Day in the Life with Chase Blum

This Tuesday, we had UMD and AMA Alumni Chase Blum join us to share out his day in the life as a marketer. Our marketing association gained real-life insight on his day-to-day as an entrepreneur and just what duties he performs within the marketing industry.

About Chase Blum

Chase Blum is the founder of Spider Monkey Solutions, a business in charge of marketing, operations, and special projects for entrepreneurs. He holds various positions for other companies, including serving as the Vice President for Click & Carry, serving as the Director of Affiliate and Influencer Marketing at Next Wave Marketing and CB3 Media, and as the Director of Business Development at Koppa Brand Protection. 

At his time at the University of Maryland, Blum served as the VP of Events for AMA! He made a lasting impact on our organization, starting up the first Marketing Employer Networking Night (now called the Marketing Career Connect), and had the chance to attend the International Collegiate Conference (ICC) two times.

As an entrepreneur working for multiple companies, Chase talked about how his day-to-day life tends to differ. However, there are parts of his schedule he doesn’t miss: 

1. Sleeping in

2. Cooking breakfast

3. Responding to emails/tasks

4. Taking a break every hour 

5. Meetings

Recent Projects by Chase

He dove into some projects he’s been working on for the past few weeks, which gave us detailed insight into what goes on behind the scenes of marketing campaigns. A recent project he worked on was for Tinnitus, an all about audiology billboard campaign that alerts people of the actions that they can take to treat it.

To get the campaign started, he began by calling numerous billboard companies to find the best rates. Once he compared the rates, he developed a creative brief. His goal? Make it “stupid simple”. He sought to “slap” drivers going down the highway “in the face” with the fact that they offer support for the disease. He developed a custom url in order to track analytics as well, keeping it stupid simple as well with wehelptinnitus.com. This project requires day to day maintenance and tracking, exemplifying the work that goes on behind the billboards you see!

Chase also talked about his recent work with Click & Carry, a consumer product aimed at simplifying carrying groceries, gear, and busy lives. Click & Carry was featured on SharkTank, and Blum provided us with insight on their plan to launch this product in retail stores. He showed us examples of creative pitches for stores including Walmart and Lowes, and how much brainstorming goes into the different pitches depending on the company. Depending on the different demographics coming into the stores day-to-day, you must communicate with the designers to figure out the language and visuals to incorporate into the product packaging. 

Q&A With Chase

After he shared his scoop of his day to day, he opened up the floor for a Q&A. Here are some of the following questions asked by some of our members:

1. How did you find all your clients?

   1. “Through AMA and networking!” - Chase mentioned how the connections he developed while serving as the VP of Events here at UMD AMA enabled him to connect with professionals and reach out to gain opportunities.

      
      

2. How do you manage all your clients?

   1. “By dedicating a bulk of my day too just one client” - Chase talked about scheudling out his days each week by dedicating certain days to each client. However, he also emphasized the importance of scheudling a rest day throughout the week, to spend doing things he loves!

      
      

3. Any advice to students in the same shoes as you a couple years ago?

   1. “Say yes to everything and don’t be afraid to try crazy things!” - Trying unique things is what has made Chase the most successful in his career, and he believes its a vital skill to get far.

For the last couple minutes he gave us a real-world mini-case he’s currently working on. Our task was to develop a plan to build hype around the launch of a high-end apartment building to fill its spots quickly. We were given the target market, amenities, and other important features to consider. One point he emphasized was to come up with a guerilla marketing campaign and to make it “out-of-the-box”. Students got creative with their work, and sent them into him to review! 

This was a great opportunity for members to engage collaborative brainstorming and to apply their marketing knowledge to a real-world scenario. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your experiences and valuable insight with the AMA, Chase! 

Chase Blum is also a Dingman Advisor at UMD. If you’d like to book an appointment with him navigate to the Dingman Portal.