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Case Study 1
Our Challenge:
Bearch Inc., a mobile app developer based in Austin, Texas, needed a rapid turn-around on a scalable PR campaign. The company, which had developed an anonymous photo-sharing app for college students called Unseen, approached us just prior to closing a $2.1 million Angel funding round. With two weeks to plan, our job was to devise a strategy that would help the company create awareness in the technology press for the funding, while at the same time increasing buzz on college campuses to drive downloads.
Our Plan:
Working closely with the Unseen founders, we devised a two-pronged strategy addressing the need for publicity in both the high tech media and college campus news.
We performed a number of tasks in rapid succession to ensure the announcement would go out in time for the funding:
- Wrote a press release announcing the funding and describing the Unseen app
- Created a custom media list comprised of tech media and college campus newspapers
- Negotiated news embargo with a blogger at TechCrunch to give that publication the first shot at scooping the announcement the same day the wire went live
- Developed a secondary pitch around the launch of Unseen at campuses across the U.S.
Last, we established communication protocols with the CEO and his internal marketing team to ensure every press inquiry was addressed in a timely manner.
Our Results:
We negotiated coverage in close to 20 publications in a 60-day period. Our two-market approach was successful at raising Unseen’s brand awareness, media inquiries, and downloads across the tech and college campus markets. The app grew from just over 50 campuses being served to over 200 campuses in just three months.
Some of the media outlets in we secured coverage on the client’s behalf:
- TechCrunch
- USA Today
- NBC News
- Vice
- Digital Times
- Campus media in close to 15 schools across the U.S.
Later in our engagement with Unseen we continued garnering high-profile media mentions, some of which included app upgrade announcements as well as trending news story pegs tied to racism, security holes in anonymous apps, and parental concerns regarding use of anonymous apps. Some of these media placements included:
- VentureBeat
- Huffington Post
- USA Today
- The Daily Dot
Case Study 2
Our Challenge:
A large publicly-traded company headquartered in San Antonio contacted us to help them raise brand awareness in order to improve hiring prospects in the Austin market. The company, which provides customer care phone support for some of the most recognized brands in the world, needed to figure out how to communicate the career growth opportunities across a variety of industries available to prospective hires. The company lacked a cohesive brand identity across its various customer support divisions. It also lacked a solid communication strategy aimed at its workforce and the public at large.
Our Plan:
Create a unifying brand theme and communication strategy designed to give the company’s employees a universal brand with which they could identify above and beyond the separate customer support groups to which they belong. We created a single theme around a call to action for employees and prospective employees, complete with original photography of employees, graphic design, and messaging. Based on interviews, we also identified three key demographic traits indicative of highly desirable/successful employees. Our messaging and artwork for both recruiting and internal communication materials targeted those traits in order to boost the company’s appeal across those segments.
We put together an action plan for the company that included:
- Appealing to key employee demographics based on interviews and workforce observations
- Designed multifaceted media campaign that included digital campaign, posters, bus wraps, highway billboards, and newspaper ads; PR included outreach to local TV and print media
- Campaign themes addressed outside recruiting needs, internal recruiting initiatives, and employee morale boosts
- Suggested new social media engagement approach surrounding client’s hiring initiative and daily food truck offerings; also suggested that the client create additional branded material for its offices to include posters, lanyards, pins and other branded items
- Recommended an employee ambassador program to reward top performers with perks and additional responsibilities that included becoming recruiting ambassadors with networking and social media opportunities
Our Results:
The client was able to hire several hundred new employees to meet seasonal hiring needs. The client was successful in launching an internal recruiting campaign that included our employee-facing collateral featuring posters, branded items, and recruiting cards.
The client’s corporate headquarters liked our recruiting campaign so much they decided to utilized it as a company-wide initiative on their employee recruiting website in order to give the site a stronger brand identity, provide a more employee-centric image, and to make an effective call-to-action.
We fostered a stronger sense of employee belonging by creating a series of internal use posters at the client site. The posters featured original photos of current employees and copy relating to their work experience. Ongoing PR activities continue to emphasize the customer’s growth in the Austin market, as well as the variety of job opportunities – from supporting global logistics to video chat support – that are available.
Case Study 3:
Our Challenge:
SalesVu, a bootstrapped mobile POS startup, had to build a brand from scratch in an emerging market, and, at the same time, position itself against established competitors like Intuit and Square. SalesVu began as a mobile payment processing application that let business owners accept credit cards anywhere they do business, but, eventually, market opportunities led the company to enter the mobile POS and ERP space for small and mid-sized businesses.
Our agency was called in to design a cost-effective media launch strategy, drive marketing and communications campaigns, and increase awareness of SalesVu in the technology and industry media. That meant we had to put the spotlight on SalesVu’s functionality and highlight what made it different from its biggest competitors, and make it top of mind for restaurateurs, retailers, and professional services providers.
Our Plan:
After studying the app’s key features and the distinct business advantage it provided users when compared to the major competitors, we created a press release tying together the company’s funding announcement and official launch. We conducted research of recent coverage of the client’s competition and used it to create a custom media list. We then began following the stories of key journalists and made soft overtures to them via social media. To make the announcement, we targeted one influential tech writer at TechCrunch and negotiated an embargo in order to time the article’s publication with the wire distribution.
Later in the engagement, we helped SalesVu announce an updated version of the app that allowed it to integrate with QuickBooks in addition to allowing seamless online and in-store inventory management, a common problem plaguing brick-and-mortar retailers who also sell online.
Our Results:
The agency helped establish SalesVu as a highly recognizable mobile POS and ERP application for the hospitality, retail and independent professional services industries.
Media mentions were numerous and included:
- TechCrunch (twice)
- Inc.
