Weekly Application Post - Week 3

To help integrate what you are learning each week, as well as to help you illustrate your growing subject matter expertise, you'll complete a weekly blog-style post that focuses in some way on one or more of the topics covered that week.  Each post must be a minimum of 300 words in length (including the post title) with no maximum limitation.  They should be tailored to fit the personal/professional brand or expertise that you’re trying to develop.  Note that later this term (Term 1), you'll begin to upload all of your posts (for this course and all other courses) to the WordPress website that you will be developing in this course.

     Your weekly application posts should go beyond merely reiterating what was covered in the course materials. They should show your target audience(s) how to apply marketing concepts, techniques, or technologies to real-world problems or opportunities for which they have an interest.  Your posts can be serious, light-hearted, tell stories or experiences, give advice, offer critiques of marketing practices you encounter, make comparisons across companies or techniques, describe innovative marketing practices, predict the future of marketing, etc.  The key is that they must be (1) informative to your target audience and (2) pertain in some way to the week's material for this course.  Other than that, you have free reign.  Remember that the tone, style, voice, and mood of your writing is up to you, but you should always consider what would work best for your target audiences.  You may even decide to have a general theme to your posts, perhaps staying focused on a particular industry or region or marketplace.

     To receive credit for each weekly application post, it must be completed as instructed and submitted on time: by 11:59:00pm on the due date.  No late submissions will be accepted for credit.  Submit the assignment using the appropriate link in the Assignments section of Canvas.  (Note that the scores for the 8 assignments will be averaged for a collective maximum of 5 percentage points, making each individual post worth 0.625% of the final grade.  Also, keep in mind the grading scale for this assignment as noted in the syllabus.)

Ideas for this week's Application Post

Below are some ideas of topics or areas that you could write about for this week's materials.  These are only prompts make sure to make your own! You can write about one of the the main topics from one of this week's modules or just a small mention of something that sparked your curiosity (or anything in between).  Remember, your post must be (1) informative to your target audience and (2) pertain in some way to the week's materials for this course.  Posts must include an original title and have proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

• In the "Managing Personal Communications" chapter in the Kotler and Keller's text (assigned for this week), they talk about "word of mouth" as a powerful marketing communication tool.  How have marketers (of both large and small organizations) taken advantage of word-of-mouth communication in the digital age?


• Adding to that, how have marketers (both small-scale and large-scale) manipulated our perceptions that a communication is a word-of-mouth source (i.e., C2C) rather than an organization's message (i.e., B2C)?


• Personal selling and relationship marketing take up only a tiny space in Kotler and Keller's dense marketing text.  How has digital "changed the game" when it comes to one or both of these?


• Why is it so critical for marketers to set strategic goals (or objectives), particularly with respect to middle management and front-line employees?


• If marketers set "storytelling" as a goal or objective, how can this be measured and/or how can it be connected to concrete monetary goals?


• In the HBR article by Douglas Holt ("Branding in the Age of Social Media"), he discusses what he calls "crowdculture."  Is this really something new or just a new word for an existing concept?  Is the concept of crowdculture useful for your industry's marketing?  How if so?


• Holt (in his HBR article) criticizes Coca Cola's "Liquid and Linked" strategy (see the Coca Cola strategy video).  Do you agree or disagree with his criticism and why?


• What's something from Coca Cola's "Liquid and Linked" strategy that you might apply to your own industry or area of expertise?


• Why should marketers understand the micro-elements of communication in all of its formats (e.g., static imagery, moving imagery, music, text/writing, spoken word, etc.)?


• What is an example of an ad that uses visual elements to its advantage?  What are those elements and how are they used?


• Why is branding so crucial to marketers today?


• Is brand purpose essential these days now that convenience and quality seem to be so important?


• Why is brand community important to marketers?


• How can marketers move their audiences to become more "loyal" and what does that really mean?


• Choose one of the elements from the second half of the Krause Visual Design book and discuss how it could affect audiences in your industry.


• Compare and contrast two different elements from the second half of the Krause Visual Design book and why they matter to marketers.


• Any applications of this week's content to digital, brand development, analytics, and personal branding.

     There are a number of topics for you, particularly when you consider you have a world of marketing all around you (and marketing communication is constantly occurring).

topic: World of Fashion

articles to read and add to the blog:  https://www.fibre2fashion.com/industry-article/2287/how-fashion-rules-the-world

https://www.crowdspring.com/blog/clothing_brand_business_tips/

videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgNNestCmBk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKryJEAKi8Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PBZ7XXwbYA&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lc4vFG41Tw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYtitqqIzRY&feature=youtu.be