Mediaboss Marketing

Major educational institutions in the U.S. and Canada use Wishpond's solutions on Stukent's digital courseware platform.

VANCOUVER, BC, June 30, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Wishpond Technologies Ltd. (TSXV: WISH) (OTCQX: WPNDF) ("Wishpond" or the "Company"), a provider of marketing-focused online business solutions, is pleased to announce a partnership with Stukent, Inc. ("Stukent"), a digital courseware provider, to introduce new real-world digital marketing and social media assignments with Wishpond's technology on Stukent's platform.

Since 2017, thousands of students have used Wishpond technology on Stukent's platform gaining valuable experience in how to perform foundational digital marketing and social media tactics to grow a business. Major education institutions that have consistently used Wishpond on Stukent include Dartmouth College, The Ohio State University, University of Florida, Gonzaga, BCIT, Frostburg University, and others.

"Today's students that are taking marketing courses have the potential to be catalysts for growth during a time of significant economic recovery," said Stuart Draper, CEO of Stukent. "We are excited about pairing our innovative platform with Wishpond's industry-leading technology and expertise to support these future business leaders."

To mark the partnership announcement Wishpond is adding new Email Marketing Automation coursework to the existing curriculum which includes Digital Marketing Essentials and Social Media Management textbooks.

"My students are really impressed with the design and functions of Wishpond, and I would love to see more students learning with this type of hands-on experience," said Dr. Lilly Ye, Associate Professor of Marketing at Frostburg University.

For higher education institutions interested in leveraging Wishpond on Stukent, visit, https://www.stukent.com/higher-ed/.

On Behalf of the Board

"Ali Tajskandar"Chairman and CEO

About Wishpond Technologies Ltd.

Based out of Vancouver, British Columbia, Wishpond is a provider of marketing-focused online business solutions. Wishpond's vision is to become the leading provider of digital marketing solutions that empower entrepreneurs to achieve success online. The Company offers an "all-in-one" marketing suite that provides companies with marketing, promotion, lead generation, and sales conversion capabilities from one integrated platform. Wishpond replaces entire marketing functions in an easy-to-use product, for a fraction of the cost. Wishpond serves over 3,000 customers who are primarily small-to-medium size businesses (SMBs) in a wide variety of industries. The Company has developed cutting-edge marketing technology solutions and continues to add new features and applications with great velocity. The Company employs a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business model where substantially all the Company's revenue is subscription-based recurring revenue which provides excellent revenue predictability and cash flow visibility. Wishpond is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the ticker "WISH" and on the OTCQX Venture Market under the ticker "WPNDF". For further information, visit: http://www.wishpond.com.

About Stukent, Inc.

Stukent, Inc. provides digital courseware and simulation for high schools and higher education while fulfilling its mission to help educators help students help the world. Stukent products, which are used by over 5,000 instructors in over 50 countries, include first-in-the-world simulations, continuously updated digital courseware and expert mentoring sessions by industry professionals.

Forward Looking Disclaimer

Statements that are not reported financial results or other historical information are forward-looking statements or forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws (collectively, "forward-looking statements"). This press release includes forward-looking statements regarding the Company, its subsidiaries and the industries in which they operate, including statements about, among other things, expectations, beliefs, plans, future operations, origination of additional targets in which the Company may hold an interest and acquisition opportunities for the Company, business and acquisition strategies, opportunities, objectives, prospects, assumptions, including those related to trends and prospects, and future events and performance. Sentences and phrases containing or modified by words such as "anticipate", "plan", "continue", "estimate", "intend", "expect", "may", "will", "project", "predict", "potential", "targets", "projects", "is designed to", "strategy", "should", "believe", "contemplate" and similar expressions, and the negative of such expressions, are not historical facts and are intended to identify forward-looking statements.Readers are cautioned to not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Actual results and developments may differ materially from those contemplated by forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in forward-looking statements in this press release are reasonable, such forward-looking statements has been based on expectations, factors and assumptions concerning future events which may prove to be inaccurate and are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond the Company's control, including, but not limited to, the risk factors discussed in the continuous disclosure materials of the Company which are available under the Company's profile on SEDAR at http://www.sedar.com. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement and are made as of the date hereof. The Company disclaims any intention and has no obligation or responsibility, except as required by law, to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE Wishpond Technologies Ltd.

