The Situation:
In 2005, Boundless Network was founded on the idea of building a next-generation promotional marketing distributorship that would revolutionize the $20 billion promotional products industry. As other industries adopted new technology, the promotional products industry has remained unchanged for 40 years – the vast majority of promotional products distributors do not use digital marketing or Web 2.0 tools.  

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.