Cover Letter

4781 NW Amanda Place

Corvallis, OR 97330

trevor.jenssen.1990@mail.linnbenton.edu

541-207-7560

November 25th, 2016

Mr. Dean Pinto

Head Salesman

Tillamook Beef Jerky

7002 SW Iron Horse St.

Wilsonville, OR 97070-8878

Dear Mr. Pinto,

Evenflo Plumbing, based out of Corvallis, is the fastest-growing plumbing company in Oregon.  No, Mr. Pinto, I am not a plumber.  I am in charge of all of Evenflo’s marketing as well as being warehouse manager.  I make sure that the warehouse is always stocked with inventory and that the plumbers always have what they need to do their jobs efficiently.  

You might not see the correlation to promoting sales in the plumbing industry compared to beef jerky.  But I assure you there are more than meets the eye.  The experience I have gained while working there, I believe it is almost, if not more valuable than the paychecks I receive.

Being only a junior in college and having zero experience in the plumbing industry did not make me the most qualified applicant for my job.  However my boss and I instantly connected on the vision he had for the company.  His vision is innovation.  Plumbers are old school, they fight change; pencil and paper kind of people.  But what we are doing at Evenflo is going to change the game.  

Automation in the warehouse and utilizing the internet to reach out to new customers is a lot of what I do for Evenflo.  If a plumber needs a part from the warehouse he uses a new program I installed.  My boss has also been paying for me to learn how to design and change/maintain our website (Evenfloplumbing.com) through a web designer based in Los Angeles.  

I look forward to being in contact with you and hopefully working together to take Tillamook Beef Jerky to a whole new level.   

Sincerely,

Trevor Jenssen

Enclosures:

LinkedIn:  linkedin.com/in/trevorjenssen

Post Marketing Case Write Up

        I chose to do my marketing case study on BIKETOWN, which is a public transportation system in Portland that was funded by Nike.  BIKETOWN is all throughout Portland, it is a bike share system.  A bike share system means that anyone can ride the bikes (as long as you have the app).  To make BIKETOWN possible, Nike teamed up with Motivate Co. which is the number one provider for bike share systems in the United States, as well as SoBi, who is in charge of providing the bikes for people to ride.

        To be able to ride one of the bikes, all you have to do is download the app on your phone and set up an account.  Once the account is set up you get a pass code to unlock the bikes.  All you do is type your code into to LED screen located on the back of the bike, and you're off!  As far as rates go, there are three options.  The first is the single ride option.  It is only $2.50, but only gets you 30 minutes of riding time.  The second option is a day pass.  A day pass is $12, but comes with 24 hour access to the bikes and 180 minutes of riding time.  The final option is the annual membership.  The membership is $12 a month and comes with unlimited access to the bikes paired with 120 minutes of riding time per day.

       I think it was really smart of Nike to endorse BIKETOWN because it is not only promoting a healthy lifestyle and a somewhat profitable business idea, but the marketing aspect is pretty phenomenal.  Every single bike is decked out with Nike logos, with 1000 bikes, that's 1000 advertisements for Nike that they are being paid for.  It's genius!
  I would say that their value proposition is, "cheap and eco-friendly public transportation."  However I also think it could include something about getting paid for advertising.  I know that the whole idea of marketing is to invest in an idea and the marketing idea eventually ends up paying for itself and more.  But with BIKETOWN it is doing that AND making money while people ride the bikes around.  

Week 5 Blog Post

1.  The person I chose that does a great job of marketing himself is Dan Bilzerian.

2.  All he does is post bad ass pictures and videos of himself on social media.  He promotes his ridiculous lifestyle, pictures with naked women, huge stacks of cash, parties, big guns.  Just look at his Instagram page.

He promotes himself as the ultimate man,  While I may not agree with the image he promoting, you cannot deny that people eat it up and he makes money by showing off himself spending money.  It works because guys want to be like him.  Dan is really just an excellent poker player, but he uses the money he makes off poker to promote himself and through social media he has made himself a celebrity.

3.  One of the things he does so well is how he interacts with his fans through social media.  On twitter he has 1.4 million followers.  It seems like he is always having fans come party with him, having them enter into his sweepstakes, which in hand promote him even more.  It is a technique Dave Kerpen references and Dan does it flawlessly.  On Snapchat, he tells fans to bet on football games through an app, and to use his promotion code to get some kind of deal on the bets.  Every time a fan uses his code, Dan cashes in.