Originally posted here:
Wishpond and Stukent Partner to Bring Digital Marketing and Social Media Expertise to Colleges and Universities - PRNewswire

A decision to ramp up social media management has given the Gold Coast Titans the means to improve content and community processes, stakeholder reporting and marketing team efficiencies as well as build that all-important fan base.

Gold Coast Titans head of marketing, Dean Madders, said social media channels when he joined the NRL team 12 months ago were used to publish content but in an adhoc fashion, leading to inefficiencies. The youngest NRL club was also sitting at the bottom of the ladder in terms of audience size in social media and keen to improve its ranking.

It was clear we could bring more strategic planning and analytics to social media to improve those numbers, Madders told CMO.

As Madders pointed out, the Gold Coast Titans are a brand but also represent a passion point for people who love NRL. You only have to read the comments to see how passionate people are about the game and teams, he commented.

An organic social media and digital presence therefore plays a significant role in the communications strategy and in engaging consumers in an emotive way. There is a role for coverage in paid, but we need those softer points to drive that, Madders said.

But with each individual channel managed organically, it was time to invest in a centralised platform and change the approach. Over the 2020 offseason and ahead of the 2021 season, the Gold Coast Titans implemented Hootsuite as its social media management platform over a three-month period.

The business case centred around better allocation of marketing team resourcing, creating and refining community management processes and more robust reporting up to key stakeholders including both sponsorship partners and the board.

Every time you bring in something new and its an expense, there is a question as to what its going to do. So being able to appropriately show the business case of what the results would be for our team plus the efficiency improvements for staff was key, Madders explained.

Every sporting team runs lean, which means you wear many hats. Time savings are a major benefit to gain. Key things in our case were gaining efficiencies We also have a number of sponsors and partners, so being able to deliver and track appropriate is important.

Another nice benefit is managing staff time and being able to plan content over weekends and holidays so staff can get a break.

The first step was agreeing everything would be done through one central point. As we have gone along, we have become better at utilising the reporting, but there is further growth there, Madders said.

The clubs set-up also saw marketing work with the membership team to set up flags so that when key terms such as membership or ticketing crop up, queries can be sent to the right people internally and answered promptly.

Then theres the content piece. Madders said a unified platform approach is enabling the club to have more strategic conversations internally around content resonating with audiences, whats driving the best commercial return, as well as how to prioritise content across channels.

Social is not always the answer, sometimes its the ability to say no, and being able to back that up, showing this is why its not quite right for this audience, but then saying how do we find a solution that meets your objectives, Madders said.

A recent example of highly impactful content was around Gold Coast Titans foundation player, Preston Campbell, a popular sportsman on and off the field. With his son, Jayden Campbells NRL debut in June, Madders and his team were able to track the journey to his first game through content, optimising social posts based on what was resonating.

That delivery of content ticked many boxes for us across the business, from a positioning point of view of being a local team, to establishing us in the Gold Coast as were still in our infancy, and engagement. We saw real success off the back of that, Madders said.

Multimedia pieces highlighting engagement with local fans as well as tongue-in-cheek insights on player tactics and relationships have also been strong performers socially, such as those with fan-favourite, Jamal Fogarty Mockumentary, and the Micd Up Instagram post.

Being able to show what this [social] does and why its important is important its not just a case of throwing something in the mix and hoping for success, Madders said.

In terms of metrics, engagement is the overarching measure of success for the Gold Coast Titans social strategy. Its social following has grown month-on-month and the club now sits third behind last years two grand final teams.

