AUSTIN, Texas  – June 24, 2009 – Diverge Communications, a digital public relations firm, won four Bronze Quill awards from the Austin chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) at a banquet June 2. Diverge was recognized for its digital media campaigns that incorporated social media technologies.

Diverge brought home awards in three categories, including two awards in IABC’s new social media category. The firm was recognized for is work on blogs – Boundless Network CEO Jason Black’s blog – and for the agency’s use of content sharing sites to promote the Sno Cone Stand Movie for Tocquigny.

In the category of strategic/community relations and public service, Diverge won a Bronze Quill for its Boundless Network Digital Strategy, a long-term project that included a full array of digital PR and Web 2.0 tools to promote Boundless Network. Boundless is an Austin-based technology-enabled promotional marketing distributor.

“As more and more companies realize the impact and reach of digital PR, they will demand a firm with expertise in digital media and social technology,” said Diverge Communications Principal Thomas Terry. “We are honored to be recognized for our efforts in this area and are eager to partner with forward-thinking companies who want to further expand their communication projects into this growing arena.”

Diverge won its fourth Bronze Quill for news writing on a project for Sheshunoff and Co. Investment Banking. This final honor demonstrates the firm’s ability to deliver an effective message in the traditional PR arena.

Earlier this year, Diverge was awarded a Silver Spur from the Texas Public Relations Association (TPRA) for its Boundless Network Digital Campaign, as well as a Best of Texas award for news writing.

For more news about Diverge visit: http://divergedigital.com/news-room

About Diverge
Diverge Communications is transforming the way businesses communicate with their customers by implementing public relations strategies that incorporate digital media capabilities to complement their clients’ communication plans. Unlike other PR firms, Diverge aims to transfer their internet PR knowledge to the client, helping them to create digital competencies within their companies. Diverge keeps clients abreast of the latest advances in digital public relations and offers high level consulting for new projects. The result is a more efficient and cost-effective PR strategy that diverges from the norm. To learn more about Diverge, visit http://www.divergedigital.com.

About IABC Austin
The International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) enables a global network of communicators working in diverse industries and disciplines to identify, share and apply the world’s most effective communication practices. Established in 1970, IABC serves over 16,000 members in 70 countries, 100 chapters and 10,000 organizations. The Bronze Quill is designed to recognize the outstanding work of local business communicators, as well as encourage professional development by those in our shared field.

Silver Spur

TPRA Recognizes Diverge’s Progressive Use of Online PR

AUSTIN, Texas  – March 5, 2009 – Diverge Communications, a digital public relations firm, was awarded a 2009 Silver Spur from the Texas Public Relations Association (TPRA), for work with Boundless Network.

Diverge won first place in the Corporate Identity category — beating agencies and companies of all sizes in Texas’ only statewide public relations awards program. Silver Spur winners in other categories include the US Army,  Shell Oil, American Airlines, Kimberly-Clark and Center Point Energy. The winning campaign used social media to generate real business results.

TPRA, recognized Diverge at an awards banquet February 28 in Dallas for its entry titled “Boundless Digital Identity Campaign.” The long-term project for Boundless Network, an Austin-based technology-enabled promotional marketing distributor, included a full array of digital PR and Web 2.0 tools to promote Boundless, one of the promotional products industry’s few technology-savvy firms.

The corporate identity Silver Spur award, which honors outstanding professional achievement in developing and implementing significant public relations programs or projects for employers or clients, was the second received by the Austin-based firm. Diverge also received a Best of Texas award in news writing for its work with Sheshunoff and Co. Investment Banking.  Best of Texas awards recognized firms for outstanding achievement using individual communications tools to support a specific PR objective.

“We have worked very collaboratively with Boundless Network,” said Diverge principal Thomas Terry. “Boundless has been very willing to experiment with new digital tools and the results have been better than anticipated. We have achieved all of Boundless PR goals for 2008. Winning this prestigious award is just an added bonus to our enjoyable and rewarding work with a great client.”

