From the get go of working on our Digital Marketing Plan I realized how essential communicating with the client is going to be for accomplishing our project. As the person in charge of the content calendar part of the digital plan, a key learning point for me was that in order for me to be able to create quality content I first and foremost needed to understand the company’s overall objectives and goals and also who made up the online audience of West Coast Aquatic Safaris. For a digital marketing campaign to be successful, the content manager needs to have a comprehensive understanding of the audience’s interests, as well as its online media consumption behaviour – i.e. market research or trial and error tests are needed to discover your audience’s online behaviour; if your audience is mostly active during the weekend it is rather pointless for the company to publish content mostly on weekdays.

One of the biggest challenges I faced was having to build content more or less from scratch, as our client actually did not have a content marketing strategy in place, but rather just sporadic posts on social media networks and a collection of last season’s photographs and videos. With no previous storyline to the company’s online content and almost no history of audience engagement, I found it challenging to create the sort of quality content that would generate audience engagement, leads and ultimately sales in a two week period. A key learning point in this respect was that you have to be consistent in your online communication with your audience if you want them to be responsive, engaging and start generating their own content. I learned that the company needs to have a constant, relevant and timely online dialogue with its audience, if it wants its inbound marketing strategy to be successful.

While working on the digital plan I felt quite isolated from all the other parts that were supposed to form our integrated Internet marketing plan, and it was as if we were each working in our own silo. When faced with preparing and delivering the client presentation we had to break our silos and communicate effectively with each other within the team, so that we could convey a meaningful story to our client. Essential to the success of our client presentation was for everybody on the team to teach and inform everybody else about their learning process and key findings. By constantly checking in with each other we made sure we are all on the same page and that our digital marketing strategy was indeed consistent.

One of my key learning points from delivering the client presentation was that whatever jargon we might learn and use amongst the team, as professionals in the digital marketing sphere, we should approach the client from the premises that they do not possess the same level of knowledge or understanding of that jargon. For example, I had to briefly explain to the client what inbound marketing meant and why we believed it would be useful for West Coast Aquatic Safaris to build an inbound marketing strategy to pull customers to their business with quality content. Just as one of my recommendations to our client was to create a consistent storyline to their online content, in our team presentation we had to create a consistent storyline to our different sections and major points that we wanted to achieve with our digital marketing plan.

Overall, this proved a valuable learning experience of how a company should create a meaningful story and consistently communicate it online and offline, so that to create a relationship with its audience, engage it and motivate it to become quality content creators on their own and further promote the story of the brand.

In the Internet age, the century old phrase “one picture is worth a thousand words” can easily be redesigned to something like… “A collection of pictures is worth billions of dollars in audience engagement.” According to an article  published in November’s issue of “Fast Company” Magazine, of 50 tech startups evaluated at over $1 billion in the last decade at least nine are actually photography companies – e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Dropbox, Pinterest, Airbnb, Snapchat, WhatsApp and Tumblr.

Although we may think of these companies as either social communities, news and messaging services, or online storage and accommodation providers, the article draws on the insight that all of these startups are in the business of processing our photos and are redesigning the photo economy as we knew it in the age of Polaroid or Kodak. Photo posts are social media’s biggest driver of audience engagement and advertising and our desire to share our snapshots with the world is changing the face of Internet marketing, with more and more brands realizing the huge potential of the Visual Web. How will this trend change the way we, as consumers, interact with brands? What online strategies will marketers approach to keep brands involved in this visual user generated content?

Consumers are looking more and more to learn about brands not from the companies themselves, but rather from other users or authority figures. These online communities where people post, share, judge and even create products, situations, ideas and industries using not the power of text, but that of images – as the article points out, according to an analysis done by marketing company Hubspot, photos posted on Facebook generated 104% more comments than text posts – allow brands to create engagement and advertise without even using ads.

Take the example of Taco Bell, a company that ran a four week campaign through Instagram ad buy and increased by 45% its users base by posting images of customers enjoying waffle tacos. An important takeaway here is that by participating in what people are doing and by creating content they want to share and recreate themselves – Taco Bell “It’s your birthday!” photograph – marketers create engagement and value without advertising.

