Big budgets, broken teeth and boosting favorable opinions
Editor's Note: "Meet a Media Planner" is our ongoing series of Q&As where we find out what's on the minds of media planners at agencies across the country. Today we'd like to introduce Eric Drieselman, a finalist in the 2012 Yahoo! Young Media Stars competition and a digital media planner at Team Detroit in Dearborn, Michigan. Team Detroit snagged Eric a little over two years ago, and he has been servicing the Ford Motor Company account ever since. Focused 100% on digital media, Eric has helped launch initiatives for everything from Ford trucks to SUVs and crossovers to the Focus Electric. He was also involved in the branding of SYNC® and MyFord Touch® technology.
Yahoo! Ad Blog: What do you like most about your job as a media planner?
Eric Drieselman:It's really cool to be able to see our work on big sites like Yahoo! or YouTube or Facebook and to have the budget to do things like Yahoo! Homepage Takeovers. Being trusted with that amount of money is one of the more fun parts, but also one of the challenges.
YAB: In what way?
ED:We work right across the street from Ford's headquarters… It's great they're that close but also challenging because we have client statuses every single week and---hopefully it doesn't, but---if something goes wrong, you pretty much have to answer the questions face-to-face, right away.
YAB: Sounds intense. How do you de-stress after long days?
ED: I play hockey four nights a week.
YAB: Wow, four times a week is a lot. Do you still have all your teeth?
ED: I'm missing half of a front one, but it's still there! It got replaced…
YAB: What's top of mind with your clients right now?
ED: Definitely social, which I think Ford has done a great job with so far. The other is video---in the sense of content creation. We just did a program called Yahoo! Plugged In that was huge. It was sort of like a scavenger hunt with celebrities in their hometowns where the Ford Focus Electric was used to get around to the different points of interest. I was one of the lead planners on it with our VP Digital Communications Director, Adam Erhard.
YAB: Are there any outside campaigns you've seen recently that you thought were well done?
ED: The "World of Red Bull" campaign features athletes who are semi-famous within their sports but really passionate about what they do. It's really inspiring and feels more organic—not like the typical endorsement. It's more grassroots.
YAB: How do you explain what you do to your parents?
ED: Actually, when I bought the Homepage Takeover with Yahoo!, I told my parents to go to yahoo.com and watch it and they said, "Oh, did you draw all that?" I said, "I was the guy who bought and planned for all of it, and we have a bunch of really creative types down on the third floor who drew it all and put it on the screen."
YAB: When you look at your industry right now, where would you most like to get more involved?
ED: I actually like the analytics side of things. It's not a new trend, but I think it's something that will continue to grow.
A lot of the stuff I'm working on is trying to drive favorable opinion and awareness of vehicles---not really trying to sell vehicles necessarily, just trying to build the brand. So what my team is measured on isn't based on how many vehicles are sold---we're measured on whether we move the needle on favorable opinion. I want to understand how our social works with display and with our site and total communication efforts and PR efforts to see how all of that together achieves that final favorable opinion or awareness goal. I want to know how to measure and read the analytics so I can take the whole story back to the client.
