College football, good friends, cold brews and delicious food. These are just a few staples of the Southern Tradition, and no one in Nashville does it better than 12South’s very own Edley’s Bar-B-Que. Recently Edley’s hired me to translates the smells, tastes and smokey goodness of their restaurant for online consumption.

Web Strategy and Design

Playing the role of chief web designer and web programmer for Edley’s Bar-B-Que, I helped launch the purveyors of “All Things Southern” into the digital world. Working with the management team for Nashville’s popular barbecue joint, I first put together a website strategy brief to guide the project from conception to publication. After assisting in the initial branding for the site, I worked with the Edley’s team to finalize the organizational structure of the website as well as to create a series of wireframes to ensure proper layout and proportionality.

After the blueprints for the site were established, I put on my graphic design hat (which, since working with Edley’s, they assured had one heck of a wide brim) and worked through a series of design reviews with the team. Once the final spec was approved, I used my experience and knowledge of PHP, CSS and HTML, along with the WordPress content management system, to bake and broil Edley’s Bar-B-Que into their fully-functional website that waters the mouths of their site visitors like a large bowl of Brunswick Stew.

Along with the website design project, I also helped Edley’s establish their social media presence on Twitter and Facebook, and I also serve as their Google Analytics Guru, providing consistent insights and strategies of how to best respond to the dynamics and trends of their web traffic.

We all remember the college daze: football games, house parties, final exam cram sessions, and those sleepless nights worrying about landing a summer internship or how to afford another semester’s worth of textbooks. Now Uloop, Inc., a student powered marketplace where students buy, sell, trade, and promote classified listings, offers students an online resource, organized by school, to help them save time and money when searching for their next job or roommate or what collegiate shenanigans they’re hoping to partake in the coming weekend.

Web Design & Marketing Creative

While working as a freelance marketing and web design consultant for Uloop, I was tasked with a variety of interesting challenges, from improving conversion rates of their most important splash pages to creating a brand new user interface for Uloop.com as well as creating the wireframes for the soon-to-be-released Uloop iPhone app. Along with helping to develop the organizational structure and creative branding for the new user interface, I also created the actual design specs for the entire project, translating the newly formulated strategy into detailed wireframes and then employing my design skills to create finished-product creative specs for the Uloop programming and development team. Furthermore, I developed a variety of new sales and marketing assets (ie. print flyers, splash pages, social media, email marketing, sales presentations, company wordpress blog, etc.) to support Uloop’s overall promotional efforts.

As a former songwriter and artist manager, interesting culture, fast-paced environments, and remarkable ideas get me “jazzed.” As a marketer, Web 2.0 freaks me out, but in a good way. I’m fascinated by emerging technologies, such as social media, user-generated promotions, and all things digital.

I am currently the Manager of Marketing & Business Development at FiledBy, a digital marketing agency within the publishing industry that provides social media and online marketing tools for authors. My work at FiledBy revolves around serving and growing FiledBy’s online author-reader community, and I am responsible for the creation and implementation of all marketing programs, including display advertising, Google AdWords, social media campaigns, e-newsletters, etc.  I also serve as the resident web analytics and site optimization guru, managing a variety of analytics suites (ie. Google Analytics, CrazyEgg, etc.) while providing consultation regarding site enhancements, search engine optimization, and community experience. I also serve as the company’s chief creative designer, translating many of the strategic insights discovered through web analytics and market research into actionable, programmable design and functionality, all the while honing my web and graphic design skills (ie. Proficiency with Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, etc.). For a sample of my design portfolio, please feel free to contact me.

During My MBA Program at the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University, I was involved in a variety of strategic projects, such as developing a marketing dashboard for Ochsner Health and improving the brand identity of Fazoli’s Restaurants while working as a freelance Brand Consultant at Bohan Advertising & Marketing. I also worked as a Digital Marketing Consultant at ECHO Music, helping maximize the ROI of their client’s email marketing campaigns by improving click-through and conversion rates. I also developed the SEO Strategy and Protocol used by the development team when designing and programming the artists’ websites. My affinity for college basketball led me to manage an independent study project developing marketing strategy for the University of Tennessee’s men’s basketball team, where I created the idea, strategy and implementation guide for the Athletic Program’s highly successful “I AM BRUCE” Video Contest, which debuted during the 2009-2010 season.  And, in my spare time, I wrote a killer Nashville-inspired rock album, soon to be available via iTunes.

Over the Summer of my MBA program, I put my leadership skills to the test as a project leader in Vanderbilt’s Accelerator program.  I led a team through a variety of consulting-based competitions, such as creating green initiative strategies for Bridgestone/Firestone, presenting new business opportunities for American Airlines, and devising a marketing campaign for a new healthcare plan provided by Humana. I also helped plan and coordinate the project for the William Morris Agency, which included organizing an off-site visit to the Country Music Hall of Fame as well as a private concert for over three hundred fans for Capitol Records’ Recording Artist Eric Church.

