Finality: HOLD THE LINE...!

Well, my stint as Marketing Manager of Pharmasim has come to an end.  The team finished the last 4 periods of the simulation this past week.  We learned an incredible amount about marketing and maybe even more about decision making processes than I originally thought we would.

This simulation and course forced us to justify every decision we made with performance metrics.  Using metrics to make tough decisions actually becomes quite fluid after managers put it into practice.  A lot of times there is a lot of information available.  The tough decision comes when deciding which metrics to use to make decisions and which metrics to choose to rate the team's or company's performance.  

Our team chose to introduce a new product line during period 6.  Before that, the marketing plan was running along smoothly.  Very few alternative courses had to be taken to keep the company in good standing.  After introduction of the new product line, Allright, a childrens cold medicine, all plans went out the window.  It's like the famous military quote goes, "Every plan is good until the first shot is fired."  We took our first shot when Allright did not initially produce as we had expected.  We survived through periods 6 and 7 and had to do a reassessment for periods 8, 9, and 10.

This past week with came up with an adjusted marketing plan for the last three periods.  To depart from some technical language, we actually took a 'wait and see' approach.  Our stock price for the company had been falling steadily, but that wasn't one of the performance metric we chose to determine if our marketing strategy was successful.  Metrics such as units sold, brand awareness, brand effectiveness perception and customer retention were much more determinative metrics of how our marketing plan faired.  Allright's impact on the company was dire at first.  It ran our budget through the roof.  We had to lay off many sales men and women and that in turn led to other negative issues.  The 2nd and 3rd order effects continued to roll in and our spirits were a little down.  We questioned our research and we questioned our performance metrics.  Finally, after a reassement, we saw that the most important metrics, brand awareness, effectiveness, retention,... were actually improving at a stagger rate.  The numbers seemed small at first, because they were very low compared to Allround's performance numbers, but what a closer inspection noted was that Allright was improving at an exponential rate.  In just three periods, many of Allright's performance metrics had doubled or even tripled.  We decided to give Allright 2 more weeks to prove itself and if it didn't continue to show this kind of improvement, we would can the operation.  

In the end, Allright proved us right.  It is still not at the level we wanted it out, nor does it bring in even half the revenues that Allround brings in, but Allright is competitive in the market now.  During period 10, we saw a budget surplus for the first time in 4 periods, and that brought joy to all team members.  Also, our stock price rose substantially.  We stuck to our analysis and trusted our reasoning and it worked out.  I'm so happy that we didn't pull the plug.

Thank you for being a part of my blog.  I have learned so much in this class about marketing.  Initially, I was one of those people that thought marketing = advertising.  Since week one, I have been on a steep learning curve and I am happy with my level of marketing understanding.

REVISE REVISE REVISE!

"All plans are great until the first shot is fired."

My group laid out a pretty intensive marketing plan for periods 3-7 a few weeks ago, and then went about implementing it.  About 2 periods into the plan, we had basically abandoned the main points of the plan!  The goals and objective didn't change, however, the methods did change.  We didn't redirect our course on a whim or because we had a change of heart, we were basically forced to change our tactics because of unforeseen market forces directing our hand.

Our group came together this week and developed a new plan put our products back on course.  we performed a SWOT analysis, identified key issues, did a strategy implementation assessment, stated our new marketing goals and objectives, and finally, developed a marketing revision strategy.

Jumping right to revision, our next plan will happen in two stages.  The first stage has the actions that will occur in periods 7 and 8.  The second stage consists of the strategy for periods 9 and 10, which are dependent upon the results from periods 9 and 10.

Often times, plans are abandoned too early.  Sometimes leadership will abandon ship at the slights sign of concern, like a drop in share price, instead of analysing the true situation.  The most important thing to us is that our Brand Awareness is still very high. Also, our consumers still believe that our brand is very effective.  With those to metrics in mind, we decided that we would not abandon the Allright brand simply because its sales were not as high as we wanted them.  We introduced the Allright brand to attract target market segments that analysis showed would result in big profits.  Allright is a children's cold medicine that was promoted to target the young families cold market.  We introduced this new line in period six and felt immediate negative affects.  Our costs and expenses sky rocketed.

The reason we cannot give on Allright so soon is because much of our initial analysis holds true.  There is room in the cold market for young families.  Allright is improving at a very rapid rate.  We believe that a lot of our problems with Allright are not because of their poor sales, but because we underestimated the expenses involved when introducing a new line, and because we under estimated how much time it takes for a new pharmaceutical drug to take ahold of the market.

Because Allright has only been in production for two periods, we decided to stick with it for 2 more periods. If Allright isn't competitive with some of our lesser competition by period 9, then we'll cut Allright from production and focus on getting the Allround brand back to past performance levels.