CBIZ Social Campaign

The Overview

As in most things, I believe in starting strong. So, with no context: here is a picture of my peers and I holding a giant cheque while we give a thumbs-up beside the mayor of Caledon. Honestly, one of my cooler moments.

Now, this is probably a little confusing. I hope it is, at least; it was meant to be. Now that I have your attention, let’s give some context to this excellent moment.

The Context and Challenge

This wonderful day was actually the evening of our last day of the fall semester of second year of our Digital Communications program. The project was for our Social Media 1 course. While Social Media 2 had fictional social campaigns, we managed to hit the ground running with a real client for our first Social Media course. It was equal parts exhilarating and terrifying for fresh second year students.

The challenge was to present a social media campaign strategy and timeline for a municipally funded group: Caledon Business Innovation Zone (CBIZ). In a brief underwhelming summary, CBIZ supports entrepreneurs in Caledon with resources and workshops to help cultivate local business in the town. We got into groups and competed against others in our cohort. I managed to team up with a group of superstars and peers I immensely respect, which was definitely the secret to our success.

The Process and Insight

We started off with social media audits of similar organizations for larger cities and some universities with the same goals. We did SWOT analyses of the organizations and compared them to CBIZ. Finally, we decided on opportunities that would promote growth and started developing content for the company to implement.

The Solution

As local ties to entrepreneurs were the epitome of CBIZ’s business model, we decided to explore these relationships on ways to showcase their success. We targeted thematic campaigns that fit the events of Caledon, as well as school semesters and holidays. Another key focus was a separate online space from the City of Caledon as well as some flashy, new branding.

The Results

I wish I could remember more clearly how work was divided. It was a hectic time, especially dealing with exams while preparing to end this semester with this presentation. I think that my hazy recollection of how our work was divided up speaks to how well our group worked together. No one dropped the ball on their workload and we all looked at everyone’s work, helping out where we could.

I remember doing social media mock ups, writing a blog post, helping shoot our videos, doing general editing and overseeing of written documents and handling the social media calendar. I remember being immensely proud of all we accomplished and not being at all disappointed at failing to capture the first-place spot after our presentations. I remember it being very close and remember second place feeling fantastic.