Here’s the final project for my Brand Management class at UCLA (Fall 2010 quarter). The North Face is one of my favorite brands of all time, so this was a fun project to work on!
My contribution to the project:
One thing I love about working in the marketing world is that there’s never a shortage of things to learn or a shortage of content to learn from. The real difficulty comes from figuring out the useful stuff, from the not-so-useful stuff. With a bajillion blogs out there, which ones are a must-add to your Google Reader?
Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik – You cannot work in online marketing without understanding Web Analytics. Avinash, the king of all analysis ninjas, writes what I consider the most practical blog in the world of digital marketing. Whether you specialize in email marketing or social media or search (or all of them), Avinash explains how to set up web analytics, create reports that are actually useful (yes, “visitors” to your website & “pageviews” are actually useless metrics, reporting squirrels), how to figure out which KPIs matter to your business & the metrics with which to measure success. So for example, if you do “social media” stuff for your job, and one of your strategies is to “engage with influencers,” and you’ve managed to get your webinar mentioned in a few blogs, you’d probably want to know which of those blogs was successful in driving not just traffic, but conversions. You can do that easily if you’ve properly set up your tracking & goals, and next time, you’ll know which bloggers to reach out to again. Also, you will never again report numbers in aggregate & you will fall asleep thinking about segmenting data.
Web Strategist by Jeremiah Owyang – Jeremiah is an industry analyst and according to his blog, he strives to “deliver insight on disruptive technologies and their impact on how companies communicate with their customers.” This is a great blog for anyone looking for research and insight into the digital marketing industry. He mostly writes about social media. I found some of the research he conducted particularly useful when I was helping my company develop a corporate social media strategy (see: How Corporations Should Prioritize Social Business Budgets) or when I was evaluating social media management systems (see: The State and Future of the Social Media Management Space) I like reading research about the industry, because it provides benchmarks for my own work
The SEOmoz Blog – Just like you can’t work in online marketing without understanding web analytics, you REALLY cannot work in online marketing without understanding search engines, how to optimize your website for quality search traffic, etc. SEOmoz provides practical information (e.g. “how-to” not just “what-to-do”) for search marketing pros. One of my favorite things about Rand Fishkin and his team at SEOmoz is that they conduct experiments and tests ALL THE TIME. We all know that Google’s algorithm is top secret, but thanks to SEOmoz’s Search Engine Ranking Factors Survey results, we have a pretty good idea of what the Google bots like to crawl and spit up in the SERPs. Also, did you know that social media impacts search?
I am also in the process of creating a book list, which will come out at the end of the year, since I still have a few books that I started but have not finished reading.
Add your favorite blogs or websites in the comments below.
I really love this campaign. They done an amazing job of mobilizing their base and getting people involved, getting people excited about this.
I spend my days devising ways to increase traffic, revenue, leads, conversion rates, engagement, etc. on my clients’ websites. They are all private, for-profit organizations. Metrics and key performance indicators of nonprofit websites will be discussed in another post. In this post, I would like to post my top 5 favorite websites of nonprofit organizations. Why? Because a beautifully designed website can substantially help increase your conversion rates, if you don’t do anything else to your website.
Here are a list of 5 beautifully designed nonprofit websites (of organizations that I support):
“charity: water is a non-profit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. 100% of public donations directly fund water projects.”
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
“Carbonica is a global brand and our carbon offsets fund reforestation and forest restoration programmes in Central America.”
“Beyond Current Horizons explores the future for education, beyond 2025. The aim is to help our education system prepare for and develop an ongoing and sustainable response to the challenges it faces as society and technology rapidly evolve.”
(RED) – They work with global brands, donating 50% of profits to the Global Fund to invest in HIV & AIDS programs in Africa.
Helpful Resources:
Smashing Magazine – Nonprofit Website Design: Examples & Best Practices
DesignM.ag – 40+ Inspirational Non-profit Website Designs
Vandelay Design – 40 of the Best Websites of Non-profit Organizations
View more presentations from Grace Cheung.
This was my final project for Advertising at UCLA (Spring 2010 quarter). I picked Meetup.com because I’m in love with their mission to bring complete strangers together, based on common interests, goals, lifestyle, whatever. Most new tech companies these days create services & products that allow us to communicate more easily & quickly online, but if I had to choose one, I would opt to just meet people in real life. Read the Meetup.com story here.
My contribution to the project:
Here’s the full report:
I stumbled upon this campaign today, Equinox’s $3 million dollar “My Body. My Biography.” marketing campaign, launched in January 2010. The My Body My Biography campaign was created by Yard, a NYC-based creative agency.
Mediums used to communicate the marketing message:
When you visit the website, you’ll see pictures of Equinox members and snippets of their stories:
“Of my whole family, I’m the only one still alive.”
“You go to marathons, and you see people with no legs. If they can do it, you can, too.”
“It’s easy to take your health for granted when you have it.”