Diverge worked with Boundless Network, to create a strong online identity for the company. By utilizing a combination of social networking and Web 2.0 tools, as well as traditional public relations methods, Boundless was able to continue its record of 100 percent annual growth, achieving 147 percent growth in 2008. Throughout the year, Diverge strengthened the company’s online presence by rebranding and enhancing Jason Black’s Blog, developing a social media website and newsroom, and creating and distributing video through a number of channels. Boundless won four awards in 2008, including the Austin Business Journal’s “Fast 50” and the Best Places to Work, as awarded by the Promotional Products Industry Association.

In an interview with Counselor Magazine, Boundless network representative Courtney Powell attributed much of their internet success to Diverge, saying,  “They are a social media/digital firm that handles our blog strategy, YouTube and social networks like Facebook. . .Our [social media] strategy has been incredibly valuable for us.”

About Diverge
Diverge Communications is transforming the way businesses communicate with their customers by implementing public relations strategies that incorporate digital media capabilities to complement their clients’ communication plans. Unlike other PR firms, Diverge aims to transfer their internet PR knowledge to the client, helping them to create digital competencies within their companies. Diverge keeps clients abreast of the latest advances in digital public relations and offers high level consulting for new projects. The result is a more efficient and cost-effective PR strategy that diverges from the norm. To learn more about Diverge, visit http://www.divergedigital.com.

About Texas Public Relations Association
TPRA hosts Texas’ only public relations award ceremony. Silver Spur awards recognize outstanding PR programs, while Best of Texas awards recognize the best of specific public relations activities. TPRA also recognizes individuals whom have made special contributions to the organization and the profession throughout the year. TPRA is one of the only entities of its kind, giving Texas public relations practitioners a place to connect with one another and recognize one another’s accomplishments. For more information about TPRA, visit http://www.tpra.com.

AUSTIN, Texas –  March 5, 2009 – Diverge Communications,  a digital public relations firm, was awarded a 2009 Best of Texas Bronze in News Writing from the Texas Public Relations Association (TPRA,) for work with Sheshunoff and Co. Investment Banking.

TPRA, recognized Diverge at an awards banquet February 28 in Dallas for its entry titled “Texas Banks Outperform Nation.” The release was written, distributed and pitched for the PR firm’s client, Sheshunoff and Co. Investment Banking, a leader in community bank merger and acquisition transactions and valuation services.

The news writing award, marking outstanding achievement using individual communications tools to support a specific public relations objective, was the second received by the Austin-based firm. Diverge also received a Silver Spur, which focuses on programs and large projects, for its digital corporate identity campaign for Boundless Network. Boundless is an Austin-based technology-enabled promotional marketing distributor.

“We are thrilled to received the award for news writing,” said Diverge principal Thomas Terry. “Sheshunoff has a successful track record and long history of providing first-rate services for bankers across the nation. This release demonstrated their deep knowledge of the banking industry at a time when Texans – and Americans – were getting nervous about the state of our banks.”

Sheshunoff & Co. Investment Banking released the Texas Asset Quality Review for the second quarter of 2008 in early October when many Americans were beginning to recognize the severity of the country’s impending financial crisis. The Sheshunoff report showed that Texas banks were performing better than the rest of the nation. Diverge determined that a news release could position Sheshunoff as an industry thought leader, generate press attention to raise Sheshunoff’s profile with the media and the public, and create local awareness and positive association the firm.

The press release performed as intended, receiving attention from large daily newspapers in Texas, all the state business journals, and national publications. Additionally, the Sheshunoff and Co. Investment Banking web pages realized a 1083 percent increase in page views.

