Students assist local program

For five Wharton students, marketing has come to mean more than just charts and graphs. For their senior project, these students are developing a marketing strategy for the Big Brothers/Big Sisters Association of Philadelphia designed to increase University involvement in the program. "The question was how do we get more Penn people involved with our program," said Cheryl Dennis, director of public relations and recruitment for the program. "As an outside organization, we can't put posters everywhere on campus." In their Marketing 341 class, students were assigned to develop a marketing solution for a given "company problem." Although the project gave them the opportunity to use their theoretical skills and knowledge in a real-world setting, enthusiasm was initially mixed. "My first reaction was that since [the result of the project] was not for profit that it would not be as exciting as?a profit-oriented marketing project," said Wharton senior Bleema Moskowitz. "But the complete opposite was true since we do have to think about the different kinds of students and employees in the market." The goal of the assignment was to increase recruitment of University students, employees and faculty, with a focus on African-American and Latin-American males. "In the past, we have had several excellent big brothers and big sisters that have come to us, individually, from Penn," Dennis said. "As the second largest employer in Philadelphia, we feel that Penn is an important resource that would benefit our children." Some of the problems students have encountered in their research include misconceptions about time-commitment and monetary obligations for the program. "One problem is that people believe it's a big time commitment," said Wharton senior Jeff Katz. "What they don't realize is that you don't have to spend a lot of money on a little brother or sister and plan activities with them. The point is to have a positive impact on someone's life." Because of the lack of advertisement on campus and the fact that the organization is not associated with the University, people are not well informed about the program, Katz said. "A problem that the organization faces is that people don't know how to become a big brother," said Moskowitz. "However, I think that once people start to get involved, the difficult application process won't deter them." The University-affiliated PennPals program is more accessible and performs the same type of community service that the Big Brothers/Big Sisters program provides. Because the application process for Big Brothers/Big Sisters is more complicated than PennPals, students may find it easier to join PennPals. But the Marketing students are trying to launch an ad campaign to stress the strengths of the Big Brothers/Big Sisters program. "It's not a fierce competition like Coke and Pepsi since everyone is working for the same goal," said Katz. "But it is a competition in the fact that students only have a certain amount of time." Wharton senior Ira Koyner said he has enjoyed working on the proposal with his group and the organization. "I'm glad I got this project as opposed to something else," he said. "This project has other rewards. It's like volunteering on a different level."