USU's BAP Chapter Wins Regional Deloitte Best Practices Competition

By Bonnie Villarreal

The team that will compete in Milwaukee in International Impact: Jacob Fryer, Derek Droesbeke, and Josh Richards

Utah State University's Delta Omega chapter of Beta Alpha Psi is famous for being the longest concurrently running "Superior" chapter in the entire organization. They are also famous for being ambitious and competitive; this year they have kept that tradition alive by taking both a first place and third place award in the Deloitte sponsored Best Practices Regional competition in Denver, Colorado April 9 and 10.

The winning presentation was in the category International Impact and featured the award winning VITA Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program that benefits approximately 700 students by preparing and e-filing their tax returns. For this competition, the BAP chapter decided to focus on supporting the inbound side of Global experience by supporting and assisting the hundreds of international students who attend USU and are required to comply with United States tax laws that are foreign and complex to them. The judges particularly liked that the chapter was innovative in their approach to develop new procedures that would keep students from waiting hours in the hallways for their turn to get a tax return prepared, reviewed and ready to file. The presentation team included Jacob Fryer, Josh Richards and Derek Droesbeke.

 

The Financial Literacy 3^rd place team:  Stephen Brown, Alyssa Kohler, and Eric Graves

The third place finish was in the category of Financial Literacy and was presented by Alyssa Kohler, Stephen Brown and Eric Graves. Trevor Frank and Jeff Fielding also presented in the Effective Operations division and while they did not place, they shared ideas about how the Delta Omega chapter has refined their success to be more inclusive and leadership oriented rather than an elite organization with benefits only for a few students at the top of their class.

The Rocky Mountain Region has chapters from 17 different schools in Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, Montana and New Mexico and includes some powerhouse accounting programs like University of Denver, University of Utah and BYU. Teams that place first in the region are invited to compete at the annual meeting in August which this year will be held in Milwaukee Wisconsin.

The entire team from left to right: Stephen Brown, Jon Medrano, Alyssa Kohler, Jeff Fielding, Eric Graves, Trevor Frank, Josh Richards, Derek Droesbeke, Bonnie Villarreal (advisor), and Jacob Fryer

HMA Marketing Week: Zagg Case Competition Finals, Inside the Game

By Eliza Thacker

We won! We were so nervous the day of the final presentation. In preparation for the final moments of the competition, we spent hours researching our idea, practicing our presentation, and putting together our Prezi. My teammates did a fantastic job of presenting the data, and the judges seemed to like our idea, but there was no way of knowing if another team had done a better job. At the awards ceremony we waited in agony as the third and second place teams were read out loud. We sat in a tense trance as the first place team was announced, when suddenly we realized the name sounded familiar; it was our team. We immediately leaped up to shake the judges’ hands and accept our prizes. We each received not only an iPad mini, but also Bluetooth headphones, a folio keyboard, a screen protector, and a Bluetooth speaker. 

In addition to the physical prizes, we took away intangible rewards. We made great connections in the Huntsman Marketing Association and gained exciting talking points for our resumes. Best of all, we met new friends. My teammates were all incredible people that I never would have gotten to know without this competition, and after late nights filled with pizza and research, we became good friends. I am so glad I had this opportunity. It has given me greater confidence and has opened so many doors. If you are thinking about competing next year, don’t hesitate; win or lose you’ll take away more than just an iPad. Hope to see you there!

HMA Marketing Week: Zagg Case Competition Preliminaries, Inside the Game

Brady Hanks, Xander Hulme, and Aaron Bytendorp develop ideas

By Eliza Thacker

After a late night of brainstorming and writing, our team has officially passed the preliminaries. Our idea of having Zagg expand into a new leather-tech market seems to be working out well. I have to admit, I didn’t expect to have so much fun participating in the competition. It has been exciting and enlightening to try and work through a real-world situation, rather than a theoretical scenario; plus, my team members are all incredible people who I never would have gotten to know otherwise. Even if we don’t win, I’ve made some amazing friends and been given an opportunity that a lot of undergraduates never get. Here is to hoping that tomorrow goes well! I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

 

Eliza Thacker and Brady Hanks work late into the night

HMA Marketing Week Guest Speaker: Morgan Pederson

By Sheii Lindley

Morgan Pederson is the Visual and PR director for an up and coming shoe designer, Yosi Samra, in New York City. She graduated from Utah State University five years ago from the interior design department. I was lucky enough to be the student host for Morgan during her stay in Logan and was so impressed with her ability to remember people and constantly be aware of her surroundings as she documented her experiences through social media.

