KEY MARKETING TRENDS FOR 2009

What does one do when you have a bit of free time on your hands after finishing an MBA? The answer is of course simple: you put together a prediction of key marketing trends for next year!



I bet that the top three marketing trends that will impact how Canadian marketers do business in 2009 will be:

• Mobilization
• Personalization
• Greenification

With the cell phone technology becoming more advanced, marketers need to dial into a new wave of mobile linked promotions. Apple has been leading the trend in this area, with their iPhone, which is going to be launched in Canada July 2008.

Second version of iPhone is going to be equipped with a new generation of location-aware software created in collaboration with Google Inc. Furthermore, expected to retail at a price of $199 (under a 3 year contract), iPhone is going to be quite affordable compared to other Smartphones on the market today. What does that mean for marketers in Canada? It means that with the increased popularity of the iPhone marketing spending on mobile medium is likely to receive a significant boost; in particular companies are going to start investing more into mobile advertising and building their mobile presence.

There are already services in US that allow promotional coupons to be sent to user’s cell-phone once they are in the vicinity of a particular registered business, maximizing the potential for lead generation and conversion. Combine that with the fact that new generation of Smartphones will likely allow for a far more granular measurement of marketing ROI and there’s a real possibility that mobile marketing dollars are going to be the biggest growth area next year.

As Canadians increase the use of Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS technologies available in majority of new Smartphones, their mobile experience will become more personalized. Prior to these technologies such level of personalization was only available sitting in-front of the computer. With the mobile personalization, depending both on their location and preferences users would be receiving selected promotional information on their mobile phones that could be made much more relevant and appealing to them. This also lessens the traditional gap of time and distance between when a consumer sees an ad and when they can actually buy the product which in turn would increase the effectiveness of promotional activities.

Furthermore, as marketing dollars continue transitioning towards online medium, social networking sites will start to play an even more important role in 2009. Websites like Facebook and MySpace as well as other niche players will increasingly help marketers to deliver their message effectively through the clutter to their target audiences. This will be made possible through the abundance of personal preference data that users willingly share on those sites.

Gas prices have skyrocketed over the last three years. Last year alone the price of gas shot up 31%. As gas prices increase, the topic of energy starts to occupy greater share of consumer’s mind and so does the related topic of environment. Hence, Greenification is becoming another hot topic. As companies continue to attempt differentiating themselves in consumer’s mind being the Greenest is finally starting to pay off real dividends. Therefore metrics measuring how Green is the company perceived by its target segment will provide an additional insight of potential sales driver in 2009.

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Now we'll just have to wait a year to see how close I really was ;)

George

McLoving it!

Who would have thought following two words could be found in a same sentence:

1) McDonalds™ and Love
2) Subway™ and Pizza
3) Me and MBA-grad

None the less McDonalds marketing slogan is "i'm lovin' it". Subway, which is a major sub chain in North America, has recently added 90 second pizzas to their menu (maybe they should also think of changing their brand to Sub + Pizza way = SuPway). And, YOU GUESSED IT: I’ve graduated from the Ivey MBA! Big Yay for George!!!

It has been a challenging year with its fair share of ups and downs, lots of learning not only about variety of business topics but more importantly about myself. Comparing MBA to my undergraduate experience I’m tempted to say that the undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering taught me how to research a narrow topic in-depth while MBA taught me how to think broadly about business problems.

Lots of people ask me if I’m happy about my decision to pursue the Ivey MBA and if I had a chance to go back would I still do it. The answer is resounding YES! Now let me elaborate a little bit about what I mean, it will also help to explain the ups and downs that I’ve mentioned in passing above. Interesting nature about Ivey is that it stretches you to the limit and then some, and that’s what really helps to build your capacity to succeed. Not only does it do that, it also trains you to think like a good manager by looking at problems broadly.

