How do you drive integrated marketing communications in large matrixed organizations?

In a small organization, communications and marketing might be the same person or team. As a company grows marketing and advertising might reside under one leader, while communications reside under another leader. Communications might prioritize public policy, issue management, earned media and brand reputation. Marketing and advertising might be focused on brand awareness, sales revenue, customer relationship management, and conquest sales. How do you stay integrated when you’re matrixed differently and reside in different locations?

About Nathan's Guest:

Whitney Drake, Senior Manager of GM Brand & Story Bureau at General Motors

Teaches IMC 610 - Introduction to IMC

Whitney Drake has created compelling activations around some of the world’s largest events, including the Super Bowl, American Idol, SXSW and Warriors in Pink.

Whitney Drake currently manages the story bureau and analytics team within communications at General Motors. Prior to this role, Drake oversaw enterprise-wide customer experience strategy and operations for GM’s Global Social Media Center of Expertise.

Before GM, Drake led digital and social media efforts for several agencies and her clients included Pure Michigan, T-Mobile, Children’s Place, and Budweiser among others. She also worked for Procter & Gamble and Ford Motor Company.

Drake has 20 years of experience counseling clients in public relations, social media, and integrated communications, both inside and outside the automotive industry, and has created unique and compelling activations around some of the world’s largest events, including the Super Bowl, American Idol, SXSW and Warriors in Pink.

She has also shared her insights at notable conferences such as Social Media Marketing World 2016, Oracle Open World and the Incite Customer Care summit.

Drake teaches IMC 610 at West Virginia University and is an adjunct instructor of social media in the department of communication at Wayne State University. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in communication from Michigan State University and a Master of Science in integrated marketing communications from West Virginia University.

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WVU Marketing Communications Today is hosted by Michael Lynch from West Virginia University which is a program on the Funnel Radio Channel. 

How To Write Effective Creative Briefs. And Why It’s Important.

The Creative Brief is the blueprint of a marketing communications effort. It provides guidance and vision for all the disciplines required to construct a successful integrated campaign—Research, Strategy, Account Management, Creative, Media, Production, PR, Social, Search, and Experiential. Unfortunately, most briefs are poorly crafted, overly long and often ignored. An effective brief, by contrast, inspires collaborative excellence among all involved in the process. In an era when brands bring together multiple agencies to execute an integrated campaign, clear and effective Creative Briefs are more important than ever.

About Michael Lynch's guest:

Jim Copacino is Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Copacino+Fujikado in Seattle He began his career in New York at DDB and Young & Rubicam, before moving west to Chiat/Day Seattle. He subsequently served as Creative Director at Cole & Weber and McCann-Erickson before co-founding Copacino+Fujikado in 1998. C+F has created high-impact campaigns for many regional and national brands including the Seattle Mariners, Holland America Line Cruises, Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, REI, Premera Blue Cross, Visit Seattle, and the Seattle Aquarium. In 2013, C+F was named an Advertising Age Agency of the Year for the Northwest region.

Spanning nearly four decades, Jim’s work has been recognized in every major advertising creative competition, including the Cannes Advertising Festival, The One Show, The Clio Awards, Communication Arts, the New York Art Directors and The OBIE awards. Jim has also received lifetime achievement honors from three different organizations—the American Marketing Association, the American Advertising Federation and Marketing magazine.

A graduate of Ohio University, he currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the Seattle Repertory Theatre and the advisory board of Seattle Children’s Research Institute.

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WVU Marketing Communications Today is hosted by Michael Lynch from West Virginia University which is a program on the Funnel Radio Channel. 

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Staying Social on Social Media with Really Good Content

You need to market your products or services, so go start a Facebook page, right? It’s quick, it’s easy and more importantly, it’s free. But, it isn’t a good strategy. First, we must take a step back and understand the benefit really good content has in building your brand. Then we can identify new ways to efficiently distributing your content, which yes, will include social media. Social media changes daily. In order to keep up, you must understand which social channel is right for you to cultivate a relationship with your audience. For social media success, it’s quality over quantity. It’s also part of the larger strategy that starts with content.

About Karen's guest: Mary Prevost

Empowering brands and inspiring people to think differently – this is how Mary Prevost has approached her 16 years of work in the public relations industry.
Nurturing meaningful relationships is key to Prevost’s success – from internal executives and colleagues to external target audiences and media. Prevost’s vast experience spans both agency and client-side work and she’s helped clients of all sizes, from Fortune 500 companies to startups and non-profits. Her specialties include both B2B and B2C strategic communication, content marketing, media relations, writing, social media planning and execution, crisis communication, brand development, event planning, and internal communications/team building.