On Tuesday night Morgan spoke in the O.C. Tanner lounge to a packed house of marketing students. She shared with us her incredible transition from Utah to The Big Apple, what it took to get there, as well as many bits of great advice on self-branding. Morgan discussed the importance of 24-hour networking. She stressed making meaningful connections with everyone you meet, regardless of their status; stating that those connections could open many doors.

Morgan shared with us her secret formula called, "social stalking," or creative contacting. She described learning about someone through their various social media platforms, entering their conversations and making connections that lead to face-to-face meetings and potential job offers. She said the key is to start with the least personal social media platform and then make your way full circle to a personal connection. Her first job with a well-known New York interior designer was gained through the use of social stalking. It began with a bit of research, followed by adding her on social media, commenting on her posts, and then starting a conversation which led to a dinner meeting and eventually an offer for employment.

If you’re interested in viewing the full presentation, all creative tips and tools included, go here: http://1560811.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/Morgan+Pederson+-+Huntsman+Marketing+Association+Presenter/0_cqogzrye

For more information on Morgan Pederson check out her website at: www.morgan-creative.com, or follow her on twitter: @morgancreative.

Morgan Pederson

HMA Marketing Week: Zagg Case Competition Kickoff, Inside the Game

By Eliza Thacker

Monday night was the Huntsman Marketing Association Zagg Case Competition Kickoff. I attended thinking that it would be a fun contest where I would meet some new people and learn a few marketing principles. I soon discovered that the competition would be much more exciting that I had imagined. One of Zagg's top executives talked to us about Zagg and its affiliate companies, and then challenged our teams to come up with a new idea for Zagg. Furthermore, he told us our teams would present our ideas to Zagg's top product managers in a week's time if we pass the qualifying round. It looks like this competition is going to be an intense race to the finish; however, my team is ready to meet the challenge!

Preliminaries, here we come!

HMA Vooray Case Competition: Winners Report

Chris Vaughan

Case competitions like this absorb everything; your thoughts, time, and late night pizza funds all have to go into it. Fortunately I was prepared for the challenge, as this was my fourth case competition. I was ready and excited to make something incredible.

True to my expectation, my team and I dedicated enormous amounts of time and energy to think, research, design, and present, something great.

To any out there who seek to compete in a case competition in the future, it takes a lot to win, but the euphoria of success is enlivening. I think my team would agree that our success was largely determined by the strength of our team itself. We're very different people, whose paths only crossed for this one event, but we worked incredibly well together. Our strengths complement and compensate for our corresponding weaknesses. We listened, shared, and compromised in our efforts.

Our finished product turned out great! It was something we were proud of and excited to share. It had its imperfections, but its strengths nudged it ahead of the rest.

Although winning had its benefits, the most enjoyable part of this experience was working on a case that pertains to my area of interest. No classroom can give one the kind of real life experience that a case competition can. It gave me the opportunity to work for Vooray for a week, and to develop and present real promotional strategies. We worked hard and were stretched to the limit, but together my team and I succeeded. In my eyes this kind of experience is what college is all about.

Chris Vaughn, Hannah Mackintosh (Vooray representative), Shay Pierce, Brady Hanks, Nathan White

Vooray Case Competition Kickoff

By Derek Saraiva

Vooray was started in 2009 by Todd Nyman in his parent's basement. Todd had a passion for sports and wanted to create clothing that matched the energy of the outdoors.

One of Todd's first brand launches was "SUP", short for Superb Under Pressure. In order to get the brand launched, Todd was faced with the challenge of accumulating the capital needed to establish some sort of storefront. Unfortunately opening retail stores can be very expensive, so Todd chose to start out with a small pure play online storefront instead of a brick-and-mortar shop. He started out online with an amazingly small inventory of only 12 t-shirts.

Todd Nyman presenting to the HMA club

To cut down on marketing costs, but still get the name out there, Todd partnered up with YouTube channels featuring extreme sports such as barefoot skiing. YouTube featured 15-30 second ads that

Todd attributes part of this success to the Vooray demographic, which consists of 12-28-year-old males. Most of them are active and into at least one of the three major outdoor sports: skiing, surfing, and/or skating.

Another key to Vooray's success came from sponsoring athletes involved in extreme yet less-known sports. In the past barefoot skiers had been forgotten as far as sponsorships goes. By partnering with these athletes, Vooray created a win-win situation - the athletes get a sponsor, and Vooray gets a major brand ambassador.

Vooray wants to focus on what Todd calls "The Vooray Project", a social mission launch aimed at the demographic to help facilitate community service. Todd thinks that if done right it could become the next cool new thing.

The case competition objective is to accomplish one of the these three key objectives:
would run prior to the video; this strategy helped spread his brand's message at a relatively low cost.