About Diverge
Diverge Communications is transforming the way businesses communicate with their customers by implementing PR strategies that incorporate digital media capabilities to complement their clients’ communication plans. Unlike other PR firms, Diverge aims to transfer their knowledge to the client, helping them to create digital competencies within their companies. Diverge keeps clients abreast of the latest advances in digital PR and offers high level consulting for new projects. The result is a more efficient and cost-effective PR strategy that diverges from the norm. To learn more about Diverge, visit http://www.divergedigital.com.

About Texas Public Relations Association
TPRA hosts Texas’ only public relations award ceremony. Silver Spur awards recognize outstanding PR programs, while Best of Texas awards recognize the best of specific public relations activities. TPRA also recognizes individuals whom have made special contributions to the organization and the profession throughout the year. TPRA is one of the only entities of its kind, giving Texas public relations practitioners a place to connect with one another and recognize one another’s accomplishments. For more information about TPRA, visit http://www.tpra.org/.

The report, entitled “Social Media Marketing: The Latest Buzz on Word of Mouth,” rests on research by the Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company, in June and July. Aberdeen polled 300 companies about their use of social media. While less than a third (29%) of companies surveyed had been involved in social media for more than two years, those that had mastered it were 2.5 times more likely to drive brand advocacy about their clients. They were also 19 times more likely to increase overall marketing effectiveness.

Boundless Network (asi/143717) is one distributor that has been converted to the power of Web 2.0. In late July, it announced it was dumping its traditional public relations agency in favor of a digital agency called Diverge Communications. “They are a social media/digital firm that handles our blog strategy, YouTube and social networks like Facebook,” says Courtney Powell, marketing communications manager for Boundless Network.

Why? “Our [social media] strategy has been incredibly valuable for us,” says Powell. “No one is picking anything up off of the wire anymore. Folks spend the majority of their time on their Blackberrys and phones.”

A well-placed blog succeeds in showing clients what a company stands for versus telling them. Absorbentink.com, for example, offers a blog about product safety. “It lets people know that we care about that,” says Lee Eldridge, president of Absorbent Ink (asi/295819). “They can come, read and learn about it. In marketing you can tell people all you want, but if you show them, it means a whole lot more.”

The site’s columnist, “Abby Ink,” gets a few dozen e-mails a month asking for advice. This advice has translated into sales, says Eldridge. “She’s recommended specific products for specific events, and they’ve used them.”

Boundless Network CEO Jason Black also offers his thoughts on a blog about the industry at large and the role technology plays in it. In the fourth quarter, he is planning a consumer-facing blog that talks about the value of promotional products for brands.

“Making marketing programs conversational and contextualized to niche audiences that naturally gravitate around a specific theme or shared passion is the essence of social media marketing, and perhaps the future of marketing itself,” says Jeff Zabin, a research fellow at Aberdeen Group. – KH

The Challenge:
Survey respondents said that the most important company characteristic was social responsibility, rating above quality and convenience. This customer group was technically savvy and willing to search the web to find the qualities that were most important to them. Traditional tactics such as press releases and the Greenling website only went to far to show how Greenling related with its target marketing and the entire community. The company wanted to try different channels and new media to promote themselves as a company that can be trusted. In an exciting, but confusing time, for organic food, Greenling wanted to educate the public on how it is different and better than popular organic grocery stores.

Our Solution:
Diverge principal Thomas Terry suggested a video to better convey the message and all the related themes. He met with Greenling staff to determine a good location and time for the video shoot. Greenling was holding a pickling class at Greengate Farms, which is close to Austin, and the team determined that would provide an ideal opportunity for filming. The film would feature farmer Skip Connett, and include shots from around his farm of the plants and animals. Testimonials about Connett’s work with Greenling were honest and unrehearsed. At the end of the day, Diverge had about an hour of video that needed to be cut down to three minutes.

The Results:     

These efforts improved Greenling’s search visibility and customer retention through online community building. The video content, posted on several places on the web including Greenling’s Facebook Page, has indeed strengthened relationships to improve customer acquisition. The video series, “Day in the Life of Greenling,” increased customer confidence in making purchases from Greenling. Simultaneously, Diverge optimized Greenling’s site using social media tools: added RSS feeds, social tagging, third party community functionality, Flickr photo galleries, YouTube videos and calendars.