Prevost previously worked as Director of Communications at Cheyenne Regional Medical Center in Cheyenne, WY, and then transitioned into agency work as an Account Supervisor at an agency in downtown Minneapolis. In 2014, Prevost founded MJP Strategic Communications to provide independent public relations consulting services. In 2019, she founded Prevost Partners with her husband to broaden their services.

Prevost graduated with an M.B.A. from Augsburg College (Minneapolis, MN), a B.A. in Mass Communications with emphasis in Public Relations and News Editorial from Colorado Mesa University (Grand Junction, CO) and an A.A.S. in Radio/TV Broadcasting from Central Wyoming College (Riverton, WY).

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WVU Marketing Communications Today is hosted by Karen Freberg from West Virginia University which is a program on the Funnel Radio Channel. 

The Future of Work in Social Media

The social media industry is constantly changing along with the expectations for work. However, experience is one element to the equation to becoming successful in the workplace and industry, but there are some essential skills, best practices, and tips students and young professionals need to grasp in order to be marketable. Dennis Yu will discuss these new expectations, what are the best practices to market yourself using social media, and the future of work in social media.

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Today's episode of WVU Marketing Communications Today is hosted by Karen Freberg from West Virginia University which is a program on the Funnel Radio Channel. 

Building crisis readiness into the skillsets of students

With the ease in which a negative event can go viral these days, effective crisis management is a valuable skillset that students need to bring into the workforce with them. In this session, Melissa Agnes, a globally recognized and leading expert in crisis management, shares some of her experience in working in the field as well as how she helps professors bring crisis management best practices into their classrooms to help their students build and hone this critical skillset.  Her immensely popular book, Crises Ready is available where fine book sold.

CRISIS READY.

Building an INVINCIBLE Brand in an Uncertain World

The potential risks in modern-day business are greater, more dynamic, and less predictable than ever before. And yet, the greatest exposure does not lie within these risks. Rather, it lies in having a team that is not prepared to anticipate, foresee, or respond to a rising threat, and its impact on your reputation, revenue, and relationships in real-time.

No matter your level of security, due-diligence, or control, the reality is that we live in uncertain times. Organizations are prone to a multitude of risks that can attack from every angle. When your team is crisis ready, your organization is prepared for anything and everything that the modern world can throw at it.

In Crisis Ready, Melissa Agnes draws from her remarkable experience in helping global brands, government organizations, and world leaders prevent and overcome a range of real-world, high-impact crises. She uses this experience to provide your organization with a clear roadmap to implementing a crisis ready culture–and thus building an INVINCIBLE brand.

Order Crisis Ready on Amazon 

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WVU Marketing Communications Today by West Virginia University which is a program on the Funnel Radio Channel. 

Be the real deal: Audacious Authenticity in an age of contrived reality

How do we build sustainable relationships with customers today? We communicate genuine value and an enduring message of dependability. This often sounds nice and improbable these days. Authenticity is hardly intuitive, and it is easily missed as we multitask and try to get ahead of the curve. Authenticity is also critically important to breed deep-rooted trust, loyalty, respect and integrity. Being audacious means being intentional and rigorous to the craft of being authentic in how any organization and product is presented to its target market.

The ‘Audacious Authenticity superpower’ amplifies and accelerates engagement, surpasses goals and drives sustainable impact. It works in private, public and nonprofit sectors, and in legacy institutions as well as start-up ventures. This art form is built on seven tested and proven core competencies that have been refined over 20+ years of practice in the field of grassroots community engagement and education with particular focus on Millennial and GenZ trends.

About our guest:

Tamara Rebick is the Founder and Chief Experience Officer (CXO) of CORIPHERY Holistic Consulting Solutions, a boutique consulting firm that delivers strategic solutions to the non-profit, education and community/social sectors. An eternal optimist, she advocates for organizational wellness and is passionate about challenging the status quo through “respectful disruption”. Advising executives, educators and community leaders on where are the young people? Tamara consults and advises on strategies connected to participant engagement, organizational capacity-building, and culture design.

She believes the key to success is in creating transformative impact through relevant, inclusive and authentic encounters. Merging her passion for experiential education with workplace learning, Tamara speaks on a range of topics and facilitates interactive professional development workshops for audiences ranging from teen through adult. Tamara is also a strategic thought partner and mentor for early, mid and senior-career professionals, many of whom are former students and colleagues. 

Leveraging 20+ years in the education sector, Tamara draws on her experience working closely with Millennial and GenZ demographics in formal, experiential and informal settings. Tamara holds an M.Ed in Adult Education and Community Development from the University of Toronto, certificates in Experiential Education, Adaptive Leadership, Coaching and Storytelling for Change, and has been trained in Design Thinking.

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WVU Marketing Communications Today is hosted by Cyndi Greenglass from West Virginia University which is a program on the Funnel Radio Channel.