Google Store at SXSW

SXSW is hands down one of the most notable festivals in the nation simply for its variety of components that make it not your average music fest. One of the elements of the festival, the interactive portion, made an exciting opportunity for our client, Google. Known for doing things in a big way, the concept for Google Store’s activation at SXSW would be a mega claw – that’s right, just like the arcade game, called the I’m Feeling Lucky experience. Only instead of stuffed animals, the machine was filled with Google Store products like Nexus, Chromecasts, Chromebooks and more. Those at SXSW could play on-site, but people in the US could also tweet in directions to be used each night of SXSW Interactive during Google Store’s live Periscope feed. My responsibilities were on the social level, monitoring various hashtags and accounts for Google Store, Android and Android Wear. Then creating responses to any great opportunities to interact with Twitter users with 1,000+ followers and good character. As the lead intern on the project, it was also my responsibility to pick the participants for Google’s live Periscope feed. This project resulted in one of the largest active brand growths seen on Periscope, a 171% organic conversion through social, nearly 300 custom interactions and almost 400K in organic impressions generated from @GoogeStore alone.

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UTA Social Takeover

Part of my senior capstone projects included a takeover of the University of Texas at Arlington’s “social” account on Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and Facebook. The point of this project was to take what we’ve learned about social media and effectively use that knowledge or to experiment with techniques and see what does and doesn’t work. Due to my success with managing @laurenceciliamims & imparting my techniques on @hauteholland my group, Maverick Media, decided to have me run the Instagram account @UTASocial. My goal for the week that I had the account was to significantly increase the number of followers and engagement.

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In order to achieve this goal I decided we should run a small giveaway while also implementing effective strategies that I’ve collected and curated. With such a small time frame, we needed to make a big impact which meant clean, beautiful photos or photos from community influencers. When we took over the account it had 390 followers, by the end of the week the account had over 530 – a 36% increase. The giveaway itself had over 100 qualifying entrants and was over the span of only two days. Along with the giveaway we focused on national holidays to interact with the community and find photos of theirs to curate, which ultimately increase our spread from 1.3% to 4.3%, a considerable increase across the Instagram platform for a small local account. My personal marketing strategies (ask to find out!) were also implemented throughout the day to encourage engagement, likes, and new followers. Our likes beat out the previous week by averaging 47 likes per photo, a 220% increase from the previous week as well as a 450% increase in the number of comments on photos compared to the previous week. The difference between our week and the previous? The major contributor is the quality of photos and copy, something that seems arbitrary to a novice but really is the sole purpose of the platform. The proper usage of hashtags that are relevant and popular as well as strategic partner tagging also helped increase the spread rate throughout the community.

2015 FWOpera Festival

A handful of years ago, the Fort Worth Opera decided to switch their season format to a festival held every April-May. This strategy was decided upon because FWOpera believes that people get more excited about the possibility of a festival rather than hopefully remembering that there is a show coming up in x,y,z months. Proving fruitful, the company decided to keep that format. This makes the marketing and PR department of FWO very interesting, because year round we are building up to this one event that will hopefully get coverage. Our 2015 festival would play host to one of the most cutting-edge and abrasive new operas, Dog Days by David T. Little and Royce Vavrek. With that came a lot of new ideas for us to try to pursue in hopes to be more profitable.

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So how did I help bring this to fruition? With the help of my advisors Christina Allen and Holland Sanders, as well as from our other lovely intern Caitlyn, we put together an engaging plan to get everyone involved. We hosted a Social Media Night for social gurus in the area and local reporters, we launched the first-ever Bass Hall Open House, and of course we hosted a fantastic line up of operas. Here were my duties specifically:

• My main project was our Social Media Night. It would be our second attempt at doing this, the last one was a true success. I was in charge of creating all digital and print collateral (pictured in gallery) and creating copy for all our announcements. The main purpose of SMN was to get a buzz going online by allowing our special guests to have their phones and tweet/gram the entire show. As a social media guru myself, Holland & Christina had me manage the Twitter account during our preview of La Traviata. While we did not start trending, we did get an 8% increase in followers from this and a 33% increase in page visits during the show. I also came up with the clever joke of “#TeamAlfretta” to play on “Bennifer.” Overall, everyone that attended was thrilled and had a great time.
• Another important project of mine during this festival was our launch of the Bass Hall Open House. Not only had this never been done before through us, but this was also a new effort with Bass Hall to get more people in the doors for the first time. I created all of the digital and print collateral for this (pictured above) as well as the copy for any announcements. I was also put in charge of curating and managing an Instagram Scavenger Hunt during the event that would allow one lucky person to win two tickets to the opening night of La Traviata. This event was especially great because of how many people came up to me and expressed how this was the first time they’d ever been able to see the inside of Bass Hall, because usually they can’t afford it. Luckily, I had been enlisted to create a fantastic coupon to hand out to people so they could get tickets to the show. With the help of the Original Cupcakery, Swag King, Twisted Dogs, and others we were able to pull off a very successful event with a turnout of about 300 organic guests.
• Hosting a festival is not easy, I’ll tell you that. I come from a performance background and I know how exhausting dress rehearsals, performances, and everything that comes with it can be. However, I’ve never been on the outside of things, I’ve always been on stage. Unfortunately, the exhaustions carries over into everyone. For three weeks we would all be running around like chickens without our heads just hoping to sell enough tickets. Nonprofit is hard. My roles were primarily creating newsletters and announcements to try to entice people to buy tickets. I was also part of many promotions brain storming sessions. On the ground, I helped with any logistics and aspects of the opera that needed to be handled namely: handing out subscriber gifts and ensuring their happiness, escorting media to and from the show, and making sure to support in our social media posts.