Challenge:
In September of 2008, most U.S. citizens were just beginning to recognize the severity of the country’s impending financial crisis. With different banks failing every other day, people were getting nervous about the safety of their savings. At that time, Sheshunoff was preparing to release the Texas Asset Quality Review for the second quarter of 2008.

Our Solution:
Diverge identified the newsworthiness of the report, which showed that Texas banks were performing better than the rest of the nation, and it determined that a well written news release could position Sheshunoff as an industry thought leader, generate press attention to raise Sheshunoff’s profile with the press and the public, and create local awareness and positive information about Sheshunoff.

Diverge wrote the release and consulted with Sheshunoff experts for explanations about terms and numbers. The team also cross-referenced media lists to ensure that the releases would reach key business and regional publications. Diverge worked with Sheshunoff’s in-house PR person to develop an email and phone pitch for Texas business publications. Sheshunoff handled the local business publications, while Diverge handled the larger papers within the state.

The Results:

The release, intended to raise Sheshunoff’s profile with positive news about bank failures, realized the following results:

• Every Texas Business Journal covered the announcement
• The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Austin American Statesman, San Antonio Express-News, Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle and Dallas Observer covered it.
• The Wall Street Journal picked up the report the following week.
• Sheshunoff experienced a 250 percent increase in website traffic for the week.
• Investment banking site page views increased 1,083 percent.

The Situation:

The Challenge:
Boundless Network’s overall goal was to continue the company’s record of 100 percent growth by recruiting the top one percent of sales professionals and closing multiple acquisitions in key markets across the U.S. Boundless understood it would be difficult to maintain its growth rate using only traditional marketing and public relations tactics. Thus, the company partnered with Diverge Communications in 2008. A key decision made during the planning process was for Boundless Network to move the majority of its marketing efforts online, where the top sales professionals were spending time and getting information.

Our Solution:
The team entered the execution phase in February. At that time, CEO Jason Black was invited to participate on a panel titled, “Secrets of Fast-Growing Distributors” at the ASI Dallas Show.  Diverge traveled to Dallas to film Black’s presentation to the industry audience.  From event footage, the team produced six video segments featuring Black discussing the secret to growing quickly and maintaining a fun culture. The finished video was uploaded to a custom YouTube channel and promoted via a new video-embedded press release, likely the first of its kind in that industry.

In March 2008, Diverge continued the process of generating awareness of Boundless Network among key audiences in traditional and digital media.  In September 2008, Diverge began the process of identifying core website functionality and messaging to strengthen the company’s value proposition, and implemented a website redesign based on best practices for social functionality that made content easy to find, share and update, including media clips, social media links and RSS feeds. Diverge also completely overhauled the Boundless Blog and rebranded it “Jason Black’s Blog.” 

The Results:

The kick-off project — the video-embedded news release featuring Jason Black’s video series — generated more than 400 percent increase in response, as compared to an average press release issued by the company. That was just the beginning of a banner year for Boundless Network. Boundless was recognized by industry thought leaders, winning four awards: the Austin Business Journal’s Fast 50; the Promotional Product Industry’s Best Places to Work; the Ad Specialty’s Inc. (ASI) Power 50; and the ASI HOT List, a “who’s who” list of industry leaders that included Black.

Most importantly, the company was able to achieve its growth goal — expanding by 147 percent in 2008.

The Situation:

The Challenge:

Research showed that many professionals in the promotional products industry were using the web for information and research, yet the vast majority of promotional products distributors were not using digital marketing or Web 2.0 tools.  Boundless was looking for a PR firm that understood the digital landscape, and could provide guidance and instruction on the implementation of new media concepts. The company retained Diverge Communications to provide guidance in these new media concepts.