- Entrepreneur
- Numerous retail and restaurant trade publications
- Accounting Today
- Austin American-Statesman
- Austin Business Journal
As a result of the broad coverage in key media outlets, SalesVu gained greater brand awareness and increased customer downloads. Most notably, website traffic spiked after SalesVu was mentioned twice in TechCrunch. The site’s traffic rose from an average of five visits per day to 178 visits after one media mention. The company experienced a second traffic spike, going from an average of 10 visits per day to 685 visits. Traffic continued strong for five to nine days after the second story ran, and leveled off at a much higher average daily rate.
SalesVu has since enjoyed a consistent stream of application downloads from the iTunes app store. The volume of transactions processed by SalesVu also continues to grow. According to SalesVu CEO Pascal Nicholas, “The PR efforts by Manzer Communications were our primary go-to-market strategy as a startup and they have continued to generate dividends for SalesVu.”
Case Study 4
Event
Our Challenge:
The largest dry cleaners in the U.S. came to our team for ideas on how to break into the crowded Austin market, where two dominant players control nearly 40% of the total market. The client planned to run its operations primarily through a fleet of 15 vans with drop-off locations embedded in a men’s retail chain, of which it was a subsidiary. The need was to raise awareness of the new dry cleaning service, link it to the retail chain as a means to cross-sell services and prove that the model would be scalable across the country. The client was also the largest dry cleaners using earth-friendly practices, from the natural (non-petroleum) dry cleaning products it used to clean clothes to recycled bags and hangers used to deliver clean clothes back to customers.
Bottom-line: we had to find a way to create a huge impression on ordinary Austinites and encourage word-of-mouth buzz on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. We also needed to draw attention to the launch in the local media and complement a radio ad purchase announcing the Austin launch.
Our Plan:
The team came up with several options that were turned into storyboards to help the client visualize the concepts. We needed a creative way engage with an audience to make the experience of the brand memorable and worth sharing through social networks.
Because Austin values progressive-leaning that embrace environmentally friendly practices, we decided to time the launch with Earth Day and incorporate a “green” theme with the events we planned.
We planned and executed three roving events using what we called our “Green Guys,” three dapper-dressed men who each wore green costume wigs (think Joker in Batman). [The retail chain provided some sweet gray suits and white shirts the Green Guys wore, by the way.] Two of the Green Guys carried super soaker squirt guns filled with a special green slime concoction. We had a third Green Guy in one of the dry cleaning vans standing by while two searched for a “victim” to call out and squirt with green slime.
We planned two of the events at different locations in downtown Austin all of them with high foot traffic, full of millennials, young families and urban professionals. Our Green Guys started by walking up and down the street to attract lots of attention with their green wigs and super soakers, and to create a sense of suspension as they seemed to look around for something to shoot.
The victim was our fourth non-green guy and was placed in strategic locations in downtown Austin – all of them with high foot traffic, full of millennials, young families and urban professionals. Our Green Guys started by walking up and down the street to attract lots of attention with their green wigs and super soakers, and to create a sense of suspension as they seemed to look around for something or someone to shoot.
When they finally approached a “victim,” who was the fourth member of our team dressed in shorts and a nice white dress shirt, we then had the dry cleaning van arrive in a screeching halt right in front of the attack. The Green Guys then announced they were there to “green slime” the victim, which they did with several squirts of the super soaker. The soaking complete, the van door was thrown open by the third Green Guy and the victim, now covered in green, was hustled into the van by all three Green Guys. Once the van door closed, the victim changed into a smart looking white dress shirt (the same one he had been wearing before). The van rocked back and forth for around 30 seconds, at which point the three Green Guys emerged with a totally clean victim who announced he was just “Green Cleaned” by the dry cleaner. They then handed out marketing collateral that included free dry cleaning offers.
We held our third event at the annual Austin Earth Day Festival, where thousands of Austinites come to hear music, eat great trailer food and see lots of arts, crafts and education displays around a park area. We set up a booth for the dry cleaner, held a drawing for a cool green bike with a banana seat, and installed our Green Guys with super soakers. The Green Guys roamed the festival area and allowed kids to shoot at our victim until he was thoroughly green with slime.
We accompanied all of our events with a social media campaign designed to stimulate a conversation online, encourage social sharing and raise the dry cleaners’ brand awareness. We created hashtags for the event and monitored social chatter during the event stunts. We took video of the Green Guy attacks and share it on Facebook and Twitter. We saw pictures from viewers of the events posted to Twitter and re-shared them. At the Earth Day event we set up iPads and took the names of people who wanted to receive coupons and try out the dry cleaners’ mobile service. We created signage and marketing collateral for the various events to drive even more brand awareness and customer inquiries. We also reached out to the local media with a variety of news triggers, from announcing a new dry cleaners coming to Austin to emphasizing the cleaners’ earth-friendly practices in the run-up to Earth Day.
Our Results:
The agency helped establish a strong foothold for the dry cleaners in Austin. Between three social networks and our iPad contact capture strategy, we grew the number of contacts by 1000s in just four weeks.
Media mentions were numerous and included:
- Austin American-Statesman
- Fox News 7
- Austin Business Journal
- Community Impact News
- KOOP Radio
The events were witnessed by 100s of Austinites, generating social media mentions on Twitter and Facebook, even laughs and applause from the audience. We created a memorable impression in the minds of those who saw the events, and provided a strong call-to-action by handing out marketing collateral. We tied the events in a clever way to an authentic part of the dry cleaners’ story – its embrace of environmentally friendly business practices – while at the same time pegging it to the socially aware ethos shared by so many Austinites.
The customer was happy with our work and continues to enjoy growth to this day.