New Growth – Interning for the Market (part 2)

In the month of July, as a representative of the market I had the honor of attending community events such the Chamber of Commerce meetings. At these meetings, I had the opportunity to network with local businesses and community members. Connecting with local community business leaders was a great experience. At these meetings, we were given updates as to what is going on within the city which was very helpful to know from my standpoint.

Interning at the Springfield Farmers Market this summer has been an amazing learning experience. On top of the social media marketing I did on Facebook, I was also responsible for event planning. This job consisted of creating flyers, distribution of flyers, writing donation letters, and searching out vendors to book their businesses in our events and so much more.

Onto the Fun:

One of my favorite events that I organized was located at Binder Park Zoo. For the first time, the market became involved in the Kids Funfari event at Binder Park Zoo which included a ‘lemur lap’ race. After the run, the kids walked through the zoo with their parents.  We had an information booth where parents could become educated on all that we offer at the market. I wanted our farmers market booth to not only provide good information to the parents but also give the kids something fun to do.

Kids FunFari Event

I set up an arts and craft station where the kids created their very own lemur tails. It was a hit! We had kids coming from every direction excited to make lemur tails. My intention was while the kids were busy making their tails at the craft station I would direct the parents over to the Springfield Farmers Market information booth which ended up being a success.

Events from July:

Story Tyme Event Flyer

Hotdog Eating Contest Flyer

Photo Contest Flyer

What’s to Come:

Something that I am proud of is that this summer, the Springfield Farmers Market was named one of the top three of Michigan’s best farmers markets by WWMT Channel 3 News. This was so exciting to see all of our hard work paying off so quickly. I look forward to seeing the market flourish and continue bringing the community together. Although this is the end of my internship, I have been asked to help out whenever I can. I will be representing the market at the 11th Annual Car show as well as multiple bridal shows coming up this Fall.

The Springfield Farmers Market is not your average farmers market. Our facility has storefronts where businesses can rent. We also allow our facility and kitchen to be rented all year-long for events such as weddings, birthday parties, reunions, and much more. Therefore, not only was I advertising the farmers market, but I was also promoting the businesses that run their shops out of the market facility. You can learn more about the Springfield Farmers Market if you click here.

New Growth – Interning at the Farmers Market (part 1)

Sign Outside The Springfield Farmers Market

When I started for the Springfield Farmers Market in June the first project I took on was finding a new logo for the market. We were looking for something more symmetrical that would be better for use on t-shirts and other promotional items. After my success with Jordan Kelly Designs through bumbleberries, I decided to work through him again. He came up with this design. We loved how it incorporated the character of our building as well as the new growth theme with the sprout growing out of the ‘G.’

New Logo by Jordan Kelly Designs

Decision Making

I was looking forward to dedicating my time toward social media marketing, but my internship took a slightly different path. Although I still did some social media work, I did not get to work with Twitter as much as I had hoped. My time was spent promoting the market on Facebook and other forms of advertising.  I found that I had to dedicate my time to just one social media website. The target audience for the Springfield Farmers Market is middle-aged adults and I found that most of our audience had not made its way to the twittersphere yet.  I had to stop investing time on the Twitter page and put my efforts into only the Facebook page. My internship consisted of mainly marketing and event planning.

Mom 2 Mom Sale Event Flyer

Event Planning

My first event to plan was the Mom 2 Mom sale. I only had a couple weeks to make this event a success. I knew I wanted to have a drawing to attract customers to come to this event so I began working with the Detroit Lions events department. Bon Jovi was coming to Ford Field and with Bon Jovi being a popular singer from the 80s,  I knew he would be the perfect fit for our target audience. After many phone calls and emails, we ended up receiving four tickets to give away at our event. Now, I had to think of a way to benefit the market vendors with this great give away.

Bon Jovi Event Flyer

I came up with a punch card system where customers had to spend at least $10 at the market that day to enter the drawing. If the customer spent $20 or more, they had the opportunity to enter their name twice. This worked out great for the sale event. Customers would realize they were only a couple dollars away from entering twice and would go back and spend the extra to enter. It was a win-win for both the market vendors and a boost to our revenue.