Our Solution:
With a very specific and tech-savvy audience, Diverge recommended overhauling the corporate blog, making it more searchable and adding social media functionality to connect with potential recruits. The company’s then-current blog was incompatible with the corporate site. It was hosted on TypePad, which meant Boundless didn’t have direct site control.

Diverge said that by creating the rebranded blog on its own site, Boundless Network would improve not only its continuity with the rest of the site, but would also make it more searchable. Diverge completely overhauled and rebranded the Boundless blog to “Jason Black’s Blog.” This change positioned Black to freely express his views and grow his reputation as an industry thought leader.

The Results:

Due to the new branding, improved SEO practices and transition to the Boundless Network corporate site, Jason Black’s Blog more than doubled its monthly traffic. Search engine traffic went from near zero to 40 percent of total blog traffic. The results far exceeded the corporate goals.  Jason Black was awarded the Power 50 ranking by the ASI, and was named to the Association’s Hot List – a  “who’s who” list of industry leaders.  With the unambiguous success of its digital strategy in 2008, Boundless is continuing in leading-edge work and new campaigns.

The Situation:

The Challenge:
Tocquigny was challenged to create interest and awareness of its work in an industry that it is not typically associated with. While the firm considered the traditional means of publicity – creating and distributing a press release – Tocquigny employees quickly decided that they should promote their agency like they promote their clients. Diverge Communications, the PR firm of record for Tocquigny, suggested that Tocquigny use an upcoming Sno Cone website completion party to create “trailer” videos to promote the film.

Our Solution:
Tocquigny employees and the film’s producers, stars and friends were invited to the website completion party. Tocquigny interviewed the film’s producers and encouraged them to speak to the film’s success, but did not ask them to promote Tocquigny’s work on the project. Diverge completed five streaming videos with this content , each displayed the Tocquigny logo and web address.  Only one video mentioned Tocquigny directly. The videos were promoted as simply entertainment – not advertisements. With Diverge’s help, Tocquigny announced the videos via a news release, promoting the creation of the film’s website. With the release, the firm was ensuring a full reach of its key audiences – taking advantage of both digital and traditional media.

The Results:

The majority of the audiences watching the videos were directly forwarded to Tocquigny’s page via direct links from the news release, and strategic metadata and tagging of the videos hosted on YouTube. These links helped increase SEO value. The videos also resulted in the filmmakers securing an interview with the New York Times. Tocquigny was thrlled with the success of the campaign, and has since created a plan to include much more video throughout the site.

The Situation:

The Challenge:
In order to be of value in a variety of different client contexts, the format of this newsletter needed to be flexible enough to support numerous types of content.  The first newsletter draft was developed using the email marketing provider Constant Contact.  Ultimately, the limitations of the “off the shelf” system did not allow enough customization and the style did not fit the Tocquigny brand image.  The second draft was formatted like the firm’s home page with centerpiece content and sidebars.  This format separated the press content from the knowledge content, and it appeared cluttered and unattractive.  The third version combined the press and knowledge into a “New at Tocquigny” section, and graphic icons were added to illustrate the featured articles.  This design was attractive, and the call to action offer was easier to find and more visually appealing.

Our Solution:
Instead of creating completely new content for each newsletter, Diverge and Tocquigny utilize the best already-created content to make constructing each newsletter more time-efficient.  The newsletter was sent to customers and contacts in Tocquigny’s existing database, and there was a direct response feature in every issue to obtain additional names for database purposes.  The newsletter highlights the strengths of the agency through original and updated site content that is built on a leading-edge web application platform. It includes whitepapers, successful case studies and articles in industry publications to boast Tocquigny’s knowledge assets.  In addition, readers also view B2B articles interactively. 

The Results:

The Tocquigny Newsletter has significantly increased the Tocquigny.com website traffic, garnering above average open and click-through rates. The newsletter also won awards for its look and feel. The Interactive Media Council recognized it with its Outstanding Achievement award in the category of E-Zine/Newsletter.