Marketing plan

Creating the Marketing Plan this week was not as difficult as the situational analysis from last week.  The team worked well together.  We spent 6 hours working in the same room.  Each brought what we had learned from the individual assignment as well as from the practice in the simulation.  The first thing we tackled was the mission statement and vision.  We had a good start because Brian had done the “try this” earlier in the term.  Once we knew what we wanted to do this Allstar as a whole, we focused on selecting markets.  We selected two markets for Allstar, the cold and cough and the children’s cold markets.  We then worked through the value position in each market and the tactics for each.  We spent a lot of time back in the simulation verifying information.  We then divided the final tasks.  I took on the spreadsheet forecast and the budget piece.  I found it challenging making all the assumptions that were needed.  I spent time in the simulation to see how different parts of the budget behaved.  For example, I figured out that R&D was always 1.2% of the Manufactures Sales for the past period.  After making the assumptions and make the decisions for the next period, I got the “what if” numbers.  Those numbers were the starting point for the extrapolation of the remaining periods.  In all it seem very unlikely, because of all the assumptions, that we will end up anywhere near the projected figure.