The Innovator Behind the Quarantine Marketing Battle

Danielle Gray is a a fourth-year marketing student at the University of Florida. She wants to work in the music industry, specifically in experiential marketing."I love challenging myself and seeing what I can handle. When I started college, there wasn't anyone at my school creating opportunities for those interested in the music business. If I can be the person that I wish was there when I started, then I'm going to do it."

The Quarantine Marketing Battle is a six week marketing competition open to current college students and recent graduates. Students will work in teams acting as a record label to create a marketing plan for a given artist. The artists are relevant and the campaigns are tangible. The goal is to think outside the box and critically on how to market a release. At the end of the six weeks, these teams will present via Zoom to a panel of judges (all of whom work in the music industry).

Danielle was inspired to create this competition as many internships in the music industry, including her own, were cancelled due to COVID-19. In an effort to build her portfolio and exercise creativity during this time she planned to create a certain number of marketing plans during the summer. It later evolved into wanting to compete against some friends which would motivate each other and create a fun atmosphere. After hearing about other cancelled internship plans from friends and colleagues she thought, “Why don’t I just make it open to the public and have students from all over the country participate?” After sitting on it for a few days, she followed through with this idea.

What was the process to plan and organize this competition?

The first step in the process was creating an outline of the Marketing Battle. This includes a timeline, panel of judges, marketing plan template, description, and goals for the students. Then, I had to figure out what artist to use. From there, I created the application, flyer, promoted it, grouped everyone into teams, communicated with all the applicants, and launched it. Overall it took about four weeks.

How did you find and choose the industry professionals to judge this competition?

I asked people in my network and my friend’s network and people who expressed interest.

How do you envision the last week of presentations to look like?

The presentations will be taking place on Zoom. I envision a lot of creative ideas to be spoken on. It will be a lot of speaking with groups, making sure everyone is on the same page, and overall communicating clearly!

What are you most excited about for this?

I’m excited to see all of the creative ideas everyone comes up with. I’m also excited to see different ways students collaborate with each other. I’m curious to see if there will be any trends based on where people go to school.

Has anything surprising happened from this that has excited you?

The amount of people that registered blew my mind. Over 150 students signed up! Also, the location from where people are registering from was shocking. People from all over the states signed up as well as someone from Poland!

Did you expect this to become as popular as it has so far?

Not at all! Originally, I thought 10 people would sign up and my goal was to get at maximum 40.

Right now Danielle is focused on QMB . If students enjoy it and benefit from participating, she'd love to do another round!

You can keep up with Danielle on her Instagram (@daniellebelit) or LinkedIn