what's new

May 2008

Four 'Brands' MBA's and one 'Brands' senior graduated May 2nd and 3rd.  It's always sad to lose members of the team after a developing a close relationship. On the other hand, it's a joyous occasion and yours truly was blessed to be invited to participate in the MBA ceremony as a representative of the Kelley Almuni Association Board of Directors.  Those graduating included Carolyn Assarian (who starts full-time at Target), Bryan Cloncs (PIper Jaffrey), Jennifer Dye (Ingersoll Rand), Jamie Podhaizer (Kraft) and Bob Weaver (Scotts).  The new summer interns begin within the next few days.  Cassie Lau starts May 7th and Ashley Bachmann starts May 12th.  They'll be doing prep work for the 2009 marketing plan that will be presented to the trade (The Home Depot, Lowe's and Wal*Mart) by the Scotts sales force in the next few months.  This is especially important this year as a major new product launch is scheduled for 2009.  It will require much of our attention this summer.  Speaking of new things, a new version of our web site, PlantersPlace.com, will launch this week!  The revised site adds 26 videos with gardening tips and 75 reprinted articles from Horticulture magazine.  Both the graduating class and the current class worked on this project.  A quick note on the current class.  There are five MBA team members returning next fall.  They are Kate Lehman (who will intern at P&G this summer), Chad Krueger (Target), Andrew Peeples (Scotts), Tatiana Quaife (P&G) and Laurel Whall (Abbott).

February 2008

Social activities: Kate Lehman, B2 Associate Brand Manager,

appears in a Business Week web site article

about romance on campus --OK, it was Valentines Day! 

The weekend was Kelley's MBA Gala aka prom and her boyfriend bought a corsage reminiscent of high school. It was really fun to have a sit-down dinner, gamble (fake dollars, unfortunately), and dance the night away. Kelley (and B2) try to enjoy the people, as well as all the work. (Lehman is pictured with her boyfriend.)

January 2008

Bloomington Brands is recruiting undergraduate interns for summer 2008 (to begin May 2008).  Candidates should be in their junior year with a graduation date of December 2008 or May 2009.  All business majors are welcome to apply.  First round interviews will be held February 15th.  Successful candidates from the first round will interview wtih Bob Stohler the week of February 18th.  The current brand team will present the opportunity to the Kelley Marketing Club on January 6th.  Interested students should be American citizens or hold a valid 'green card'.  Applications for an interview may be made at the Undergraduate Career Services Office. There are two salaried Marketing Associate positions available.  

September 2007

Here's the recruiting schedule for the MBA Marketing Internship Program at Bloomington Brands:

• Resume drop on the Kelley GCS website:  September 21 - October 17.
• Bloomington Brands presentation during AIW1:  October 15.
• First round of interviews: October 26.
• Second round of interviews (w/Bob Stohler):  October 29 - 31.

August 2007

It’s another beautiful summer in Bloomington, Indiana.  Our undergraduate interns are finishing up their last full-time days at B2 and will be returning to classes soon for their senior years.  Our MBA’s are finishing their summer internships, also, and will be returning to campus later this month.  The MBA Class of 2008 – Bloomington Brands version – is interning at the following companies this summer:

Kellogg (Battle Creek, MI) – Carolyn Assarian

Piper Jaffrey (NYC) – Bryan Cloncs

Oscar Mayer (Madison, WI) – Jamie Fae Podhaizer

Nestlé Purina (St. Louis, MO) – Bob Weaver

There are several new developments for the Osmocote® brand this year.  Together with support from R&D, Creative Services, Regulatory, Operations and Sales – all at Scotts – the brand team launched a new 4.5 lb. Flower and Vegetable formula. Initial shipments started in January 2007.  During the peak spring season, the new formula received strong support from retailers like The Home Depot and Wal*Mart as well as from passionate gardeners.

To keep our momentum going, we’re preparing for another new item in FY08 called Osmocote® Plus.  It has the finest formula of any plant food available for consumer use and it will be positioned as a multi-purpose product suitable for all plant varieties.  The current brand team helped determine the new formula’s positioning and label design.