1. Create uniqueness in a very competitive retail market

2. Gain increased exposure by using low cost methods

3. Generate a creative way to launch the social mission (the Vooray project).

Good Luck to all the competitors!

HMA Stukent Internet Marketing Competition: Round Five and Awards Lecture

By Jason Porter

Congrats to the winners! Round five of the competition had me making gains again. My email marketing campaign went really well, but I didn't learn the ads fast enough to really be competitive. It was interesting to see my statistics of the campaigns I was running climb steadily as I learned more about targeting ads. Overall, my stats weren't bad, and considering I have had little training, they were pretty good.

I think this is an opportunity more people should explore. How often do you get to throw around $25,000 of someone’s (fake) money to see what it does? The awards lecture by Chad Heath, from Netmark.com was really interesting. He gave a rundown of how to “bootstrap” your business idea and get it running with little or no capital. Advice like this from someone of his background is pure gold. He also reached out to help those in attendance. One more great opportunity I got to participate in thanks to the Huntsman Marketing Association. Thanks to our sponsors Netmark.com, Utah Mattress Outlet, and Stukent!

HMA Stukent Internet Marketing Competition: Round Four

By Jason Porter

Round four I am seeing the results of my ad experiments and research. All my statistics are going up again. A/B testing works out slowly for me, but it does work. I can see where one ad boosts click through rates compared to the other. Perhaps if I had started this testing in the practice round I might have been able to boost my conversions higher by now. As it is my statistics aren't bad for someone with little formal training. I like seeing what effect my decisions have without sacrificing my money to see it.

On a bright note I am making the email marketing part work well for me. One of the campaigns has nearly a 100 percent open rate (nearly unheard of in the industry) and is converting 50 percent of my leads into buys (also extremely high). Just one more round to go! Thanks to our sponsors Netmark.com, Utah Mattress Outlet, and Stukent!

HMA Stukent Internet Marketing Competition: Round Three

by Jason Porter

*Sigh* Lesson learned. I changed horses in midstream and allowed the competition room to wiggle. I am learning what makes ads work and what doesn't. It also is very clear I need different strategies for my UK products. If it works in the UK it might not work in the US. One would think I would know that after an International Business class and a Cultures class.

I am finding that pinpointing the proper key words in my ads is harder than I thought. Posting tons of different ads with different keywords is helping narrow it down, but I might have given over too much of an advantage to the competition to recover. Maybe luck will be on my side for the last two rounds! Thanks to our sponsors Netmark.com, Utah Mattress Outlet, and Stukent!

HMA Stukent Internet Marketing Competition: Round Two

By Jason Porter

Well, as it often happens, my practice round was no indicator of what the first round would be like.

All my competitors brought out their A game and trounced me good. We are given limited information about what the others are doing with their campaign, but we do get glimpses. It appears that at least two other people have tried my same tactic, so I decided to switch gears entirely.

Will that be a good idea? Who knows, but I will find out in the morning. It was interesting to see what was working and what wasn’t. My long shot ad campaign ended up being my best. That campaign stuck squarely in the middle and was the most costly, driving up my cost per conversion. Many things went right. Other things went not so right. Only time will tell if a change in tactics was the right choice.

Stukent Internet Marketing Competition: Round One

by Jason Porter


The Stukent RealDeal Internet Marketing Simulation Competition is under way. As a competitor, I

was given $5,000 to spend in the simulation to try and drive traffic to my websites and sell Tablet Computers. Stuart Draper gave us all a great kick start on Monday, showing us some tricks and tips we could use to get more web traffic. At first, the learning curve was brutal. Designing a good website and setting up pay-per-click ads is difficult when you haven’t had to do it before. I felt good about our practice round where I managed to grab about 38 percent of the web traffic among my group of six even though my statistics were average. The competition has just started, and I already have learned a lot about optimizing websites. Now it’s time to see if my adjusted ad strategy pays off!

HMA: The Long March: Why it Take 10 Years to Sell a Space Telescope

By Seth Merrill

On Thursday, Jim Marshall, Director of Business Development for the Space Dynamics Laboratory, spoke to a group of 30 students and professors from the Huntsman Marketing Association during a presentation titled, “The Long March: Why it Take 10 Years to Sell a Space Telescope.”

Jim Marshall presenting to the HMA club

Marshall’s work involves qualifying, pursuing and capturing the hundreds of multi-million dollar research projects the SDL undertakes each year. These projects include building telescopes that record deep-space image data, cameras for reconnaissance airplanes, meteor-detecting satellites and more.

Because the laboratory is one of only 14 Department of Defense-designated university affiliated research centers across the nation, 95 percent of the SDL’s revenue comes from the government. Last year the SDL received more than $75 million in external research funding.

