"The Rock That Rolls Gathers No Moss"

(written by Joshua Sellers)

..and our "rock" is certainly on a roll! This week has been a critical week for our team. We are now in the early stages of doing rather than thinking. Amanda has been coordinating t-shirt design, which is coming along well - we plan to submit a design to the print company by Friday. The rest of the girls (Delia, Christina, and Jackie) have been collaborating on the paper materials, such as 3x5 promotional cards and 8.5x11 POS flyers.

I had the opportunity to meet with Nick last Friday to flush out some details and briefly brainstorm different facets of the project that had not yet been considered. The feeling at our meeting was unmistakably optimistic. We couldn't help but occasionally stop ourselves short during our conversation and smile as we begin to consider the enormous scope that this project can evolve into.

It was at this meeting that Nick gave us a $2,000 budget. A question was raised in class yesterday (which I was unfortunately unable to attend) by Dr. Leffel who wanted to know how we planned to bring value to our client through this endeavor, which would match the $2,000 budget that we were granted. -Certainly a pertinent question that should, and already has been, discussed...

At our first meeting with Nick, we had some trouble specifically defining our relationship with Nick and how this unique project would fit within the requirements of the class. Typically, a group of students are given the opportunity to develop any business of their choice, so long as it has social value, can be sustained, and has the potential to turn a profit. At the end of the first day of class however, Dr. Leffel made a special announcement that there was a project already available for whoever was interested in it, called the Papouli project...

For personal reasons (which I'll share in a later post) I felt compelled to devote myself to this project but I quickly found a problem - it sounded like just a project, not a business. How do we make this a sustainable business? What exactly is our relationship with Papouli's grill? Are we separate from the restaurant, or are we some sort of PR team?

It was out of these questions that the idea of Skunqwerks was born. "Well, what exactly are you doing for me?" Nick asked us to help get our juices flowing. We were taking the raw ideas that he, a client, had in his head and developing a project that would turn his ideas into a realistic product (mypapouli.com). In order to fit our unique project into the requirements of the class, we decided to form a separate fictitious company called Skunqwerks, a play on the business term: skunk works. Skunqwerks is a PR company with a unique objective: it works with small businesses to help them develop their own social projects - the "make a wish foundation" of social entrepreneurship.

Once we were able to define our working relationship with Nick, it became much easier to approach the project and answer questions like that which came up in class yesterday: how are we measuring our social value? Well, how does any client measure the value of a project which will not directly generate revenue? -Through key deliverables and critical benchmark points. When Amanda answered that she "thinks we would probably be able to show a profit from the coupons" she was trying to answer the question in terms of monetary value, which is not applicable for our project. In the business world, there is no room for ambiguity. Instead, we have identified specific key deliverables that when met, are worth the $2,000 budget that Nick has granted. These deliverables include: lauch mypapoulis.com, receive a substantial amount of submissions on the website (at least 100 contributions), perform in-store tapings of employees and guests, and develop a presence on third party networking sites such as facebook and twitter. -These aspects of the projects have been identified by the client as worth $2,000.

The discussion about the Skunqwerks/Papouli's relationship has been an interesting one that has offered the team substantial insight into real-world client/conulstant relationships. When we were first given Nick's goals and ideas, it was put on our shoulders to "make it work." Given the constraints and limitations associated with the class and this project, our team is confident that our decision to create Skunqwerks was the appropriate solution to "make this project work."

There are many more exciting posts to come. We may be blessed by the contribution of a largely celebrated individual... but more on that later!