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.