Students in Marketing 205, Principles of Marketing, taught by Maggie Wells, are developing marketing plans for a wide range of businesses. Two of these groups are learning how to market with on campus businesses. Omar Ahmed (‘26), Andrew Duhaime (‘26), Maureen Figueredo (‘25), Carmine Meola-Dreissig (‘27) and Natalia Rakviashvili (‘26) are working to make the Pub a profitable enterprise. Ty Gelijns (‘27), Jeff Ayeh-Datey (‘27), Evan Richardson (‘27) and Avery Cohen (‘27) have been hard at work marketing for WMNJ, Drew’s radio station.
The group working with the Pub told the Acorn, “We’re creating a marketing plan to make the pub profitable. If you’re over 21, you’re going to bars, if you’re under, you’re going to parties. We want to get more people to go to the Pub.”
A focus for them was expanding the Pub’s hours to later at night and to Saturdays. Their plan also includes bringing sports broadcasts to the pub, creating a better system for queuing music, a new employment strategy, payment methods for workers, expanding the pub’s drink selection and more. “Certain parts are more doable, like sports packages, while others are more ambitious,” they said.
Their suggestions extend to the Pub’s branding, like updating its slogan, which is currently “where fabled creatures come to drink,” for which they had a handful of alternatives. Of course, it’s still up to the Pub to approve the students’ plan, and to implement the changes they prefer. They said, “we have so many ideas that we are going to present to the Pub and the school. We think it is important to make the Pub profitable.”
Having put out surveys, they also said, “not everyone fills out surveys or gives correct information,” which makes it harder for them to adapt their plan to the tastes of students. Even more, they said “it is hard to find exactly which problems to target.”
Nevertheless, the students say, “we are working to make Drew better, one Guinness at a time.”
The group working to refine WMNJ Radio said of their objective, “We were given a short term goal of recruiting more DJs and podcasters. Our long term goal is to build awareness and audience.” Essentially, they’re running a marketing campaign for the radio.
“People aren’t going to listen to an empty radio station,” said one group member. So, their main focus is on recruiting more DJs to fill the empty spaces in the radio’s hours.
Another said, in response to surveys they sent out, “I was surprised by how few people knew about Drew’s radio already.”
To fulfill its full potential, the students want to succeed in marketing the station and getting the word out both to prospective DJs and podcasters, as well as potential listeners.
Kevin Feinstein is a first-year student majoring in English.
