Today we’d like to introduce you to Christian Portugal.
Christian, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I’m a photographer and I love to build things such as online communities. I started working with the media industry back in 2009 while I was still attending community college. My passion for music drove me to land an internship in radio broadcasting with Clear Channel (a.k.a. iHeart Media) where I learned the basics of the business. Afterwards, I was offered a position in the promotions team with MVS Radio. A media group catering to the Hispanic audience. Later that year, I spent a semester abroad studying art history, composition, and learning a new language in Paris. Upon returning to the states, I joined Uniradio, a multimedia group also specialized in the Hispanic market. Fast forward to 2014, I graduated from SDSU’s School of Professional Studies & Fine Arts and immediately started working on a project with Google as an Ads Quality Rater. The following year I got my dream job, a position as a community manager with Sony Interactive Entertainment. I was part of the team working on Sony’s GaaS (Games as a Service) initiative with San Diego Studio’s 1st-party development team producing video games for PlayStation 4.
As a community manager, I had the task of producing live streams on Twitch, as well as finding new ways to connect with our online community through several social media platforms. Unfortunately, after a couple of years, the support for our project at the moment ended. After the studio closed doors I dedicated my time to freelance photography, branding, and graphic design until I stumbled on a marketing position with GTM stores. A brick-and-mortar discount store specializing in selling Costco overstock.
For the very first time in many years, I noticed that the need for digital strategies and community management in every business was evident. After joining GTM I was able to grow our Facebook’s online community from 3k to 26k likes, our official Instagram from a couple of hundreds to more than 5k followers, and eventually consolidated our email-subscriber list from about 100k to 300k subscribers in less than two years.
As we move forward, our marketing department has grown to a team of three talented individuals. Where we design weekly emails, manage coupons and promotions, create in-store signs, maintain and fine tune our customer loyalty program (a.k.a. GTM Rewards), engage and listen to our customers through social media, participate in community outreach events, and one of the most fun things we do here is designing billboards.
We have slowly been adjusting our digital efforts to allow our customers to connect via our social media platforms. We have recently transformed our Instagram account (i.e. https://instagram.com/gtmstores) into a community-driven page where customers have the chance to take over our official account every other week and they’re able to show us their #gtmfinds and their discount-shopping skills.
If you’re in San Diego, and you love a good deal, you should check us out (and send us a DM if you’d like to personally take over our account for one day)
TL;DR I’m a community manager who uses photography, marketing, social media, etc. as tools.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has not been a smooth road. Like many of us, I was not able to afford rent in San Diego at the moment, I had to live with my family back in my hometown Tecate, in Baja California. The commute (plus waiting time at the US-Mexico border crossing) took about two hours each way. It is not easy going to school whilst doing an internship and working multiple jobs. Also, the entertainment industry is ever-changing. I do not recommend anyone getting into it if you do not have a real passion for media and the arts. I do recommend to stick to your passion and finding a way to get income from it.
As if commuting and working in a volatile industry wasn’t difficult enough, I was also (and always am) facing a slight language barrier. As a first-generation student in the US. I had no guidance. I had to make my way through a passage of trial-and-error to get to where I am now. It’s been such a fun bumpy ride.
Another fun obstacle is that I am color blind. There are different kinds of color blindness, I happen to have protanopia. That is where reds and browns look almost identical to me, or purple and dark blues, or light greens and yellows (you get the idea). This is probably the main reason why a camera is one of the most powerful tools I ever use. As it helps me capture the light I cannot see. Thanks to color histograms and hex color codes I can work without a hiccup.
Again, I recommend you stick to what you love. In my case, I believe art is the most powerful form of communication because it directly transmits the message, it gives a cultural insight, and if done correctly, it transcends time and language.
Please tell us about your business.
I’ve had the opportunity to take GTM’s social media, marketing, and community management to the next level. We are always looking for ways to connect with our customers. Marketing being a pseudo-science allows me to experiment with content creation, and we can measure effectiveness with certain KPI’s such as social media engagement, email open rates, coupon redemptions, average purchase, customer counts, etc.
I like to see myself and my department as the ears, the eyes, and the mouth of GTM Stores. As a community manager, I am responsible to voice our customer’s opinions as well as to increase traffic to our stores.
I’m very proud of having the chance of creating our brand style guidelines and to manage our online corporate identity by setting new standards in the company. But the thing I’m most proud of is growing our healthy online communities to a point where we are connecting with real customers and listening/sharing their personal opinions. We trust our customers enough to allow them to take over our IG account for a day. That says a lot! I love seeing through their eyes and learning more about how GTM helps them in their day-to-day lives. This helps us as a company to properly identify opportunities to introduce products that resonate more with our online community.
What sets me apart from others is that I have the theory, the practice, but most importantly… The vision of how and where we’re heading.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
Authenticity and composure are key to success. The process of authenticity involves constant evaluation and most importantly acceptance. that leads to a state of awareness. Composure helps you with Murphy’s law, you got to learn how to handle everything that is thrown in front of you and making the best out of it.
Contact Info:
- Address: 1462 Corporate Center Drive
#130A - Website: https://www.gtmstores.com
- Phone: (619) 596-7486
- Email: cportugal@gtmstores.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gtmstores/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gtmstores/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/gtmstores
- Other: https://christianportugal.com/
Image Credit:
Christian Portugal
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