Home-Based Business Vendor Event Flyer

The next planned event was our Home-Based Business Vendor event. This was an event to help promote the market by giving locally owned businesses a place to network themselves. We had this event on a Saturday, which is the same day as our normal farmers market and it was the most packed we have ever seen the market!

This first month was incredible and I learned so much. This next month has a lot more to come!

To be continued…

Protected: Adjusting to the Buzz of Interning

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What If Social Media Affects Self-Esteem?

–Social Media is everywhere–

According to a recent national survey, the more time that is spent viewing your friends’ status updates and posts of their lives, the more a person naturally will compare their life to the updates. This can create a sense of happiness, jealousy or sorrow. It would interesting to conduct a survey of college students to find out what emotion they feel when they see an update of another person’s success on a social media website.

It is thought that the constant positive updates of your Facebook friends will have a negative effect on your self-esteem. You will start to compare your life to the happy and succesful updates on your news feed.

According to Psychologist Mudra India Muskesh you should have no more than 354 friends on Facebook. In Mukesh’s study, Facebook users were asked how they felt about their life achievements. The users who had just viewed their friends’ status updates gave themselves lower ratings, and those with over 354 friends felt more inadequate in comparison to those with less friends.

As you can see on the graph below, social networking is on the rise and does not seem to be decreasing anytime soon.

A University of Haifa study discovered that the more time adolescent girls spend on Facebook, the more likely they are to develop an eating disorder due to self-comparisons. 

I would like to do my own experiment with conducted studies of both males and females, I would have college students complete surveys answering: how many social media website accounts they have active, how often they update their accounts, how many notifications per day they receive, and which emotion they feel strongest when they see positive updates from their friends’ achievements. The results on teen girls are shocking and it would be interesting to find out the results on college age students.

It is hypothesized that people who are more narcissistic or those who have lower self-esteem are more likely to spend more of their time with social media. I would have college students complete another survey to discover their levels of self-esteem and how much time is being spent on social media.

Disney Builds Revenge Resort (what if?)

Revenge is a new hit show on ABC that is sweeping the nation. An intriguing plot of a girl who seeks revenge on those who helped frame her father for the terrorist attack of flight 197 many years ago. Amanda Clark’s father left behind a box of journals that prove his innocence to his darling little girl. He tells her to forgive-but Amanda is determined to see justice be served. She sets on her journey of revenge-to bring down those who had an innocent man locked away. With money left from her father and her alias Emily Thorne she has all the ammunition necessary for retribution.

ABC is currently owned by the Walt Disney Company. The new resort is based on the show Revenge. Double Infinity Resort is coming in the next few years.

What better park to be near than Disney’s Hollywood Studios?

You can choose which life of the Hampton’s you would like to live on your stay at Walt Disney World in Florida. Whether it be living the high life in Grayson Manor or for a more laid back stay in the Beach House, you will be sure to be pleased with your stay.

GRAYSON MANOR

There are many rooms to choose from, but the presidential suite includes the round balcony from Victoria Grayson’s bedroom that has a beautiful view.

THE BEACH HOUSE

Sit on the porch swing and feel the morning breeze at Emily Thorne’s beach house while enjoying the beautiful view.

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THE COLOR RUN ADVERTISEMENT

I wanted to create an advertisement that would grab the attention of the younger demographic. I used a picture of myself after the race I ran to give a realistic example of the results of The Color Run.

Green is a color that resembles energy and grabs attention but doesn’t take away from the main point of the advertisement. I then lightened the area around the color runner so it showcased the person more than the background.

The font was chosen specifically because it had a fun look to it and the word ‘dirty’ was colored in to match the colors that are thrown on the runners.

For the text that was chosen, normally getting dirty isn’t something people get excited about, but it is implying that the color run is so much fun that it is worth getting your clothes dirty. That is the whole point of it-to have fun and not have a care in the world. They don’t call it ‘the happiest 5k on the planet’ for nothing!