Cheyley Cakes
For my capstone project I decided to assist my friends in creating and implementing a marketing plan for their small business. Sean and Cheyley are a newly married couple whom work together to create themed cakes such as the ones seen on television shows such as "cake Boss." Sean makes the cakes and Cheyley designs them. They already had the skills necessary to have a successful business; they just needed a plan to get their product out to consumers.
Rock the WLC 2013 As part of a class titled "Leadership and Communications" I was tasked to create and lead an event. I noticed that there were many musicians at WLC but not many outlets for them to share their music with people. As a result, I chose to create a concert for the students at WLC to participate in and watch. I dubbed the event "Rock the WLC." I got five acts to play and several audience members to attend the event.
Latest Projects
Singles Pringles 2011-2014 Singles Pringles is a tennis tournament created for tennis players around Milwaukee and its surrounding counties. I did everything on it including advertising, logistics, recruiting sponsors, and managing the event on site. This tournament is one of the things I am most proud of from a creative standpoint because each year it has gotten better and gained notoriety.
https://www.facebook.com/SinglesPringles?ref=aymt_homepage_panel
PROJECTS
These are projects outside of school or my internship that I have completed in the past two years or am currently working on.
WSO Bird Study 2014 As part of an effort to keep tabs on local populations of birds in Wisconsin I dedicated time and energy into doing research for the Wisconsin Society of Ornithology. To participate I had to devise a research experiment to compile useful date on behavioral patterns. I chose to study the impact of urbanization on migratory species by documenting the number of birds feeding on of natural food sources vs. the number of birds feeding on bird feeders.
I wanted to create a marketing plan and brand identity for their company. The easiest place to start was by making a Facebook page. Cheyley had a font style logo developed already and had a page where she posted pictures of the cakes which the two of them had been making for friends so they were already on one page. The logo was then added to the page and Cheyley Cakes Facebook page was born.
https://www.facebook.com/Cheyleycakes?fref=photo
After the facebook page was created, the next step was to immediately switch focus to the branding aspect of the plan.
As long as there was some public entity displaying the business' merchandise it was worth it to figure out what the product identity should be. Since Sean and Cheyley have two children and are newly married, they have friends with similar situations or at similar stages in their lives. As a result, many of their cakes were themed for either children's movies or whimsical ideas such as the pirate ship below. This helped to shape the brand identity as a family oriented company that catered a lot to weddings and children's birthdays. As seen on the Facebook page, the business is not only described as cakes but also wedding planning. With this particular identity, the demand for the cakes would most likely grow due to word of mouth through the particular demographic since people with young families and children tend to be connected in various ways arguably stronger than other demographics. Word of mouth spreads even quicker when the product is unusual or eye catching which is the case for these cakes. With just a Facebook page up and running the demand started to increase significantly.
Since the brand identity was at least somewhat solidified, it was time to increase the amount of consumers that could see the cakes and place orders as opposed to having to track down information from the Facebook page. This reaching out came in the form of the website.
The website is ideal for this small business because it not only displays the products but also provides a place to actually shop for the cakes, thus making it much easier to purchase them.
http://cheyleycakes.com/index.php?
With social media and online sales taken care of the next move was to gain exposure through having the products at a physical location so that people could see them first hand as opposed to the hypothetical way the internet works.
The next step in marketing the business was getting a physical location where people could actually see the cakes in-person as opposed to pictures on the internet if only just temporarily. This location came in the form of an opportunity through Northtown Church. The church had a bake sale with proceeds going to help a woman who was diagnosed with cancer. The pamphlet to the right provides more information on the event. Overall, the event got a lot of exposure for the business and added to the positive charitable view that we were trying to promote.
Sean and Cheyley are committed to continue growing the business and are off to a great start. I learned about the logistic aspects of promotion and integrated a lot of things that I learned from my internship into the marketing plan.