Our client presentation for Church & State Winery was a positive experience – the client was engaged, despite the length and detail of our presentation, and took away useful insights on to potential of a digital media marketing plan. We were able to give them useful insights into how customers are searching their products, how to improve engagement, and what levels of activity and spending on some platforms could be. Overall, this project was a very positive experience.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Client Selection was Crucial: Our project was successful because we found a client early, and the client was very open to giving us access to their digital media platform. Their Marketing Manager had a comfort level with social media, but not necessarily a clear direction, and allowed us complete control over their digital plan. Their social media presence was already established at a low level, but did have enough reach to provide meaningful data from our testing and planning.
2. Project was too Brief: The timeline for this project really only gave us an insight into how one might operate a social media campaign. Our campaign only ran from Nov 14 to 30, giving us just over two weeks to gain data and provide insights. Had this course been offered in a traditional 13 week period, we could have provided a much more in-depth analysis of the data and tried a greater variety of techniques and message structures. As it stands, our presentation to the client was tempered by the disclaimers our data comes from a very small sample, and while we could observe some interesting insights, we could not provide definitive information. This meant many of our recommendations awere contingent on the client continuing to operate the campaigns we initiated.
3. Project was too Individual: Because of the number of components of the campaign and the short time frame, the project elements rarely met to share their insights and findings, or communicate how their project elements worked. While I have a solid understanding now about the use and structure of an effective content calendar, I feel I gained very little insight into how to use the other campaign tools. The presentation to the client helped me understand what the elements do and what the analytics tools look like, but I will need to do some self-directed study to better understand what the process is like for using these tools.
4. Social Media is a Very Cost-Effective Marketing Tool: The costs associated with much of the marketing we utilized were low. Facebook and Twitter, for example, had no cost and allowed us targeted reach for expanding the brand’s presence. During the campaign, our client learned John Cleese (of Monty Python fame) had asked for their Merlot specifically on a Vancouver visit. As a result, the client related their intent to try to contact Mr. Cleese’s management by email to arrange some type of contact. Instead, our group recommended reaching our on social media, specifically Twitter. We found Mr. Cleese has 2.5M followers and is very active on Twitter, so we tried a Tweet referencing pairing the Church & State Merlot with a Camembert from the National Cheese Factory (a reference to a 1970’s Monty Python sketch involving Mr. Cleese as a frustrated cheese buyer). Though we did not get direct engagement, this represented an opportunity to engage with a major influencer, with no cost for marketing.
5. Media is the Message: This campaign reiterated the importance of what kind of media you are creating. Our posts with video had significantly greater reach than information articles, and promotional posts had far less reach than the information articles. People seem to engage visually, and want to be delighted and entertained. The message was not very relevant; as long as the post or Tweet had even a tenuous content to wine, as long as it was fun, it got great engagement.