Waiting for your bus or train has never been more potentially interesting. Now, thanks to a new “Instant Experience” digital marketing campaign, Thanksgiving travelers at Union Station can learn more about the history of the building and its restoration. The Union Station Instant Experience campaign was designed and programmed by James Garvey and Mary Shea and features two videos produced by Darcy Young. Initially, an Instant Experience ad looks like a normal promoted post on Facebook or Instagram. Once clicked on, however, it explodes into a full screen mobile experience featuring a variety of videos, image slide shows, and more.

In the lead video, local historians Wayne Phaneuf and Joseph Carvalho highlight the historical attributes of Union Station and how they were restored to help bring new life to the renovated building. As Wayne explains, “This is a rebirth of a building that was so important and there were enough people around who wanted to make sure that it became great again. What really makes Springfield is it’s heritage.”

“If someone was here in 1927,” observes Joe in the interview, “they pretty much would recognize all of these elements.” The historians note that, in addition to restoration of the building’s unique architecture, the planners were able to include murals and other exhibits that highlight the city of Springfield history as a hub of innovation. “We tell those stories in the murals of why the city was such an important place,” explains Joe. “Springfield has a bright future, but it builds on an incredible past.”

The digital marketing campaign will run during the peak Thanksgiving travel periods and will target both the wider Springfield market and Union Station simultaneously. Both videos can be viewed on the history page of SpringfieldUnionStation.com GCAi, an independent digital marketing agency, is also a Google Partner and Facebook Marketing Agency Partner.

It takes one to know one. GCAi Digital Marketing Analysts Darcy Fortune and James Garvey, both affirmed and credentialed A-listers, recently presented to the members and guests of the Employers Association of the Northeast (EANE) on “Increase Results: Digital Marketing for Recruiting & Hiring Success.” 

Their specific objective was to introduce the concept of digital recruitment marketing and its potential to always be recruiting A-listers. Sympathetic to the heroic plight of human resource professionals during a full employment economy, James opened the seminar by noting that a recent GCAi client had even lost their Santa Claus to a competitor.

Critical to any digital recruitment marketing strategy is understanding the job search behaviors of A-listers. The GCAi team presented a new concept they developed called the “Candidate’s Journey” funnel. Based on the similar concept of a digital sales funnel, the four stages of the Candidate’s Journey funnel are: Awareness, Interest, Intent, and Conversion. Each of these stages requires HR pros to optimize their digital assets in order to attract and convert A-listers. Failure at any stage almost certainly means that the top performer will move on to a company that’s more carefully catering to his or her needs.

Darcy and James reviewed critical subcomponents of the Candidate’s Journey including employer branding, recruitment through Social Media Marketing, use and production of video, and even the best practices for online applications.

Not to worry, the standing-room only presentation is likely to be repeated in the spring. Stay in touch with GCAi or EANE if you are interested.

Putting the Focus on Innovation

BUSINESSWEST (August 7, 2018) – John Garvey isn’t shy about noting that he never worked for a large ad agency, or a ‘traditional’ ad agency, as he calls them.

In fact, he’s rather proud of that background — as are the rest of the members of the team at the agency he formed more than 30 years ago known as Garvey Communication Associates Inc., who didn’t work for a traditional agency either.

They’re all fond of saying they didn’t follow any model in creating and then shaping the firm known as GCAi, but instead created their own model.

“None of us come from an agency background,” Garvey explained. “So we put this together on our own; we didn’t throw away the book — we just didn’t really know the book was there; so we invented our own book.”

As they talk about this book, the company’s main players — Garvey; his son, James, the social-media marketing analyst; Mary Shea, vice president of Digital Strategy; and Darcy Fortune, digital PR analyst — collectively wear out the word ‘innovation’ as they discuss evolving technology, what the company can do with and for clients with regard to this technology and using it to reach targeted audiences, and, perhaps most importantly, how they do all that.

MORE: gcai.co/news_bw