When Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry (MSI) offered the opportunity for one person to become its month-long “roommate,” Kevin Byrne (MS Medill ’10) jumped at the chance to live, work and interact with guests at the South Side cultural institution. More than 1,000 applicants from across the country sent videos extolling the reasons they [...]
Last Tuesday, Northwestern University’s Medill IMC students and alumni, along with members from the Chicago marketing community, gathered for the IMC Talent Q symposium. Like the name suggests, the Talent Q had a keen focus on uncovering and understanding the talent that stands behind today’s winning marketing and communications programs. To understand the driving forces [...]
Frankly, I’m tired of talking and reading about social media marketing and its ROI, or lack thereof. After spending a year and a half in the IMC graduate program at Medill and working with various clients on sponsored projects, I think the key to becoming a successful marketer lies in understanding digital marketing and shopper [...]
As marketers, we’ve seen many examples of companies and people that have been built extraordinarily successful and active Facebook pages—for example, Zappos and Justin Bieber. However, the success of these pages are not exactly surprising. After all, fashionistas can have endless discussions on the Zappos page, and if you’re a teenage girl who is not [...]
Social Media Week Chicago was a hot topic this week. And yesterday, Medill added to the buzz when full-time IMC students presented on how to measure the value of social media. In a session entitled Social IMC: Finding ROI in Social Media, Prof. Randy Hlavac, joined by students who participated in his Direct [...]
Dating and marketing have more in common than you might think. Think back to some of your best and worst dating experiences and you’ll see why the art of navigating through a relationship is so relevant to marketers today. Here are a few reasons why it’s a good idea to follow the rules of dating [...]
Guest blogger Tom Collinger is chair of Medill’s Integrated Marketing Communications program. I recently had the pleasure of moderating a panel discussion with Medill alumni Terry Davenport, senior vice president of marketing at Starbucks, and Jonathan Blum, chief public affairs officer at Yum! Brands. The format was interview-style in nature, and the questions revolved around [...]
Customers have communicated with companies in various formats: a visit/phone call to customer service, a written letter, and more recently, a post to their social media site. In the early 2000’s, I submitted a letter to GUESS about a GUESS purse whose strap kept falling off. I quickly received an identical replacement purse and an [...]
The memorable saying “If you build it, they will come” worked well in Kevin Costner’s blockbuster hit Field of Dreams, but from a marketing perspective it usually doesn’t work that easily. In one of my IMC classes, we frequently discuss issues surrounding customer relationships and customer loyalty. For the class, we’re working on a project [...]
From AT&T’s deals site to Google Chrome’s inspiring and emotional new advertising campaign, here is a look at what happened this week in the integrated marketing communications industry. The Battle for the daily deal The daily deals market just got a little more crowded this week with the launch of two new deals sites by [...]