We know we need to grow our audience base. Were now 14th so were up a couple of rungs and were progressing at a strong rate. We need audience to foster connection, Madders said. Then its about converting those metrics into more engagement. That ties into achieving faster growth.

Delivering value back to commercial partners is another win, giving the sponsorship team hard data on audience reach.

In a lot of cases, these sponsors are using their partnership for brand reach and association as a primary objective. Were giving them a platform to deliver back on those audiences and provide feedback on what we have managed to deliver, Madders said.

Messaging is another potential area of development. We try and respond where we can to give personality to the brand or where we can facilitate an answer on a practical question, Madders said. We are using social to drive that conversion as it is a lead mechanism for us as well.

With a project to refresh the Gold Coast Titans brand and positioning rolling out over the upcoming off-season, Madders said the team will look to again harness social channels to reflect the change in tone, look and feel.

If we can give our players personality, show who they are and help members and potential members to engage, then were taking big steps forward, he added.

Check out more of our social media case studies:

Dont miss out on the wealth of insight and content provided by CMO A/NZ and sign up to our weekly CMO Digest newsletters and information services here.

You can also follow CMO on Twitter:@CMOAustralia, take part in the CMO conversation on LinkedIn:CMO ANZ,follow our regular updatesvia CMO Australia's Linkedin company page

Read the original here:
The social strategy driving the Gold Coast Titans fanbase - CMO

Theres a video on YouTube I keep coming back to, even though I absolutely hate it. Its a 46-minute mix of songs titled Lofi glug glug mix beats to drive/study to. The buzzy, mostly wordless electronic tracks are set to an animation of an anime girl driving a car with a cheerful Shiba Inu hanging its tongue out the window. Its a lot like other lo-fi mix compilations on YouTube, except in this one, theres a tiny red car with a Conoco logo on the anime girls dashboard. Thats not an accident: The video was produced not by a random YouTube DJ, but by the official account of Conoco, a giant chain of gas stations owned by Phillips 66. (The glug glug in the title apparently refers to the sound of gas being pumped into a car.)

No joke this actually isnt too bad as late night cruising music, the top comment reads. Mad props to Conoco on this one as this is .

I really, really hate that I agree.

Most oil and gas companies seem to struggle with how to present themselves on social media, isolating their brand presence to strictly photos of refineries on Instagram or making cringy statements about Pride on Twitter. Some have started dipping a toe into Instagram influencer marketing; an Earther investigation last month revealed that Shell has worked extensively with Instagram influencers, most recently on a campaign to promote a carbon offsets scheme for their gas. (Phillips 66 also worked with influencers on an Instagram campaign.)

But Conoco stands out from its competitors: Its social channels are filled with content theyve created thats actually interesting, mostly because it has absolutely nothing to do with gasoline. In one Instagram story, a makeup artist paints their face and chest to resemble a mountain scene, complete with gondola; theres a short that starts off with a man whose body is a cat tree; theres a whole series called Conococooks, which features recipes with illustrations for foods like Thrilled Cheese and Hamburgizzadog. The whole thing is well-designed and a little disorienting, meaning I spent a lot of time on their account just looking at posts (which, I suppose, is the goal of a social media campaign). The vibe is somewhat reminiscent of Brand Twitter, the ever-growing ecosystem of companies who attempt (sometimes too far) to assert a personalitythink of how the Steak-Umms account keeps picking fights with Neil DeGrasse Tysonbut with a remove that makes it not too annoying.

Reaching a younger, Very Online crowd, it seems, is Conocos whole goal here. Most of Conocos social content appears to have been produced by Carmichael Lynch, an ad agency based out of Minneapolis. (Carmichael Lynch also ran the Phillips 66 campaign where it tapped Instagram influencers.) In a case study posted on their website, the agency sheds a lot of light on the goal of all this strange posting from a gasoline brand.