Among those that have shared their stories are cancer survivors, those living with diseases like HIV and multiple sclerosis, a CEO/mother of 5 kids and a plane crash survivor. These are real people that have triumphed over insurmountable adversity.
What’s beautiful about this campaign is that it doesn’t focus on “the results.” You’re not going to hear, “I lost 20 pounds in 2 weeks without any effort, ate whatever I want, and now I can shop at all the trendy stores.” Some of these people have lost almost everything, including their lives, faced terminal illness, or survived fatal accidents. And they share their stories of how the resources and support at Equinox have helped them overcome these seemingly impossible obstacles.
My Body My Biography focuses on the journey, not the destination. It’s about developing a better relationship with yourself. It’s about the commitment to living a healthier life.
It’s emotional, it’s compelling, and most of all—it’s real.
People in my generation are connected through technology in a way that is almost overwhelming on a daily basis. I don’t watch TV, but I’m online for most of my waking hours, so I’m bombarded with countless e-mails, newsletters, articles, Facebook updates, tweets, etc. almost every waking moment.
For the past year or so, Twitter has become the “it” tool for “social media marketers.” Most people don’t know how to use Twitter for their business. (See my article, “How to Use Twitter for Your Business” for a few ways to actually do it the right way). I am not a self-proclaimed “social media expert” like many people claim to be, but I did develop a very successful social media campaign for Beats By Dre. Links: Beats By Dre Facebook, @BeatsByDre, and Beats By Dre Myspace.
Anyway, I was a very happy girl tonight when I came home from work to find a box of truffles from DoubleTree Hotels (@doubletreehtls) I had participated in some sort of informal market research via Twitter a couple of weeks ago, and this box of truffles was a thank you. As a marketing professional, I know this means they have the right to bombard me with marketing spam for the rest of my life, but hey, they earned it.
What DoubleTree Did Right:
P.S. I just ate both of the dark chocolate truffles. I will work extra hard in Bar Method class tomorrow morning :0)
Winter 2010 Quarter – Marketing Principles & Practices – with Tom Lewis (his son created the Bravo show “Flipping Out”)
Our final project was to create a comprehensive marketing plan. Some people created marketing plans for companies they were currently in or a product they were currently working with. My team decided to come up with something completely new.
Urban Farm Cafe
The Concept: My group came up with the concept of a casual grab-and-go restaurant cafe that serves up all locally grown and organic foods located in the heart of Woodland Hills, an area where there is little direct competition from other “healthy” restaurants but where the residents are still relatively affluent and educated, so they will be willing to pay more for a healthy alternative to the chain restaurants heavily populating the area.
The Plan: Ideally, a realistic goal for a new restaurant is to break even in the first year. However, that wasn’t good enough, so we set a lofty goal of 15% gross profit margin for our price objective (from an overall $960,000/year revenue objective). We dreamed up this cozy and comfortable, simple yet stylish, little spot for my suburban neighbors. Our restaurant cafe serves up all locally grown and organic fare at relatively affordable prices. What’s special is that all our condiments and spreads will be homemade and everything on our menu is customizable. Customers will be able to place orders over the internet on our website or on their phone, and come in to pick up their order when it’s ready. We will offer a seasonal menu in addition to our regular offerings.
The Urban Farm Cafe Experience: My goal was to build a community around this restaurant cafe, so that it’s not just a place that serves up great good, but that it also becomes an integral part of the community. We will form partnerships with local small businesses such as gyms, spas, hotels, and yoga studios. We will be present at the local farmer’s markets, hold cooking demonstrations at schools and offer weekend food and tea tastings of our newest recipes. In addition, we will encourage our customers to help build our online presence by offering incentives in the form of a point system (points redeemable for future meals, merchandise, events, food tastings, etc.). This plan is a result of the firm conviction held by my teammates and I that healthy eating can also be fun.
My contribution to the project: Promotional Strategy, the bulk of the editing, and I made the PowerPoint presentation.
One of my favorite parts of my Winter 2010 Writing for Marketing and Advertising class was conceptualizing and writing advertising pieces for print, television, and radio. For the final project, my group (Toast Innovations) created a media campaign for Sofia Sparkling Wines by the Francis Ford Coppola Winery. Our objective of the campaign was to reposition sparkling wine as a casual, everyday drink, by placing the drink in a variety of every day situations. When people think of sparkling wine, most of the time they associate it with champagne and celebrating special occasions. Well, we believe that every day is a reason to celebrate, which explains our tagline: “Celebrate Everyday. Celebrate with Sofia.”
Powerpoint presentation and written report are below (keep in mind, this was thrown together in just a few days). The campaign includes a print ad, billboard ad, 30-second television spot, 30-second radio spot, a concept for a micro-site, and a Twitter tweet.
How we did: By far, our presentation was the instructor’s favorite.
My contribution to the project: I helped conceptualize the campaign, tie the message of each piece together with the campaign as a whole, and I put together the report and PowerPoint presentation.
Final Report:
