#PrayForBrussels

Social media makes the world go 'round. On Tuesday, March 22, 2016 around 8 A.M. our time, several bombs exploded as hundreds of people navigated their ways through the Brussels airport and a metro station. More than 30 people are believed to have been killed and hundreds injured. When tragedies like this occur, in the midst of all of the chaos, it is heartwarming to see people from all over showing their respects and support, especially in a time when everyone seems to hate each other. Terrorism is something that everyone fears and takes very seriously and no matter who is affected, people always manage to come together when such a tragedy hits. On Tuesday, millions of tweets and Instagram posts were shared pertaining to the attacks and the hash tags #JeSuisBruxelles/#PrayforBrussels trended for most of the day. Everyone from my childhood friends to favorite movie stars shared their condolences and opinions on the attacks. Although a tweet and hash tag at the end of the day, is just a tweet and a hash tag and cannot physically do anything to immediately combat the issue at hand, I do believe that the gestures hold a bit of importance. They quickly demonstrate and facilitate worldwide solidarity amongst individuals who are all so different and also bring awareness to the issue. For people like me, who had no idea what was happening on the other side of the world until I opened my Instagram and Twitter apps, the pictures, tweets, and hash tags were very much appreciated! From millions of miles away, the posts may have just been considered a nice gesture, but for people closer, tweets and Instagram posts were extremely helpful and hit home, literally. Many civilians in Brussels and of other neighboring cities, took to social media to offer services and physical support for those directly affected by the attacks. Wow! 

Side note: When I woke up Tuesday morning, this post was one of the first I saw. It was posted by Zoe Kravitz, the daughter of Lisa Bonet and Lenny Kravitz, and one of my favorite people EVER! She's not just a pretty face with amazing style, but she's an individual who is very aware about happenings all over the world. She motivates me to stay in the loop and to never be afraid to state my opinion. 

Spriiiiinggggg Breeeaaak!

So...it's the week after Spring Break and as cliché as this may be, I'm going to talk about Spring Break. Only because it was simply amazing! Not because of the crazy parties on the beach (which I unfortunately, but fortunately didn't partake in this year), but because of the amazing week long vacation I had with NO social media. You guessed it, I went on a cruise. Now, I've been on cruises before, ones that were either three or four days long, but never a full week. A quick note about myself, I'm basically addicted to social media, so when I was overruled during Spring break planning, I was a little bummed about missing out on Miami to go on a cruise for SEVEN days. Little did I know, the cruise would actually be a little life changing. We cruised to the Bahamas, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, and Cozumel, Mexico and I was able to enjoy every minute of it. Instead of experiencing these beautiful places through my snapchat camera, I was able to genuinely see and enjoy everything. I swam with dolphins, snorkeled with Stingrays, went kayaking and paddle boarding, all things that I had never done before and I literally enjoyed every single second of it without having my phone glued to my hand. Of course when we would visit certain places on the islands, "free wifi" was advertised, but it really wasn't unless you bought something, which I wasn't willing to do since I basically spent my whole life savings on the cruise in the first place! At the beginning of the week, I kept telling myself over and over, "I can't wait to touch down in the States". I was starving for a little Instagram and Snapchat. By the end of the week, I couldn't have cared less. I was so used to living without it and I realized that I enjoyed my time a whole lot without watching what everyone else was doing. I still haven't gotten back into the swing of things with social media and I've noticed that I get a lot more done now (what do ya know!?).

However, because I am Marketing major, I haven't lost sight of how important it is. I couldn't help but to wonder how the tourists venues were generating so much revenue with a pretty nonexistent social media presence. There were no ads for social media interaction anywhere! No "hashtag this" or "hashtag that", but then I remembered that they didn't need it because the cruise line did all the advertising and marketing for them! But, I wonder how much things would change if some of these places did get a hold of a few social media platforms. Would people start making special trips? Would anything change at all?

Any who, here are a few pictures from the trip! Enjoy.

UGA Red Cross, New and Improved

For the past couple of weeks, I've worked on a project for my Integrated Marketing Communications class. Our assignment was to come up with a digital marketing campaign for a company or organization in need of a new marketing strategy. While searching for a company, a friend of one of my group members expressed the need of marketing help on behalf of UGA Red Cross, so that's who we went with! We interviewed a few executive board members and immediately got to work. They expressed that their main objectives were increasing member and volunteer participation. They feel that this lack of participation stems from their struggling digital presence and current marketing strategies. We were eager to help!  I would like to share what we came up with, since I used a lot of what I learned about content marketing to assist in developing the marketing campaign.