G/O Media may get a commission

Conoco wanted to reach 18-24-year-olds, a hard-to-engage audience, the case study begins. Skeptical of marketing and unlikely to interact with brands, they sit, text, curate and retweet in an endless stream of #content.

Surveys have found that around 70% of this age group also experience eco-anxiety due to the climate change caused by the product Conoco is trying to sell them. But, of course, that wouldnt make for a very good brand campaign. (Carmichael Lynch didnt answer questions as to whether young peoples concerns about climate change were part of their conversations with Conoco.)

The result of the analysis is a campaign called Choose Go, which, the case study describes, is a social-first campaign that changed the rules of social engagement by understanding the audiences perceptions of brands. Instead of forcing advertising-like objects on them, we built content around their interests. AdWeek wrote a glowing review of the glug glug lofi mix video, and per the case study, the campaign generated millions of impressions on social media.

This strategy of increasing brand loyalty while not focusing on the actual product was pioneered by another oil giant. In the 1970s, Exxon sponsored several episodes of the PBS program Masterpiece Theater in one of the earliest examples of a company associating itself with a cultural touchstone to boost brand loyalty. This strategy can be really successfulwhich isnt great news for the climate.

This is why ad agencies are so dangerous: they can take a boring fossil fuel company and turn them into your hip best friend, Jamie Henn, the director of Fossil Free Media, which runs a campaign called Clean Creatives dedicated to pressuring ad and PR agencies to quit working with fossil fuel companies, said over Twitter DM. Who cares if ConocoPhillips is blocking climate legislation if theyre sharing dope playlists and funny animations, right? Im sure the team at CarmichaelLynch had a good time working this account, but creativity has consequences. Shilling for Big Oil is an act of climate denial no matter how cool it looks.

There could be limits to how far this dont-focus-on-the-oil-and-look-how-funny-we-are approach can go with other oil and gas companies. Im not sure if high-profile brands like Exxon will be able to appeal to Gen Z since its name is associated with lying about climate change for decades. Other Big Oil companies like Chevron, BP, and Shell have had a more intense and unforgiving spotlight put on them for their role in delaying climate action.

One of the reasons this particular strategy seems to have been able to succeed here is that Conoco hasnt come under the same scrutiny, perhaps because it only sells gas. But it does have a dirty history: ConocoPhillips, its predecessor company, produces about 1.5 million barrels of oil per day. In 2012, ConocoPhillips, then the third-biggest oil company in the country, split its oil-and-gas producing arm from its oil-and-gas selling arm; the resulting companies are ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66, which owns Conoco.

Phillips 66 and ConocoPhillips have done quite well since then: They are currently the fifth-largest and third-largest oil and gas companies by market share in the U.S. And at the end of the day, selling all that oil is what these kinds of campaigns are for.

Conoco sold 40 million more gallons of gas in the campaigns first five months compared to the year prior, Carmichael Lynch concludes their case study proudly. Lets hope none of the other oil companies figure out how to replicate this success.

Read the original:
I Hate That Conoco Is So Good at Social Media - Gizmodo

LinkedIn has shared new insights into the changing landscape of gender and racial diversity in the marketing field today.

Although the stats shared in this infographicfocus on comparisons between women and men in the industry,LinkedIn notes that "Gender identity isnt binary and we recognize that some LinkedIn members identify beyond the traditional gender constructs of male and female. The data shown here is based on individuals and their chosen pronouns. LinkedIn encourages everyone to include pronouns in their profiles so that they can improve their data. "As members begin to self-report gender, we will be able to share more inclusive gender data."

A few notable stats seen in this infographic:

This is the fourth update from LinkedIn in a series called The Changing Marketing Jobs Landscape.

Optional Caption

Image Source

See the original post:
LinkedIn Shares Insights Into Gender and Racial Diversity in the Marketing Field - Social Media Today

As consumer habits post-pandemic ebb and flow, beauty brand Fresh is using data to drive its social marketing decisions.