Combination of a case teaching method and large number of brilliant professors has been two real highlights about my experience at Ivey. Cases are real situations that managers are faced with in their everyday activities. It trains you to recognize patters of problems analyze those situations systematically and act accordingly to resolve them. After a year of Ivey it feels like you’ve been in a management role for at least 5 years based on the number of management problems that you’ve seen and collaborated as a team to resolve.

As anticipated, it turned out to be one expensive year. The final number is hovering close to a cool $95,000 including living expenses and an optional trip to China, and excluding lost wages. I’ve also told my family to forget buying me a watch as a graduation present and instead to get me a sturdy helmet to safeguard my head which now officially is the most expensive asset that I own!

The other day I was pondering a question whether I could have lasted another year if Ivey still had a two year MBA program? The answer is a simple NO. First of all my finances are stretched to the limit with the one year MBA. Second, going back to life of student has been fun for the first 4 months, but I’d like to go back to having an income, rather than just living off student loans. Finally, talking to alumni from the two year program it sounds like it was fairly tough to keep the same level of focus on education over the span of two years.

I want to thank everybody for following the blog over my year at Ivey. One last part of my Ivey experience that I want to share with you is the whole career search process at Ivey. I’m planning to write it once I accept a job offer.

Cheers,
George

Book recommendations from my favorite Ivey prof

Following is the list of book recommendations from Robert Nourse, my all-time favorite professor at Ivey. Bob taught Entrepreneurial Manager elective for us. It was truly amazing to have somebody with his level of experience sharing insights and knowledge with us. Bob founded Bombay Company and grew it from one store to 432 stores; he was named 1993 Entrepreneur of the Year by Inc. magazine. 

Guy Kawasaki,  The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested Battle Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything, (New York: Penguin Group, 2004)

One of the early pioneers at Apple, Guy Kawasaki is the founder of the venture capital firm, garage.com. He’s down to earth, humorous and practical.  You should, at minimum, read something he’s written.  If you like this, you’d also enjoy his earlier book, Rules for Revolutionaries.

Fareed Zakaria,  The Post American World, (New York: Norton, 2008) 

This book won’t be out until the first week of May, but it’s widely-anticipated and, because Zakaria speaks extensively, its content is somewhat known.  A naturalized American of Indian descent, the author is the editor of Newsweek International.  He’s a brilliant thinker and you’ll find his insight into the rise of China and India, and their impact on the advanced economies of the West, fascinating and thought-provoking. His earlier book, The Future of Freedom, was a New York Times bestseller.

Collins and Porras, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (New York: HarperBusiness, 1994, 1997)

This is certainly not a new book and, technically, not one that deals exclusively with entrepreneurship.  But the authors, who are Stanford researchers reporting on a six year study of 18 successful companies, have a lot to say about what makes a visionary company and vision is an important ingredient of any entrepreneurial venture. That’s why I like it.

Lewis, The New New Thing (New York: Penguin Books, 2001)

Different than other books on the list, this is a biography.  It looks at Jim Clark, the founder of Silicon Graphics, Netscape  and Healtheon.  There was an earlier hardcover edition, but this is the paperback.

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Enjoy!
George

Is there a best time to start an MBA?

By: George

So it’s been a long road but you’ve finally made the decision to pursue an MBA. Congratulations! Now there are a couple of things you might want to take into the consideration when making the next decision about when you actually start your future MBA. As usual, please keep in mind that following are just my personal subjective thoughts and may or may not work for you and are definitely not meant to act as de facto rules.

In this blog post I will discuss couple of potential factors that might affect the ROI of your MBA investment. In particular I will focus on those factors which are associated with the timing of an MBA: such as current economic conditions, your age and years of experience.

Following discussion is going to based on a 12 month MBA program format as that’s the type of program I am currently attending here at Ivey. You might also find it interesting that one of the reasons why I chose Ivey was because it is a bit easier to plan around since it’s only a one year program. Shorter program means lower probability that economic conditions are going to shift drastically while I am at school affecting my career search strategy.

