I was sad to hear today of a fire that gutted Havana Restaurant (Buford Highway near North Druid Hills), one of the few great places for Cuban food north of Miami. I’ve been going there about 10 years now, as it was often a mandatory escape from the horrible cafeteria food at Oglethorpe. Yes, my first Cuban coffee experience was here, and I remember buzzing for the next two days afterward. Many guanabana shakes were enjoyed here, though I often took them to go as the place truly was a hole in the wall. I remember when the owner’s husband died, and now this…well, there’s a site started to encourage her to reopen…so if you were a fan, drop a line and let her know! And who knows, maybe she’ll get a nicer place…and if not, that’s ok, it kinda added to the ambiance.
Five people. Five busy jobs. Five relationships – spouses, significant others, pets. Five schedules of demanding classes. Five homes spread across metro Atlanta.
One group presentation.
At Portfolio Center, crazy situations like this happen. Five people without a single common minute in the day are to come together and work on a group project and deliver a professional presentation before a professional panel.
However, we had one extra variable. Alas, we had one group member with a very pregnant wife and a half finished house full of contractors. In the final days before our presentation we knew we had a lot of work ahead of us, but struggled with our different schedules and locales. We could have given our very busy member an absentee pass considering the circumstances, but our loyal member wanted to remain involved in between doctors appointments and housing dilemmas.
So what do you do with a member who has a wife days from giving birth and a house full of construction workers? Easy. Move in with him.
Yes, we moved in, pets and all. Those who lived furthest away showered, slept, and borrowed pre-pregnancy clothes and shoes from our host. A pull-out sofa and picnic table outback provided a place when fatigue overcame us. Take-out, Pirate’s Booty, and Starbucks became our regular diet. And somehow amongst barking dogs, sweaty construction workers, and a very pregnant wife, a marketing plan was born.
As for all this started -this quarter 10 students were given the opportunity to take a class called Marketing for Designers. For many in the creative field, the idea of taking a marketing class sends shivers, but fortunately we were given freedom to make the best of it.
Our class was divided into two groups and given the task to present a marketing plan for a new fictitious Proctor & Gamble product. In 45 minutes we were to pitch a new Crest product for cleaning teeth on the go: a small capsule that dissolves in the mouth, all natural, small pellet size. We could change the name (it was introduced to us a Crest-On-The-Go) and market it any way we saw fit, as long as we had a strong objective with strategies and tactics to back it up.
In our research, we looked into the way the day is used, divided and spent and the opportunities P&G was missing. We analyzed the typical shelf space for Crest and studied their color pallets and packaging. We attempted to create a sub brand for Crest, kind of a Mini Cooper for BMW, in an attempt to appeal to Generation Y. We called our product Re*fresh and added a new logo instead of using that of the dated Crest. We didn’t want to get away from the reputation of Crest, yet we wanted a fresh look to attract the huge dispensable income of the upcoming ginormous group of consumers, Generation Y.
We struggled much in the beginning, as establishing a unified objective and strategies among us provided to be quite difficult. We bribed my boss from Kimberly-Clark – senior designer for the Innovation Design departments, and also an industrial designer to shed some light on how to successfully market a new product with a creative mind. Over lunch they shared an immeasurable amount of advice and inspired us to get on the ball.
Through challenging one another, doing immeasurable amounts of research, and spending too much time in a small space together, we made out plan come together in the end. We managed to conduct video interviews with our target market, fit in a photo shoot for our ad campaign, and create three forms of packaging mock-ups. We each used our strengths to make our presentations come alive, weather it be in public speaking, making keynote charts, or comping last minute designs.
Our instructor, posing as the CMO of P&G, wanted a surprise at our presentation and did not want to see any of our work throughout the quarter…we hope we gave him something to enjoy, as we definitely gave ourselves something to remember.
The expecting
Lunch with the fine folks from Kimberly-Clark
Confidential Dog
Testing the competition
Re*fresh logo
Poster #1
Poster #2
Poster #3
Billboard #1
Billboard #2
Bebo Site
YouTube Contest Ad
YouTube Contest Page
Ad for business class (future Gen Y)
Shelf mock-up
Packaging concept sketches (sorry, I don’t have pics of the final comps)
World reknown dentist, Dr. Yuri Zhopov
Gen Y tells all!
