Ali Bestler, Ali Calder, Eric Libby, Gabby Reis, and Matt Taranto
LC 305 A: Integrated Marketing Communications/Detroit Proposal
Executive Summary
Detroit’s rich history in the automobile, sports, and music industry has allowed the city to prosper over the last century but has fallen as a victim to the 2008 recession. Detroit is currently millions of dollars in debt, owing a substantial amount to creditors. Not only is Detroit succumb to financial woes, the city is notorious for its high crime rate, making it an unsafe place to live. Lastly, the housing situation in Detroit is not any better. There over 50,000 abandoned homes in Detroit and real estate in Detroit can be sold for less than 10,000 dollars.
In order to restore and rebuild Detroit, our objectives during our campaign is to change the perception of Detroit, increase population, and increase local businesses. Detroit has a particularly negative perception viewed upon it and the population has not increased within the past few years. Also, small and large businesses have “gone under” or failed because of Detroit’s ongoing financial issues. We plan on targeting millennials aged 24-35 by advertising the city as an up and coming with plenty of opportunities for entrepreneurs and small business owners. What we hope to accomplish through our strategies is to create a positive perception about Detroit, thus increasing the population, and giving business owners a chance to start fresh in Detroit.
Throughout the course of this campaign, our group plans on forming ads that will be used to reach our objective of changing the perceptions of Detroit through different medias such as magazines, commercials, and websites. These advertisements would also appear within public areas such as billboards or parking in order to gain attention and spread by use of word of mouth.
For our first approach, we plan on using our social media, utilizing pulse advertising, particularly during the New Year and the summer months. The New Year capitalizes on people’s New Year’s resolutions. The summer months seem to be the most appealing to people and this is time period when everyone is engaged in social media. For our second Quicken Loans approach, this is going to be a year long process. We have decided that our second approach will begin in early January and last until January the following year. For our Business Grant approach, we plan for this to be a three month process. Specifically, we are going to have a two month submission period and a one month review period. If these campaigns are successful and our organization has enough donations, we may run these campaigns again for future use.
The budget for approach 1 is going to cost a total of $202,000. The budget for approach 2 is going to cost a total of $55,000 and we are going to rely on volunteer efforts. The budget for approach 3 is going to cost a total of $380,000. For our advertising strategies, it is going to cost us about $200,000. Lastly, the total amount that we have for our emergency funds will amount to $163,000. The purpose for emergency funds is that since Detroit is still financially unstable, we might need to have money in case one of our campaigns is lacking staff or if something goes wrong internally.
To evaluate the success of our campaign, we plan on using the public’s opinions of Detroit as the main indication on how our project can surpass the initial year and continue into further campaign strategies. Our main goal is to see the increase in population within Detroit and how much of the target market came to the city within the year of the campaign. We also are going to review the benefit of the grant competition and evaluate if it generated enough revenue for the businesses to survive within the city. This will determine if it’s a justified decision to replicate the competition at a later date. Finally, we plan on evaluating the public opinions of their perceptions of Detroit through online evaluations via our website and email distributed through the members in order to understand the public’s opinion on Detroit after the year long campaign in completed.
Background & Situation Analysis:
Detroit, Michigan was once an upbeat and flourishing city with a rich history before becoming a victim of the 2008 recession. In the early 1900’s, Detroit became home to the automobile industry. The automobile industry allowed Detroit to prosper financially. In the span of 30 years, Ford, Chrysler, and GM became the leading automobile manufacturers and became known as The Big Three. The Big Three were able to provide thousands of jobs and pay steady wages for their workers. Alongside the automobile industry were the sports and music industries (Sugrue).
In particular, the Detroit Red Wings and the Detroit Tigers are some of the most historic teams in all of sports history. Each team has won numerous championships, proving that they are elite and can provide the best entertainment. Also, these teams have strong fan bases and longtime season ticket holders which generates tons of revenue (Red Wings/Tigers Timeline).
Detroit made a stamp in the music industry when Barry Gordy created Motown Records in 1960. This establishment became a stop for anyone who wishes to pursue a career in music. Motown Records is home to genre ranging from Jazz and Blues to Rock and Roll. Notable artists that have come out of Detroit have been Kid Rock and Eminem (Motown Music - The Sound That Changed America).
