PentaVision's "What's Your Story?" Blog

On August 4, 2010 I will post my last participation comments at Baker College Online as an undergraduate student in marketing. I’m what colleges and universities would refer to as a “non-traditional” student – I’m 31, a working professional and don’t have the flexibility to attend class on campus (nor would I want to attend on campus). I live at least 20 minutes from the nearest community college campus and while that might not seem like a long commute, see how long it takes during a Lake Michigan lake-effect snowstorm! I also didn’t really want to dedicate the necessary resources to make it to a “real” classroom. On the flip side, I definitely felt that I missed out on enriching in-person, real-time discussion and interactions. To be honest, statistics was not an easy class to learn solo!

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While sifting through my mail a few weeks ago, I spotted a semi-appealing piece of direct mail. It was a pair of bare feet leaving a pair of brightly-colored flip-flops on white sand and walking into turquoise water. I opened it up and glanced at it briefly; it was an advertisement from Meyer Real Estate serving the Pensacola, Florida and Gulf Shores, Alabama area. I had visited their website in the height of my sunshine-deprived months of November through February (though it can really be most times during the year in Michigan these days). As I closed the interesting-but-not-relevant-on-a-hectic-day marketing piece and prepared to put it one of my many piles-of-things-saved-for-a-later-date (that inevitably get thrown out), I caught a whiff of wonderful. Was that coconut I smelled? And summer?!

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If you grew up in the days before email was the preferred method for sharing information with friends and family, then you probably remember chain letters. I was born in 1978 and fell into that in-between group that started using the Internet for email and basic research in middle school and high school on our dial-up Internet connection (insert look of horror here). As a young child I remember mail arriving for me; the envelope indicating that it had come from a best friend or acquaintance written in the slapdash scrawl usually reserved for young children and physicians.

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When most of us think of marketing, we think of a department in the company that creates ads, direct mail, commercials, etc. But marketing is so much more than just a few “creative” people sitting around writing tag lines.

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If you could pick one company or product that, in your mind, defined innovation, who or what would it be? I asked myself that same question after I was approached by my coworker Michael Rupchock, our video and graphics editor to co-write a blog on innovation. It’s interesting that he chose this topic, because this is something I’ve been discussing in one of the groups I belong to on LinkedIn – as well as an article in the November 2009 issue of Entrepreneur.

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Everyone wants to make the right impression – whether it’s in person, by phone, email or other mode of communication. We practice what we’ll say, spend time crafting a solid email introduction, make sure our hair is neat and breath is fresh. But when it comes to social media marketing, some of us show up with bad form and no game plan.

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