How Cirque du Soleil Manages Marketing with Podio
Posted by Michael Dean, 16 May, 2013 | Podio Blog
Here’s a story about what happens in Vegas that doesn’t have to stay in Vegas! Meet the Cirque du Soleil marketing team from Las Vegas and see how they use Podio to run their marketing processes – specifically, how they handle creative jobs. You can get started managing marketing on Podio as well with our new App Pack built to do just that: Marketing Management – free in the Podio App Market.
Before finding Podio, the team at Cirque du Soleil Las Vegas was using the familiar combo of documents and emails to handle job traffic. This was not without its issues.
“It was very hard to manage the jobs that I had open because there wasn’t a centralized location where we were storing all of our jobs. So I could have opened up 10 jobs in one day, and two days later I was having to go through my emails to figure out what I had opened and what was still out there and what I had to follow up on,” explained Megan Pechin, assistant marketing manager.
Cirque du Soleil knew there was a better way. Andy Levey, senior manager of new media and analytics, and his team found the solution in Podio.
“What attracted us to Podio was that it put everything in one place, and it was something you could fully customize,” said Andy. “It wasn’t just a project management system – it was a project management system for our needs. No two projects are the same, and it’s really cool as the project manager to build in different aspects of that in different apps on the Podio platform itself.”
Of the apps created for their marketing processes – including ones for managing large projects and tracking social media content on a calendar – the Jobs app is the main hub of activity for the team on Podio. Everyone from graphic designers to project managers to executives can request and follow the progress of creative jobs in one place and on any device.
Senior graphic designer Jason Isaac described how the increased transparency of workflows in Podio over email has enabled team leaders to get a much faster and more complete overview of projects.
“It’s allowed us visibility throughout the company with people that would not normally have the time to do it,” said Jason. “[They can see] what the artwork looks like, or we’re talking about the new creative or the program or the T-shirt give away or the different initiatives that are going on. They can see what it looks like in real time.
“Is it in the art department? Is it in the marketing department? Is it at the vendor? Which vendor is printing it? Who signed off on it? When it was signed off on?” said Jason. “They can get so granular, or they can really step back and get that bird’s-eye view of everything that’s going on.”
Following the success of Podio within the marketing department, members of the sales and PR teams have now begun working with the marketing team on Podio to manage the production of assets like presentations and trade show material: “It’s been very seamless for them, and we’ve actually began the processes of mapping out how Podio can fit their specific needs,” explained Jason. “It’s mainly connecting into the marketing department at this point in time. Talk to me in two months and I guarantee you that won’t be the case – it will be more than that.”
I hope you’ll find this example of marketing on Podio inspiring. Perhaps you’re already using Podio in your company for another function like CRM or recruiting, but you would like to get the marketing department on board, too. For that, the new Podio Marketing Management apps are a great place to start.
{ SOURCE: Podio Blog | http://goo.gl/20LVIB, http://youtu.be/cWAbucaDx3s }