In recent years, however, Detroit’s economy has progressively shifted from prosperity to poverty. The recession in 2008 was the greatest contributor to Detroit’s bankruptcy. The city currently owes money to more than 100,000 creditors, facing nearly $20 billion in debt and unfunded liabilities (ABC News, 2013). The significant population decline of over 50% in the past 50 years has negatively contributed to the current financial crisis because the city generates less money with less people. With a lower population, taxes increase and businesses shut down.
Detroit’s recent improvements include decreased crime and unemployment rates. Although Detroit continues to be known as the city with the highest crime rates, a better security system has been taking action against the violence. The Detroit Police Department (DPD) reports there were 14% less criminal homicides in 2013, than in the previous two years. According to the author of Detroit Unspun, Cindy Pasky, Detroit plans on becoming one of America’s safest cities. The overall crime rate dropped by 10% as of November 2014. It was discovered that most violent crimes are domestic in nature, involving people who already know each other (Pasky, 2014). From this, we can conclude that Detroit is on its way to becoming a safer city for its residents.
The unemployment rate has decreased from 27.8% in 2009, to 17.7% in 2014. Despite the improvement, this number is more than twice the national percentage of 6.1% (U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014). There are not many job openings for the city's working-class and low-income residents (OpportunityDetroit, 2014). The city’s poverty is directly linked to unemployment. The majority of Detroit’s residents are living under the poverty line, relying on government programs to be sustained. The poverty rate as well as the percentage of homeless people are said to decrease in the future with a higher employment rate (Sand, 2012).
There are currently a total of 78,000 abandoned houses and buildings in Detroit. This is partially due to the massive population decline in the past decade. Many homes were lost due to foreclosure, and a great portion of dilapidated or empty buildings are lost to arsons every year. This issue highlights a problem and presents an opportunity. For a while, Detroit has been associated with the term “Rust Belt,” a label for cities with older and sometimes closed industrial buildings. The danger attached to this label is when journalists, artists, filmmakers, and pundits go beyond shorthand labels and instead place their own views onto the city by portraying it in a negative aspect, therefore creating a negative stereotype of the city (Alverez). However, cheap and unoccupied houses and buildings give Detroit the opportunity to rebuild. The average house price in Detroit ranges around $7,500, and some houses sell for as low as a few hundred dollars.
Objectives
ReDefine Detroit is a Non-for-Profit organization that is focused on transforming Detroit, Michigan. We plan to transform Detroit through three key objectives; change perceptions about Detroit, increase the population, and increase the local businesses. We have proposed three campaigns that target each one of these ideas individually. Our first campaign, a social media campaign, aims to change perceptions about Detroit and create positive buzz about the city. Our second campaign, a blog, aims to increase the population of the city. And our final campaign, a business grant, will increase the local businesses in the City of Detroit.
Target Market
Detroit has become a popular location for Gen Y, “the Brooklyn of the Midwest.” According to the New York Times, “…downtown Detroit experienced a 59 percent increase in the number of college-educated residents under the age of 35, nearly 30 percent more than two-thirds of the nation’s 51 largest cities” (Hipsters and a Billionaire, 2013). They are attracted by cheap rent, jobs, and the opportunity to do good deeds. Detroit’s youngest adult residents, 18-24 years old, are the most attached of all of the age groups (Knight Soul of the Community, 2010).
Specifically, we are targeting the late millennials, ages 25-34, who are post college and looking for new job opportunities. There are about forty colleges in Michigan but only one college is located in Detroit. The law school at University of Michigan is in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which is about a forty-five minute drive from Detroit. Due to this, we will target the graduates when they look for opportunities after graduation.
The millennials are the largest population in our nation’s history, accounting for almost a quarter of the United States’ population. According to a recent report from demographic research firm Nielsen, nine of the ten most popular markets for millennials fall west of the Mississippi River; with Austin, Texas being the most popular market for millennials with 16% popularity (Isaacs, 2014). Detroit has the potential to become a popular market for millennials east of the Mississippi River with cheap rent, jobs and the opportunity to do good deeds, which are all attractive to millennials. We capitalize on Detroit’s nickname of “Brooklyn of the Midwest” for the millennials.
Action Plan
Based on our objectives stated earlier, our strategy statement is to inspire people to change their views of Detroit and increase both Detroit’s population and small business. Detroit is in need of a transformation and thus, transformation is our key message of our campaign.
Social media is free so it will be our main form of media to be utilized. Shared media allows anyone to generate content. Social media is very popular with our target market, with 73% of adults on social networking sites and 42% on multiple social networking platforms. According to the Pew Research Internet Project, Facebook is the most popular with 71%, followed by Twitter at 18% and Instagram at 17%. Facebook appeals to a variety of demographic groups while Twitter and Instagram specifically appeal to younger adults and urban dwellers, with Twitter and Instagrams user base often overlapping. We will be mainly utilizing these sites, particularly Instagram for our campaign, because both Facebook and Instagram have high levels of user engagement, with users checking those sites daily (Duggan & Smith, 2013). These sites can all be linked together so Twitter hashtags on an Instagram photo can be published to Facebook and trend on Twitter.
As demonstrated by Edelman’s The Social Pulpit, people trust content generated by people like them ("The Social Pulpit Barack Obama's Social Media Toolkit," 2009). Through our campaign, people will generate content on social media that can be shared with other users, including their family and friends. Millennials particularly enjoy sharing content on social media, which allows them to engage others online.
Our first campaign is primarily using Instagram with the “What’s Your Before and After?” campaign. Transformation is the key theme of our campaign and this resonates with our target market’s desire to do good deeds. People love to share their transformations, especially online now, whether it’s weight loss, home improvement, or another milestone. For many days of the week, different hashtags are standards. For example, there’s #ManCrushMonday, #TransformationTuesday, #WomanCrushWednesday and #ThrowbackThursday. These are staples of Twitter that help to generate content on those days. We want to capitalize on the market of people who are already using the hashtag of #TransformationTuesday and link it to our transformation of Detroit. This part of the campaign will achieve our goal of changing perceptions of Detroit while raising awareness of our campaign. #TransformationTuesday is a popular recurring trend because it allows us to connect through social media to share the human experience of change by injects feeling, emotion and humanity. #TransformationTuesday is all about personal growth, evolution and change, which appeals in the same way that #ThrowbackThursday does ("On #TransformationTuesday, Change Trends Online", 2013).
Our campaign’s Instagram campaign will release transformation images of Detroit. Users can tag their own transformation photos with #TransformingDetroit, #WhatsYourBeforeAndAfter, #BeforeAndAfter, #BePartOfTheCollage, #TransformationTuesday, and #TransformationChallenge so we can follow their own transformations. Like the recent wildly successful #ALSIceBucketChallenge, users will nominate 3 other people to post their transformation photos to spread our campaign. The most popular transformation photos will be featured on digital billboards along 94 E/W, which is an interstate that stretches from Chicago to Detroit and runs through Chicago. It costs $4,882 for 4 weeks with 6 rotating advertisers with 1,665 spots per day per advertiser, which gives us 1.2 million impressions ("Lamar Advertising Company, n.d."). People will encourage their photos to shared so they can trend because they will want the opportunity to have their transformation photo prominently displayed on a billboard on a major highway, which allows millions of people to see it. The photos add a personal feel to the campaign and people will be driven to our website from the billboard to contribute to the campaign.
We will utilize pulse advertising for this campaign and encourage submissions during the New Year, to capitalize on New Year’s resolutions for change, and during the summer, when people tend to tackle transformation projects. When we finish our campaign at the end of the year, we will take all of the transformation photos and combine them into a collage. This collage will be available on the website and we can make a timelapse video on YouTube that will show our collage being assembled. The collage will be the image of a hand with a heart below the thumb, to symbolize Detroit as the heart of Michigan. Since Michigan looks like a hand, native of Michigan use their hand as a map to show where they are from. We’ll utilize this symbol for our collage and as a logo. This allows us to connect with natives of the area and adds an emotional appeal to our campaign.
Dan Gilbert, a native of Detroit, is the billionaire chairman and founder of Quicken Loans. He relocated his business to Detroit, which brought employees to the area. He’s bought real estate for his business, which utilizes the abandoned properties. His employees can be consumers in Detroit and they can take advantage of the abandoned homes at cheap rates to purchase real estate.
Since he's an opinion leader who's interested in helping Detroit, his company could sponsor a blog that profiles different millennials who moved to Detroit for a job with Quicken Loans and follows them as they adapt to Detroit. The bloggers would be volunteers from the company and the blog will follow them throughout the year. People’s favorite subject is themselves and we can use that as a way for them to talk about their move to Detroit, which is a transformation for them. They could also offer their tips for relocating to Detroit. It would offer a young, authentic, personal view and also be cross-promotion with Quicken Loans, which is already established as a Detroit business. As the new, young professionals talk about their lives in Detroit, they can profile other local businesses, which offers them promotional coverage. This will allow for more user generated content that the public can trust. This part of our campaign will achieve our objective of increasing Detroit’s population by encouraging others to move to Detroit. It also could promote local Detroit businesses, especially our sponsor of Quicken Loans.
Finally, to increase local business in Detroit, we will have a contest for three companies to have the opportunity to win $100,000 each as a business grant to start a business in Detroit. On our website, people can submit their detailed business plan to the contest during a two month period. After the submission period ends, an independent review board will spend one month reviewing submissions and interviewing candidates. They will narrow submissions down to the top ten candidates, based on the best businesses for Detroit with the most feasible plans, and then the public can vote for the businesses. The voting will last two months and the public can vote daily with a registered account on our website to keep the voting ethical. This will also drive traffic to our website. After the voting is completed, the top three businesses will each receive $100,000 for to start their businesses in Detroit. Each of those winners will enter into contracts with us to insure that the money is used as stated in their business plans for their business in Detroit. There are over 1,000 law student at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, which is only forty-five minutes away, and we can use the law students from the University of Michigan to write our business contracts with the business grant winners. Law students have to complete 80 pro-bono hours per year so drawing up these contracts for the businesses will allow the lawyers to complete some of their mandatory pro-bono hours, while giving them important contract experience and skills. It also allows for community engagement.
Staff and Budget - Approach 1
Our first approach has a great involvement in social media, which will minimize our budget expense. We plan on utilizing pulse advertising, particularly during the New Year and the summer months. The New Year capitalizes on people’s New Year’s resolutions. The summer months seem to be the most appealing to people and this is a time period when everyone is engaged in social media. The plan for our Instagram campaign is to display the top 10 most liked photos on a digital billboard on one of Detroit’s most used highways. This advertising will be effective because it will spread awareness about Detroit’s efforts, and encourage an increasing amount of people to participate in redefining the city. The digital billboard advertising will cost a total of $16,000 during the four months when our campaign will be utilizing pulse advertising.
Next, we plan on hiring a social media coordinator. A social media coordinator will be of special importance to our campaign because he or she will teach us about current social trends and how they relate to our campaign, as well as work together with our team to increase fanbase and audience participation on Instagram and other social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Our social media coordinator’s responsibility will also include keeping up with latest news and updates and make necessary changes. We plan on hiring a freelance social media coordinator to allow more flexibility with working hours. This staff member will receive a total compensation of $64,000 for their services.
A senior consultant will be a necessary investment to use in all three of our approaches. This person will guide us through each campaign and offer our team and other leaders expert advice to improve our efforts. The senior consultant will not need to be in the office every day, so they can be part time and flexible with their hours. They will be paid $80,000. Our senior consultant will also work together with a graphic designer to make our billboard more effective and appealing to the public. The graphic designer will be in charge of designing our billboard in a way that draws attention and sparks interest. The appearance and design of our billboard will be the way in which our campaign is further advertised. We will pay our graphic designer a sum of $50,000 for this project.
Lastly, we will hire a PR consultant to manage the public image and reputation of our Instagram campaign. Because the main focus of this approach is to change people’s negative perceptions of Detroit, it is very important to make our efforts and success known. A PR consultant will support our team by developing promotional strategies, writing news releases, and organizing events. These efforts will generate public interest and acceptance of our campaign. We plan on using our hired PR consultant for all three of our campaigns, and compensate him or her with a sum of $12,000.
Staff and Budget - Approach 2 & 3
We have already established in this proposal that the Quicken Loans blogging approach will be a year long plan while the business grant approach will be about three months. For the blogging campaign, we are going to hire the employees of Quicken Loans. The reason why we want them to be a part of our staff is that they will be our opinion leaders inside the business atmosphere as well outside the business. What we want are the employees of Quicken Loans to blog about how their lives have changed over the course of the year. They are going to blog on our website weekly talking about how their lives have changed since coming to Detroit. They can talk about anything they want and what we hope to accomplish is they are going to shed some positive light about Detroit.
