Thursday, July 22, 2010

Sales and Marketing Experience: Career Treking

Oh how fondly I remember my Sales and Marketing Class at Tufts within the Entrepreneurial Leadership Program. This class was at 8:30 in the morning; and for the commuting student (me) to get there on time, I had to wake up at 6:00 and be on the train by 7:00. Then I had to catch a shuttle to the building. Fun. The class was taught by the amazing Jack Derby, who I felt slightly intimidated by yet excited to learn from.

I remember sitting in the classroom of 30 Tufts students, brilliant, thinking, "How do I win over my professor, who owns his own multi-million dollar consulting company and has entrusted us with assignments from his own clients, who need a marketing plan?" About four weeks I had found it - my solution; “Disturbia”, by Rhianna.


I'll explain.

We were assigned to real companies (clients of Jack's) to work with as teams to come up with fresh ideas for marketing plans for them. Our company was Career Trekking, a company that specialized in assisting college students in finding their dream careers and jobs. While we definitely pulled all the usual stuff, I wanted to make our presentation awesome.

I came up with an idea of a video for Career Treking after Jack mentioned something in one of his classes: how can you appeal emotionally to your client to have them purchase your product? Well, emotionally, as a college student, I figured it was a safe assumption that college students were afraid. This was a scary time in the economy, and it is still a scary job market. So I took this notion of "Fear", and applied it to a video, taking images and icons from old movies adored by our generation and putting them to appropriate music by Rhianna - a song called "Disturbia".



The company loved my video and ended up putting it up on their website! They've since taken it down, but it was still a moment of intense pride for me, and it was when I realized that I would really love a position in marketing. Now I hold a marketing position within Boston Logic, I am looking forward to a great career in this amazing industry, and I do owe so much to Jack Derby and his intellectually stimulating and invigorating class.

Check out the video and let me know what you think!!

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