RedBlack Consulting Spring 2025

This spring marked the conclusion of another successful semester of RedBlack Consulting, UMD AMA's fully student-run marketing consulting group, led by our VP of Marketing Consulting, Nina Brown. Yesterday, RedBlack Consulting wrapped up the semester with its final showcase, where student teams presented the results of their semester-long projects. Our talented teams worked with local clients to provide strategic solutions. Here is a look at the impactful work done by each team during the Spring 2025 Final Showcase.

The Laundry Basket, LLC

Team Members: Annalise Jeng (Account Manager) , Riya Patel, Jennifer Carmeli, Azraa Abdoul.

Overview

The Laundry Basket, LLC, provides a subscription-based laundry service focused on convenience and sustainability. Despite their high-quality service, they possessed little social media engagement and brand visibility. The student team was tasked with strengthening The Laundry Basket's social media presence to help extend the company's reach and better connect with its diverse customer base.

The Project

The team developed a comprehensive plan to strengthen the brand's social media engagement to expand their reach. To boost engagement, they focused on Instagram, creating content that highlights the brand's dedication to sustainability and community-focused mission. They also strategically used hashtags and account tagging to expand reach. Recognizing that different demographics engage on different platforms, they also produced Facebook content and flyers to connect with an older audience. They emphasized the success of this channel!

Looking ahead, the team suggested incorporating TikTok to create creative and engaging content such as "Day in The Life" videos, customer testimonials, behind-the-scenes clips, and Q&A content to further extend their reach. These ideas can humanize the brand through relatability, connection, and entertainment. To ensure consistency, the team proposed a weekly content calendar featuring intentional and diverse content across its various channels. The team's multi-channel approach laid a strong foundation for increased visibility and deeper community engagement through their social channels.

Focus First Academic Coaching, LLC

Team Members: Nataly Reyes (Account Manager), Julia Hidar, Courtney Ricker.

Overview

Focus First Academic Coaching, LLC, is a year-old tutoring service empowering students with ADHD, dyslexia, and executive functioning challenges. As a growing business in a niche market, Focus First needed guidance in building brand awareness. The student team set out to develop a long-term marketing plan to improve Focus First's visibility across social media platforms, expand clientele, and support the company's internal growth

The Project

With strong market research, the team created a marketing strategy tailored to Focus First's audience, mission, and goals. Across social media, the team worked on developing engaging content across Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and LinkedIn, featuring hiring flyers, enrollment details, educational tips, and promotions. To specifically target local visibility, the team planned for local SEO optimization and community outreach, suggesting partnerships with pediatricians, schools, and parent groups and the distribution of flyers in local hotspots.

Throughout this process, consistency and branding played a key role in their plan. By prioritizing consistency, professional aspects, their values, and connection, Focus First can foster reliability and credibility within the community. This project led to results: an increase in social media followers, stronger community awareness, and more online reviews. A notable achievement includes a successful hiring flyer that resulted in two new hires for the business!

Maryland State Police

Team Members: Michelle Sun (Account Manager), Rudra Soni, Emily Martin, Christian Lowman.

Overview

The Maryland State Police Department (MDSP) is leading law enforcement agency across the state. The primary goal of this consulting project was to launch a new Instagram account focused on recruitment. The team's objectives were clear: to humanize the badge, attract diverse applicants, provide education on the recruitment process, and to build an engaging social media presence.

The Project

Over the course of this project, a new Instagram was developed featuring a four-part content series: "Meet the Recruiter" introductions, "Day in the Life" behind-the-scenes clips, "Did you Know?" educational posts, and "Meet the K9" profiles. This project also worked on optimizing other key elements of the Instagram profile, such as creating a recognizable icon, writing a simple and direct bio, organizing easy-to-access information through story highlights, and maintaining visual consistency in line with MDSP styles.

Upon launch, the account debuted with a joint post from MDSP's main account to attract visibility. Within the first week, five posts were published, earning 120 followers and 189 likes, early signs of strong engagement. With its goals and strategy structured, the marketing responsibilities have since been transitioned to an official MDSP employee. Looking ahead, the team emphasizes maintaining a structured content calendar, diversifying media, and implementing performance tracking, as well as continuing collaborative posts, consistent engagement, and cross-promotion at events. This project reinforced the importance of clear communication, strategic planning, and inclusive content creation in building a effective online presence.

Reality-Based Training Group

Team Members: Habineza Herve (Account Manager), Sarah Beale, Jacklynn Ho, Kyle Williamson.

Overview

Reality-Based Training Group (RBTG) is an organization that provides police and security training program support, working alongside clients such as MGM National Harbor and Bowie City Police Department to deliver services to businesses who need security assistance. RBTG primary goals were to strengthen its brand image, build a cleaner and more effective social media presence, and grow overall company awareness.

The Project

This team focused on addressing existing gaps by refining RBTG's brand identity and enhancing its online presence through Instagram. A key priority was aligning content with RBTG's mission and communicating offered services. Another core objective was to build RBTG's partnership with SecTek. The team's content strategy included Instagram posts promoting job fairs and training courses, featuring key word-rich, easy-to-read captions, accessible information, and targeted hashtags to expand reach. They also included reels showcasing RBTG leaders speaking directly to followers about the company’s origins and partnership with SecTek. With their personal and dynamic approach, RBTG effectively reach new audiences and increased engagement significantly by 72%. A significant result was SekTek reaching for a job fair partnership after noticing the increased traffic and hires driven by RBTG's Instagram campaigns. This yielded to a substantial increase in SekTek's visibility.

Conclusion

From strengthening brand awareness of small businesses to launching digital campaigns for state organizations, this semester's RedBlack Consulting projects highlighted the dedication, creativity, and strategic-thinking of our student consultants. Thank you to our clients, project teams, and supporters. UMD AMA is so proud of the work accomplished this semester!

-Maie Ikemoto