SMA Case Comp Marketing Campaign Recap
During my final quarter at Western, I had the opportunity to take the Applied Integrated Marketing Communications class. In this class, we created content for Western’s social channels and promote Western’s Marketing events.
My role in Applied IMC was being a Content Editor. In this role, I led a team of 2 Content Creators (hi Colby and Savannah) to run the SMA Case Competition marketing campaign. I also helped assist in this campaign on SMA’s side as the SMA President. The annual SMA Case Competition gives students the opportunity to develop a solution to a problem outlined in a case and present the solution to a panel of judges from companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, New Engen, Spotify, WWU faculty, and other local and Seattle area marketing firms.
Creative Strategy
Before we began creating content, we developed a creative strategy for our target audience of current marketing students.
Student Value Proposition:
“Our SMA Case Competition allows students to practice their case analysis and presentation skills while helping students to build their professional network.”
Communication objectives:
Increase Awareness by 10% by May 7th
Increase Knowledge by 10% by May 7th
Increase Liking by 10% by May 7th
Marketing Objectives:
To reach the maximum number of groups that can register for the SMA Case Competition by May 7th.
Increase the number of visitors to the SMA site by 10% by May 7th
Increase the number of shares on video content from 0 to 5 shares per post by May 7th
Convert 3 volunteers for the Case Comp by May 6th
Campaign Theme
Executions
Our campaign executions, which aimed at supporting our goals stated in our communication and marketing objectives, ranged from primarily video content to blog posts and social media graphics.
Video content
Our video content was extremely successful. Our most popular video had 16 shares and a combined total of 67 likes, which was unprecedented for the WWU Marketing social channels at the time. Our success came from our innovative “TikTok-esque” content using trending audios to appeal to our Gen Z audience.
Besides our trending videos, we also conducted 5+ student/faculty interviews to gather primary data and testimonials for the Case Comp.
Winner Graphics
To announce the winners of the Case Comp, we created graphics and tagged the winners so they could easily share the news with their networks. These posts received amazing engagement as they were posted as collaborator posts between the WWU marketing channels and the SMA channels.
Blog Post Recaps
For long-form content, we wrote 2 blog posts that were posted on the WWU marketing blog. One was an interview with a student competitor and the other was a write-up summary of the Case Comp that could serve as evergreen content for the marketing program.
Final Thoughts
This was a very successful marketing campaign, and the Case Comp turnout was great! We reached our max number of students (32) who could compete and our max number of student volunteers. While at times it was overwhelming working on this campaign for AIMC, SMA, and competing myself, looking back I am extremely proud of the quality of content that we were able to produce.
To learn more about the Case Comp, read a write-up summary here!
