Mad Marketing

I have to admit, I don't watch "Mad Men." It's on my list of 'someday catch up on' shows, but I'm just not there yet. However, I was extremely intrigued when I read a NYTimes article outlining the success of an Unilever campaign that airs during the show (read the article here). Unilever's basic idea is to style the TV ads to mirror the style of the popular 1960's show. Obviously, this intrigues people and makes them think that they are watching the show until... surprise! It's an ad for Dove! (I have to say too that the ads themselves are very fun to watch).

Take a look at the article and go to youtube to watch a few of the commericals. Personally the Breyer's ad is my favorite:

Career Fair Marketing Mania

Today was the semi-annual RIT Career Fair and being the unemployed grad student that I am, I couldn’t resist the temptation of 200 companies all ready and waiting to meet me. As a side note to the blog – I forgot how much I love RIT and what an amazing school it is! Just being on campus brought me back to my undergrad years.. I was just waiting to see one of my friends walking by in their suit… making fun of me wearing my flip flops with my suit (don’t worry, I changed… it was a long walk from the parking lot in heals!). It was nostalgia at its best and I will never regret my decision to go there.

So you are probably wondering, what does going to a career fair have anything to do with marketing? My answer? It has everything to do with marketing. The companies are trying to market themselves to students, students are marketing themselves to potential employers and the school is marketing itself as a premier college for companies to recruit at.

Upon entering the Gordon Field House it was like a magazine blew up and scattered company ads. Company banners hung everywhere and the most well known and recognized companies drew the longest lines (yes, I spent over 30 minutes in the SONY line in order to get a 60 second conversation). The point is, a brand is more than wanting someone to purchase your product, its’ making people have that happy feeling when they see your company name or logo. Example – I love Apple products, do I know much about the daily life of an Apple employee? No (well, ok, I do… but I’m making a point). However, when I saw the Apple banner I made a bee-line to the table in order to get my 60 seconds with the recruiter. I’d want to work there… they’re products are fantastic. There was also the swag. Now, four years ago there was a ton of swag. I couldn’t walk out of there without arms full of company branded mugs, pens, stress balls or water bottles. Now, companies are being more careful with their limited amount of swag and giving it to the prospective who they feel have potential, however the creativeness and quality of the goods have drastically increased. At SONY they gave away shirts (a college student’s dream) and at Fisher Price I got a Doodler (super cool). These items will not only make me happy when receiving them (who doesn’t like a toy!) but also remind me of my time talking with the company and make me excited to talk with them further in the future. There were also companies that I think hurt their brand. I won’t name names, but there were a few of my highly targeted companies who after speaking with their representative, made me second guess my like for that company (here’s a hint.. even if recruiting a Software Engineer, bring at least 1 Marketing or HR rep to a career fair… Software Engineers tend to not be the most friendly, outgoing and positive people to be recruiting). Another brand downer? A name. Case example, I walked up to a company that I hadn’t heard of or researched, but thought looked interesting enough to speak with, “Brand Solutions”. Me: “Hi, I’m Danielle…. I’m interested in Marketing and Brand Management”… Recruiter: Oh, we don’t do Marketing, we’re a Packaging Science company. Let me ask the obvious question: Why would you name your company “Brand Solutions” if you have NOTHING to do with branding? I am sure that they are a fantastic company and I’m sure that if I was a packaging science major I would love to work for them… but maybe they should consider changing their name?

Then there are the students. 15,000 twenty year olds all looking for their first internship…. It’s interesting. I saw students with blue hair, in t-shirt and jeans, with backpacks and just all around unprofessional. However, I also saw students dressed in suits and ties with shaved beards and big smiles. How each of these individuals presented themselves is how they marketed themselves to recruiters. After a bit of careful thinking (while in my 30 minute line for SONY) I realized something very vital – these students are marketing themselves to recruiters and recruiters may like it! A drawing and painting major may appeal to an employer wearing their blue hair, because that company may want a creative, free spirit in just the same way as the bank would want their prospective employee to approach them in a suit. Huh, maybe these twenty year olds know a thing or two about marketing themselves (or so I’m choosing to believe).

Lastly, the school is marketing themselves to the companies. Being on the student side (and once on the employer side) it seems as though they are doing a great job of it. 200 companies is a MAJOR career fair for a medium sized school. The names of the companies attending are enough to make any MBA student drool. Every recruiter attending had to be impressed at the size of the career fair at a school in upstate NY. And this career fair is organized … students just had to swipe their student id and out would pop a name tag! (They didn’t have that 4 years ago). There was lunch and a break room provided for the recruiters as well as probably anything else that they needed. If I was working at any of those booths I would have been extremely impressed with the caliber of the fair as well as the caliber of students that I spoke to. I’d be back J

RSS Genius!

