CAPSTONE!

Hello everyone!

I can’t believe Heather and I submitted our final report paper today! It is crazy to thing that we are finally done with this project. We have learned a lot about the CPG industry and marketing in general. At times, it was hard to work with our client Olga, but the experience was amazing overall! I am glad I took the time to find a project that would align with my career goals in the beginning of the semester. I feel a lot more prepared now to graduate and start working. Heather was also a great partner, and I’m very proud of the work we have done.

Heather and I were scared about releasing the survey through Qualtrics too late and not having enough time to work on the analysis and final paper. We were glad we were able to get enough responses in only one week and a half, and start working on the analysis. Our client wanted us to organize and analyze all the data we’ve got from the survey because of her plan on publishing an industry white paper, and that helped us go through everything and write part of our final report.

We had a meeting with our client last Friday, where she reviewed most of our work and gave us feedback. She seemed very satisfied with our work, and we were very happy with that. Working on some of the deliverables were not an easy task, but we were glad she followed our vision. We recently shared the final report with her, and have a last meeting this Friday. We hope she’s happy with what we came up with! She worked alongside us throughout the semester, but we never mentioned a marketing strategy. During our meeting, we explained what we thought was most appropriate in the first place, and we were satisfied she agreed with us.

Overall, this was a great experience, and even though it was a lot of work, I would easily do it again!

Hope you also had a great semester and ended up very proud of your work!

Natália Abdalla

Blog 13

Hey everyone,

 

Last week was the really busy week for me, I had to prepare midterm and final exam in coding, and presentation for the consumer insight course. Plus my son may coming out in any second now, so I need more time to take care my daughter and wife. So I had less time to work on my final report. However, Professor Dianne is really kind to get me 2 more days to work on it. So this week I will continue working on my final report and get ready for presentation on Friday.

 

Hope everyone feels good for the final week!!!

Roy Zhang

Blog Post #12

Hello,

This week, our team has been gearing up for the final presentation on Monday, April 22nd. Earlier in the week, we received feedback on our improved pitch statement from Professor Hardin. Later, we created an outline for how we will present our findings. Over the last 16 weeks, we have collected plenty of information.

As a result we spent a considerable amount of time organizing our findings and discussing the best ways to share it with our client. Communication is the key and the way we choose to communicate our findings will impact how the client interprets it. To have a deeper impact, we have utilized several quotes from our interviews, competitive analysis and created personas for the client’s target audience. We are making short-term and long-term recommendations. Some of which can be accomplished in a future capstone. Our team has worked well together and by sharing the responsibility we have been able to accomplish our objective.

It’s been a pleasure learning with everyone. Congratulations to all of you!

Blog Post 12

Hi everyone!

I can't believe the semester is almost over!  I don't have many updates on my capstone project with the 1819 Innovation Hub.  I have my presentation scheduled for May 16th, so I'm happy that even though I have to present after I graduate, it won't be too long after before I can present.  Today I sent my more detailed research into the University of Pittsburgh and the offerings they have for businesses to Myrita Craig to look over.  I am hoping that the data I sent her is what she is looking for so I can really dive into the data I need to be presenting to 1819 executives in May.  So for the next few weeks I will just be gathering data, uploading it into a presentation, and preparing to present.  All the changes for my project has made writing my final paper a little difficult, since I just found out a week or so ago that I need to gather even more data that I wasn't aware I needed, but I'm powering through.  Overall, I have really enjoyed working with Drew Boyd and I have learned a lot about what working with a real-life client is really like.  

Blog Post #12

I cannot believe this is our last blog post!  It feels like our first class together, meeting Carly and Utkarsh and getting our assignments was just last week.  Dianne really tried to warn us that time would be our enemy.  Our final presentation is schedule for Monday, April 22^nd at 4pm, we are ready (almost)!

Since my last post, Carly, Utkarsh and I have reworked our presentation format to embrace our solutions right away to ensure our client is engaged and wanting more.  We are really starting to see all our hard work this semester come together as a final strategy that the College of Law can execute and take forward to another capstone project. On Monday, Dianne helped us think about our pitch statement as an executive summary, which helped us work through a revised pitch statement that shows more of our voice than the outline given to us.  We felt it was important for our client to feel our investment in the project, while still touching on critical statements a pitch statement needs. 

As we are putting together our presentation, we are also compiling all our working documents to hand over to the College of Law.  We will be delivering to them all we promised in our Charter, as well as, anonymous transcripts of our interviews, insights spreadsheet, competitive analysis, perceptual map and value statements that they will be able to refer to when executing our strategy or starting another capstone project.

Lastly, I want to give a shout out to my team, Carly and Utkarsh.  It was unbelievable how quickly we took to each other’s personalities, challenging ideas and opinions, while also having the utmost respect.  It was so great learning more about them, about me, about Law School and inclusion.  I look forward to keeping up with how our client moves forward and so happy I enjoyed my capstone experience!

Blog Post 12

This week I finally completed the communication strategy and the channel strategy! These were the two modules I was having the most difficult time with because I felt like the content overlapped a lot with my value proposition messaging and my digital strategy. 

For the communication strategy, I took the approach of suggesting more specific content and topics the client could use in their digital marketing under the umbrella of the "We care, that's why we approve you for the right amount" messaging. The messaging is more about the broad strategy, while the communication strategy highlights specific tactics. Some examples include partnering with a financial advisor to provide "smart money management" tips to customers to become a reliable resource, and a "danger zone!" campaign where they warn about the risks of falling for a lender who qualifies people for higher loans than they can reasonably pay back. 

