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Conversations with a Marketing Consultant - Carrie Eller
During my time on jury duty, I had the privilege of meeting Carrie Eller, a self-employed Marketing Consultant in Tulsa, and talking with her about marketing.
Eller has a degree in fine arts and art history from Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado. After graduation, she went to work for the Tulsa Opera and then for the Philbrook Museum. Although her degree was in art, she actually ended up doing fundraising development for both of these organizations. This experience led to a job at F&M Bank as the Director of Marketing, and eventually, starting her own business as a Marketing Consultant.
Her client is still F&M Bank, but now she does it as a contractor. Each year, she gets a budget for F&M's marketing promotions. She considers her target market, proposes three or four ad campaign ideas, F&M chooses which idea they will use for the year, and she does the rest.
For each campaign, she creates, prints and stores statement stuffers, company brochures, does press releases, buys TV and magazine ads, and subcontracts out the artwork. Other responsibilities of her job include organizing and promoting F&M’s annual two-day company celebration for its best customers and working with local nonprofits as part of a co-op marketing effort.
Because she knows the company so well and the image it wants to portray, she has very little face-to-face time with the president. She is able to make most of the creation and design decisions herself. This can be a blessing or a curse, she said, depending on the outcome. The president often expects her to make the decisions; but, if he doesn’t like them, she has to start over. The blessing is that she can work at her own pace, and she gets to use her own creativity.
Last year, Eller created a campaign that played off the word, “able.” Each of her promotions featured the bank as capable or dependable and other words ending in “able.” All the promotions used the same logo, font and colors to provide continuity.
Eller recommends that students get a general business degree rather than specialize in public relations. She believes that “public relations is a piece of anything you do.”
Eller and her husband have been in the restaurant business for a number of years. This November, they are starting a new restaurant in Midtown called, Sprouts, which will feature healthy and Kosher menu items. It will be open for breakfast and lunch, as well as offer a take-home menu for dinner.
Eller has a degree in fine arts and art history from Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado. After graduation, she went to work for the Tulsa Opera and then for the Philbrook Museum. Although her degree was in art, she actually ended up doing fundraising development for both of these organizations. This experience led to a job at F&M Bank as the Director of Marketing, and eventually, starting her own business as a Marketing Consultant.
Her client is still F&M Bank, but now she does it as a contractor. Each year, she gets a budget for F&M's marketing promotions. She considers her target market, proposes three or four ad campaign ideas, F&M chooses which idea they will use for the year, and she does the rest.
For each campaign, she creates, prints and stores statement stuffers, company brochures, does press releases, buys TV and magazine ads, and subcontracts out the artwork. Other responsibilities of her job include organizing and promoting F&M’s annual two-day company celebration for its best customers and working with local nonprofits as part of a co-op marketing effort.
Because she knows the company so well and the image it wants to portray, she has very little face-to-face time with the president. She is able to make most of the creation and design decisions herself. This can be a blessing or a curse, she said, depending on the outcome. The president often expects her to make the decisions; but, if he doesn’t like them, she has to start over. The blessing is that she can work at her own pace, and she gets to use her own creativity.
Last year, Eller created a campaign that played off the word, “able.” Each of her promotions featured the bank as capable or dependable and other words ending in “able.” All the promotions used the same logo, font and colors to provide continuity.
Eller recommends that students get a general business degree rather than specialize in public relations. She believes that “public relations is a piece of anything you do.”
Eller and her husband have been in the restaurant business for a number of years. This November, they are starting a new restaurant in Midtown called, Sprouts, which will feature healthy and Kosher menu items. It will be open for breakfast and lunch, as well as offer a take-home menu for dinner.
Comment
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Comment by Jessica Chapman on October 11, 2009 at 9:27pm - I'm friends with Carrie! Her daughter used to go to my daughter's preschool. Lots of fun playdates. She is super nice. I didn't realize how involved she was in this field. I'll have to talk to her about it more! Very cool.
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Comment by Lauren Ennis on October 11, 2009 at 8:23pm -
That's a really interesting story. It's cool how things just fall into place like that... I hope my job search happens similarly!
Regarding the new customers question... I would think a lot of people follow in the footsteps of their parents when choosing a bank. Parents often help their kids open savings accounts when they are young, which might lead the child to stick with that bank as they get older. Especially when dealing with an old bank with a good reputation, the clients are most likely very loyal, which would lead to the same attitude from their family members.
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Comment by Cindy Downes on October 11, 2009 at 5:21am - What about getting new customers? Won't they go out of business if they don't attract new ones? How do young people decide on a bank, especially young entrepreneurs as F&M is primarily a commercial bank.
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Comment by Liz Horkey on October 10, 2009 at 8:00pm - I could understand why some people aren't dying to embrace social media and others are. If a lot of the banks' clients are older and don't use a computer for social uses, a social media campaign would just be a waste of time. But I have learned in marketing that it is better to market to the customers you have rather than spend more money to attract new ones. Maybe she is thinking in those terms.
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Comment by Cindy Downes on October 10, 2009 at 1:24pm
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I forgot to mention that she does not use any social media to promote F&M bank.
Her belief is that it's an old company and doesn't need it. What do you think about this?
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Comment by Kathryn Nygaard on October 10, 2009 at 12:16pm - Great story. Jury duty sure paid off in an opportunity to connect with this successful business woman. I love reading about successes stories like this. The Socially Orange ad for the London trip led me to look further into Dr. Jami Fullerton, who is heading up the event. I was just reviewing the Web site at http://www.osu-tulsa.okstate.edu/sharedvalues/broadcastnews.aspx about her advertising campaign to promote America. The campaign was an effort to intermationally improve the American image through the media. She wrote a book called, Advertising's War on Terrorism, which she talked about on the KWGS that can be heard on the Web site. She has a wonderful success story, and from what I've read, she's ranked right up there with people like Barbara Walters.
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