If you or your company would like to hire me as a freelance web consultant or are interested in learning more about my qualifications or experiences, feel free to shoot me an email, download my resume, follow me on Twitter, friend me on Facebook, find me on Foursquare, or even download my album from iTunes!

Not since the “Printing Revolution,” when goldsmith by day, inventor by night Johannes Gutenberg inevitably cured the sore and weary fingers of the Scribe community with the advent of the printing press has the publishing industry seen such radical change within just a few short years. As an online, author-centric platform, directory, and community, FiledBy continues to break down the once-solid barriers to communication between creatives and consumers, bringing book enthusiasts beyond the page and into their favorite author’s inner circle.

Web & Business Analytics

With a directory and community of over 3 million author listings and 8 million book pages, the FiledBy platform generates a wealth of knowledge ripe and ready to be mined and analyzed. As VP of Marketing & Business Development, I was responsible for understanding the intricacies of consumer behavior through a variety of analytics platforms, including Google Analytics and CrazyEgg, as well as for using this data to expand community involvement, improve conversion rates, and drive on-site sales.

Marketing Strategy & Web Design

As a technology startup with a rapidly growing community, the need for quick and effective marketing strategy and web design was vital to keep pace.  My experience with high-level strategic thinking, market research, and graphic design, including Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat, afforded me the opportunity to take a new idea or concept from Ideation to Implementation.  At FiledBy, I was responsible for creating and delivering all marketing advertising pieces, from display ads, print literature, e-newsletters, PPC vis Google AdWords, and all on-site educational and instructional pieces.  Furthermore, I quickly became the company’s chief graphic designer as well, creating both the strategy and  physical design throughout the website, including the homepage, a variety of marketing-focused landing pages, the author and reader profile pages, marketing products and services pages, and all peripheral other on-site design (buttons, pop-outs, fly-overs, etc.)

The Digital Revolution is often a song of heartbreak, sung in minor keys without harmony or encore on the farewell tour of the retiring music business model.  But as quickly as Heavy Metal was exchanged for Grunge, music industry innovators like ECHO Music are rocking and rolling the industry with a fresh new melody.  Although the arrangement is influenced by each individual artist, Search Engine Optimization and Email Marketing are always two important foundational tracks.

Search Engine Optimization Protocol

As search engines such as Google still remain the primary way consumers surf the internet, optimizing one’s web presence to correctly “speak Google’s language” is becoming a vital aspect of every successful online marketing strategy.  As a digital marketing consultant at ECHO, I investigated Search Engine Optimization best practices and industry case examples, audited a variety of client websites for compliance, and created a SEO Protocol and Checklist that was adopted into the client site creation process.  The SEO Protocol was accompanied by a SEO Guide created to educate those without prior knowledge or experience in the field to the strategy behind SEO, the terminology, and the tools to measure its effectiveness.

Email Frequency Analysis

As the designers and administrators of artist and client email marketing campaigns, Echomusic reaches hundreds of thousands of fans each day with messages supporting an upcoming tour, album launch, or a variety of other promotions.  Thinking strategically, I designed a frequency analysis measuring the effectiveness of different email distribution schedules and identified an “email threshold,” the point where the costs associated with sending an additional email outweighs the benefits.  To influence clients to adopt Echomusic’s improved email strategy, I created a presentation for artist managers that documented the benefits of the new strategy, industry best practices, quotes and statistics from credible sources, an analysis of the data, and strategic recommendations for the future.

Chase Pattison  I  MBA Candidate 2009  I  Owen Graduate School of Management  I  Vanderbilt University  I  Nashville, TN

Even as consumer culture and behavior becomes ever more unique and diversified, one truth remains. College kids love sports. But as the growth of new leisure options continue to vie for attention in a student’s consideration set, even UT Basketball needs to find new ways of bouncing the ball.

In accordance with the Sales and Marketing Staff for the University of Tennessee Athletics Department, my work included gauging the behaviors, perceptions, and attitudes of the student body of the University of Tennessee toward the home basketball game experience and offering consultation regarding the vision and strategy for future marketing initiatives.

In the Fall of 2008, I conducted qualitative and quantitative research methods, including personal interviews, focus groups, ZMET techniques, and an online survey, aimed to better understand student perceptions toward the basketball team, program, and experience.  Utilizing insights from the research, I helped devise a variety of innovative marketing solutions that would resonate with this young millenial segment.  The overall vision consisted of opening channels of communication familiar to students and speaking to them in a language that they understand.  Some of the examples of the marketing solutions are as follows:

Web 2.0 Marketing Solutions

• “I Am Bruce Pearl” User-Generated Video Contest
• Interactive “New Recruit” Microsite
• “The Vols Anthem” Contest

Chase Pattison  I  MBA Candidate 2009  I  Owen Graduate School of Management  I Vanderbilt University  I  Nashville, TN