At Fairchild Media Groups Virtual Tech Forum on June 17, Tennille Kopiasz, chief marketing officer of Fresh, spoke with Thomas Rankin, cofounder and chief executive officer of marketing software company Dash Hudson on how the brands digital strategy reflects the needs of a post-coronavirus consumer.

More from WWD

Our customers and our employees have changed, and theyre not going back, Kopiasz said. From a marketing standpoint, consumer satisfaction is the new marketing excellence. Weve seen major shifts in all dimensions with unprecedented speed and scale with digital always at the core. Its about how we reinvent across all areas, from content, to human capabilities, experience, channels and even the future of work.

Kopiasz credits the brands partnership with Dash Hudson for the agility of its social media content. Technology is only as good as the team you have behind it, because it helps you make smarter decisions. Dash is at the heart of how we look at social on a daily, weekly, quarterly and annual basis, but its also helped us shift our strategy, she said. In the past, we were obsessed with engagement, but it didnt really encompass video. So now, were using the [Dash Hudson] effectiveness tool, and its really helping us drive the strategy moving forward. Data is in everything we do.

We also use Dashs organic reach tool to figure out what people are talking about, what theyre interested, and we tweak our strategy based on what their interests are, Kopiasz continued. We see the big content buckets of our competitors, and distill that in a way thats more specific to Fresh, because what works for Fresh isnt what works for other brands.

Just like its clients, Dash Hudson has also made a concerted effort to keep up with the rise in content format. Its been a real struggle for brands as the formats have grown, Rankin said. Channels aside, if you look at Instagram alone, with the launch of Reels and IGTV and of course, Stories, its about understanding your baseline performance across all of those formats and understanding how they come together, he said.

Story continues

Rankin added that video, despite being increasingly resonant, has historically been difficult for brands to scale or to understand its return on investment. Additionally, the company is seeing its offerings applied to paid advertising in growing numbers, despite paid and organic social content existing in silos, he said.

Kopiasz postulated that when creating paid content as an extension of organic posts, consumers respond with more enthusiasm. When you see what performs, its almost never what you think is going to perform, she said. These beautiful, perfect, curated, branded assets that are the epitome of the brand are not typically what appeals to your consumer. To have those insights from an organic content perspective, you can ultimately take that and adapt for the paid perspective to reach a whole new audience and group of consumers.

Following explosive growth in Eastern markets like China, Kopiasz also has her sights set on social commerce.

Weve done a test and learn approach and where weve seen the most success is in exclusive drops. For example, the jumbo size of our Soy Face Cleanser, which is a cult product our consumer already knew about, and that saw great success. For our partners in China, social commerce is hitting almost 30 percent of the business, and thats only going to be bigger with TikToks partnership with Shopify. Theres not just a brand approach there, but an influencer approach. Its going to create a whole new level of commerce that doesnt exist in the Instagram universe, Kopiasz said, adding that the brand still experiments with Instagram Checkout and Live Shopping.

In a live Q&A with Evan Clark, deputy managing editor of WWD, Kopiasz discussed how Fresh is reinventing the wheel for its upcoming social holiday campaigns, which run from September through December.

Theres a high level of fatigue. Holiday represents almost 40 percent of the business, you typically have one campaign, and you spend a lot of money on it, Kopiasz said. Dash helped us look at different content segments. Moving into 2021, we broke our social business into three different buckets. We have content thats still holiday, but doesnt have the same fatigue, and thats all driven by data.

For more from WWD.com, see:

10 Unscented Body Washes for Sensitive Skin

Neimans Turns Toward Technology With Heightened Investments

Dash Hudsons Jenny Pratt Taps Into Users to Create Content

Sign up for WWD's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

See the original post:
Freshs CMO on the Future of Social Marketing in Beauty - Yahoo Lifestyle