Today was our last day at FWV :(. We started off by going to a creative meeting about the CMA fest and wrangler jeans. Following that Morgan and Colleen surprised us and took us out for a coffee at this really cool place called Bittersweet and reflected on our time at FWV. We then worked on finding influencers for an old-school clothing brand that was losing customers and reaching out to the younger crowd. Overall it was a great last day at FWV and i hope to come back someday.
Today at FWV was all about influencers. In a marketing company these people are the most important. They get word out about product to the general public and make it more appealing and accessible. It was our job to find these influencers for the opening of a new gym. O2 fitness is reopening its store and we were tasked with finding influencers who lived specifically in Raleigh and had an intrest in fitness and lifestyle.
Today was especially interesting at FWV because we were working with one of the newer clients. Relay, this company is creating a screenless smartphone for kids. it has a single button that can be used to contact a parent or friend. it was our job to go through the parenting magazines and blogs and talk shows and see which segments we could find to pitch the product too. We spent a lot of time perusing daytime television networks and figuring out which ones could feature this product.
Day Six at French West Vaughn was by far the most interesting day of work so far. Today we were shadowing the creative department. The creative department takes care of things like naming, creating events, and the visual design of advertisements.
Today we were working with a newer Client of FWV. This particular client isolated CBD from the cannabis plant and sells them to pharmaceutical, makeup, and food companies. Currently the name of the company is XYZ but that is about to change. We were given the job of finding names that are more fitting for the things that XYZ actually does.
After that we had to create ideas to advertise for a top secret project that the FWV will be working on for the next 5 years(!!!!). These ideas were later discussed and implemented in the creative meeting afterwards.
Day Four was super exciting because I got to work with the travel and vacation teams. Some of the ads that we see everyday on Tv, the ones for NC beaches, Wilmington, and even Moe’s are created by this team. Today I started off by meeting the entire team and then i got to work creating social media reports for all of their clients. It was my job to track the traffic on twitter, instagram, and facebook. After that I grabbed lunch and got straight back to work. My next task was to write advertisement posts for the facebook pages of Wrightsville beach and Wilmington NC. I first had to find an instagram picture for both posts and then write a short description. By the time I left work that day the post was up! It was so exciting to see the responses that i received and all the positive reinforcement from strangers on the internet.
Today was perhaps the most exciting day yet at the FWV offices. Today i was working with the STEM team which advertises mostly for science, medical, tech, and electronics companies. To start the day off we were able to sit in on a huge brainstorm sesh with the creative and stem teams. The Brainstorm was for a secret project at the North Carolina Science Museum involving something called the “Dueling Dinosaurs”. It was ur job to brainstorm some celebrity endorsment for the event as well as come up with ways to advertise the event. The brainstorming session was perhaps the best part of the day. It was so refreshing to see the energy and enthusiasm and it was like a free flowing conversation.
After that i went through a media list of medical magazines, picking out ones that specifically focus on at home geriatric and emergency care. I then had to format it into an excel spreadsheet and send it over to the STEM dept.
Today was an eventful and surprising day at French West Vaughn. We spent the day with the publicity and were working with one of the companies biggest clients; Wrangler Jeans. It was our job to scope out the publics general opinion of the brand. To start of we began researching the denim brand, starting with the founding all the way to the place where wrangler is today. We then learned all about the marketing goals for FWV today, find a way to make “cowboy” jeans accesible and desirable to people who don’t live in the wild wild west.
As Wrangler is one of the companies biggest clients it came as no surprise to us that it also had the biggest publicity team. Today we were part of this team. We were tasked with rounding up social media influencers who could potentially help the sale of these jeans. The influencers had to fit a very specific bill though, they needed to be from Austin Texas, needed to have an Instagram following above 5k, and they needed to LOVE Wrangler denim! When we first started it seemed very daunting, but as we continued to delve into the square-ish world of Instagram we found search buttons that helped make clear to us what exactly we needed to find. After we found this information we had to learn how to use a platform called Cision to find their emails and contact information.
The Second thing we had to do was find out about the coverage for CMA music fest, a HUGE music festival in Tennesee and a HUGE oppurtunity to sell Wrangler Jeans. We had to go online and look for websites about what to wear to the CMA music fest and copy down the links to those sites and find the authors and editors to whom FWV could send product samples.
We then sat in on a meeting with one of the Wrangler execs and we learned about all the work that goes into planning a pop up shop and how to get celebrities to to perform at these types of events for free!
All in all it was another eventful and exciting day at FWV.
This was a picture we took at lunch today, we went to Raleigh Raw, a FWV favorite!
Our first day at French West Vaughn was everything we expected it to be and more, located in a cute brick walled building in the heart of Downtown Raleigh the FWV office is unassuming to the outside eye. When Kaylah and I walked in on Tuesday morning we were taken aback by the buzz of energy that greeted us at 8:30 in the morning. We were rushed into the kitchen where we were introduced to Morgan Dougherty, She gave us a tour of the office(the one that the company had been using since their inception in 1997) and we got to work. Kaylah and I had three tasks;
After this we sat in on a creative meeting, where ideas for new marketing tactics were tossed around. it was enthralling to see the passion in everybody’s voices as the argued about which idea was the best and which should be implemented in advertising for NC Pork Council.
After a quick lunch we continued our work on the Arena swimwear project until it was time to go.
Overall it was a busy and fulfilling day of work at FWV and i cannot wait to see what tomorrow holds for us!