By Dan O'Brien, Collegian Correspondent
May 13, 2003
Isenberg School of Management's Promotional Strategy class will be making their final presentation of the semester to members of the Honda Corporation this Friday. They will be showing their marketing work from throughout the semester, which includes their "Brave the Elements in your Element" event on the campus pond a few weeks ago.
The marketing class has spent the entire semester marketing Honda's new outdoor-style automobile "Element," which is not to be confused with a sports utility vehicle, according to Stephanie O'Shea, a student who is helping run the promotion.
"It's not an S.U.V.," O'Shea said. "There really isn't a name for what type of car it is, but it's not an S.U.V." She went on to point out that the Element has better gas mileage than S.U.V.'s. The Element receives 21 to 26 miles per gallon depending on the type of model, compared to that of a typical S.U.V. that receives 13 miles per gallon.
The SOM class, also known as "Wicked Good Marketing," has been marketing the Element all semester around campus as part of the Honda Element College Program. The program consists of college marketing classes promoting the Honda Element on their respective campuses. The 29 different groups compete against each other in hopes of winning one of the top three places in the contest, which will win them a trip to California to present their efforts to Honda executives. The winners of that final presentation will receive $5,000 for their school.
The group's main promotional event was the "Brave the Elements" event at the campus pond on April 24th, which was a huge success. The event featured skydivers, a bounce-house, free food and activities, which included shooting basketballs through an Element sunroof and a race against time to load the vehicle with outdoor camping equipment.
The group also conducted other marketing activities besides the campus pond event. Much of their work consisted of research and conducting surveys of UMass students about the popularity of the Element and the effectiveness of Wicked Good Marketing's campaign, including the campus pond event.
The marketing class was divided into five distinct groups for this project: research, public relations, creativity, events, and media. The group that was responsible for gathering information such as popularity statistics of the Element from before and after the Campus Pond event was the research group. The group conducted various surveys to compile their information. The public relations group was responsible for making media contacts and publicizing the event.
The group that was mostly responsible for creating ideas for the campaign was the "creative" group, whose job consisted of coming up with event ideas, advertisements, and themes of the campaign. "Events" planned and coordinated the "Brave the Elements" event, which included setting up the stations around the different vehicles at the promotion.
The final UMass presentation by Wicked Good Marketing will take place this Friday at SOM. In their presentation the group plans to wrap up the semester by reviewing all the work and effort they put into this campaign for the past three and a half months. And the Brave the Elements event of April 24th will no doubt be the centerpiece of their presentation.