1. We decided to propose a website as the starting point of our campaign. Currently UGA Red Cross has a presence on various social media platforms, however they do not have a website, problem number one. They have completely skipped the first step of establishing an effective presence in the digital marketing world. I know and can now share with them that without a website, social media posts will basically just serve as noise. After all, one of the main uses of social media when it comes to marketing is driving traffic back to the brand's site. So, without a site where is the traffic going? In and right out of people's minds! A website tells what you do and why. It's a place for consumers to become familiar and to get acquainted with the brand. It is absolutely necessary if we want to increase participation amongst the student body.

2. As a main component of the website, we proposed including a blog. The blog will serve as a platform for local families who benefit from the Red Cross to share their unique stories and express their gratitude and for participants to express what drives them to give and volunteer. The blog will also serve as a space for members and volunteers to come, socialize and comment. We hope that as a result of the blog, students will become motivated and gain an understanding of where exactly they may fit into the process of saving lives.

3. After the website is implemented, we will begin to focus more on social media content, which needs a lot of work. We haven't gotten that far yet, but I'm sure we will come up with something amazing. I'll keep you posted!

I'm super excited about the opportunity we were given to completely restructure this organization's marketing strategy. I'm even more excited that I actually know what I'm talking about. Hopefully with the execution of our proposal, results follow. The UGA Red Cross is such a wonderful organization filled with people who just want to serve others. They deserve to be promoted as such.

The Obamas- Impacting Lives One at a Time

Last night as I scrolled down my Instagram feed, I came across a video that immediately forced a few tears into my eyes. This past weekend 106 year-old South Carolina native, Ms. Virginia McLaurin took a long awaited trip to the White House. She was invited for a Black History Month reception, after receiving a community service award in 2014, but unfortunately not being granted the opportunity to meet the Obamas then. She filed a petition, but the requirements were not met before the deadline. That didn't stop her!

For decades, Ms. McLaurin has volunteered and served her community in the Washington D.C. area. At 106 years-old she is still volunteering at local schools, where she helps students with disabilities and serves as a foster mother. She stated that she never thought she would live to see an African-American president, but as President Obama's presidency comes to a close and Ms. McLaurin's 107^th birthday approaches next month, she can cross that off of her bucket list. I crack a smile every time I play the video and watch her face light up as she lays eyes upon the Obamas. I'm sure President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, experienced this same joy (and a little worry) as Ms. McLaurin dances over with an enormous amount of excitement an energy to embrace them.

As the first African-American president, I feel that President Obama has done an outstanding job of reaching out and impacting lives of those who lived through civil rights movements and only dreamed of the day an African-American man would become the President of the United States. Ms. McLaurin says she can now die happy, a feeling I'm sure many others can share. Thanks to Instagram, YouTube, and blog sites, we are able to share these precious moments that aren't nationally publicized. We can collectively appreciate the efforts that the Obamas have made and are making to embrace a people who were never supposed to make it this far. 

Happy Black History Month!

Kanye West- Crazy, Genius, or Both?

Kanye West, self-proclaimed musical genius, fashion extraordinaire, and living legend has obnoxiously finagled his way into the limelight once again. I mean, when it comes to Kanye West, most either love him or hate him. I guess I fall in the middle. I am definitely not a fan and I don’t agree with some of his antics, but I do believe there is some genius in that brain of his, which at the same time makes me feel okay about thinking he's absolutely crazy! Well everything all started about two weeks ago when he engaged in a Twitter altercation with rapper, Wiz Khalifa. In about twenty tweets, Kanye expressed his distaste for Wiz Khalifa and accused him of inappropriately incorporating his wife, Kim Kardashian’s initials in a tweet. After attacking Wiz Khalifa, he went on to bad mouth his ex and Wiz Khalifa’s son’s mother, Amber Rose. Wiz Khalifa must’ve really ruffled his feathers because never have I have seen someone go so far as to needing to use “17^th of all..” in an argument. Days before this particular rant, both Kim and Kanye had been posting several Twitter polls pertaining to album titles, possible song lists, and possible album cover artwork. Could that somewhat pointless Twitter rant have just been a marketing strategy to gain a bit of publicity before the album dropped and the premiering of his new clothing line at the exclusive Yeezy Season 3 show? I think so, considering the next day everything was supposedly solved between the two rappers.

