Second Meeting
We all knew our client was Mary Kay before applying, but I was very excited to read the case study and see what products we would be working with, and also learn about Mary Kay. The case study was 35 text-filled pages! It went over everything from the history of the brand, to how the brand is today, to the company as a whole, the successes of the business, all of their products, their influence in the industry, their competitors, and to their consumers and prospective consumers.
I had to read over the case study a few times to be able to understand everything they were hoping to get from our campaign. There were so many questions that also needed to be answered!
The party.
We went into another room where Prof. Bichard’s friend Robbie, who works for Mary Kay, set up a PARTY! It was super exciting! She had all the trays set up for us. We were able to try either the botanicals or the clearproof for our face, then let us loose to three different stations: cheeks, eyes and lips. The whole experience was a bunch of fun! Especially, when a few of the guys put on makeup! (Don’t worry fellas, I won’t give out names.)
After we got ourselves looking pretty, we asked Robbie a bunch of questions that she would be able to answer being an IBC or independent beauty consultant. She was very helpful, and we got a rounded knowledge of the inside workings of Mary Kay that we would be able to use for our research and understanding of the brand.
Then, we took a test over the case study to see how much information our brains retained. I’m not sure which questions I got right or wrong, all I know is that I didn’t make a 100. Not a surprise since it was 35 pages! No one actually got every questions right, but there were a few people who only missed one or two questions and they got a goofy prize from Prof. Bichard.
We split up into smaller groups to get our brains thinking about the rest of the semester. Prof. Bichard had each group work on a different idea. Two groups were working on how meetings would be planned, one group was working on something I can’t remember, another group was digging up questions from pages 20 to something, but my group was working on getting questions from pages 1 to 18. We looked over those pages to see what questions we would want to ask people to find out more about their purchasing decisions. We would go on tangents from those questions that dug deeper. I was amazed to hear questions that I would never have thought of because I kept thinking “it’s just makeup” when it’s not, it’s a lifestyle. I could tell at this point that Prof. Bichard knew which people she wanted to certain groups and was doing a test run. After 20 minutes or so, we all shared our ideas and got feedback from the rest of the group.
I was right! At the end of the night, Bichard announced the teams and directors. I was a part of the primary research team!
About Olivia Utley
