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New Tasks, New Challenges

It has been 1.5 months since I’ve started working in Canadian Tire Corporation. In my co-op journey, my manager assigns me new tasks that I’ve never had an experience with before. Working with Merchandising team, you need to do lots of different marketing and sales activities. From pricing to promotions, buying to selling the product to a dealer I had a chance to work on different projects.

Right now, one of the projects I’ve been working on is digital asset management. My manager gave me the task of contacting the vendors asking for brand images and logos and uploading them to the system. After these images go to the marketing department and we are working on future flyers with these images. Also, the Canadian Tire website keeps these images for its e-commerce activities. Although this task seems easier to handle, most of the time you need to be time effective since these images are connected with the future flyers and e-commerce activities. Also, sometimes it is hard to contact the Vendors because you can not know their schedules and availability. This project thought me to be a time-efficient person and enhanced my communication skills with other people in long term. In short term, I learned how to do business in several different departments each time. My manager appreciates my developing skills and being a problem solver. Therefore, she recommended me additional work with another department- Line Review - to do their digital asset works.

The second project I’ve been working on is, every week I receive an email from both Coke and Pepsi that have the weekly credit report attached. This is broken down by store and will let me know that week what stores returned and need to be credited for. To finance to credit the stores back I need to add the ADLR (Dealer Cost) to the spreadsheet. Currently, the report shows our cost but doesn’t show what the dealers paid. I’m in charge to update these spreadsheets and create a debit and credit file every week. With this task, I improve my excel skills by working with the data. My manager checked my work one time and trusted me to do the rest. Her feedbacks have been positive so far.

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My Co-op Journey

I began my co-op term in Canadian Tire on September 7th. So far, it has been a great journey that teaches me a lot in the retail sector. Before diving into our jobs, new co-ops and business analysts took detailed training regarding marketing activities such as pricing, promotional activities, merchandising and so on. In our training, trainers told one of the biggest goals of Canadian Tire, which can be also accepted as an important business issue, is to become the undisputed number one retail brand in Canada. So far, Walmart is heading the competition among retail companies and Canadian Tire comes second so they would like to obtain this reputation by 2022.

Canadian Tire Corporation would like to achieve this goal by implementing some strategies. They would like to continue not only to introduce new, innovative and improved products and categories but also to strengthen their owned brand portfolio. For Canadian Tire Corporation, customer experience also holds an important place to achieve success. They want to increase Net Promoter Score (NPS) and deliver on initiatives informed by it. As a financial contribution, Canadian Tire would also like to drive sales and profitability by improving efficiency in core functions - Disciplined and balanced capital allocation.

My responsibility for this goal is to be challenging myself to be a solution-based person when surfacing issues to be active participants in driving the change forward. I also need to demonstrate full commitment to new initiatives, even when challenged. One of my key roles is to focus on improved collaboration with cross-functional stakeholders and external vendors since I’m working with merchandising and marketing departments. To sum up, I need to be the best of myself to combine what I learn in my program and what I see in the retail sector.

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Importance of Networking

As a part of the Strategic Marketing Relationship Seminar course at George Brown College, we have been meeting with professionals each week. From each professional, I learned many different things related to marketing and also life and shared these insights in my journals. Coming to the end of the semester and also the program, I would like to share my overall learning from Strategic Relationship Marketing Seminar Class.

What I learned from this experience?

Each journey was very special and thought me different things related to marketing and for the life. Firstly, we had a great chance to meet and exchange ideas with Jefferson Darrell who is the founder of “Breakfast Culture”. With more than 17 years of brand strategy expertise, Jefferson implements his experience to his Public Relation Company “Breakfast Culture” by generating different media channels such as owned and earned media applications through digital and traditional marketing. In his presentation, I learned the differences between digital media marketing types which are Owned Media, Paid Media and Earned Media. He explained the differences among these digital media marketing types while giving concepts of advertising within owned media and public relations within earned media.

One thing I appreciated a lot in this presentation was how Breakfast Culture gives importance to diversity, equity and inclusion. As a young “international” professional, and as a woman, I face these difficulties not only in daily life but also in the working environment. Jefferson thought me that there are still some people who accept diversity, equity and inclusion as their core values in their working environment.