Steve Throckmorton 2007

Our summer interns, Jennifer Dye and Steve Throckmorton, have been awesome! They tracked and analyzed results from a mail-in rebate program, they reviewed and analyzed results from a market test for a new product (to be launched in FY09), tracked and reviewed data from the spring radio tests, provided on-going support to garden clubs, created four sell sheets for the Scotts sales force, updated Scotts Product Catalog, revised the Scotts Product Information Guide, and participated in the drafting of the FY 2008 marketing budget.  They also helped execute the new Osmocote® Plus label.  Of equal importance, they both actively participated in the next revision for Osmocote® Plant Food’s web site, PlantersPlace.com.  In short, their time at Bloomington Brands has been a good learning experience and I think we managed to challenge them to deliver results at an exceptional level.  I look forward to their continuing with the program in the 2007/08 school year.

Fall also means recruiting a new class of students to start managing the brand at the beginning of the calendar year.  The current class of MBA's will be instrumental in this.  If you are just now learning about the program, first-year MBA students receive the opportunity to gain practical brand management experience while remaining on campus and working toward their MBA degrees.  The out-going class gets to experience the flip side of interviewing, recruiting and mentoring. The brand Osmocote® gets the benefit of new ideas and renewed energy.  Of course, we’ll also be looking soon for two more smart and energetic undergraduate interns in January 2008 to help us again next summer.

Once again, I am obliged to thank Jonlee Andrews, MBA Program Associate Chair, for her ongoing counsel, and for the continued support of the good people at Scotts starting with Jim Hagedorn (CEO), Barry Sanders (EVP), Rich Sorota (SVP – Marketing), Keith Baeder (VP – Growing Media and Plant Food) and Carlos Hernandez (Director, Plant Food, and the rest of the Scotts Plant Food Marketing Team.

September 2005

The 2005 fall semester is in full swing. Bloomington Brands is back to full speed. All six MBA students returned from meaningful internships and are applying what they learned over the summer to Osmocote® Plant Food. Our students interned at a wide array of companies in a variety of packaged goods categories (food, household products, infant products, pharmaceuticals, and of course, lawn & garden). Now they are teaching and sharing with each other these rich experiences. We are looking forward to a busy and rewarding second year of school.

This past summer, the Osmocote team of two interns focused especially on preparing new bottle and bag labels for the 2006 season. In addition to working closely with Creative Services, Scotts in-house art department, the team spent a lot of time on the phone with Coleman Brandworx, a top-tier design house in New York. This was a work that combined creativity with excruciating attention to detail. A terrific learning experience for the participants and not incidentally, some cool-looking bilingual labels for the Osmocote brand.

The team is working this fall on a very aggressive list of projects because the new season is just around the corner. Projects include preparation of detailed promotional plans, an update both the Osmocote and Bloomington Brands websites with new and relevant information, the creation of new print advertisements, an update of the media plan, and the establishment of a new fiscal year budget. One exciting project that is entirely new to Osmocote this fall is internet advertising on Yahoo. This has not been attempted before and depending on the success of the program may become part of the media strategy for next spring.

Fall also means recruiting a new class of students to start managing the brand mid-year. First-year students receive the opportunity to gain practical brand management experience while remaining on campus and working toward their MBA degrees. The out-going class gets to experience the flip side of interviewing, recruiting and coaching. Osmocote gets the benefit of new ideas and renewed energy. Of course, on a personal note, I get to meet and work with a half dozen of the crème de la crème from the Kelley School.

Once again, I am obliged to thank Jonlee Andrews, Professor of Marketing at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, for her ongoing counsel and for the continued support of Jim Hagedorn, Bob Bernstock, Rich Sorota, Keith Baeder and Rich Foster, the Scotts Miracle-Gro leadership team.

