Carrier called to benefit students

By : Michael Hugall

 

St. Clair College advertising students were given some key advice the morning of Oct. 17 when a British entrepreneur was skyped into a marketing class to share information about the success of Revive-A-Phone.

Jeff Carrier, from Montreal, is a partner in the company Revive-A-Phone. The company specializes in the restoration of water damaged and screen-cracked cell phones. Their famous “beer phone” video clip, (dropping an iPhone 6 in a glass of beer) as well as an appearance on the U.K. edition of the television show Dragon’s Den has made them internationally known.

“We were a bit overwhelmed. From paying bloggers to managing customer relations and getting 100 (business) requests a day,” said Carrier in the conference.

Early in the conference, Carrier stressed the value of “spending money to make money” as he talked about the amount of money needed to fund the business. Carrier said he has paid multiple social media sites for advertisements and endorsements, including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter

“Sales so far exceeded expectations,” said Carrier. “You always want a realistic plan and we tried to be the first one on the market so no one could copy the idea. As soon as people saw the video they went to our website. We had 1,000 customers the first day and sold 1,000 units as a result.” Students were grateful for Carrier’s advice. Said Zaarour in particular learned some useful information that he said could be beneficial.

“Always ask questions,” said Zaarour. “If you don’t ask questions then you will not learn about how a product grows and how to avoid mistakes.” Advertising professor Leonard Olszewski agreed that the knowledge of entrepreneurship from Carrier is crucial in applying real world skills.

“I think one of the important things is that the students actually see the living example of success that social media can have particularly for a startup business.” Said Olszewski. “I think it’s exciting for (the students) to see this happening especially to someone who is relatively their age. It’s exciting that we can bring these sorts of things into the classroom.”

Professor Scott Briscoe organized the conference based on research by a third year advertising student.

“It’s one of those things that in class we talk about. It’s good for students to engage and ask questions that you cannot ask in class,” said Briscoe. “Its events like these which make St. Clair College one of the best marketing schools in Canada.” After great response from Mexico and Canada, Revive-A-Phone is now looking to expand to the U.S.