The other meeting that I wrote a journal about was when we met with Nicole Hutzul. She had a dynamic marketing background and shared her experiences and how important is to be in the “right place at right time”. Technically, she presented more in-depth about how email marketing works, she introduced us to AI and machine learning technology.

Moreover, she introduced us to “Strength-Based Coaching” which helped us to find our strengths. At the end of the presentation, she wanted us to walk through 3 takeaways from the presentation; Focus on our strengths, the movement of strength focus is building momentum and the strength focus is everywhere. She shared a famous quote from Marcus Buckingham regarding finding our strengths:

“A strength is not what you are good at, and a weakness is not what you are bad at. A strength is an activity that strengthens you. It draws you in, it makes time fly by while you're doing it, and it makes you feel strong.”

I found lots of common points between myself and Nicole when she was presenting her career path. Likewise, I was coming from different backgrounds, had different jobs in business-related areas. In her presentation, I took myself some key points that, whatever background or professional experience you had, it is not too late to find your path and do something you are interested in.

In one of our other seminars, we had a chance to meet and exchange ideas with Michael Cohen who is an intrapreneur and product leader. In his presentation, he shared some insightful information with us about how to get yes and to make other people buy your idea. In his presentation, Michael shared his experiences with us and what he learned from leading corporate innovation. He gave us some pieces of advice which were:

1-    Be the owner of the idea, not the renter so you can be more attentive to your ideas.

2-    If you are pitching your idea to an executive team, have a clear ask.

3-    Frame your idea, the comprehensive framework will ease everyone’s life.

4-    Have a test plan, you can do a 100 Dollars test before jumping into 10,000 Dollars test.

5-    Make your ideas tangible. The more it is tangible the more it seems real.

6-    Set Pre-meetings with the team. Ask their opinion, take feedback and update your idea accordingly.

7-    Anticipate No-Sayers. Try to turn no into a Yes.

8-    Practice and elevate your pitch.

9-    Be ok with failure. You need to learn lessons from your failures.

10- Be prepared also for yes. You should always have a plan for after.

The key outcome that I had from Michael’s presentation was, it is completely normal to feel that way and negative responses may turn into positive outcomes if we take a lesson from it. According to Michael, each idea is valuable and we need to know how to frame our ideas properly to achieve success.

After these insightful meetings, I networked with all of these professionals from LinkedIn and had a great chance to check their backgrounds more. Each presentation contributed a lot for me in terms of marketing-related areas. After Jefferson’s presentation, I began to search for paid media positions and applied for similar positions. Also after Nicole’s presentation, my curiosity for email marketing has been increased and therefore I searched for internships in these areas. Unfortunately, I’m still on my job search journey and sometimes losing my hope but I remember what Michael said about this; It is completely normal to feel that way and negative responses may turn into positive outcomes, we just need to take lessons from these!

Finally, I would like to thank Lori Nave for her efforts to introduce us to these professionals every week. Without her, we couldn’t have had a chance to meet these valuable professionals. Thank you, Lori!

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INNOVATION IS NOT A LUXURY – IT IS A NECESSARY

As a part of the Strategic Marketing Relationship Seminar course at George Brown College, we continue to meet with professionals each week. On July 13th we had a great chance to meet and exchange ideas with Michael Cohen who is an intrapreneur and product leader. He shared some insightful information with us about how to get yes and to make other people buy your idea.

Michael started her presentation by explaining his background. He introduced himself as an intrapreneur and product leader. He worked in different companies such as Loyalty One, MLSE and right now he is working at a company called “Achievers” as a chief product officer. While he was presenting his career path, Michael reminded us that it is completely normal to feel off track sometimes and he felt the same during his career too. The main reason why he explained this is he faced a lot of No’s until he reached his Yes and so his current position. He tried to tell companies that innovation is not a luxury, it is necessary. To achieve long-term success, companies need to invest to understand customer’s wants and needs. Thankfully, his thoughts and ideas were appreciated later.

