Case Study of Digital Marketing Strategy Led by Pivotal

Recently, UIC Liautaud’s graduate marketing student group, GMARK, hosted Shannon Downey, owner of Pivotal Production, to discuss the opportunities and challenges of digital marketing. Dubbed “Anatomy of a Digital Marketing Strategy: Chiquita,” Shannon spent an hour discussing digital marketing strategy using Chiquita’s Crushed It Campaign as a case study. Pivotal was the local firm launching a new national product for the Chicago market.

She walked us through the experience from beginning to end, discussing the nuts and bolts of the activities as well as the 30,000 foot view of the goals of the campaign. She discussed the very real challenges of working with national teams that have multiple stakeholders (in-house marketing folks, contracted national event production folks, etc.) and how that translates into the rollout of a product in a local market while similar rollouts are happening nationally. Each piece of the campaign must be working toward the same goal: be it online coupons, point of sale placement, customer engagement, event production or product design. Downey highlighted the importance of quickly responding and genuinely engaging customers as a way to build brand awareness and loyalty.

Downey challenged the notions of the universality of online campaigns that are not knowledgeable of local communities and players within those cultures. Indeed, engaging the Chicago market successfully required tying online and in-person activities together using a Chicago lens. Using the social media patforms of Facebook and Twitter, as well as in-person events that engaged Chicago tastemakers in the desired demographic, Pivotal exceeded its qualitative and quantitative goals for the project.

More than 40 folks from a variety of different disciplines came out for this GMARK-sponsored event. We appreciate Shannon Downey, owner of Pivotal Production, coming to UIC to share her expertise with us.