Since they are our opinion leaders, we are not going to pay them any money, but plan that their volunteered efforts will create positive buzz about Detroit. Also, if our hired staff are going to blog, they will need a website. In order to accomplish this, we will hire a Website Specialist, which will cost $50,000. The Website Specialist will do the heavy duty work when it comes to our site. He or she will design the website with the features we intend to have; our logos, tabs, links, and contact information. Lastly, in order to keep our website up and running, we will hire Website Maintenance for $5,000. The role of maintenance will be to record the amount of visitors that view our website, the amount of people who sign-up through our website, the number of people who donate to our organization, and the amount of business owners who want to apply for our business grants.
For our business grant approach, we plan to award the top three companies with $100,000 each, coming out to a total of $300,000. However, earning this money will not be easy for the participants. We will need lawyers to ensure that we are awarding money to genuine companies. Hiring full-time lawyers is going to cost an extensive amount of money. Since the University of Michigan has over 1,000 post-graduate lawyers, we will utilize post-graduate lawyers. This is ideal for our campaign because we will not need to pay these lawyers since it will count towards their mandatory Pro Bono work. In return, these post-grad lawyers will gain valuable experience handling business law. The role of these post-grad lawyers is to handle any legal issues we might face during this three month process. They will create the contracts for our winning businesses and make sure that these businesses will not go under or spend their money unwisely. Lastly, we are going to hire a review board. With a review board in place, they will be able to decide which businesses will prosper in Detroit. The review will handle all applications for our business grant campaign and they will also conduct all of the interviews for prospective candidates. For this three month process, we plan to pay our review board $20,000.
We have reserved $60,000 for grant business events and promotions. This money will go towards planning events that will promote the three businesses that won the grant competition. $20,000 will go to each business towards their promotions.
Ad Campaign
Throughout the extensive ad campaign, we will cover a multitude of mediums which revolve around the central idea of changing the perspective of the public on what Detroit’s reality is, in spite of the current stereotypical view. We have reserved $200,000 to go towards our expenses for the advertisement campaigns.
In our first approach, we will introduce a symbol that will represent Detroit as the essential “heart of Michigan.” Many men and women from Michigan take pride with the fact that they have a portable map wherever they go of the state they live, which is the back of their hand. Whenever a person wants to indicate where they are from, they point to the part of their hand where the map of Michigan matches the shape. Detroit itself lies right underneath the “thumb” of Michigan, almost where the heart would be in a person. To portray this idea, we will portray Detroit as a heart on the back of a hand in a simple image that can be replicated easily if someone wanted to use the image. We wanted the image to be simple so that people could understand the message while being able to apply it to their own life; in this case they can replicate the image by placing a heart on the back for their hand. The main goal is to show Detroit as the heart of Michigan and portray that it supports the rest of the state being “hand-in-hand” with what it believes in.
The second part of the campaign is a gorilla marketing technique that portrays the change people can create when visiting Detroit. We will create a tarp that shows the image of a half a new car or building, depending on what we place the tarp on. We would then take the tarp to a well populated area and drape it over either a run-down car or building. The car or building would then be shown as half run down and half rebuilt with words under the image saying, “Build the Detroit you want to see”. We are trying to portray to the public that Detroit can be whatever the public wants it to be, having the resources and the affordability to become the thing they always wanted whether it be a new business, home, or life.
Finally, we constructed a storyboard for a potential commercial that portrays Detroit in the way that diminishes the negative stereotypes that have been placed onto it. The commercial starts off by having text appear on screen that says, “how many see us” and then it cuts to an alley with trash thrown around the area. The commercial then cuts to another shot of text that reads, “This is how we see it”. The commercial then cuts to the same alley scene but the camera pans backwards and soon the frame is filled with a bustling city with active people walking along the street. The commercial then ends with texts that reads, “Lets ReDefine Detroit Together.” The commercial ends with our campaign symbol, the hand with heart. This commercial portrays the new image of Detroit, a bustling city, and gives the audience the idea that Detroit has changed and is not the same city that they have grown accustomed to.
Website
The website our group has designed is used mostly for functionality and for men and women to keep up with current events happening within Detroit. The website will have a section where people can log-in using a username and password where they can then vote on events the website has provided, such as the business creation grant. People will also be able to view events happening within Detroit that will be frequently updated in order to allow people to see what they can do on different days within the area. The website will also provide links to Instagram, Twitter, and various other social media outlets in order to stay updated within the campaign. Finally, the website will have a section that allows people to donate to our campaign with a separate area that contains contact information so people can join our campaign easily and use their resources in order to help our efforts of making Detroit a thriving city once again.
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