“Customers have lots of expectations from companies”, later Michael explained in his presentation. They expect that companies will bring everything’s best to them which heat the competition among companies. Therefore, companies need to keep up the innovation. Furthermore, there are new innovators are emerging and forcing other companies to change. Michael explained this with an example of “Amazongo”. No one thought of doing something that Amazon did before and this brought another success to Amazon. Michael continued with his words explaining that the best organization thinks not only today but also tomorrow and the future. Ideas create this power for companies to boost their success. However, one should not forget that ideas are easy, getting execution is hard and that is the most important point.

Later in his presentation, Michael shared his experiences and what he learned from leading corporate innovation. He gave us some pieces of advice:

1-    Be the owner of the idea, not the renter so you can be more attentive to your ideas.

2-    If you are pitching your idea to an executive team, have a clear ask.

3-    Frame your idea, the comprehensive framework will ease everyone’s life.

4-    Have a test plan, you can do a 100 Dollars test before jumping into 10,000 Dollars test.

5-    Make your ideas tangible. The more it is tangible the more it seems real.

6-    Set Pre-meetings with the team. Ask their opinion, take feedback and update your idea accordingly.

7-    Anticipate No-Sayers. Try to turn no into a Yes.

8-    Practice and elevate your pitch.

9-    Be ok with failure. You need to learn lessons from your failures.

10- Be prepared also for yes. You should always have a plan for after.

Although Michael’s presentation was about pitching ideas, it contributed to my current journey. Coming to the end of my program, I’m searching for job opportunities and most of the time I feel off-track. Michael thought me that it is completely normal to feel that way and negative responses may turn into positive outcomes if we take a lesson from it. Moreover, he thought us that each idea is valuable and we need to know how to frame our ideas properly to achieve success.

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IN THE RIGHT PLACE AT THE RIGHT TIME

As a part of the Strategic Marketing Relationship Seminar course at George Brown College, we have been meeting with professionals each week. On June 8th we had a great chance to meet and exchange ideas with Nicole Hutzul who has a dynamic marketing background. It was insightful for us to experience that how important is to be in the “right place at right time”

Nicole started her presentation by explaining her background. She grew up in Berkeley, California and found herself in the Education field in her university years.  She chose to study the program of elementary school teaching which she later describes as this was the choice of necessity because she thinks that she wasn’t comfortable with different areas such as math. After her graduation, she started her professional career as an educational counsellor. Later she continued counselling kids with disabilities and writing a curriculum for a local charity which is called Working Wardrobes. This charity was helping women get back to their work after staying in women’s shelters. Slowly she had been developing her networks with each of her jobs.

Nicole continued her career in staffing companies which later let her recruit herself in an internet startup.  She describes this achievement as being in the “right place at right time”.  At that time Nicole was selling ads to companies like Yahoo and Google before these companies became worldwide popular. One thing led to another and Nicole found herself in a company that does Search Engine Marketing. After giving birth to her second child relatively premature, Nicole realized that most of her female colleagues from web hosting company suffers from the same situation. With her colleagues, she decided to start up their own business. She became a VP of Sales and Marketing for Preemie Magazine and the premium online community. Unfortunately because of the economic recession, Nicole and other partners had to sell their assets and move on which brings the current stage her Nicole’s life.

Nicole moved to Canada in 2010. In Canada, she began to work in a company that does email marketing, again the right place at the right time the company sold to Salesforce so she had a chance to work in Salesforce for almost 2 years. Again, thanks to her networking skills in Salesforce, she found a job in Adobe. After more experiences she has gained, she ended up working in Yext which is a search experience platform. In this platform she explains, they take the data, structure it in a knowledge graph and send the data out to the digital ecosystem.

As Nicole goes more in-depth about how is email marketing works, she introduces us to AI and machine learning technology. She supported the point with her “underwear story” example and reinforce the importance of machine learning for a great customer experience. Pattern recognition is a must for machine learning Nicole says. She gave the Google example of how Google takes the data and each step we feed the data with our activities on the internet and then Google starts to recognize the pattern. So Nicole told us how important to have pattern recognition and related this example with her underwear story. If the underwear company was able to the pattern recognition, Nicole would be more satisfied with her future shopping offers.

