Marcus Collins

Teaching social media marketing and consumer behavior for degree programs and executive education.
Faculty Member of Center for Sports Marketing Research with the School of Sport Management.

Golden Apple Award nominee 2017

Currently leading the agency's social marketing practice. Cross-channel strategic development for brands across a wide spectrum of industries. Led new business acquisition for Nescafé, Purell (GoJo), DiGiorno's, California Pizza Kitchen (frozen), Comcast, & brightpeak financial.

Master Class session designer and instructor.
https://www.hyperisland.com/

Developed and led the social engagement practice for the agency, including the vision, growth, and
management of a 21 team-member department at the helm of all social strategy, creative,
activation, and measurement/analytics. Responsible of social thought leadership and ideation
across the agency's client roster: State Farm, Bud Light(s), Budweiser Music, McDonald's,
Brooklyn Nets, Coca-Cola, and Target.

• Created, launched, and led the social campaign strategies and activations for:
o State Farm’s Cliff Paul (as a companion to the ATL work)
o Budweiser + Jay-Z’s Made In America music festival
o Brooklyn Nets
o Bud Light Platinum (the #1 food and beverage product launch of 2012)
o Bud Light Lime-A-Rita and Straw-Ber-Rita

• Oversaw all channel strategy, community management, content creation, & analytics for:
o State Farm’s Facebook and Twitter channels (for both Flagship and Nation)
o State Farm’s Cliff Paul Twitter and Instagram handle
o Bud Light’s Facebook and Twitter channels
o Bud Light Platinum’s Facebook and Twitter channels
o Bud Light Lime’s Facebook page
o McDonald’s Big Mac Facebook page

• Designed strategies for brand publishing and supervised content execution for Bud Light, directly linking online consumer behavior to offline behavior through the participation of a Facebook + Data Logix research study.
o 6x return on advertising spend
o 3.3% sales lift
o $1.6M incremental sales

Innovations In Marketing - Social Engagement:
Bob Dylan once sang, “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” and in the world of marketing, truer words have never been spoken. The ubiquity of technology and the advent of the social web have made it theoretically easier to reach target audiences but simultaneously more difficult to ‘break through.’ This shift has challenged conventional approaches to marketing communications and put more emphasis on leveraging social media as a means to engage consumers and propagate communications, ideas, products, and the like. This course takes an in-depth look at the relationship between media and human behavior in order to equip students with the ability to design socially driven marketing initiatives. Students will get hands-on experience creating comprehensive social strategies and marketing campaigns for active brands that aim to catalyze sharing from person to person.

POP 537: Social Media
This course is not about Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or any of the other many 'social media’ platforms that exist today, though they are important. Instead, this course is about people, their relationships, and our ability to influence each other’s decisions and subsequent behavior. It’s through understanding the dyadic ties - our relationships - that connect us all to one another, and the dynamics thereof, that enable us to leverage social media technologies - and other social environments - to spread ideas, messages, products, and the like. Students will be able to engineer programs/ experiences that induce desired consumer actions like sharing, sampling, and ultimately, buying (in some cases).

Delivered and co-authored (with colleague, Chaucer Barnes) the Summer 2014 program methodology, The Contagion Cookbook, for participates to use while crafting client solutions. The Contagion Cookbook is an actionable framework that satisfies the conditions necessary for creating cultural contagion. This is not about going "viral," though it is a welcomed side-effect. Instead, the Cookbook is singularly focused on stimulating cultural wake. The principles of the framework enable marketers to permeate a population's consciousness and drive behavioral adoption by leveraging fundamentals of human behavior and brand behavior.

Supervised the direction and growth of major accounts for the social media and branded content agency including brands like Microsoft, GORE-TEX®, Colgate-Palmolive, and Fisher Price.

• Successfully led cross-functional teams through strategy, ideation, development, and launch of social media campaigns and digital content distribution.

• Increased Facebook “likes” for Gore-Tex® by 234%, resulting in a 1,090% rise in conversations, a 134% spike in Twitter engagements, & 17% target audience growth.

• Spearheaded creation and distribution of branded content for SoftSoap that led to over 1.6M video views, exceeding client expectation by over 70%.

• Responsible for all digital and social endeavors, across the management company's entire talent roster, most predominately, Beyoncé.

• Created online strategy and executed digital exclusive launch of Beyoncé’s hit music video, “Why Don’t You Love Me,” resulting in 1.5M views in the first 30 hours of release.

• Spearheaded the online strategy and execution of the company's marketing campaigns in support of the Beyoncé “IAM WORLD TOUR” DVD launch and Thanksgiving ABC special which went on to sale double platinum in the first week of release.

• Led email and social media marketing execution for the company's launch of Beyoncé’s Heat perfume, resulting in $3M in first month sales and 72K units sold in first hour of launch; making Heat the #1 celebrity fragrance in the US, Canada, UK, South Africa, & Australia.

• Successfully developed company’s overall interactive strategy and marketing approach to maximize online fan engagement and optimize brand advocacy, leading to a double digit increase in digital product sales and a 164% growth in online brand awareness.

• Managed online communities for all Music World artists and brand properties; focusing on audience aggregation, fan engagement, and brand advocacy to streamline brand communication; resulting in a 356% increase in audience reach, over 11M consumers.

• Designed and supervised the creation of Music World’s rebranding initiative, including redesign of company website, overhaul of brand ethos, creative direction of all marketing campaigns, management of all online brand properties, and creation of company voice.

• Developed, managed, and launched the Music World Summer Internship Program to identify talent, increase brand awareness, and promote brand advocacy; 16 interns selected from 500+ applicants at top universities like Harvard, UMich, and UT-Austin.

Digital and social strategy consultation for Interactive One assignment

• Identified unique value proposition with college/university partners to increase iTunes consumer acquisition and grow iTunes U; developed partner initiative into a scaleable program, led pilot launch to reach 1M consumer. Exceeded program expectations, doubled consumer reach for second launch.

• Managed Nike partnership, leading all digital-music marketing initiatives to message and promote Nike+ co-branding campaigns, promotion visibility exceeding 22M consumer reach.

• Negotiated and secured terms for Nike promotion visibility with internal cross-functional teams, third-party partners, and major retail channels; promotion reach of 58M potential consumers.

• Synthesized, designed, and wrote copy for marketing communication of iTunes online presence. Redeveloped iTunes.com partner page to optimize user experience, establish partner expectations, and further promote iTunes marketing initiatives.

• Analyzed partner agreements to evaluate restrictions and identify opportunities within contractual

• Developed 5 year revenue growth strategy for the company’s UK operations, specifically centered around online service integration.

• Created short and long-term marketing strategies in order to increase revenue after analysis of current client awareness and external communication.

• Presented findings, recommendations, and implementation opportunities to senior executive board and president of Harris Interactive, Europe.

Developed and managed youth leadership initiative in Ethiopia for middle school children. Program launched in the fall of 2008.

• Negotiated and secured regional ad campaign with McDonalds to increase artist visibility and widely promote release of new single.

• Organized 12 city national tour with the NBA’s “Rhythm n’ Rims Tour presented by Sprite, resulting in national exposure for Muse artists and an increase company
revenue by 38%.

• Managed & served as music director for 10 city tour in the United Kingdom; introduced Muse Recordings to international consumer market, exceeding forecasted sales by 23%.

• Secured seed-capital to finance startup operational costs including recording, distribution, marketing, and promotions; co-wrote company business plan and developed marketing strategy.

• Created company brand identity including logo, website, public relations, and marketing communication.

Retail marketing and event planning.