Have you met the traveling gnome?

Yesterday I had a great experience thanks to my MBA program. I had the opportunity to go to Fuqua's Marketing Conference at Duke University. It was an all day conference with different sessions about marketing and I feel like the knowledge I gained was invaluable. First, Dan Ariely, a professor at Duke University spoke about marketing as the Faculty Keynote Speaker. I then went to Alain Groenendaal about Experimental Marketing in a Post Digital World where experimental marketing was defined as a planned event that leaves a brand impression on a target audience. This can be achieved by the following:

1. Educating/teaching new behaviors.
2. Bringing brand promise to life
3. Generating conversation
4. Making tangible the intangible
5. Expanding the brand's meaning.

Next Yaser Bishr talked about creating a "social footprint" and creating Evangelists in your consumers.

The next session was delivered by Kimberly Long, Brand Manager of Heinz Ketchup. who talked about Heinz change to reflect new campaign "Grown, not made." In this session, she talked about expandable consumption; how to use ketchup beyond burgers, hot dogs and fries, and how to use more in a serving, get customers to buy bigger bottles of ketchup, etc. She also talked about using the classic glass bottle in advertisements (just as Coke still uses the classic glass Coke bottle for advertisement) as well as the importance of equity tracking both before and after consumers saw the new campaign(s).

The next speaker was Brad Brinegar, CEO of the Durham marketing firm, McKinney, who is responsible for Travelocity's effective marketing campaign with the Traveling gnome. Brad spoke about Connection planning for complex segmentation- to consider who the right people to reach are and what conversations you want to have with these people. "Brands are the connection between someone and something. Transactional connections say 'I'm buying what you're selling' whereas personal connections say 'I'm buying from you'."

Clint McClain talked about building a brand portfolio, specifically regarding his position at Wal-Mart and the value of discovering the type of consumer that you plan to target in your marketing strategy.

Overall, I was quite impressed with the knowledge I gained at this conference. These are just some of the valuable things I learned yesterday.

The woman who lived in her shoes

My name is Jessica and I am a shoe-a-holic...I have a lot of shoes; tall ones, short ones, flat ones, boots, flip flops...I have it all...Well at least I did until this past Sunday when they mistakenly got brought to the Municipal landfill...I had a bag of five pairs of shoes that were picked up from the shoe repair shop after some much needed recapping on the heels. They were in a brown paper bag that was then placed in a plastic bag and they were waiting patiently for me in my parent's laundry room. However, at some point this sack of shoes ended up next to the garbage can and got brought to the dump with the rest of the "holiday" garbage. Let's just say I was in for quite a surprise when I went to my parent's house to pick them up and they weren't there. I wouldn't have cared so much except that out of the five pairs, one was a really nice pair of silver peep-toe Mary Janes that have mini-diamonds on the buckles, yes diamonds. The other pair was my french pink peep-toe JIMMY CHOO mary janes that I got in sale on Rodeo Drive this past summer while shopping with Erin in Beverly Hills.

I went to Saks 5th Ave last night in hopes of replacing my mangled JIMMY CHOOs with a new pair but I honestly wasn't crazy about anything I saw and if you're going to spend mega bucks on shoes, they better be fabulous.

After a disappointing supply at Saks last night, I went on a mission today and managed to find both my Jimmy Choos and my Silver Corso Como shoes on line, on sale and in my size....I should receive both pairs by the end of the week and will definitely think twice before bringing them to the shoe repair.

On a completely different note, I went to a cycling class at my gym for the first time and I am hooked...going back tomorrow.

Fire Alarms are overrated!!

I just got back to North Carolina yesterday in time to start what will hopefully be a much better year. I was expecting to be back on Tuesday which I was counting on to get my life in order for the year of 2010 before school and work take over...

Instead, I had to say goodbye to someone very important to me, my grandfather. He passed away this past Monday and he will be missed very much but I know that he is happy to be reunited with my grandmother. The plus to extending my trip home to Connecticut was more time with my new cousins Ava and Jules who are the most adorable babies ever! Jules




Ava

Jules


I also got to spend some much needed time with my lifelong best friend Melissa who was there for me all week, taking me to the hospital, supporting me at the wake and the funeral as well. I love you girl...you are after all "family".

However, the hotel we stayed at was terrible, the room was really small, especially when shared between three people for one week, the mattress felt like a sheet of plywood, there were 4 maintenance calls for the toilet that would never flush, a day without water while a plumbing issue was worked on (day of the wake), and 3 fire alarms, one while my brother was in the shower and two in the middle of the night prior to the funeral...Needless to say I will not be staying at the Doubletree on Post Rd again any time soon. Oh yeah, the breakfast that we were comped for the all of the inconveniences was cold, yuck!

It's been an emotionally and physically exhausting week and now I only have two days to knock out an on-going and self-induced honey-do list. I have gotten a lot accomplished today but still have so much to do tomorrow before I go back to work on Monday. At least I have another week before school starts and life really gets crazy.

With the new year, I don't have resolutions necessarily but goals...

• Take things in stride...know that I can't control everything no matter how hard I try
• Stay away from Toxic people, completely remove them from my life- it's not worth the drama
• Run and Run hard- my running shoes need to come out of hibernation alas!
• Cook more, eat out less- I got 4 cookbooks for Christmakah that are waiting to be broken in
• Live, Laugh, Love