The end is near

Shout out to the best dad in the world: Happy Birthday Papa!! :) He celebrated his 5_th birthday this week.

Recently met a truly inspirational person in UP... grabe, her life story's so tragic, it could be made the storyline of a soap opera. She's had such a hard life, and is STILL having a tough time of it. But she manages to get grades of 1.25-1.75, and bears her cross with a smile on her face. 

Hearing her story (from others, mind you... not from herself) made me realize how lucky I am ...to have parents who are paying for my tuition, to be able to have some fun even amidst all the hustle and bustle of busy college life. When I think of certain people I know who cut class just like THAT (snaps fingers)... OOooooOOOh! It's too obscene for words. On the other end of the spectrum you have people like the Ex Libris UP Scholar, Miss J.B. Ang hirap na nga ng buhay niya, bigay ng bigay pa rin. Her story both shames and inspires me.

Today I attended the JPIA org's MARK-UP seminar: How to Seal the Deal, and I've learned so much about Marketing! Managed to win a L'Oreal UV Whitening Essence bottle (Tata says it's worth 895 bucks, hehe), for coming up with an innovative marketing strategy for L'Oreal sunblock and skin whitening products in ten minutes. Woohoo! It was fun. :) Never thought that my ideas would actually sell, they were actually quite crazy and risky. But the L'Oreal marketing representative obviously liked them. Hehe. I feel ridiculously happy, because the L'Oreal rep. actually brought home with him the two best marketing strategies written on cartolina: Mine's and Tata's. O diba? Twin power! The Powerhouse twins!

Note: If L'Oreal comes up with an aggressive advertising/educational campaign with slogans like 'Rays today, raisins tomorrow' and 'Sunblock: A Necessity, Not A Luxury,' and if they get Japoy Lizardo to endorse their products ("Why not increase the target market to include men as well as women?" quoth moi)... well, those ideas were OURS!!!! :)

We also played a simulated marketing game, where we came up with a project proposal for a fund raising event for potential sponsors in under one hour, and we had to "sell" our projects to various company  "representatives," such as ABS-CBN, San Miguel, Toyota, Unilever, P& G, etc. Sayang, our group lost to the first placer (who secured 100,000 pesos in cash/ Xdeals) by a margin of 1,400 pesos (we were able to come up with 98,600). SAYANG TALAGA! Hehe but it's alright, you can't win 'em all. Grabe, kumakal ang mukha ko after this most interesting exercise.

Ooooh, I have a funny anecdote to share about Tata, whose charisma and passion was such that she was practically SELLING L'Oreal products to everyone at the seminar during her turn to share her marketing strategy. The L'Oreal representatives were so impressed by her performance, they made several hints about hiring her. Haha! It was really funny. At one point, Tata was having an intensive one-on-one talk with the main sales rep., and the funny thing was, she REALLY DID KNOW what she was talking about. Talk about knowing the product you're marketing. Tata knew EVERYTHING about L'Oreal and even knew things about their competitors like Neutrogena. She was practically lecturing the sales rep. of L'Oreal on how to package their products to make them more sellable to price-conscious students as well as the richie-richie ones.

You don't have to take up a course in Marketing to go into Marketing... it just takes hard work and perseverance. O Tata? Let's go into Marketing and make our fortunes! :)