I’m obsessed. Obsessed. RSS feeds might possibly be my favorite social media tool that I have discovered thus far. Don’t tell my professors… but lately I’ve been spending more time reading my RSS feed than I have doing school work! RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (Wiki told me that) and it is genius. At its’ basic form, it allows you to pull in all types of blogs and articles which interest you and puts it in one place. For me, it’s been a huge asset as I try to gain as much knowledge about the social media and marketing worlds as possible.

I use the Google Reader. Why? Well basically I love Google … it’s easy , I’m loyal and in the same place as every other Google tool that I use. It links to my Gmail account and brings in all of my gchat friends so that I can share articles with them as well. Even though I prefer Google, there are many forms of RSS feeds that you could use ranging from online versions to putting the software on your hard drive. The most popular RSS readers are My Yahoo, Bloglines and of course Google Reader.

There are a variety of ways to read the blogs. Subscriptions are publications from journalistic resources where as blogs are informal postings. For example, I am currently following subscriptions from Advertising Advantage and the New York Times Media and Advertising section and blogs created by my friends. Following blogs is super simple to do: just click on the orange icon that says RSS feed on any blog or news article (in fact if you want to follow my blog, just go to the bottom right hand side of the screen… you’ll see it). If you were to see my RSS feed, I have 3 articles unread from the NYT. If I want to read just the NYT articles I can click on just that publication. If I would prefer to just see all of my postings I click on “All Items” and it will show me an expanded view of all postings. Super easy right! Then say I find an article interesting, I can click the “share” icon at the bottom and share the article will all that follow my blog (my gchat friends… see how this works)! You can also just go directly to my shared page by going here or you can find it from my Google profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/danielle.gossett. Personally, I think it’s genius and a fantastic way for me to read the daily news on marketing and social media!

Branding

Branding. That has been the buzz word of the week. What is a brand? How do you create a brand? Most importantly, how do you brand yourself? When faced with the question on “what is a brand” I quickly defined a brand as a personality. To me, branding is making a product into a personality… when I think of Geico insurance, I think fun, easy and simple. Are those traits that a human would want to have? I doubt it. But I for a product, they are a perfect personality! That is exactly what Geico wants me to think of when I think about their insurance.

So, now I have to apply this same thought process to myself. How do I brand myself into a professional personality, in a way that is available to the world? Well… since it is my goal after getting my MBA at Simon to get a job in Internet Marketing and a major sector of Internet Marketing is Social Media… well that is exactly how I am going to brand myself and show it off!

First off, what is my brand? That is something that is still evolving. My brand at Ernst & Young was a young professional with strong client relationship management, leadership and project management. I was the one who would “get things done.” Are these traits still important… of course! However, now I need to transfer my Ernst & Young brand into something that would be attractive and beneficial within the Marketing industry.

While I am working on how to brand myself into a Marketing Professional and I have taken a head start on projecting it to the world. There are so many tools available to do this… and being the internet marketing expert in training… I am going to market myself on the internet first! If I can do this for myself then I can do it for any company and any product. First off, Linkedin…. What an amazing invention! Of course, Linkedin wasn’t just invented yesterday, in fact I have had a profile since my undergrad days at RIT. However, I had never seen the importance of it other than pressing “accept” whenever one of my friends or professional contacts tried to “connect” with me. Why did I need it? I had a job and had a ton of contacts in person, I didn’t need to have them on a virtual network. Wow was I wrong! Linkedin is an amazing invention that until about a week ago I didn’t know the value of. This social media network allows everyone to actually see the power of the people that they know and the people that their friends know. My old contacts from J&J may have moved on, maybe even to a Marketing Firm doing the exact same career that I am aspiring to. Or even better, a Simon alumn following the career path that I plan on following. These people are amazing contacts, who are at my finger tips. In the past week I have spent more time on Linkedin, updating my profile, joining groups and contacting old (and new) contacts than I have probably spent on the site in the last 5 years! While doing this, I am branding myself. My profile reads exactly as I want it to – current MBA student looking to get into Internet Marketing with great education and work experience to make her a great resource to any company. Perfect! Now my 123 contacts know exactly what I want them to – my brand.

Stay tuned for more social media outlets that I am utilizing to brand myself online……