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Ringling College of Art and Design has always believed in supporting
alumni-owned businesses. A mainstream e-communications contract
with a Hispanic ad agency founded by Ringling alumni has proved
to be more than good will. It is good business.
Pedro Perez launched Nuevo
Advertising Group along with his wife
Roseanne in 2001. "E-commerce is not new," he says. “It’s
how we do it that makes the difference.” A multicultural
approach and success level makes this campaign notable in my judgment
as well.
Here's some history. Nuevo did not start as a Hispanic
agency,
and its moniker does not really do the company justice. Boyd
Gaming,
owners of numerous casinos including Stardust, was one of the early
clients. The agency managed the web presence, online promotions
and customer rewards -- in English. The shift to Hispanic
marketing came as Sarasota media and businesses continuously asked Perez
to translate English campaigns into Spanish for the significant
Latino population in Florida.
Literal translation was not good enough. Perez felt that trans-culturization
was necessary for effective communications. A sensitivity to culture,
whether Latino or Anglo, distinguishes the Nuevo approach. Thus,
Nuevo Advertising Group and a spinoff, Nuevo Translation.
Back to Ringling. Christine Meeker Lange, special assistant to
the president for media and community relations, joined Ringling
College after an earlier career with several media companies. “Ringling
was good academically. But from an e-marketing and communications
side, it was weak. We couldn’t even send an HTML email,” she
recalls. Over a year and a half she has convinced one department
after another of the need to shift from print to electronic to
improve communications and save on printing and postage.
Initially, she paid Perez a small retainer to consolidate and manage
certain college databases, and to begin experimenting. An adult
continuing education campaign garnered 400 registrations - a 20
per cent lift over the usual. Gradually alumni, career services
and some other departments joined in to share news, promote events
and maintain relationships using e-mail.
Nuevo now manages all of Ringling's electronic communications,
other than admissions. Messages are based on a rich understanding
of the audience, explains Perez. “We control what, when and
how they receive. We do not overwhelm recipients with multiple
e-blasts. There is also room for one-off opportunities.” Nuevo
fine tunes by day of week and time of day using sophisticated analytics.
Messages are in either English or Spanish. They have what Perez
calls unfettered control of all electronic messaging to analyze
open rates, clickthroughs and forwarding to really see what is
resonating with recipients.
There are operational benefits as well. Ms. Lange observed that
even an event invitation became a laborious manual task of collecting
RSVPs from multiple sources, including post cards and telephone
calls, then logging into a crude spreadsheet. Now the e-response
device automatically populates a spreadsheet to manage acceptance
rates and other analytics.
An expanded Nuevo now manages a variety of marketing activities:
Continuing Studies and Special Programs e-marketing and Google
AdWords campaigns; recruiter links to students and graduates; student
exhibitions; press releases and more.
Most important than technology is a thorough understanding of the
Ringling community. Pedro and Roseanne attended Ringling. They,
like so many alumni, students and faculty, are bicultural and bilingual.
They know, like so many others are discovering, that training in
the arts combined with left-brained business skills make a powerful
combination.
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