Student is inspired by professor who reminds him of Steve Martin

I had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Jim Davis the other day. I like what I’m studying and it’s not very often that I talk to someone who makes me wish I was in their program, but Dr. Davis did. For a guy with white hair he has so much enthusiasm for what he’s doing, it’s rather infectious. He kind of reminded me of Steve Martin in that way, although there was significantly less banjo playing.

Paul Lewis Siddoway

So far this summer, he’s been on six international trips, and he’s about to head out to Chile next week. Whether he’s giving keynote addresses or attending business strategy meetings, he said he regularly hits the other five inhabited continents.

He says it came about because he’s fluent in German, and he started consulting companies in Germany, then Europe and elsewhere, on corporate strategy planning, mergers and acquisitions, strategic positioning, new product lines, cost analysis or general performance improvements. Since then, he has always been on the move.

He does admit that he will have to cut back when school starts, but he says that experience is vital to his teaching. As part of his lessons, he says he constantly brings in the experiences he’s had in the past couple of weeks with companies like Bayer, the pharmaceutical company, and helps his students see the real world applications.

That kind of practicality is what I like to see in my professors.

He told me that nothing he does is mutually exclusive; it’s all interconnected.

“To me, everything has a double bottom line,” Dr. Davis said. “When a student comes in, you aught to want to help the student, but when I help a student, I’m helping the Huntsman School. And if I recommend a company to hire a student, that also opens an avenue for research.”

It makes me wish I wasn't graduating in December; it also makes me wish I had time to switch my minor at least.

Oh well. There's still my masters.

Paul Lewis Siddoway

What are the reasons for the new building?

After my blog posted last week, one of our students asked the question, “What are the reasons for the new building?” This question made me realize that maybe we have not done an adequate job of explaining why we need a new building. The simple answer is that we are out of space. All of our existing classrooms and offices are being used at near full capacity. Personally, I am OK to move classes outside since it is so nice here in Logan year-round – but my perspective is a bit skewed due to my 10 years of living in Minnesota (also known as the “frozen north.”)

Let me share some of the key data points:

1) In the past five years, student enrollment on campus has grown from about 1,600 students to more than 2,100 students.

Ken Snyder

2) To accommodate the increasing demand from students, we have added classes and, of course, faculty. Every faculty office in the current building is filled. We have 13 business school faculty and staff that are in offices outside of our current building. We would like them to be with us in the same building. If nothing else, it will reduce the number of times we have to walk across campus in sub-zero temperatures.

3) Some of the office space shortage is due to added staff to help run programs. In the past five years, we have added staff to run programs in global engagement, entrepreneurship, the Huntsman Scholar program, internships, career acceleration, etc. These programs have greatly enhanced the experiential education opportunities of our students. There was no space planned for these types of functions in the original design of our current building.

4) We are short on classrooms both within our building and on campus in general. We have had to move several classes to a 7:00 a.m. start time, and several others to late afternoon and evening simply because of the lack of classrooms. We are quickly running out of options; we thought a new building is a better option than having classes start right as Letterman and Leno give their opening monologues.

It should be noted that most of the money for the new building is coming from generous donors who understand our current space limitations. It should also be noted that none of the money for the new building is coming from student tuition.

Ken Snyder

Great Work Great Career will be back in the fall semester

We really appreciate all the support we are getting from the Huntsman faculty, as well as the faculty and staff from other colleges and Career Services as the program continues to grow and develop.  Week after week, we hear from the best of the best this university has to offer.  The lessons the students learn and the connections they have the opportunity to make are invaluable. 

Everything is coming together for the fall session.  The dates aren’t set in stone yet but applications will open around the first week of school with the course beginning possibly the third week in September and going for nine weeks.  We’ll get everything finalized in the next week so be sure to check out our next post!

In the very book we study, Dr. Stephen R. Covey and Jennifer Colosimo make a claim that “it’s a natural principle that you cannot achieve anything truly worthwhile alone – at least not in the world of work.”  We stand by that claim and implement that principle into this course.  There are great lessons taught concerning the importance of taking charge of your life, defining your contribution, getting the work you want, and how to perform well on résumés and during interviews.  On top of that, the relationships formed between students and with the elite guest speakers have the potential to accelerate ones career.

Jordan Jennings, a marketing student graduating this December, had this to say after completing the course,

“Great Work Great Career gave me the preparation I needed to step out of college and into the career search with confidence and direction.  Thanks to Great Work Great Career I know I can take control.  Where most people go through the application process in the standard way, I know I can take control, be proactive, and not simply find a job opening, but create a place for myself in a company where I can make a significant contribution.”

Jordan, along with many others, have expressed their increase in confidence as they get ready to graduate and prepare to enter the job market. 

To students, we encourage you to participate in this program.  To professors, we ask you to encourage your students to participate in this program.  

Blending the New with the Old

Eric Schulz

New tools to help marketers reach consumers are being created or evolved at breakneck speed. Just when you think you’re up-to-date on the latest cell phone technology, android marketplace, texting gimmick, widget, social network, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, Google+ or other innovation, something new comes along that changes everything.

Many young marketers growing up in this age of rapid evolution are so focused on taking advantage of the next new thing, they’ve failed to learn or integrate basic marketing strategies that have been time-proven to work. Many seasoned marketers, having embraced and found success using the core strategies of the past, disparately cling to old strategies and tactics, discounting the opportunities created by new technology, media and hardware.

To be effective in today's environment, marketers must integrate the marketing innovation created by the technology revolution and the brash utilization of these tools by youthful marketers, with the sage and proven wisdom of time-tested marketing strategies.

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Marketing Truth

The strategies proven to convince consumers to buy your products have not changed. The tools and tactics we can use as marketers to most effectively and efficiently reach consumers have changed dramatically.

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Redefinition

It wasn’t that long ago that “social network” was the term that described the group of ladies who get together at church to knit quilts on Saturday mornings. Senior marketers remember when there were only three television networks, and “appointment viewing” was Thursday nights at 8 p.m. to watch “The Cosby Show” on NBC. The most technologically advanced piece of home electronics was a VCR, with a flashing “12:00” on the face because most adults were too intimidated to program it.

Now social networks mean Facebook, Google+, YouTube, Twitter and countless affinity groups. Cable and satellite providers have diluted the effectiveness of TV advertising, bringing up to 200 channels into homes, specialized into everything from sports to history to home improvement, which can be of help in some cases if you’re selling to a very specific audience, but a detriment to reaching consumers far and wide. Smart phones are now complete entertainment devices, with the ability to stream TV, hold your music library, access your email, and give you turn-by-turn driving directions. DVR’s have replaced VCR’s, and appointment viewing is a thing of the past. Consumers record their favorite shows on their DVR’s and watch them later, so they can skip through all the commercials (a very bad thing for marketers). About the only television programs being watched when they are being broadcast live are news and sports. Miss your favorite program or accidentally erase it? No problem. Just watch it at your convenience on your computer via streaming video on the web or your smart phone.

Advertising to youth has changed the most radically. Kids use the TV more to play games on their Playstation, Xbox and Wii than to watch programs. They don’t listen to the radio; they get their music from an iPod. They don’t read the newspaper or magazines; they browse the internet, use widgets or subscribe to RSS feeds for the things that interest them. The media channels that have been used for decades to advertise to youth are becoming less and less effective.

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Marketing Truth

A wise man once told me “it’s not what you CAN do, it’s what you SHOULD do”. The question you need to ask is “Does it FIT with your brand strategy and drive the sales needle?”

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Can vs. Should

Three or four times each week, a salesmen comes into my office to show me his latest and greatest marketing tool. Most are technology driven, such as location based Bluetooth or GPS texting; “smart” database systems; and innovative internet technologies. One gentleman came in to show me how I could upload a scanned photo of myself to his website, and his company could insert my face over the top of the actor’s face in any commercial, and my eyes, mouth movements, and expressions would all look exactly like I was in the commercial. Cool, but what do I do with it? How will it help me sell my products?

Marketing today isn’t just about initiating an email blast to your database, texting them, “tweeting” them, or creating a really cool mobile app. While those are tactics that CAN be used, they need to fit within a strategic plan that drives product sales. Just creating a great looking website the ad agency has convinced you to make “sticky” so that consumers come and linger doesn’t necessarily translate into improved product sales or even increased brand affinity.

About the Author

Eric D Schulz is Sr. Lecturer and Co-Director of Strategic Marketing & Brand Management at the Jon M Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. He is a brand marketing expert and the author of “The Marketing Game, How The World’s Best Companies Play to Win”, with sales of over 250,000 copies worldwide. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter.

Doing the same thing over and over again will not yield different results

One of my wife's favorite shows is the Bachelor/Bachelorette. For anyone not familiar with the show, I envy you. I won't even bother explaining the premise of the show to spare you the pain.

Connor Child

The most recent season of the Bachelorette just came to a close, and (Spoiler Alert!) Ashley the Dentist selected a man named J.P. as the man she would like to temporarily be engaged to. Past experience with these types of "reality" TV shows says that the odds of those two actually tying the knot someday are about the same as a 75 degree February day in Logan. It's a mortal lock that Us Weekly will have a cover story in October with a melancholy picture of Ashley and a caption that says, "'Heartbroken' Ashley finally tells her side of the story."