Another important point the article makes is the huge storytelling potential photography holds, which in the digital marketing sphere is still in its early stages. This makes me think of the important switch advertising is making towards storytelling, where instead of simply presenting consumers the benefits or characteristics of products, marketers are allowing consumers to create their own stories around the brands or simply the values that they stand for – see the example of the P&G “Thank You Mum” campaign for the Olympics. For this reason it is my belief that apps like Storehouse  – mentioned in the article – hold huge potential to change the face of digital marketing campaigns and engagement with online audiences. In this crowded photo economy, Storehouse allows users to create and share compelling video essays and tell stories with their photographs. Soon, this could revolutionize the user as creator of customized content concept and instead of having to create their own digital campaigns or vlogs, marketers will just have to handle the challenge of curating the content they release on the Visual Web – as the article mentions, brands are seeing 50-70% increase in Instagram likes days after posting one ad, meaning that people go looking for more content. The opportunity I see here is for brands to create high quality content and consistently communicate the values they abide by – so that people will want to integrate both into the stories they create and share on the Web.

One final important trend the article mentions, in my view keeping with the same line of storytelling, is the rise of shoppable photos, seen as “the holy grail of Internet marketing”. Are shoppable photos the next level in creating unique customer experiences and driving consumer engagement? Judging by the number of tech startups trying to build platforms that turn our images into online catalogues – one of them being the company Luminate acquired in September by Yahoo – and maybe coupling this with the recent partnership signed between Instagram and the marketing Giant Omnicom Group, I would say this is definitely one trend to look out for in the future. If I think only of challenges presented by using celebrity images and turning them into stores – the article mentions one example of a lawsuit from actress Katherine Heigl – such open o paid for platforms to transform any photograph into an interactive store could become the new way to storytell brands as part of the lives of normal people. Just think… An average of 60 million photos posted daily on Instagram, plus some 700 million images couriered every day through WhatsApp, equals as many opportunities to create visual, online stories around brands. Considering that online audiences are becoming more and more critical and selective of the content they wish to see and share, all these trends make me hopeful that we, as inhabitants of the Visual Web, are in for more high quality, unique creative content in the future.

Reference: “The Photo Economy” by Sarah Kessler, http://www.fastcompany.com/3036082/the-photo-economy

After hearing quite a few times over the last months the question “sustaina… what?” I wanted to give a human face to this actual buzz-word “sustainability”.

I started thinking what is sustainability and how I could rephrase the word… Without knowing I was thinking, acting and communicating from the outside in, starting from what, from the marginal interest instead of the core. That was when great friends from the Net Impact Professional Chapter guided me towards author and strategic leadership professor Simon Sinek. I was in what he called “The Golden Circle” and had to start with “why” so that I could address the heart of the matter.

“The Golden Circle”

That was when I pivoted my project and started asking “Why Sustainability?”, why do we do this work, why do we care? The first one I asked was Moura Quayle, Strategic Design Professor at Sauder Business School, who said ” it’s all about balancing the three legged stool of environment, economic and social.” Moura quoted words great leaders like Robert Kennedy and Gaylord Nelson, Earth Day Founder, have used… “Economy is a subsidiary of the Environment and not the other way around…”

I then went on to ask a bunch of other people, with different backgrounds and different interests, to see why they think we do and need sustainability in our lives…

I will mention just some of their answers…

Julia, library assistant: “because resources are finite.”

Omid, MBA student: ” because otherwise things will degrade to levels you see in Iran! It is only by paying attention to the difficulties we can come up with innovative ideas…”

Gavin, plumber: “with limited resources in the world we need to make them last as long as possible and find new ways to produce new methods for survival!”

Jose, MBA student: “to be able to give more than we extract from the Planet; because it is a growing business demanded by the consumers; because it engages employees more than other initiatives; because it creates limitless opportunities and it drives our creative spirit! Because it brings people back to a simpler way of life!”