A few minutes with a corporate bigshot and his thoughts on dental care
I’ve been more than annoyed lately by the way the US has stuck its nose into the affairs of Russia vs. Georgia. We’ve made a big enough mess with invading smaller countries, we don’t have room to talk.
The amount of biased coverage in the US press makes all this seem a little shady – I have nothing against Georgia and hope to visit it someday, but our media here has plastered them as the innocent victims on headlines everywhere. A one sided opinion is never valid, and I hope people will recognize this.
If you want to see a prime example, here you go. Russian trying to tell their side of the story and abruptly getting cut off. Obviously this is not what Fox wanted to hear…
I notice a lot of people have been coming to this blog to look for info Pre-Bauhaus Europe. I don’t know who you are, but I know the feeling of not being able to find much on it…I’ve been meaning to get my paper on the subject from 4th quarter Sustainable Concepts uploaded here, so finally, here you go. Use what you like from it, just credit the authors noted in the back.
It wasn’t easy ato come back to the land of homework hell and criticism after all the cafes, relaxed strolls, and meeting of family…if fact, it makes me want to choose carefully the lifestyle I head into next. There is much more to life than just working Contentment and success comes in all forms and the stress of a non stop high profile job is not the answer for all.
So yes, I finally made it to Milan…after a night in Virginia, and a day at JFK. We didn’t get in to Italy until Saturday afternoon, in fact. But the days afterward make up for those delays….Milan, Lugano (Switzerland), Torina, Genova, Rome, and the region of Calabria.
Those are all posts or talks over coffee that will have to wait – I’m far too tired to write about those adventures. While the 11 hour flight was not much fun, it was the 2 hours going through customs hell in Atlanta that diminished my level of energy completely. I did make it back for my 1pm class today, only to have the instructor not show up. But that was ok – instead I had a relaxed lunch with a few classmates and did nothing but catch up and drink margaritas. I never had a chance for that last quarter, and I was quite miserable with the isolation it created. It’s good to know the fears and worries that I have are shared by fellow 7th quarters as well. Well, I’m not wishing them to feel this way, it was just nice to vent together.
Anyway, I am tired and have the opportunity to sleep, so I will take it.
I’m supposed to be in Milan right now. Sipping strong espressos and looking at cool people. No, I’m somewhere in Virginia, the day after my flight departed. Let’s just say problems everywhere you turn. Upon departing Atlanta, a man on our plan has a seizure and then goes unconcious. He won’t respond to any doctors that are on board. We make an emergency landing at a little airport in Virginia. Out landing gear doesn’t like the heavy plane landing on a small run way, and makes an odd thud noise. Firetrucks come. Siezure guy is removed from plane, but we stay since we are an international flight. However, tech people see that this plane won’t fly out again, so after an hour we can leave and hang out in the tiny terminal. For many many hours we are told several stories about what will happen (they will bring replacements for all the tires that blew out, they will ship us back to Atlanta). However, By midnight we are shipped out to a hotel. 200 grumpy Itlians, Americans, and some Middle Eastern folk that were making connecting flights in Milan. Did I mention the multitude of sreaming chhildren on that flight? Anyway, next day we are about to take a cab back to the airport now, and see if the plane will be ready to fly out, and that we will have someone to fly it (another problem last night, we couldn’t just bring in another giant jet, and we couldn’t find someone available to fly it since the pilot here maxed out his legal awake time). Anyway, I’m supposed to arrive in Milan at 2:45 am. great. Will write about those adventures when possible. Ciao.
I haven’t done any homework today. I feel a bit guilty, and will probably do a bit of reading later, but my brain feel like it finally has had some time to breath.
I haven’t gone to bed before 4am all week, and I’ve been wearing myself down terribly…but now I’m eight hours from PC and going to spend a few moments in the Atlantic before heading eight hours back. I’m just along for the ride, I keep saying.