First, let’s talk about global economic conditions or at least economic conditions of a country that you are planning to start your post-MBA career at. Even though I was not able to find any empirical data to confirm this, one can probably sense that the type of jobs that a brand new MBA grad would be going after are a bit tougher to find during a period of economic recession as compared to a period of prosperity. It is especially true for the high paying consulting and investment banking jobs; those types of jobs are highly correlated to the GDP growth. Having said there are still all kinds of jobs available during a recession. Industry jobs are usually much less dependent on the economic cycles (See following interview). What the economic slowdown or a recession means is that MBA grads would typically have to be much more proactive in their job search, orienting their search towards the hidden job market. Unfortunately, there might be some unforeseen consequences associated with graduating during the tough times: "A growing body of research on both MBAs and undergrads suggests that graduating into an economic downturn will substantially reduce lifetime earnings" (BusinessWeek).

Furthermore, I’m going to take a subjective view that Canadian economy is still tightly coupled closely to US economy (good thing that IMF agrees). If you combine that with the fact that US economic recessions has lasted on average 11 months with longer ones taking up to 16 months to unwind and are typically followed by an average of 57 months of economic expansion. The logical conclusion would be that the best way to start your Ivey MBA would be within a year or two after a recession has passed. That appears to be the best way to capitalize on ones investment if that would be the only factor that you are looking at. (Recipe 1: Add a one US Recession, wait for it to cook for 11-16 months, and then add the Ivey MBA within a year or two)

To make it a bit more fun, there are a couple of other factors that get added to the mix. Years of experience appears to be another good one to look at. This one is particularly interesting one for me personally, as I only have three years which is on the lower end of the curve for Ivey. Talking to number of people in the industry and Career Management team at Ivey, the optimal number of years appears to fall in the range of 3-5 years. You would get the biggest % boost to you salary. Lets assume that the average salary for 4 years of experience would fall somewhere around $60,000 per year and even if you get the average $85,000 salary upon graduation that’s a 42% boost to your salary. Not bad! However if you wait another 3-4 years and you are already making around $75-80K/year, the starting salary might not be that much higher than what you had going in. I also know couple of people that came in expecting pay cuts right after the MBA, hoping that MBA will ultimately act as a strategic tool which will help to increase the longer term salary ceiling. 4-5 years of experience in would also allow you to take the full advantage of the learning opportunity available at Ivey. (Recipe2: add 4-5 years of solid experience and the Ivey MBA, mix well)

The last thing I’m going to mention is role of one’s age. I will be honest; being on either extreme of the age spectrum has its potential challenges. For one, it might be a bit harder to “connect” with your classmates. Having said that there are enough people with diverse backgrounds and in various age groups that there’s always opportunities to socialize and form life-long friendships. (Recipe3: Be yourself and respect others, age matters not)

So let me quickly recap this post: Years of solid work experience is probably the single most important factor contributing to the high ROI of an MBA. Graduating during a recession – a bit more stressful but doable none the less. Those are universal factors that might affect you ROI in Ivey, there are certainly variety of other factors such as personality, ability to learn, etc that also affect ROI as well, but they are much more individual, and therefore I can’t speak to those.

Having said all of this, keep in mind that there are always exceptions to every rule, as correctly pointed out by an Anonymous reader of this blog. The example that comes to mind is the one from our Venture Creation elective class when we had a chance to talk to couple of Ivey grads who founded a successful business right after their graduation (PolicePrep).

I hope you found info in this post useful.


Till next time,
George

P.S. Here's an intersting collection of thoughts from BusinessWeek magazine about Graduating into a Recession

P.S.S. For those of you wondering, I did not end up buying the Asus Eee laptop. I had horrible experience trying to purchase it online at The Source by Circuit city which totally screwed up my online order loosing it in the process, so I’ve decided to hold off on that purchase until I can find an easier way to buy it (read not involving The Source)