“A strength is not what you are good at, and a weakness is not what you are bad at. A strength is an activity that strengthens you. It draws you in, it makes time fly by while you're doing it, and it makes you feel strong.” Later Nicole continued with the words of Marcus Buckingham. She introduced us to “Strength-Based Coaching” and wanted us to find our own strengths. At the end of the presentation, she wanted us to walk through 3 takeaways from the presentation; Focus on our strengths, the movement of strength focus is building momentum and the strength focus is everywhere.

I found lots of common points between myself and Nicole when she was presenting her career path. I also chose the subject I didn’t want to study in university. As Nicole did, I also changed this preference by attending different programs so that I’ll focus on Marketing, not on my bachelor’s studies which is Economics. I also take insights into Nicole’s career path. I started my career as a logistics and planning assistant, later continued in different places with different titles such as in NGOs as a project assistant, international companies as a marketing assistant etc. I agree with Nicole’s right place at the right time motto is crucial to make the right choices in our life. In this presentation, I took myself some key points that, whatever background or professional experience you had, it is not too late to find your path and do something you are interested in. Therefore, it was a very fruitful meeting to get not only the sector insights but also Nicole’s experience to find her way.

[checkthemeaning]

Let’s Break Some Eggs!

As a part of the Strategic Marketing Relationship Seminar course in George Brown College, on May 18th we had a great chance to meet and exchange ideas with Jefferson Darrell who is the founder of “Breakfast Culture”. With more than 17 years of brand strategy expertise, Jefferson implements his experience to his Public Relation Company “Breakfast Culture” by generating different media channels such as owned and earned media applications through digital and traditional marketing. Furthermore, Mr. Darrell advocates marketing communication with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) when he creates Breakfast Culture.

Jefferson’s presentation began with digital marketing trifecta which are Owned Media, Paid Media and Earned Media. He explained the differences among them while giving concepts of advertising within owned media and public relations within earned media. After giving insights into each concept, he presented a case study that is related to KPI Analysis for Marketing Communication for Dancap Productions. It was about the TV show which is called “Happy Days” in the 1950s that later transformed into a musical in the 1970s by Gary Marshall. The main aim of this transformation is for people who grew up with this tv show may bring their children to the show and give the same experience once they had. Unfortunately, the show is not successful in other cities except Toronto. Jefferson mentioned how their marketing strategies such as publicity push effects the show’s ticket sales and how implying this strategy at right time pushes the ticket sales in Toronto.

In the second case study, Jefferson introduced us to 3 Mo’ Divas. Unlike traditional musicals such as “Happy Days”, this show was performed theatrically by 3 opera singers. Later, Jefferson introduced us to a Public Relations Challenge in this musical. He said the show’s budget is 20k and he wants us to allocate the budget within earned, owned and paid media. He also asked who can be our target audience for the show and how can we reach our target audience. As a result, students shared their thoughts of how they can budget PR vs advertising vs promotions within a 20k budget.

After listening and exchanging ideas with our classmates for the case study, Jefferson shared his insights for 3 Mo’ Divas. In 3 Mo’s Divas, Breakfast Culture focused on 3 main audiences which are the African Caribbean Black Community (ASB), Queer Communities and Music Lovers. For owned media, the company used social media channels to promote. However, their main focus was on earned media since the budget was really low. For the earned media, Breakfast Culture became a partner with Internal Black History Society during Black History Month, since most of the jazz and soul singers are black. They also brought the famous singer Latrice, to promote the show. Furthermore, lots of drag queens and influencers were invited to the show to create word of mouth. Jefferson mentioned that they didn’t do a lot of paid media activities but instead focused on earned media because of the low budget.

In my opinion, Jefferson’s presentation was very fruitful since I’ve learned the differences between digital media marketing types within the case studies. The other thing that I appreciated a lot is how Breakfast Culture gives importance to diversity, equity and inclusion. This feature makes me more interested in his presentation because as a young “international” professional, and as a woman, I face these difficulties not only in daily life but also in the working environment.  

Hazal Apaydin