If my wife ever goes insane, I'm blaming this show. Albert Einstein once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. He may as well have been talking about this show. Every season, millions of people (mostly women) invest an inordinate amount of time and emotion into hoping that an attractive bachelor/bachelorette finds the person of his/her dreams and has a fairytale wedding and marriage. My numbers may be a little off, but I think the show has yielded someting like one marriage out of 4,342 attempts. When Ashley and J.P. inevitably break up in a couple months, my wife and millions of other people will be heartbroken and one step closer to insanity.

Einstein's definition of insanity applies to more than just fans of terrible TV shows. As students, we can learn a great deal from it. It's not uncommon to find students and recent graduates who are frustrated with the lack of results that comes from what they are doing. I believe that it's crucial for us to tweak our formulas and try new things if we want differnt results. With the school year rapidly approaching, I hope that each of us looks for opportunities to broaden our perspectives and open our eyes. It's not enough to work our part-time jobs and get passing grades. Join a club, sign up for a study abroad, work with a professor on a research project or attend the dean's convocations. Additionally, there are several other opportunities the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business has afforded us so that we can try new things. It's only after we do this that we can begin to "Dare Mighty Things."

Connor Child

The domino effect now plays out on USU campus

Now that we’ve found the architect we want to hire to lead the construction on our new building, people are asking me when construction will officially get underway. That’s a difficult question to answer because the start point of the timeline is out of our control.

It’s what I call the domino effect. Before we can begin work on our new building, there are a number of things, which are out of our control, that need to happen first. For starters, the construction of the new Agricultural Building needs to be completed.

Ken Snyder

After that, the tentative sequence as Facilities has explained it to me, is that the College of Agriculture and Department of Journalism and Communication faculty need to move into the new building. Next there will be some sort of renovation of the Animal Science Building. Then, I’m told, the Department of Mathematics and Statistics will move out of the Lund Hall. Then we we will demolish Lund Hall. And only after the demolition work on Lund Hall is complete can we actually begin construction on our building.

As for time schedule, I have heard that they expect the Agricultural Building to be completed in February of 2012. I am told that the Department of Mathematics and Statistics people will move out of Lund Hall sometime in between May 2012 and August 2012.

So, as you watch construction on new Agricultural Building progress, realize you are also watching the goal of our new building becoming a reality. It’s all part of the domino effect.

Ken Snyder

Entrepreneurial spirit in the form of selling lemonade

As a child, growing up in Southern California, summer had a different meaning than it does for me now while living in Logan. I now see it as a heavenly two- or three-month period. Accustomed to heat and all-around wonderful weather, it meant a break from school and a chance to make a little spending money for some coveted bubble gum balls and basketball cards. When the temperature would get very hot in summer, as it always did, I was granted the opportunity to exercise my entrepreneurial spirit selling lemonade.

Rob Goates

Armed with a small card table and a folding chair, I enlisted the help of my little brother, Jon, to become my “business partner,” in which we would evenly split the earnings after doing our share of work. We first found our supplier; in this case it was my mom. With our lemonade powder, water, sugar and ice, we were ready to begin. (Or so we thought; we also found that there is a science to making lemonade, and we learned that the hard way)

After choosing the location at the corner at the end of our subdivision, we began to wait. And wait. And wait. My mother came out and was nice enough to buy one from us, allowing us some momentary joy; however, it was short lived, as it soon became apparent that our location wasn’t great. Nevertheless, we couldn’t move - that was the stipulation of our investor, i.e. my mom, and we were stuck there. So the waiting continued.

As the sun continued to beat down, we decided to try our hand at advertising our immovable location to bring in more customers. This, we found, was also not as easy as we thought. My mom, again to the rescue of her seemingly helpless sons, taught us the principle of using vibrant colors and big, bold lettering to catch the attention of those driving past. And, much to our surprise, it worked okay. Bringing in two or three more customers gave us renewed vigor and strength to continue on in our endeavor. We wanted more.

We hollered and yelled our little lungs off, hoping to attract any attention at all given that the sun was fading fast and we had not a moment to lose. We knew that once it started to cool down we didn’t have a prayer. Then, when we had sat back in our chair (we shared one), resigned to call it our day’s work and making what seemed small, it happened.

“Hello? Are you still selling lemonade?” it was a middle-aged woman, in a minivan, with six children buckled into their seats.

“Yes, ma’am, we sure are,” our eyes lit up.

“I’d like seven.”

Seven? Seven! Wahoo! We leapt to action and served them up quick, collecting to us what seemed a fortune, full of gratitude for that nice woman who took pity on two haggard-looking little boys, exhausted from a day of yelling.

I learned many valuable life lessons that summer day. I’m reminded of it often during times like these when heat returns and kids come out on the streets to continue the age-old practice of making a buck or two selling lemonade.

Rob Goates