Now, let’s move ahead a few weeks. After the album drops and the show is over, Kanye takes to twitter to address song lyrics where he calls singer Taylor Swift out of her name and claims that her fame should be accredited to him. Fans, nor her brother, Austin were too happy about this (Austin videos himself throwing away a pair of shoes from Kanye’s line). Kanye claims that the word he used to describe Taylor (and his wife on a different occasion) is a term of endearment. He also claimed that Taylor and everyone mentioned in the song gave him the permission to discuss them in the song. But I’m not sure how true that was after listening to Taylor subliminally address the issue in her acceptance speech last night at the Grammy’s.

Most recently, Kanye has taken to Twitter AGAIN and has used it as a medium to ask for very generous ($1 billion generous) donations from Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page. He says that he is in debt $53 million and needs the money to continue to produce great art, while still being able to feed his family. That kind of sounds like a personal problem, Kanye! Mark Zuckerberg donates his money to charities, everybody knows that, so I’m not too sure what Kanye was thinking when he pulled this one, but I guess we'll see. 

I know this was kind of a lot, so to bring everything back in, what do you think Kanye’s purpose of all of this is? At this point, everyone is asking why? Why so many Twitter rants in less than a month? Is he really out of his mind? Or has he successfully shown us how great of a marketing genius he is by taking advantage of our thirst to be involved with the industry via social media? Although he's not the most polite and the exact opposite of politically correct, he has a purpose and a passion that no one can deny. He knows we're addicted to refreshing our timelines and he knows we're wondering what all of the hype is around. One way or another, he's going to get people to listen, watch, and possibly learn a thing or two. 

Good one, Budweiser

So, Super Bowl 50 was this past Sunday. I think everyone got the memo except for poor Cam Newton and the Panthers. Personally, I was super excited! I’ve been waiting to cheer on Atlanta native, Cam Newton in the Super Bowl since his Auburn days and as a marketing/advertising junky, Super Bowl commercials are kind of like Christmas presents for me. Oh and one other thing....Beyoncé! In my opinion, although the halftime show was phenomenal, the game was pretty boring and the commercials weren’t all of that, however something did stick out to me. That something would be Peyton Manning’s post game interview. In the interview, Manning discussed his celebratory plans, which included spending time with his family and drinking a lot of Budweiser. When Peyton Manning made this announcement, Twitter blew up (well at least my timeline did) with estimations of how much he was paid for the two-second mention of Budweiser. I mean it is kind of ironic to mention a specific brand name during an interview that 111.9 million are watching, right? Representatives from Anheuser Busch quickly took to twitter to clear up speculations that Manning was paid for the announcement. Lisa Weser, leader of marketing communications tweeted, “Hi internet. For the record, Budweiser did not pay Peyton Manning to mention Budweiser tonight. We were surprised and delighted that he did.” I guess Budweiser just got lucky. Thanks Lisa, but a lot of people weren’t buying it. Either way, whether Payton Manning was paid or not, Budweiser is now more desired than ever. Peyton Manning drinks Budweiser, so it must make you a champion! I'm curious to see how much Budweiser sales increase over the next couple of weeks and how the company uses this unexpected, but much appreciated promotion to its advantage. 

Got Twitter Beef?

Twitter beef has been around for a while, well ever since Twitter has existed, and every once in a while it gets even more interesting than usual. Twitter has been used as a platform to express any sort of discontent with products, performances, and people, which is what usually fuels the twitter beefs. Lately companies have figured out a way to sway away from serving as the center of the backlash and rather appear and promote in the midst of other's chaos and drama. 

Over the past few months, rappers Drake and Meek Mill have been “beefing”. I’m not 100% sure how the whole feud started, but the two have been going back and forth, expressing their dissatisfaction with each other via Twitter, Instagram, and multiple diss records for the past few months. As proven time and time again, when public figures are going at it PUBLICLY, the whole world is going to be watching. Many fast food restaurants recognized the enormous amount of publicity the internet fight was gaining and decided to get in on some of the action. Chick-fil-A, White Castle, Whataburger, and Burger King are just a few amongst the long list of companies who used this world wide “beef”, to promote for their own beef (or lack there of, in Chick-fil-A’s case).

 

The appearance of these brands during internet happenings that they would not typically be associated with, gives them relevance and makes them relatable. Their presence shows consumers that they are very much so aware and present. Not only are these brands humanizing themselves and building relationships with their customers, they're effectively doing what they showed up to initially do, promote. While refreshing twitter feed to keep up, you now want a burger!