The Jones Soda recipe for creating buzz about their company as well as dominating the blog-a-sphere begins with the launch of their Tofurky & Gravy specialty soda.

Proceeds from the online sale, where two bottles of Turkey & Gravy soda sold for about $11, were donated to Toys for Tots, a children’s charity.

Local retailers will start selling the soda today and we’ll be talking about the oddly tasting but, meatless drink for years to come.

Marketing Insight: Campaigns that put smiles on the faces of your indented audience will create positive buzz about your brand and extend the promotional cycle.

Marketing to Gen Y: What You Can’t Afford Not to Know

The best way to get the attention of Cal students and Gen Y is to stop marketing to them and begin “connecting” with them. Check out this article from www.startupnation.com to read more.

Source: Marketing to Gen Y: What you Can’t Afford Not to Know, www.startupnation.com

Cal Students are helping to transform the landscape of Higher Education one nano byte at a time. Check out this article from www.fastcompany.com for more information.

Source: www.fastcompany.com, How Web-Savvy Edupunks Are Transforming American Higher Education

Getting Cal students to touch, taste and experience your products and services at Caltopia will be the first step in creating a loyal following. Check out this article from www.directmag.com for more information.

Source: www.directmag.com, Gen Y Leads In Loyalty Participation

This article by Andrew McInnes, discusses a study on how retailers are getting into the Social Computing world, by using different Social Interactivity tools and features on their websites. The end goal is to enhance the customer experience and engage the consumer. Check out this article from www.blogs.forrester.com for more information.

Source: www.blogs.forrester.com, Engaging Gen Y with Social Interactivity

Just like the everevolving marketplace, the workplace has to keep up too. With the increasing number of Gen-Y’s entering the workplace, the expectations are changing and keeping up on trends sometimes means hiring young and creative talent. According to WSJ’s Blog, Gary Hamel’s Management 2.0, to hire the best of the best companies will need to keep in mind the following workplace principles:

1. All ideas compete on an equal footing.

2. Contribution counts for more than credentials.

3. Hierarchies are natural, not prescribed.

4. Leaders serve rather than preside.

5. Tasks are chosen, not assigned.

6. Groups are self-defining and self-organizing.

7. Resources get attracted, not allocated.

8. Power comes from sharing information, not hoarding it.

9. Opinions compound and decisions are peer-reviewed.

10. Users can veto most policy decisions.

11. Intrinsic rewards matter most.

12. Hackers are heroes.

Source: Wall Street Journal Blogs – Gary Hamel Management 2.0, The Facebook Generation vs. Fortune 500

Check out this presentation by Evan Williams on the growth of his company, Twitter, and how being open and receptive to unexpected uses by consumers can drive growth of your company.

Source: TED, Evan Williams: How Twitter’s spectacular growth is being driven by unexpected uses

Engaging and activating Generation Y will take a strategy, patience, creativity and a unique set of tools.

Microsoft’s Small Business Center breaks down some of the difficult questions surrounding reaching and engaging Generation Y consumers through contests, being present and visible in the marketplace and cause-related products and offerings. Outlined below, is a more in-depth view of how your company can better engage Generation Y and Cal Students.

1. Make your products cool for the kids as well as their parents. “Offer pop clothes at good prices with a brand that will appeal to 30- to 50-year old soccer moms and dads but that Gen Y is not loathe to adopting,” Cooper says.

2. Exploit contests and promotions. “Gen Y is unbelievably enthusiastic about winning free concert tickets or cars or ski weekends,” he says. “Marketers need to generate teen excitement with radio and mall tie-ins, advertising, discounting, promotional kiosks — anything that’s cool and has cachet.”

3. Become “hip.” Yes, I’ll explain. It means a combination of location and concept, Cooper says. “You have to be present where teenagers want to spend time, in skateboard parks, at concerts, in malls. Older marketers are not as comfortable doing that.” Concludes Cooper: “You need to balance the benefits of attracting the younger market against the difficulties of embracing alternative business principles.” After that, you need to get a handle on how Gen Y makes buying decisions. Like teens beforethem, Gen Y relies on peer recommendations, says John Burnett, professor of marketing at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business. “But they are far more socially conscious than any generation since World War II,” he adds. “They believe in giving, participation in nonprofits, and in donations of time and resources.”

To view the full article, please visit the following link, Microsoft Small Business Center, “Tough customers: how to reach Gen Y”

Source: Microsoft Small Business Center, “Tough customers: how to reach Gen Y” by Joanna L. Krotz

Reaching the Milennial Generation

Cal students born after 1980 are part of a highly-sociable, influential, tech-savvy and achievement-oriented group of consumers referred to as Generation Y or the Millennial Generation. As a generation that has grown up with technology at it’s fingertips, this group demands a dramatically different communication style than that of the Baby Boomers.

An interview by Andrew Tilin of bnet.com, with our very own Haas Business School Admissions Dean, Peter Johnson outlines how he speaks to the Millenial Generation.

BNET: How do millennials first reach out to Haas?

Johnson: They often listen to our podcasts, which we started about three years ago. The idea to create one was suggested by someone in our marketing office. I said, “I can’t imagine anyone listening to this.” But after two weeks, we found out how many people listened, and the figure was almost a thousand. Being a non-millennial and a skeptic, I made our tech verify the number for me three times. When he did, podcasts became an imperative.

BNET: What’s on the podcasts?

Johnson: They’re about the admissions process, financial assistance issues, program content — that kind of stuff. We try to make them conversational. We still regularly get 1,000 unique visitors a month. We also have students writing blogs; the bloggers are given guidelines like “don’t use profanity,” but we don’t censor them, even though I was initially resistant. Now I know it was the right thing to do. If you censor a blog, it sounds like a marketing message, and the millennials can read right through that. We’ll probably be adding video blogs.

BNET: Blogs, video blogs, podcasts — aren’t you going a little overboard? Can’t you just send potential MBA candidates a catalog?

Johnson: It’s not enough to have a printed publication. They’ll never look at that anyway. You can’t use a single information channel with millennials, because that’s not how they gather information. Our solution is to push out our message through more and varied channels.

To view the entire article, please visit the link below.

Source: “How to Speak Millennial” Media Week