for Burson-Marsteller UK
http://www.bursonmarsteller.co.uk/index.php

3.) Sue Unerman - She is the Chief Strategy Officer for MediaCom
http://mediacom.com/

4.) Matthew Chapman - He is the International Service and Systems Innovation Director for Billets
http://www.ebiquity.com/uk/billetts/

5.) Rik Haslam - He is the Group Creative Architect for WWV Rap
http://www.rapp.com/home/

This event was basically a long discussion about several marketing topics. They talked about how marketing communication has changed and how the Internet has taken over. From my friends notes (we made him write all the notes!) it was said in the panel that 80-85% of marketers have started to use mobile marketing through the Internet. This is a very good statistic and shows how the marketing communications are being developed everyday and many marketers have to keep up with the latest technology and they have to see how they can cover the most number of customers.
After the first discussion, a student from the third year did a presentation about the Internet and how marketers are using the Internet. He mentioned about 9 billion adverts appear on the most visited site on the Internet, Google.
After this, brands were discussed. They discussed the fact that customers want value and high quality. The price interestingly they said is not a massive factor in deciding what to buy, it just has to be of good quality and of value. (Maybe they said this because they are rich)They also said packaging is a good point to mention when discussing brands, for example Asda smart price range has very basic packaging but the higher range has better colors. But they also mentioned the fact that just because the packaging is bad does not mean the product is not popular so the brand has more to do with it then the packaging. I learnt a lot from these discussions and the opportunity to meet these people was very good as it was a good experience. The notes also helped with another piece of coursework and I may use them in the future.
Another event in the three weeks was the Apprentice challenge. 6 people from our class actually won this challenge so Ruth was really proud. We were not able to enter because of one of the group members being ill.