Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

Exchange: people giving up something to receive something they would rather have.

Conditions of exchange:

1. There must be at least two parties.
2. Each party has something that might be of value to the other party.
3. Each party is capable of communication and delivery.
4. Each party is free to accept or reject the exchange offer.
5. Each party believes it is appropriate or desirable to deal with other party.

Management Philosophies:

1. Production Orientation: a philosophy that focuses on the internal capabilities of the firm rather than on the desires and needs of the marketplace.
2. Sales Orientation: the idea that people will buy more goods and services if aggressive sales techniques are used and that high sales result in high profits.
3. Market Orientation: a philosophy that assumes that a sale does not depend on an aggressive sales force but rather on a customer’s decision to purchase product. It is synonymous with the marketing concept.
4. Societal Marketing Orientation: the idea that an organization exists not only to satisfy customer wants and needs and to meet organization objectives but also to preserve and enhance individuals’ and society’s long-term best interests.

Marketing Concept: the idea that the social and economic justification for an organization’s existence is the satisfaction of customer wants and needs while meeting organizational objectives.

My report: I didn’t pick this picture and naturally I fell asleep while attempting to watch it. Basically the film was about a woman dying for one and a half hours. I’m not making fun of cancer patients, just the movie. The humor was not good. This film has a very specific market. Maybe people in their thirties, with kids, that have gone through the same, and even they may not find it funny either.

Rating:

About it: Director Steve Stockman takes the helm for this semi-autobiographical comedy drama about an estranged family that comes together for one last goodbye, and finds their assumedly brief farewell inexorably dragged out for two excruciating weeks. Aging matriarch Anita (Sally Field) is dying, but before she goes, she has requested that her four grown children travel back home to visit their ailing mother on her deathbed. Eager to gain a better understanding of the dying process, daughter Emily purchases a variety of self-help books on the subject. Though brother Keith (Ben Chaplin) soon arrives determined to float through the process in typical L.A. Zen mode, Emily contends that the only way to be prepared for the future is to consider every detail that can go awry. When PR executive Barry arrives intent on getting some work done before death comes knocking, it appears as if he is more concerned with getting broadband Internet in the house than actually tending to his mother. Meanwhile, youngest brother Matthew sets at the sidelines biding his time as his unlikable wife, Katrina, callously speculates on which of the dying woman’s luxurious jewels she will be inheriting. Now, as Anita begins to look back at her life while reflecting on the time spent with her family, the question of who will hold this family together once she is gone casts a melancholy shadow over her fond memories. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Strategic Planning: the managerial process of creating and maintaining a fit between the organization’s objectives and resources and evolving market opportunities.

Planning: the process of anticipating future events and determining strategies to achieve organizational objectives in the future.

Marketing planning: designing activities relating to marketing objectives and the changing marketing environment.

Marketing plan: a written document that acts as a guidebook of marketing activities for the marketing manager.

The first thing is that I have to want to write. If I’m not feeling it then I’m just wasting my time. I can’t force it. That’s how you end up spending hours working on something and go no where with it.

I don’t force myself to write a song either. I just put whatever I’m feeling on paper until I have to say nothing else. Then I worry about making verses, hooks and instrumentals.

Like I said, the most important thing is to be real about it. It just doesn’t come out right when it’s faked.

Sound On Sound Magazine Review

Sound On Sound (SOS) is a music-recording magazine targeted to music industry professionals such as music studio producers, deejays and mix engineers, as well as hobby enthusiasts around the world. SOS mission is to be the “world’s premier music recording technology magazine” and it pursues this goal by publishing monthly articles that are related to music production, vocal recording and sound mixing. The magazine also includes reviews on new and existing recording equipment as well as interviews with music industry professionals. SOS was established in 1985 and is currently based in Cambridge, England where it remains independently owned.