March 2005
Bloomington Brands is about to graduate its second class of students (May 2005). In fact, two from this group have already started with their post-graduate employers, John Price (The Scotts Company) and David Rhoades (Kellogg's). There are six Bloomington Brands associates in this class, and collectively, they have a total of 10 offers. The employment offer record for Bloomington Brands associates looks like this:

- Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (3M)
- Kimberly-Clark (2 offers)
- Phillip Morris (Altria)
- Oscar Mayer (Kraft)
- The Limited
- Sara Lee
- The Scotts Company (2 offers)
- Kellogg's

Our third class of MBA student marketers is already engaged in the business. Their term with Bloomington Brands will last one year. Dan Cutchin, Pooja Porwal and Jeff Weber started in January, and this month, Maalvika Mantripragada, Jordan Mulford and Kristin Waller joined the Team. Maalvika will intern this summer with Bloomington Brands while Jordan will intern at Scotts. Summer 2005 internships for the remainder of the Team are as follows:

- Dan Cutchin (Kraft)
- Pooja Porwal (Mead Johnson)
- Jeff Weber (Eli Lilly)
- Jodan Mulford (Scotts)
- Kristin Waller (SC Johnson)
- Maalvika Mantripragada (Bloomington Brands)

Dan Cutchin                                              Pooja Porwal

This has been a busy year for the Osmocote brand team. An Osmocote display unit has

been deployed at Wal*Mart (for spring 2005) and incremental listings are in-place at Lowe's and Target. In addition, the team coordinated and led a change in the bottles used by five SKUs. This change improved the water-resistant integrity of the packages at no additional cost. Together with the ad agency, Ten United (Columbus, OH), new advertising copy and a "vertical" media plan were developed. The new, elegant ads fit the premium positioning of the brand, and have an appropriately emotional component that reaches out to the highly engaged gardener. This year's media plan ensures that these messages will obtain multiple exposures with the targeted consumer. All in all, the brand enters the key spring season with great optimism.

Of course, none of this would be possible without the continued support of Dan Smith, Kelley's Interim Dean, Jonlee Andrews, Professor of Marketing at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, and of course, Jim Hagedorn, Chairman and CEO, The Scotts Company, and Bob Bernstock, President, Scotts North America. We greatly appreciate their counsel, encouragement and willingness to let the Team exercise its creativity.

-- Bob Stohler, Manager, Bloomington Brands, LLC

Winter 2005
Bloomington Brands was featured in the latest edition of Kelley - the publication for alumni of the Kelley School of Business. The article highlighted ways in which our school is creating value for world-class companies such as Microsoft, Target, Intel, 3M, John Deere and, of course, the Scotts company.

Click here to view the article.

August, 2004
Bloomington Brands is about to celebrate its first birthday. Great things happened in our inaugural year thanks to Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, its graduate students, faculty and administration, and the executive management team at the Scotts Company. We are especially indebted to the vision of Jim Hagedorn, Chairman and CEO at Scotts, for the "loan" of Osmocote, our first brand. We also appreciate the ongoing support and guidance of Professor Jonlee Andrews as well as the leadership of Dan Smith, Interim Dean of the Kelley School. We are pleased to report that our first class, which graduated in May, is actively pursuing careers in marketing or finance at prestige packaged goods companies like General Mills (2), Kimberly-Clark and Nestle. We are proud of this pioneering group and deeply appreciate the efforts made to not only get Bloomington Brands started but to begin the process of building the Osmocote business for Scotts. The second class has been in place since March - they will graduate in May 2005. There are five marketing majors and one finance student. Three of the marketing students from this group worked as interns this summer "in the business" at either Bloomington Brands (2) or the Scotts Company (1). The other members of the Bloomington Brands class of '05 held internships at Sara Lee, Johnson & Johnson, and 3M.

We look forward to the class being reunited soon. Another year of MBA study resumes shortly at the Kelley School, while at Bloomington Brands, the team is busy with making last-minute decisions about Osmocote's fiscal year 2005 marketing plan.

-- Bob Stohler, Manager, Bloomington Brands, LLC.