My help with this past festival was deemed so valuable that FWO asked me to stay through December in order to help them strategically plan our next festival as well as a special symposium dedicated to JFK as we come up on the 50th anniversary of his death and the world premiere of JFK the opera, which FWOpera will be hosting. My new duties include essentially all outreach and external needs. I am writing press releases, creating digital/print collateral, taking my first stabs at media relations and pitching, as well as designing actual strategic plans for each event. I am playing an integral role in the brainstorming and design of this symposium and will be going to New York with the team to be a part of a press conference to promote JFK.

 

Big D Reads – True Grit 

This past Spring I had the opportunity to help Krista Nightengale of D Magazine put her Big D Reads project in action for the third year. Big D Reads is a nonprofit literacy group with one goal in mind: making Dallas a community of readers. Supported by D Magazine, the organization picks one book for the entire city to read, creating what would be one of the biggest book clubs ever. This years selection was True Grit by Charles Portis. Focusing on a strong female protagonist, BDR felt this book was very fitting to the problems students face today. With over 12,000 books delivered to students and nonprofits across Dallas and over 60 events throughout the month of April, it is no surprise the kind of impact we made on the city. Here’s some highlights:

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With the help of D Academy, Klyde Warren Park, and several other sponsors we were able to put together several huge events that had a great turn out (all of which you can get more details on in the events section of this website). I played a huge role in organizing a lot of these events, but here’s a quick glance at what I did:

• Graphic Design – A lot of our events needed collateral. With the help of Renee Blostein and a few others, we created the bulk of that. Projects I did on my own: Klyde Warren Park, Half Price Books, and Librarian of the Year collateral. 90% of the rest of our collateral was templates and then organized and finalized by me. Our bookmarks for HPB were professionally printed and distributed at the Northeast location.
• Social Media Photography – One of my main duties was managing BDR’s social media platforms including Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. I created roughly 85% of all of our content during this spring resulting in a huge increase of activity and engagement across the board. At one point, we event began trending on Twitter with our branded hashtag, #gotgrit. Feel free to watch the Google Slide presentation below that gives all those details.
• Diplomacy and Pitching – Throughout the semester I was tasked with reaching out to various people and companies to try to secure trades or convince them to allow us to do x, y, and z. Whether this was finding businesses to promote our events (or radio stations such as The Ranch and Hank FM) or contacting vendors for our book end events, I was constantly trying to sell BDR. We put up fliers all over the city and I secured us 8 different vendors to host booths at our Klyde Warren Park event. I also had to work with Klyde Warren Park to delegate and organize everything for those vendors.
• Website Upkeep – Another big task that I was completely responsible for was keeping our website up to date with information and managing our Librarian of the Year page. Our website is typically one of the first things people look at when trying to find more information on Big D Reads.

Streams and Valleys: Friends of the River – Party on the Plaza

In my Public Relations Methods class we were presented with an amazing opportunity to not only write press releases, feature stories, and other content for nonprofit Streams and Valleys, but we were also able to actually plan mini-events, or activity stations, for its annual fundraiser. My team, Verde Public Relations, put together an engaging booth that attracted runners and eco-conscious people alike. I created our event plan, our flyer, and I helped facilitate the booth itself. Here are some photos from that project:

                                     

Media Advisory/Fact Sheet    Event Plan   Event Recap  Press Release

Alliance for Children: Safe Baby Site – Looking Out for the Little Guy

In my Public Relations Case Studies course we were tasked with creating a miniature strategic plan to help promote the Safe Haven law as well as create logo recognition for Safe Baby Site. Alliance for Children is a nonprofit in Fort Worth that aims to help abused and neglected children in Tarrant County. Below are my collateral examples as well as the plan itself.

Strategic Plan

 

Peachy Girl Cakes Brand Development

In August of 2014 Eryn Smith of Fort Worth, TX decided to leave her second job and pursue her hopes of becoming a professional baker and entrepreneur. I offered to help her get some much needed exposure so that she could continue to support herself and she gladly accepted. Fast forward a few months and we have a running Facebook page and Instagram account. Since the Instagram account started in October we have seen a 16 percent increase in followers, an 8 percent increase in engagement, and a turnover rate (followers) of less than 1 percent. Using Iconosquare technology we have also been able to track our followers and engagement with people that do not follow us. This revealed that we gain an average of 20 followers each month and 16.88 percent of our interactions this past month have been with non-followers.

These numbers are minuscule in comparison to big companies, but for a brand new start-up with absolutely zero budget, Smith has been very pleased with the outcome. She has had to quit her other job in order to keep up with her customers orders. Smith’s cooking supplies are incredibly inexpensive, leaving her with an almost 800 percent profit. We expect to see more growth in the next year as Smith continues to grow her network.