Mktg 490 Planner Persona Outline

MKTG 490 “PLANNER PERSONA” OUTLINE

Background As discussed in class, the “Planner Persona” technique for marketing planning achieves three objectives: 1) Personalize the marketing planning process for students who may not have direct ‘planner’ experience or opportunities in the immediate to mid-term stage of their careers

2) Prioritize the distinctive personalities and unique planning approaches (“Who, How & Why”) that have gained strategic market success, along with the textbook directions and standard planning concepts/frameworks (“What, How & Why”) that guide strategic market success.

3) Prepare students for their future career advancement by becoming familiar with successful planners to emulate, as well as to perform more productively in entry-level and mid-level positions by having a better understanding of what organization planners do. This objective can also be furthered by contacting your “Planner Persona” (if able) to initiate a mentor dialogue.

Typically, “persona” techniques and research have only been applied by brand managers and advertisers to help personalize and understand target market customers in their human experience, as opposed to making marketing decisions from data profiles and statistical tendencies. The “Persona Template” on the following pages and the “persona” links provided for Section 2 of the course reflect this consumer oriented application of the persona technique.

However, given our “Planner Persona” objectives, traditional applications of ‘consumer personas’ can be directly transferred to marketing ‘planner persona’ techniques. In a nutshell, just as personalizing consumers will helps develop brand strategy with a better human fit, personalizing planners will help develop marketing strategy with an awareness of the human qualities required for successful plans.

These human qualities are specifically used to evaluate your case analysis reports, as indicated by the 25% weighting allocated to descriptions of how your “Planner Persona” would have handled the case. After selecting and awarding extra-credit for complete individual “Planner Personas”, each case analysis group of 3 students maximum will decide upon a single “Planner Persona” for their case analysis reports.

Requirements To complete your “Planner Persona”, profile three aspects that parallel the three categories of the ‘consumer persona template on the following pages, for “name, characteristics, and need.” Yet, for the “Planner Persona” we will address “person, bio, and style.”

1) Select a person (photo is desirable) who is/was actually paid and has/had authority to do organizational planning with a 5 – 10 year future timeline for the completion and implementation of plans. The organization can be large or small, private sector business, public sector institution, as well as a community, health, education, cultural, or faith-based organization. The organization can be in the U.S. or any other country. The ‘planner’ does not have to be alive, as long as information of their planning success and style is readily accessible. 2) Compile bio information about the person, their brief professional/personal background and the organization(s) for which they performed planning. (1 page maximum in outline/bullet-point format) 3) Describe planner style that is distinctly associated with the person and their success, including factors like people skills, financial acumen, market vision, beating competition, adopting new technology, etc. (1 page maximum in outline/bullet-point format)

1. Personas Definition

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_(marketing)

2. Personas Design Template http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/agile-product-innovation/persona-template-for-agile-product-management/

3. Personas Slideshow (A) http://www.slideshare.net/brainmates/characters-at-work-the-use-of-personas-in-product-management-brainmates

4. Personas Slideshow (B) http://www.slideshare.net/capitalmale/creating-marketing-personas