From a typical college residence hall room, Chris Franco ’10 created and launched a new-music blog that grew to become hugely popular. While still an undergraduate, an audience scope of 160,000 monthly readers from around the world propelled Franco to be ranked as a WordPress Top 100 blogger. Within two years of inception, Hiptics.com, which combined music and politics, was a profitable business for Franco and kick-started an innovative career in marketing.
After graduating from Denison, Franco, a communication major from Naples, Fla., moved to Atlanta, the “hip hop capital,” to work full time advancing his music blog. In 2011 Hiptics was the most highly trafficked new music blog on the Internet. In a single year the blog had achieved 234 percent organic traffic growth.
But Franco felt “it was time for a change” so he packed a U-Haul trailer and drove up the east coast to prepare for a Monday morning of interviews. By 11 a.m. he had secured a position at Carat, the world’s leading independent media planning and buying specialist.
Franco remained with the agency for a few years, soaking up knowledge, before joining Klique as cofounder and chief marketing officer. At Klique, Franco applied his marketing skills to cutting-edge advances, including managing the partnership of a social media app with major television network Revolt TV, the first partnership of its kind.
In the fall of 2014, Franco received recognition for his accomplishments in the first five years of his career. Franco’s peers nominated him for a Marketers Choice Award as one of the “2014 Mobile Innovators.” This award recognizes “excellence in pushing forward innovation” and “exceptional thought leadership.”
Franco recently attended the annual Marketers Choice Awards Gala in New York City held for all nominees. As he looked around he noticed he was one of the youngest in attendance, by far. “I was both shocked and appreciative to receive this recognition. I didn’t realize I was on the professional radar like this,” he said.
Franco now works with a start-up company, Miner Labs, Inc., where he is the chief growth officer.