With the start of the new (and my final) academic year approaching just around the corner, I think it’s best to take some time to think about my new role as President of the Guerrilla Marketing Society. I have been a part of this club since my freshman year at Boston University back in 2016, when I first learned about GMS by some girls walking around Splash handing out tiny slips of paper. I attended the first meeting of that semester where we convened in a basement classroom of CAS, writing our names down on a ‘sign-in’ sheet as we entered. That first semester was the baby steps towards revitalizing this club that had originally started many years prior. Things were disorganized, chaotic, and we lacked an identity – but it was still one of the best learning opportunities I’ve had outside academic classes.
Since then we’ve developed our branding identity with one of the most recognizable club logos on campus (self-proclaimed, don’t sue me), grown our club membership by over 160%, and have worked with dozens of national and multinational companies. In the upcoming semester, I will be following in the footsteps of previous GMS Presidents, Esther Tu (QST ’18), and more recently, Vanlizza Chau (QST ’19) – both of whom I’ve had the pleasure of leading with on the E-Board team since Fall of 2017! Having been a part of this club for four years now, and leading it for three years under two different Presidents, here are five things that I’m going to be doing differently for the upcoming 2019 – 2020 academic year.
1) Inbound Marketing
This was an idea we’ve had and talked about since last year, but this year I’m going to push our leadership team to each write one article or upload some type of short form media to our new GMS blog page at least once in the semester. With a leadership team of well over 20 members, we should have enough content to publish at a minimum of one per week!
2) Expanding the Leadership Team
This year we’ve grown our leadership team by adding three new members to our Account Manager team, two new members to our E-Board team, and created an entire new team dedicated to Inbound Marketing led by Frances Smyth and Ian Sung.
3) Diversify our Clientele
With the extraordinary efforts of Sharon Zhong and Ashley Wu (our two new Co-Heads of Communications) this semester we have some of the most unique clients yet! We have everything from deep sea exploration to VR exercise… with a full list of our clients to be released soon (stay up to date and join our mailing list!).
4) Open up more Leadership Opportunities
This semester we’ll be changing the way we take on new members for our leadership team in an effort to provide more opportunities and allow more of our members to grow in their own personal development as well as with the club. More details on this will be coming soon.
5) Ensure a Smooth Transition
Finally, I’m going to aim to streamline most internal processes so that the future President and E-Board team will be able to keep GMS growing at the rate it has been. By digitizing and decentralizing important club documents and processes, this will help ensure no aspect of the club will cease to function moving forward!