Jordan, Arts student: “because living on Earth is a privilege and if we’re not smart about keeping it healthy we might have to move to Mars and that sounds like a scary trip…”

Tim, Decision Theatre Manager, UBC: “because it’s about our future and creating a better present!”

Jason, MBA student: “because it simply makes sense!”

And the ones it made most sense to were Ryan and Iain, 13 and 14 years old high school students, who synthesized beautifully the answer to “why sustainability?” Because it is good for the environment, it creates long term benefits and less side effects and it protects nature.

I would say I accomplished this mission, as I gave more human faces to “sustainability” and showed it is a meaningful reason to act and not just an actual buzzword.

As for my “why sustainability…” I leave you with some more human faces and visions of the future…

Bach Choir Singing at the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Charity Event

A quarter into my Sauder MBA Journey I stop, breathe in and try to go to the balcony, like I learned in Consulting and Strategic Management Class, to see the big picture and put everything in perspective.

I now have confirmation that even a right-brainer like myself does have a place in the Sauder MBA Program. After taking classes like Creativity and Entrepreneurship and Business Innovation and learning tools like the Design Thinker and Mind Mapping I choose to step to the right of the left hemisphere of my brain and fulfill my meaning in a purposeful way.

Reflecting on the months that have past I learned the importance of connecting with fellow classmates and professionals alike and getting involved in the space I care about. For me part of that space is the Net Impact UBC Chapter of which I have had the honor of being elected president. It is my opportunity to take business concepts and ideas from the classroom and apply them into the Greater Vancouver community. These first few months on my MBA Journey have confirmed my initial assumption that business is, indeed, an engine for change. I have been fortunate in these months to have the guidance and support of amazing and dedicated people who encouraged me to actively learn and improve my skills, which I will then employ for the benefit of my community.

Being selected to participate in the Sauder Early Alumni Connect Program made me feel part of the Sauder global network from the very beginning. I felt motivated and engaged to learn and become a part of the Canadian professional network. I have discovered partners and friends worth investing in! Actually, this may be one of the key lessons of the first quarter of my MBA Journey: invest the time to become a part of my network and prove that I deserve my place at the table by bringing my unique self into the conversation.

Volunteering with the Greater Vancouver Food Bank, together with like-minded fellow Sauder MBAs I had a first opportunity to pay if forward…

I take these first few lessons and continue to design the next part of my MBA Journey. Come January I begin my chosen career track at Sauder: Business Innovation and Entrepreneurship, one of my goals being to place my dot on the map of Vancouver’s entrepreneurial ecosystem!

Sustainability means different things and actions to different people and industries. To some it might be just a theory, while others have turned sustainability into a business model and way of life.

For me, sustainability starts at UBC, one of the worlds’ most green and sustainable campuses. After walking the whole day through campus searching for an image that would say to me “Sustainability” I ran into Kris Holm, without even knowing he was Kris Holm founder of KHU, a Canadian company providing top-end unicycles in over 15 countries and the first company in Canada to join “One Percent for the Planet”, donating 1% of its sales to support environmental conservation.

The concept and professional domain of sustainability have come a long way since 1969 when the first national policy for environmental sustainability was established in the U.S. or since 1983 when the World Commission on Environment and Development defined sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Sustainability and sustainable development are evolving in sync with everyone one of us.

Corporate Social Sustainability has become much more than a fashionable trend or a way for corporations to make up for possible wrong doings. CSR has become a business model, a way of proving that business is indeed a part of society.

Just a few days ago RobecoSAM and S&P Dow Jones Indices announced the 2013 results of the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices Annual Review. Being the first global sustainability benchmark, the DJSI assesses the performance of the world’s 2,500 largest companies that create long-term shareholder value by embracing opportunities and managing risks deriving from economic, environmental and social developments.

If in my native Romania these days we are witnessing national protests condemning a gold mining project using cyanides, amongst companies named to the top of the DJSI we find leading Canadian mining companies like Vancouver headquartered Teck or Kinross Gold Corporation.