Using the December 2007 issue as an example, the magazine starts with an article titled “The Ears Have It” from the Editor in Chief, Paul White, in which he argues that the way music is heard is the most important element in making good recordings. The magazine has three main sections: “Techniques”, “Product Tests” and “Features.” In these sections there are articles such as “Home Studio Acoustics”, an article devoted to helping beginners make the most out of their home studios. Another example of the magazine’s educational articles is “Integrating External Hardware With Logic”, a tutorial geared at helping its readers synchronize software with hardware. “Product Tests”, the second section of the magazine, includes several reviews from products such as microphones and acoustic accessories. While the “Product Tests” and “Techniques” sections have articles that remain specific to a product, the “Features” section focuses on the professionals using these products. As part of the “Features” section, the magazine has a subsection entitled “Inside Track”, which is targeted at readers with an interest in sound mixing. The “Inside Track” for the December 2007 issue, “Secrets Of The Mix Engineers: Manny Marroquin,” was written by Paul Tingen, a well known professional guitarist and author of “Miles Beyond.” In the article, four-time Grammy award winner and mix engineer, Manny Marroquin, discusses the mixing of the Hip Hop hit song “Stronger” by Kanye West, one of today’s top selling rappers in the Hip Hop industry. As the article explains, before Marroquin had his chance at mixing the now popular song, the same task was assigned to eleven other mix engineers. It took Marroquin and West a total of five sessions and over twenty-four hours of mixing in studios in California and New York to end up with the final product as it is heard on the radio. The article goes into great detail to explain the different techniques Marroquin used to mix the drums, keyboards and vocals of the song with Digidesign ProTools®, an industry standard software for recording and mixing. The article also includes several screenshots of Marronquin’s work as a way to ease the explanation since the understanding of it required a great deal of technical information.

Sound On Sound’s ethos is one of educating its audience by providing detailed information on the how to’s and don’ts of the recording industry. All the articles are designed to provide step-by-step instructions and explanations to its audience. New words and phrases the authors feel the audience might not be familiar with are explained. Such is the case with the term “re-amping” used in the “Guitar Technology” article, which is defined as a “process that allows the user to choose guitar sounds at mix down rather than at the recording state.” Music store owner and producer, Steve Guerra, says “SOS is a great source of information for anyone who wants to take [music] production seriously. It’s important for me to know what’s new out there.”

Works Cited

Tingen, Paul. “Secrets Of The Mix Engineers: Manny Marroquin” Sound On Sound. Dec. 2007.
144-148.
Guerra, Steve. Personal Interview. 3 June 2008.

My report: this was a great story. Proof that you don’t need to say much to get points across. I would have never watched this movie if it wasn’t for the 2007 Best Actor Academy Award. Before I knew about the award I kept looking at this movie rental store and thinking I’d like to see someday, but didn’t want to take my chances just yet. The cover was weird enough to call my attention, but not to rent it. The best thing is how the entire movie is wrapped around what people would do for money, anything from deceiving families, to accepting or denying Jesus.

Rating:

About it: Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson steps outside his contemporary world of dysfunctional Angelenos to explore a very different dysfunctional man — an oil pioneer whose trailblazing spirit is equaled only by his murderous ambition. There Will Be Blood is Anderson’s loose adaptation of the novel Oil! by Upton Sinclair, and it focuses its attentions on Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), a failed silver miner who happens upon black gold during a disastrous excavation that ends in a broken leg. Pulling himself up from the bowels of the earth, both literally and metaphorically, Plainview embarks on a systematic and steadfast approach to mastering the oil business. Using plain-spoken and straightforward language, and accompanied by his young son, H.W. (Dillon Freasier), Plainview launches a campaign to convince small-town property owners they should let him drill their land. Without him, they won’t have the equipment to access the profit beneath their feet. He builds an empire this way — and gradually becomes obsessed with the intrinsic value of power, growing increasingly irascible and paranoid in the process. Plainview meets his match in Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), a teenage preacher in the small California town of Little Boston, whose brother tipped Plainview off to the town’s plentiful supply of untapped oil. To fully reap the benefits of the land, Plainview must suffer the opposing whims of this “prophet,” whose legitimacy is questionable at best. And it’s unclear either man is prepared to pay the humiliating price the other wants to exact. There Will Be Blood features an anachronistic percussive soundtrack by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, and it was shot in the same town where the James Dean epic Giant was filmed. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide

My report: This sequel had nothing new. The first one, “28 Days Later”, was about an infectious virus destroying the British Isles. This sequel, “28 Weeks Later”, is exactly the same shit. I wanted to see the virus spread to a new country. The worst part was the end. I felt like the people who made the movie had to cut it short because they ran out of tape or maybe they’re trying to squeeze as many sequels as possible out of the story. I don’t think they’ll get another one like this. I was disappointed.

Rating:

About it: The devastating rage virus that annihilated the British Isles mysteriously resurfaces in Goya Award-winning director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s sequel to the Danny Boyle-directed horror hit that terrified audiences worldwide by offering a breathless new take on the familiar zombie mythos. Six months has passed since the rage virus caused British residents to indiscriminately murder and destroy everything in their paths, and now the U.S. military has declared victory in the war against the rapidly spreading infection. As the reconstruction process gets underway and the first wave of refugees return to British shores, a family separated by the devastation is happily reunited. During the initial outbreak, Don Harris (Robert Carlyle) and his wife Alice (Catherine McCormack) sat holed up with a small band of survivors in a remote farmhouse. Their kids well out of harm’s way at a remote boarding school, Don and Alice’s outlook for the future is decidedly bright until all hell breaks loose in the country and Don just barely manages to escape the clutches of the infected. The joy of later seeing his son Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton) and daughter Tammy (Imogen Poots) as repopulation efforts get underway in London is short-lived, however, when an innocent bid to reconnect with the past sets into motion a tragic series of events. Now, just as society struggles to sort through the rubble and rebuild London from the ground up, the virus that nearly destroyed a nation strikes back with a vengeance. Jeremy Renner, Rose Byrne, and Harold Perrineau, Jr. co-star in the frightful sequel, which highlights the dangers of declaring victory in the calm before the storm. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

I just finished watching the first season of the reality show “The Apprentice.” It’s a T.V. show about 16 candidates competing for an apprentice position with Donald Trump, one of the most successful Realtors in the United States.

Several times Donald asked the apprentices if they thought they had the genes for becoming a leader. I’ve always dismissed that thought, but now I’m wondering. Could it be possible that certain people are born with gifts that go beyond physical abilities? Like the way certain people process thoughts, the reason why babies know to hold their breath underwater and to suck on a nipple, and being able to learn sciences at faster rates than most?

I know what my gift is: I have a great mind when it comes to imagination and creation. This is something I know I can use well in business, where the true rule of the game is to make a profit by solving problems. I also know that my gift alone is not enough to be a good businessman. I still have/had to figure out how to persuade people, learn accounting, use a computer, etc. In other words, I still have to learn how to use the tools that would make me the greatest businessman of all times. It’s the same with being an artist. I still have to learn how to play instruments and write music.

I am lucky to have discovered my gift. Something tells me a lot of people don’t get to do that. The question is: do all of us have gifts we are born with? And are these gifts genetic? I guess the answer to the second question in many ways is the opposite answer to the question “do you believe in God?” Many would say our gifts come from above and not others.

I realize I am leaving a lot of questions unanswered and I do want to know the answers for these questions. I found a good article that explains why parents don’t have total control over how their children will turn out. I still need to research more, but if this is true, maybe it will help me understand why I’ve never liked going to church. Even though my parents forced me to go every week. My brothers never complained and many people even if forced, after 21 years of going to church every Sunday they end up with something. I moved to the U.S. and never stepped foot on a church again. It never became a habit, but maybe some day I will go if I want to.

Is being a businessman coded in the genes of Donald Trump or is simply from watching his father when he was a kid? I don’t care, but I do want to know more about my genetics. Figuring out won’t really do anything in terms of where I’m going, but it does help in answering where I came from.

The Gene Responsibility

Why you don't have total control over how your kid turns out. By: Annie Murphy Paul