Kate Tueller | Zeppe’s Italian Ice | Public Relations
Project Summary
I did marketing and public relations for Zeppe’s Italian Ice, a delicious dessert shop in Salt Lake City. My plan consisted of three main areas, but each area did not share equal weight (see chart below). The majority of my project was planning a Bride’s Night Out event. For this event, I planned, advertised and organized every detail to promote Zeppe’s catering options for weddings. I also created content for and audited their social media accounts to increase awareness and ultimately, sales. Lastly, I organized a calendar of events and scheduled vendor opportunities for Zeppe’s to attend in order to get more exposure in the community.
Project Breakdown
Bride’s Night Out Event
I came up with the idea for Zeppe’s to host a Bride’s Night Out event to promote their catering options for weddings. Because catering brings the company a lot of revenue and my client really wanted to promote catering options, this was where I strategically decided to focus most of my efforts. I created social media posts, social media advertisements, an email blast, flyers, and other promotional material. I then monitored the paid advertisements to ensure they were reaching our specific targeted audience and made adjustments where they were needed.
I made an event booklet with all the details for the event including the goals and objectives, mission statement, timeline, budget, decorations, activities and evaluation. This book was sent to the client to help them run the event and stay organized.
The event was really successful! We had over thirty people attend and it was only planned a month in advance. Because it happened just a few days ago, we aren’t sure what its full effects are yet, but I look forward to seeing how many people choose Zeppe’s to cater at their wedding in the near future. The client loved this idea so much they plan to make it an annual event.
Marketing
The owners of Zeppe’s don’t have a lot of time to think about marketing and advertising. They are so busy running the business and don’t see the priority of paying someone to do their marketing. After discussing priorities with the owners, I decided to research events happening near Salt Lake where they could potentially vend. I put together a list with detailed information about each event and created a calendar so they could keep everything organized. This will ensure that they don’t miss out on events where they can make a lot of sales.
Social Media
To begin helping Zeppe’s with their social media, I conducted an audit on all of their social media platforms and set goals with the owners. Based on those goals, I created a guide that included the best practices for posting on social media. I made changes to their profile and bio to make it more professional and on-brand. I made several pieces of content and templates on Canva that they could easily manipulate in the future to keep their content on-brand. Because they don’t know how to use Canva, I recorded a tutorial video demonstrating how to use the website. I also posted several times during this process to showcase good examples. Lastly, in order to provide their followers with important information, I created highlight cover photos on Instagram and added several stories to each highlight.
Conclusion
I feel that this project was a perfect combination of the most important things I’ve learned during my time at BYU-Idaho. Design, Public Relations and Marketing have been my favorite areas and I’m grateful I was able to implement all of them into my senior project. I learned the importance of being proactive, making adjustments based on data, branding, working with a client virtually, and much, much more. If you haven’t tried Zeppe’s Italian Ice, it’s definitely worth a visit, or two.