​​​​Nicole Cassis​

The marketing and branding activities I have employed spanned a range of budgets, geographies, personas and target audiences, and have included designing, building out and managing a multitude of tactics. My experience includes working with new and emerging brands, established brands, troubled brands, fragmented brands, and sub-brands in branded house and a house of brands. My roles have extended across the spectrum from vision and planning, to development and implementation, all the way through to tracking, reporting and optimization.
 

Ad Planning  |  Brand Exposure Events  |  Copywriting  |  Collateral Design  |  Digital Ads  |  Direct Mail  | 
E-mail Marketing  |  Website Design  |  Web Copy and Optimization  |  SEO  |  ROI Tracking  |  Video

​

​
 

 

​

My 5-Step Strategy When Joining a New Brand:

1. Problem Identification

Goal: Pinpoint primary business pain. (High churn? ARPU dropping? Lackluster new sales?)

Method: Discussion with business leader and/or executive team.
 

2. Brand Audit

Goal: Uncover the reason for the brand’s existence. In the words of author Simon Sinek, “Start with why.” Explore the brand story, review the current go-to-market strategy, including existing assets (what’s in market now) and customer acq strategy, plus probe what’s working, what’s not and what’s missing?

Method: Discussions, focus groups and surveys with internal team members and current clients; leverage mystery shoppers; examine existing strategy, assets and campaigns for each channel; shadow customer service and sales team members.

​

3. Data-focused Investigation

Goal: Analyze product suite, customer data, pipeline data, competitors and popular market trends to determine gaps.

Method: Secure access to reporting databases, conduct competitive analysis, explore churn reports and NPS survey results, read recent executive reports, etc.

​

4. Roadmap Development

Goal: Outline the high-level projects to solve the business problem.

Method: Whiteboard or sketch with pens and paper the buckets of activity, stack rank activity based on impact/estimated ROI, and then plot on timeline.

​

5. Launch

Goal: Start activity, campaign, etc.

Method: Just do it!
 

Overview of My Experience:

• Brand Owner

  • Primary owner of brand vision and consistent execution in communication and experience for more than 12 years, across a variety of brands, including emerging brands, troubled brands, and fragmented brands.

    • Responsible for maintaining umbrella-brand (and university-wide) guidelines at Web.com, North Carolina A&T, and Arizona State University.

    • Entrusted to develop the brand identity for ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration, including messaging, visual identity, collateral suite, and a new website.

  • Deep experience establishing brand identity, including: messaging, positioning, differentiators, unique selling proposition, visual identity, customer segmentation and personas.

  • Successful track record of cascading a consistent brand identity across all platforms and mediums, including websites, collateral materials, direct mail, advertising, live events, social media sites, sales tools and customer touch points.
     

• Rebranding

  • ​Web.com for Enterprise - In this role, I learned that a change in brand name won’t be sufficient if you don’t focus on improving the quality of your products. As an executive team we developed pillars to ensure that our performance, products, and customer service matched our new brand. In April of 2018 I led a rebrand of our business unit, which had formerly been known by several different names in the market.

    • Process included: Communicating reason for rebrand to customers; engaging our customers and communicating to them why we opted for a brand makeover and how it would benefit them; compiling factors that negatively influenced our brand and addressing them while rebranding; developing a branded story for everyone to rally behind to set the stage for every interaction customers have with our brand.

  • Arizona State University School of Earth and Space Exploration - Led two major redesigns of school's website.

  • Florida Coastal School of Law - Led the rebranding efforts by focusing on reputation management. I provided strategic direction and hands-on leadership of external and internal communications to enhance the brand image, resulting in additional 439 positive stories per year.
     

• Marketing

  • Leveraged research, audience insights, and competitive insights to design sound strategy. Employed a comprehensive understanding of psychology, marketing practices and advertising essentials to develop campaigns and catalyze customer growth (sales).

  • Florida Coastal School of Law - I served on a small team tasked with determining the viability of recruiting Canadian students with lower LSAT scores wishing to go to law school. I conducted extensive research regarding the law school market in Canada to forecast potential profitability. I led the development of an internal infrastructure to develop program (finance – exchange rates, tuition; registrar – visas; MarCom – website, collateral; admissions–recruitment events)
     

Details:

• Community Programs -- Dynamic networker and relationship builder with the proven ability to connect and establish key influential partnerships. Created, developed and establish community-based programs involving media, marketing, internet and high-level events.

  • At Arizona State University, I initiated and popularized signature events designed to drive awareness and brand exposure and media attention for the school.

  • Development of strategic partnerships and extensive fundraising campaigns for non-profit organization the 21st Century African Youth Movement, which I served as a board member for four years.
     

• Content Creation -- Partnered with writers, editors, creative staff, and design agencies to create and publish content that inspires a target audience to take the desired action. Created and produced marketing products for national marketing campaigns (E.g., Viewbook, direct-mail, ads, email campaigns, etc.)

​

• Inbound Marketing -- Developed thought leadership strategy, content strategy, podcasts, videos, e-newsletters, lead magnets (content pieces, white papers), social media posts to attract prospects, while employing SEO best practices.
   

• Marketing Certification -- In January 2017, I earned my Marketing Consultant Certification from eMarketing Association.

 

​