“We don’t really have a product line, and there’s not a lot of pricing strategy,” Marshall said. “We sell unique solutions to one-of-a-kind problems and solve specialized projects. We are only as good as our last project. We eat what we kill.”

Marshall emphasized how marketing strategy was more manifest in the process of writing proposals for projects. He said because the SDL works so closely with the government, the purchasing process is often complex, unpredictable and political.

“You can’t be out there trying to do open-field tackles,” he said. ”If you aren’t projecting and analyzing potential projects years before the request for proposal is released, you are already too late. You need to be following personnel changes and constantly building a soft network.”

In such a competitive industry, with numerous research foundations bidding on multi-million dollar projects, Marshall said you have to stay sharp.

“Business development is not an orderly, turn-based game,” he said. “It’s more like a sword fight on a pirate ship. You are never in complete possession of information on what competitors are doing. It’s never fair. Everyone’s making moves at same time and not revealing what they’re doing.”

Julian Brown, a senior studying marketing, attended the lecture and was struck by how complex this particular non-profit field is.

“It’s nothing like I’ve learned in any of my classes,” Brown said. “It’s a higher level of years of strategic planning that may take years to close a deal. That diligent, persistent effort is really a skill set, and sometimes it takes making connections and building relationships to accomplish that goal.”

HMA Brand Yourself Event

By Maddy Coast

This event was truly a great way to kick off the month of October. With a crowd of no more than twenty-five people, I didn’t feel over-whelmed or intimidated at the Marketing Association’s affair, which featured guest speaker Phil Jacobson. Phil’s presentation was personable and genuine which made me feel like I was being talked to instead of talked at. Through his use of baseball analogies, stories, and genuine manner, Phil was relatable and interactive. He discussed his personal background, education, and work experience and talked about how it shaped him and his decision to start a franchise of Amada Senior Care in Utah. His overall message was that when it comes to networking, interviewing, and making business connections, the best thing to do is to be yourself. He said that in his experience, being a genuine and personable character is not only what employers look for, but also the best way to make authentic contacts. Likeability is what makes people want to work and interact with you, so showing a “fun” side can be advantageous.

For me, listening to him was refreshing because he was honest and funny, and helped me get a better understanding of how to stand out from the crowd and why it’s so important just to act natural and confident in any business situation. Any business student would have gained a lot from the presentation, especially because it was followed up with a session of questions and answers with professors. The event was a great way just to get involved, learn something, get some questions answered, and get my foot door of the Huntsman School of Business.

Phil Jacobson presents to HMA Club

HMA Medical Sales Blitz

Last week the Huntsman Marketing Association went through a medical sales blitz where students had the opportunity to interview with Ray Fujikawa the Senior Vice President of Commercial Strategy at Orthofix, a Global medical device company. The following are perspectives from the couple of students who were lucky enough to interview with him using the new FJ Management Center.

Bree Arnold
I had the opportunity to attend a lecture and interview with Ray Fujikawa. I feel proud to say I was the second student to ever interview in the new FJ Management Center in the Huntsman Business School. Mr. Fujikawa's lecture was very good. He talked about becoming a Student of the Game (SOTG). The point of SOTG is a way for sales professionals to become the best that they can be. It is important to learn as much information from a client before we try to "fix" problems they have. He gave a few different examples of things good and bad sales people have done. He is a very engaging and dynamic person. I also appreciated the opportunity to interview with him. This put him on a "real" level. It was nice to interact with him one on one. He is a very accomplished individual and he gave me great advice for my future career.

Ray Fujikawa teaches the HMA club

 Lendel Jeppesen

The Huntsman School of Business is moving to new heights and I am glad to be a part of it.
 

Last week I was able to attend the medical sales blitz where I interviewed with Ray Fujikawa. He comes every spring and fall looking for Aggies to interview and potentially hire into a very competitive and lucrative industry. It is very difficult for one to get his or her foot in the door and even harder to land a job; he comes for talent. The FJ Management Center is a great asset, as it allows companies to come right to campus and interview us in an environment we love and are comfortable with. Professionals like Ray come to hire us to be the solution to the challenges they face in their respective industries. They come to the Huntsman School because we have been trained sufficiently to meet the demands of companies today. Interviewing with Ray was an important event in my career here at USU and taught me so much about what the job market seeks in its new hires. I learned about what I have to offer that is valuable and where I lack and need to grow. I suspect that as I look back on my collegiate experience, interviewing with Ray will be one of my coolest moments. I invite anyone interested in accelerating their career to take the opportunity and learn from it - capitalize on it. Take advantage of all the resources that the Huntsman School has to offer. I decided to give it a try and will not pass on another opportunity as long as I am here.