The 10th meeting was very long! Since we did not have a prior meeting due to bad weather and driving conditions, we had a lot to catch up on. Our problem was that most of our team was still coming home from Thanksgiving break, so we had less than half in attendance.
We first talked about the success of the bowling tournament. We did not have as many teams as there were last year, so we were all slightly worried on how much money we ended up with. All the silent auction items and the money from teams totaled around $2,200. It’s a good start, but we do need more money to get 20 people to Austin for competition! There was a small discussion about hosting “Give Back” nights in January at Chili’s and several other places to reach our $4,000 goal. Bichard also mentioned that some people could get money from their families during Christmas. My own problem is that I’m trying to save up for a wedding that I have to pay for, so I really hope it does not come down to that!
Our next topic was coming up with some creative brainstorming nights so that everyone can agree on an amazing idea. Even though it is the last few days of school, we needed to kick everything into gear since we do not have much time left. Everyone who was at the meeting agreed that we would schedule four days (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday) at 8 p.m. to meet, and everyone must attend at least two. I agreed that people tend to come up with better ideas in smaller group — that way everyone is heard.
This meeting basically turned into a creative brainstorming session. Both ideation teams covered what they were working on and got input from the rest of the team. We tried to focus on three overall ideas and concepts so that we could work on defining them and then picking our favorite. We just have not stumbled on that “Oh Wow” idea just yet, but I feel like we are very close.
Some of the big things that we asked ourselves were:
How would Mary Kay react to something that was out of the box?
Is that where we need to focus on?
Where is out of the box? How far out can we go?
One ideation team is more focused on specific words and themes while the other is focused on the visual aspect. Bichard suggested that the two teams switch for their next meeting and see where things go. I believe that would be a good idea, maybe that’s where we can find that astonishing idea that we have not come across yet.
After a few hours of discussion, we wrote several words from the case study on the board to see if that would help anyone think of an idea. I feel constantly reminded that “when in doubt, look at your case study”. It’s not a fancy saying, but it truly helps. For those who don’t know, the case study is the large packet we received in the beginning that told us everything about Mary Kay and their products.
We also focused on things that we needed to keep in mind. What are we trying to say? What is our overall message? We have a good idea of what we want to portray from our campaign, but we have not put it into words just yet. It’s more of developing phrase at this point. We each thought of several words that helped us hone in on that single message and wrote it on the board.
On Thursday, the primary research team will be meeting. Since we are having our insight meeting on Sunday, it is our goal is dig through all of our research so far and pick out the most important aspects. We need to go through our survey, focus group, and IBC interviews to find out what specific words they used to describe themselves, their makeup style now or what they want, and what captures their attention. We also need to look into what is the target market’s media usage, what they think about Mary Kay, how can we change this view, and what we learned that we did not already know.
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About Olivia Utley
