Coreen Nickerson began Nickerson Marketing in Seattle, Washington in 1996 (originally as Larson Consulting) but had begun a career in marketing & public relations in 1993 as the Director of Public Relations in Santa Monica, California.  It was at the non-profit, American Oceans Campaign (now Oceana) founded by actor Ted Danson, where Ms. Nickerson:

secured thousands of dollars in corporate sponsorships & donations;

developed dozens of relationships with the media;

published several magazine and newsletter articles; and

successfully planned several PR and fundraising events.

 

Ms. Nickerson worked within the SCUBA diving community to preserve the health of the oceans by organizing several underwater beach clean ups by enticing scuba divers to scour the California coastline for trash by winning prizes for the most trash recovered. In 1993, she was named “Eco-Diver of the Month” by Rodale’s Scuba Diving magazine and received Earth Share’s “Outstanding Service Award”, recognizing her for her efforts in environmental stewardship.

In 1996 Ms. Nickerson earned a Masters of Business Administration at The Foster School of Business at the University of Washington.  Coreen worked on several international and local marketing projects in the field of the telecommunications, including a two-month visit as a Marketing Specialist at Deutsche Telekom in Germany where she used her fluency in German and helped develop a customer loyalty program for business customers.

In 1997, she served as interim Marketing Director for TAL, a wireless start-up in Iceland and was responsible for conducting market research and establishing advertising & pricing. Her efforts helped lead TAL to a market share of 15% within its first year of operation. During 1997 and 1998 Ms. Nickerson co-authored marketing plans for successful competitive bids to operate wireless service in foreign countries on behalf of then client, Western Wireless International, including Ireland and Iceland.

In 1999 Ms. Nickerson took a break from consulting to work in brand management at VoiceStream Wireless and watched the Seattle market boom with activity for wireless products and services during that time. She spearheaded the launch of the company’s first branded pre-paid product, resulting in 1 million subscribers after the first year.

In 2000 she left VoiceStream’s brand team and spent the next 7 years working closely with the the company’s Product Development Group. In 2001 VoiceStream was acquired by Deutsche Telekom and is known today at T-Mobile USA, a $4 billion wireless communications service provider with 33 million customers, ranked #4 in the US market. Originally, she was retained to coordinate team communications for pre-paid products during T-Mobile’s acquisition of wireless carriers Ariel Wireless and Omnipoint Communications. Her leadership and organization contributed to a successful roll out of all three companies’ pre-paid products and reaching a total of $237 million in revenues after the first year.

Ms. Nickerson worked closely with T-Mobile’s Product Development team and designed and executed extensive primary market research projects including beta trials, focus groups, field studies and friendly user trials, contributing to the following products launches resulting in millions of dollars in new revenue:

• Mobile@Home (WiFi phone)
• Bluetooth
• Voice Notes (audio messaging)
• 1^st Camera Phone
• 1^st Internet Phone (WAP)
• iStream (GPRS-enabled phone)

She also contributed to 0ther market research efforts during her tenure as a consultant for T-Mobile including analysis of secondary market research reports, designing surveys, facilitating employee feedback interviews and writing competitive analyses for the following product concepts:

• Games & Entertainment
• Print & Imaging
• Mobile Commerce
• Wireless Digital Frame
• Women’s Fashion Concept Phone
• Youth Concept Phone

In 2008 Ms. Nickerson began a consulting relationship with Nickerson Street Self Storage, a privately held, Seattle-based storage facility with 1,000 units for commercial and personal use. She led effort to re-tool company website resulting in a cost savings of approximately 40% per year. Additionally, Ms. Nickerson created and launched company’s first customer satisfaction survey, which was well received by the owners.  The results of the survey may be used to develop a customer loyalty plan to help retain long term, profitable customers  to be launched in the winter 2009.