For the channel strategy, I took the opposite approach. I have the specific digital strategy, so I backed into the broad channel strategy. What are our overall goals for reaching our customer? What makes the specific digital tactics the right approach? This includes reaching the customer where she is, specifically when she's searching for installment loans, and ensuring that the campaign is measurable so that they can determine the best places to invest marketing dollars.

I hope that these two strategies combined with the other modules I've completed will help Axcess Financial with their future digital marketing plans for a long time to come. I feel that they are customizable, flexible, and easily targeted so that they can be adapted for use in many different applications. 

Now that I've completed the last two modules, it's time to put together the final presentation! Overall, I'm very happy with the work I've done on this project and looking forward to presenting it next week.

Blog Post #12- Final

Hi guys,

Wow, I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but this is our final post for capstone. I'm shocked at how the time has just flown by so quickly. What a ride it has been, phew!

For my last post, I just wanted to reflect on my personal experience working with my client over the past 3 months. I must say I have learnt quite a lot on this journey and having worked in similar spaces in the past, the experience brought back so many memories. Some not so pleasant like the anxiety and stress that comes with such a project, managing timelines and expectations as well as wanting to apply yourself in more ways but confined within the limits of what the client will allow. But overall, it has been great learning experience and I am the more wiser and knowledgeable for it. CMH is a wonderful school and the staff has been so great. Susan and I worked well together and I hope she too shares the same sentiments and will be happy with my final analysis and recommendations.

At the moment, just like everyone else, I am busy putting together my final report and project presentation. The client is still sending more data to work on for building the donor database which I am happy to work on, but at this late stage of the game I really wish she could have made use of so many weeks of lost time when I was expecting this information from her. Hopefully I can juggle it all in the short amount of time left while still  working on my report and presentation.

I really enjoyed reading everyone's posts from week to week and knowing that some of the experiences i had were not unique to me or this project. It definitely help keep me sane and calm throughout my many stresses. So Thank you guys for helping walk through this process with me.

All the best of luck to you all and whatever you will be doing in the near future! 

Thembela

  

LAST BLOG POST

Good morning everyone, and an even better morning as this is our last blog post of the semester!

 

Twelve weeks of blog posts later, and I am amazed to look back and reflect on how far my reflections have come - and I bet I am not alone! It's fascinating to see where I imagined this project would go when we began week one, and where it is actually wrapping up within the next  1-2 weeks. It's all rooted back in a reflection I had a few weeks ago, about being flexible but also maintaining a big picture vision for where the project is going.

 

One large learning that I've had throughout the semester is the ability to maintain and achieve specific goals and objectives. While all of our clients have been explicit in their approval of our work, it is still interesting to see what parts of our deliverables we had to cut out or change so that we could execute to the best of our abilities on others. This is far from a knock on our ability to execute, time manage, or perform, but more of a learning opportunity to maintain open communication lines about progress with your client so that they truly understand what you are delivering and why it matters to their business that extra time be spent on it.

 

For example, the Business of Fashion academic research is going incredibly well, but has evolved from including interviews and a breadth of resources to diving deep into two specific areas: a core competency analysis and a competitive matrix framework. Indeed, Katie and I could have just done these two modules and "checked a box" to deliver it to our client, but the more we dove into the actual research, the more we found that there are more insights to be learned from that specific module that we had initially anticipated. Thanks to the incredible flexibility of our clients, they've been excited to trust us in our journey and our ability to deliver a final project that will positively impact their business.

 

The next few weeks will look a little crazy for Katie and I, but nonetheless represent the culmination of our hard work executed to the best of our ability. As I prepare to spend the net few hours dividing into a competitive class matrix of course topics, I'm eager to continue to pull insights from the depth of our work.

blog 12

Last week has been exhausting as this is the final week to complete my project. I have already started on my report which I’m trying to finish as soon as possible. I’m still working on the data as I have found some discrepancies on it which I need to address and try to make them right. I just have to make a move on as time just flew by and the report is due in a week’s time.

Last week’s pitch presentation really helped me narrow down my focus and the conclusion of my work. It really helped me understand and also pinpoint the results of my project. Listening to other students’ pitches gave me an understanding of how to make my project better as well. I also got excellent feedback on my pitch which I truly appreciate from my professor and my peers.

Looking forward to completing this report and the presentation next week.

 

-Bhavya

Blog 12

Hello!

I can't believe that this is our final blog post and that our client presentation is next week! It's a relief to know that all of our hard work will finally be appreciated, but also nerve racking. Last Monday was our final meeting with our client Tyler and he gave us some great pointers on how we should present. He mentioned how we're presenting to mainly CEOs, so they're not going to hesitate on asking the hard question. I am a bit nervous for this, but know that our group did great research and could answer any questions they throw at us. I think the main step we have to take is practicing to be ready for the questions. Our deliverables and plans seemed to be right on track with what Tyler expected out of our research, which was a relief.

This coming week, we are editing and condensing what information should be on the powerpoint and how we should present. I think one of the hardest parts of that is narrowing down the information we should touch on the most, especially because we have excess insights and data. Once we feel confident that we have a final draft of the presentation, Tyler offered to look it over a final time and give us any last advice. He has been such a supportive, concise client to work with! Our group is also going to take our presentation and just transfer it over into our report. I'm not looking forward to that part because I know it will be time consuming.

My advice for people going into their capstone would be to plan plan plan. Establish what exactly needs to be done at the beginning, then assign each task each week of the course. It will help with organization and also to make sure you have enough time to finish everything. Best of luck to those finishing their capstone and to those just starting out!