JDC West Marketing

What is JDC West?

Jeux de Commerce West (JDC West) is an annual three-day event with over 650 students that showcases ten academic case competitions, an athletics tournament, a parliamentary-style debate, and an out-of-the-box social competition.

Originally from Montreal, it has since expanded as JDC West for 12 western Canadian post-secondary schools. In addition to the attendees, the event works with over 400 volunteers and dozens of partners.

What problem did we need to solve?

The competition travels each to a different school with a different organizing team. Similar to the Olympics, the host school is able to create their own event theme, pillars, branding, and more. 2019 would be the first time for Simon Fraser University and the Beedie School of Business to host the event since JDC West’s inaugural competition in 2006.

Given a fourteen year old legacy, how could our team create a cohesive visual identity and consistent messaging to engage competitors, recruit volunteers, and receive stakeholder and sponsor buy-in?

Tackling the Problem

When I joined the Organizing Committee and the event marketing and creative lead of the event, some of ground had already been created, however, there was still a lot of work to be done. Upon an initial analysis, I made it a commitment to the following:

1. Make branding easy for all teams, regardless of their experience with design.

   • In past competitions, branding was fairly inconsistent especially given the fact there were 15 different portfolio teams. Teams were splintered when it came to creating a cohesive experience for their stakeholders.

2. Clearly differentiate the event from the parent JDC West organization

   • Parent branding would only be used for Board of Director or multi-year related documents & materials to increase visual importance and add hierarchy within the organization.

How did I approach the problem?

There were

How did we execute the plan?

With this core outline, it was easy for me to work with our product management and engineering teams and create core messaging. I wanted to communicate that the app is intuitive to use, time-saving, informative, and responsive.

With a finalized messaging, I was able to create a new brand identity, leveraging elements such as a lesser-used set of colours, cleaner pictograms, consistent mockups and graphics, and more. The mobile app was able to stand on its own and quickly identifiable

Creating Customer Focused Content

First, I created something that teams and customers could start using today. I wrote blogs and one-page data sheets to summarize and provide an overview of the changes for the app. With some initial communications completed, I could focus on generating the new assets.

My favourite pieces included 4 videos, including a promotional splash. Customers were able to learn the basics, understand how the app fits into their workflow, and generate interest in downloading the app. Although I had to create these videos on my own, I was able to leverage a simple After Effects template for some of the mockups reduce a lot of the editing time.

From here, I needed to enable internal teams and that started with an internal messaging and asset guide to help others understand the product and guide their customer conversations. I hosted all of our materials internally on SAP JAM, our in-house collaboration platform for sharing documents and information.

In addition to sharing updates with key stakeholders such as Product Managers and other executives, I included it multiple marketing and sales newsletters, posted it in high traffic Microsoft Teams channels, and presented it on well-attended update calls.

Externally, I updated our Ariba.com webpage, adding all of our new content. Previously these pages were hard to find, confusing, and redundant. I reached out to our web team to add more visual call-outs on other pages and consolidated all of our information.

Additionally, a team member suggested we added a new page as a changelog that links from within the app and on the site. This new changelog reduced customer confusion when updates are released.

Lastly, I supported our product team by optimizing our Google Play and Apple iOS app stores with more intuitive keywords, more descriptive and relevant descriptions and titles, and improved graphics. As SAP Ariba has multiple app offerings, these changes helped improve customer search.

Over a span of two months, we ran organic Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter posts promoting the app changes and learning materials with download links as our CTA. I added it to high traffic locations such as Supplier login page banners, generating over 1,000 clicks. By including it in a large scale virtual event for Suppliers, suppliers were given a a demo of the app as well as a sneak peek into our app roadmap. Then, we created a drip campaign for 3 emails for each of the upcoming quarterly updates. 

Planning for Long Term Communications

Now that a bulk of communications and assets have been released, we can continue to work with our product teams to develop materials for upcoming updates. Supplier can be notified of new changes on the app, on social media, and in upcoming email campaigns and events.

How did we do and what did I learn?

29.86% Increase in Active Users | 38.5% Increase in Downloads | New Branding & Assets

When I was assigned the mobile app, I was excited! I could own this project and see it grow and develop. Thanks to the initiatives that we had created, we changed how customers look at the app. We understand that there’s still a lot of work to be done in regards to app ratings and user acquisition. That said, this period alone helped generate almost 5,000 more active users, including 3,000 new users.

This project has taught me to be more creative in targeting customers and finding what channels we can leverage. It’s been great to learn how to manage stakeholders and to collaborate with other teams specifically Product and Engineering.