Getting Creative

With the research finished and analyzed, Plug. is returning rejuvenated from a week-long spring break and is ready for the sprint to the end of the semester. The strategic plan is taking shape and development of our final campaign book has begun.

The team is in the process of developing five strategic tactics that will specifically target potential sponsors for the Spot.Us site. In attracting additional sponsors, Spot.Us will be able to distribute an increased number of free credits for donations from community members on the site. With this increased capacity for donations, Spot.Us will be able to support an increased number of story pitches from reporters and news organizations.

Plug. has put much consideration into developing nontraditional methods of publicity for Spot.Us. It is necessary to cater to the interests of the tech-savvy and connected audience that already participates in Spot.Us so that the existing user base can continue to grow and develop. Our strategic campaign will combine traditional and nontraditional methods, including improvements on pitches to sponsors, an interactive component that will pull traffic into the site and improvements to the site itself among other recommendations.

The campaign will be based on building anticipation around the Spot.Us brand by emphasizing the unique advertising opportunity that is involved in a Spot.Us act of engagement. Spot.Us provides hope for the new ways to reach an audience, and we would like to convey this to potential sponsors.

We’re doing a lot of work on re-branding the idea of sponsorship as a unique advertising opportunity. This will include new collateral material for you to provide to potential sponsors as well as content for the site. We’re also putting together some social media tactics focused around Twitter. An event plan is in the works (any thoughts on that–is an event something you’d be up for?) as well as, yes, some traditional advertising. The research showed that one traditional method may be helpful in reaching completely new sponsors. A print ad for industry journals is also on the way.

In addition to the five tactics, our research provided many insights that have led Plug. to develop recommendations focused around our secondary audiences, which are the news organizations or reporters that pitch stories and the community members who frequent the site.

The development of the book has Plug. more excited than ever about Spot.Us itself and the challenge that has been presented to us: facilitating the transformation of Spot.Us into a more sustainable business model.

A Public Conversation

It was a busy week for Plug. as we kicked off our primary research efforts for Spot.Us. Site observations, surveys, interviews and focus groups have officially finally gotten underway after we spent a few weeks determining where our client is and what we need to know to get them where they want to go.

In determining the type of primary research data we wanted to collect, our team made the exciting decision to attempt a very unique kind of focus group.

Next Monday on the 28^th of February we will hold a real-time focus group over Twitter! Starting at 9:30pm CT we will begin tweeting questions from @Plug_MU regarding the public’s feelings toward nonprofit news. We will also be focusing on brands or sponsors that interest Spot.Us followers and who they would want to see playing a role in turning the site into a sustainable business model.

Why did we decide to use Twitter? From politics and national news to brands and organizations, Twitter has become a database of the community’s real-time opinions. The development of social media has created a shift in society’s preferences for engaging with others and expressing themselves. In this day and age, companies need to understand that the key to success can be found in the creation of dialogue and interaction with the community. Today, the public would rather be talked with than talked at, as has been the case with traditional advertising methods.

In the last weeks, Plug. has decided to expand our Twitter presence and give this community conversation a try with our real-time focus group. We want to gain valuable feedback from the community and tap into the wealth of information that is so readily available through Twitter.

If you would like to join our focus group on Monday, follow @Plug_MU and tweet back with your answers to our questions and the hashtag #spotfocus. Plug. can’t wait to see you there!

Follow @Plug_MU at http://twitter.com/#!/Plug_MU

For more info about Spot.Us, check out the site at http://spot.us/

For more info about our twitter-based focus group, please visit http://on.fb.me/guXtRm

get connected.

We’re ambitious. We’re passionate. We’re Plug.

We’re a student-run agency that is newly entering the advertising world!

The name Plug. represents the way our agency  will strive to plug our client into a specific target market with a sound strategic campaign. Over the course of a semester, we will plug into our creative abilities to create a campaign that will effectively and efficiently use strategic communication tools to  reach the best possible outcome for our client.

We’re excited to be working with Spot.us this semester, a platform for community powered reporting that is rooted in transparency and participation.

Here we’ll share our ideas on advertising and our updates on this student-driven project.