And mining is just one industry. According to a research published this month by Euromonitor International, sustainability has also become “the hottest consumer trend, crossing both income and cultural divides.” According to this research, in order to compete in tomorrow’s market, businesses should adapt sustainable practices across their value chain. The food and drink sector is nowadays at the heart of the sustainability issue, with an increasing percentage of consumers (41% of Americans in 2011) placing “green considerations” at the top of their purchase decision making criteria. An example of business innovation in the field of sustainability from a leading company in the food and drink sector comes from PepsiCo brand Walkers Crisps, a company that worked together with farmers which supplied its potatoes and found new ways of producing dryer potatoes, saving energy in the drying process.

The DJSI also recognizes the importance of sustainability in the consumer products sector by having a distinct “Food and Beverage Category”. The leader this year was named Canada’s oldest brewery Molson Coors, another sustainable business innovator that has turned sustainability into its mission statement. The company invented the concept “Our Beer Print”, a corporate culture that recognizes the business’s impact on communities, people and the environment.

Sustainability takes different forms and actions in different industries. Still, paraphrasing the 1983 WCED definition, we can do much more than allow future generations to fulfill their needs. We can create sustainable and responsible business models in our present for the future growth of our society.

Do you know the movie “Stranger than Fiction”? If you do, than you will probably get where I am coming from and if you don’t, it’s worth reading on just to satisfy your curiosity…

Saying that your life is a story has become a cliché. Being in charge of the pen writing the story might be slightly different – or at least it had been for me until making the decision to go back to school. This being said, around this time last year was the moment when I grabbed hold of the pen and became the author of my life story.

If you saw “Stranger than Fiction” you probably remember and if not… Well, you are about to find out that Harold, the main character in the movie, left in search of the author of his story, as he had realized he was not the one in charge of things any more. I kind of know how Harold must have felt like, as sometimes in my professional career I felt a bit like “fortune’s toy”.

After my undergraduate degree in social management I was offered an internship with the Romanian Public Radio channel, which opened up for me a career as a journalist and public relations officer. The good thing about not having a plan was that with every new role and challenge I was uncovering more natural abilities and building new skills.

Working as a media and public relations officer I discovered my natural ability for problem solving. As a broadcast journalist I tapped into my creativity and spontaneity and discovered my talent for the art of the spoken word. In front of the microphone I discovered the joy of helping a community grow.

With my backpack half full of all these abilities and skills I decided to start my search for the author of my story. I put one hand on the pen and took on the challenge of being self-employed, as a conference services and events coordinator. I discovered within myself an escalating risk appetite and the thrill of starting my own business.

On my journey so far I have proved that I can reinvent and develop who I am and I felt hungry and prepared for more. I wanted to walk on my professional path with a backpack filled to the top. So what was I missing? The other half full of knowledge. Deciding to go back to school and applying for my MBA Program at Sauder School of Business – was the moment when I put both hands on the pen and took responsibility as my author.

My Motivation for Taking the Leap!

I see Sauder School of Business and the UBC as a place for my mind to grow and for me to embrace my full potential and design a new career in sustainable development, social innovation and project management. It was the attention given to professional and career development and the interest in green, sustainable and social business that made me connect with the Sauder MBA Program in the first place.

I am no longer a “Stranger than Fiction” character. I am a Sauder MBA Student “Building a Strong Foundation” for my future career.  I am the author designing my life game plan in Vancouver and wider BC community.

As I am preparing for the start of My Sauder MBA Program, from the very first encounter with the UBC learning environment – from my career coach at the Business and Career Centre and the MBA & MM Programs Office team, to the Jim Pattison Leadership Centre, professors in the MBA Prep Program, Vancouver campus and its facilities and last, thou certainly not least, my fellow Class-of-2015-mates – every day confirms the assumption I made before climbing aboard…

Rather than being a “leap of faith” into the unknown…

My Sauder MBA journey is a life-changing experience that will help me grow…

…into a top professional…

and inspiring leader!