Advertising Emphasis
Project Summary
I chose to build a business plan, as well as an internal strategic focus plan for Macha Media. I am in the process of applying for law school with the intention of eventually practicing corporate law and felt that writing for a business like this would be beneficial to my long-term goals.
Macha Media is a brand new company based in the Salt Lake City metropolitan area and co-founded by a good friend of mine, Spencer Chavez. It shoots and produces commercials, and has so far completed one project with three more in the pre-production process. As a new company with expansion goals, a business plan is crucial. Without it, it’s impossible to obtain a bank loan needed to grow.
The first step in this process was sitting the two co-founders down and establishing what their vision for the company was. At first they didn’t really have one, they just assumed they would be producing commercials forever. I encouraged them to think about what they really wanted for their company, and what they were really passionate about. I enjoyed seeing them light up and tell me about their artistic aspirations and how they would love to eventually shoot short films as well as music and dance videos. Establishing that as their vision really helped open their eyes to the potential their business had, and a goal to work towards.
With that vision set, we strategized ways to both grow the business, as well as establish who they wanted to be as a company. Although both are extremely talented at what they do, they lacked experience running a business, and were lost as to marketing tactics to foster growth. They didn’t have a website or any social media pages, and were relying on word of mouth growth to obtain new projects.
After going over various different marketing strategies with them, we settled on a plan that would both incorporate their current method of word of mouth growth, as well as looking possible organic growth and legitimizing themselves as a business built for the long run.
With these things in mind, I went to work creating a business plan for them that they could use if they get to a point where they need a loan to keep up with growth. I also worked on the strategic focus plan that would be for internal purposes and helped lay a foundation for the company itself and who they are.
After working on the business plan for quite a while, I felt good about it and sent them the rough draft to see what they thought. I was initially disappointed to hear that they thought the original length of 27 pages was too long, and if possible they wanted it to be around 15 pages. I was pretty disheartened to hear that, and surprised when they came to me with well thought out reasoning for it. I had gone online to figure out what a business plan should look like and based it off of that, but they sent me links to other ideas supporting a shorter plan.
It wasn’t easy cutting the plan almost in half. Going back into it and taking out sections, rearranging pages and reorganizing the design was more than I thought I would have to do, but looking back I am glad they asked. After several more hours of work to essentially recreate their business plan, I was surprised to see that pretty much all the information I thought to be relevant to their business plan was still included.
Learning how to cut down and edit my writing to be shorter, while still telling the same information was a great learning experience for me. Seeing the difference between the original plan, and the finished one was eye opening to me, and I realized the two co-founders were right to ask for a shorter plan.
I added an appendix to the end where they would put supporting documents in the case they went to the bank such as financial statements, graphs and reviews from clients. The plan itself didn’t need that now, and serves as an adaptable model for future use that they can change if needed, but the base is there.
Time Breakdown
I spent a total of 61 hours on this project. Those 61 hours were broken down in the following ways:
- 6 hours meeting with Macha Media co-founders and going over vision and marketing strategy
- 23 hours writing and working on initial business plan
- 5 hours writing and working on internal focus plan
- 18 hours rewriting and editing business plan after request from co-founders
- 5 hours on design and organization of plan
- 4 hours on preparation for Senior Showcase and the Showcase itself