Successes
Click to learn more about:
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Creating an emotional connection with an innovative tradeshow activation
The brand and digital presence overhaul that became #1 in the U.S.
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A creative campaign worth $4 million in the sales pipeline
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Dominating the underground fashion scene with punkrock events and outreach
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Rallying a major city around a business event
Columbus Equity Pledge Activation
Creating a strong emotional connection to Columbus, OH, from a tradeshow in San Francisco, CA
When Experience Columbus won the bid in 2019 to host the Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA) 2023 Convening Leaders event, a nationally attended event for convention planners, it presented a chance to showcase Columbus to more than 5,000 attendees with potential to direct their own convention business to the city. Hosting this event was a major win. To make the most of a golden opportunity, a campaign to assure maximum PCMA member attendance had to begin immediately.
One of the biggest challenges was that the city is not exactly a bucket-list destination for most non-locals, most PCMA members included. We'd have to create an experience, at a tradeshow in San Francisco, that would give attendees an emotional connection to Columbus, a Midwest city most have never actually visited.
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Luckily I had managed focus groups that helped outline a set of shared values between the city and the target market. Armed with that data and only a few weeks of lead time, I worked with a creative team to plan an out-of-the-box tradeshow experience, centered around the work of community partners who could attend the conference as presenters to demonstrate the city's shared values with the target audience, rather than simply setting up a booth that repeated the same nuts-and-bolts information about our convention center and hotels that had previously dominated the city’s marketing messages.
The unexpected and holistic experience connected with attendees on a deep enough level that visitors spent an unusually meaningful amount of time in our booth. Instead of grabbing a giveaway and leaving, they hung out and learned about the city's equity efforts, recorded testimonial videos, took group photos, and even put temporary tattoos of our messaging themes on their bodies before leaving the booth. The automated follow-up email achieved an unheard-of 48% open rate and 10% click-through.
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ECDI's Brand Elevation
Transforming ECDI's profile from "local nonprofit" to "#1 SBA Microlender in America"
Think back to March, 2020: We were in the early days of a global pandemic. Schools, restaurants, offices, and public spaces were shut down. We had no idea what was going to happen next – but most small businesses knew they needed help or they weren't going to last. ECDI had help to give – but the community and businesses of Ohio were unfamiliar with the good work they do.
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The organization, a 16-year-old, nonprofit small business resource center and SBA microlender, had grown over the years through successful development efforts, but leadership realized that they weren't going to grow any further in this crucial time without a marketing strategy to get the word out about all they had to offer and all the good work they had done so far. They asked me to stand up their marketing and communications department.
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While building a team, systems, and strategies, I rallied a diverse mix of staff, stakeholders, and board members to participate in discovery sessions and get behind a complete overhaul of ECDI's brand identity, communication programs, and digital presence.
Marketing, PR, media, client engagement, lead gen, and sales funnel strategies I implemented contributed to ECDI's lending revenue growth of 314% (from $56.4 million to $177 million) over a four-year period, compared to the previous 16 years.
A successful earned media strategy garnered more than 430 media placements (an approx. ad value of $5 million and publicity value of $15 million, with ROI of $76-$230 to $1). The strategy incorporated media interviews for ECDI's small business clients, which was highly valuable for the entrepreneurs, and also added to ECDI's community impact, which helped raise funds to cover a portion of the costs. Best of all, it got shining client testimonials circulated via mass media. Thanks to the added notoriety, ECDI and team members received awards (more notoriety!) including Business First Power 100, Diversity Organization of the Year, and Woman of the Year; MLK Society Collaboration Award; Columbus Underground's Top Business Resource; and Black Professional Association's 40 Under 40 Emerging Legends.
Email and social strategies implemented by my team led to a 400% increase in social followers and built an opt-in list of nearly 25k business owners across the state. (Email offers have to be deployed carefully – because the opt-in list is so responsive that a single, targeted email can generate enough leads to overwhelm the lending team.)
ECDI's marketing and engagement programs have gained recognition for the organization as a stand-out leader in the industry. The efforts were truly transformational for ECDI in raising their status from "small, local nonprofit" to "#1 SBA Microlender in America."
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Check out the brand before and after, above. Check out examples of media coverage from innovative publicity programs, below:
Check out some of the content and collateral in the updated brand :
Johnny Logic action figure: custom made for a campaign mail piece, and still found in the wild today.
Johnny Logic Campaign
A creatively campy – and highly effective – spy story proves that B2B marketing isn't destined to be boring
When IT provider, Logicalis, wanted to boost their sales pipeline, the answer seemed clear: get the attention of their geeky target market with comic books and action figures.
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Facing a saturated marketplace, with a product that's (frankly) not very exciting to talk about, we set out to develop a creative approach that would cut through all the noise. I am proud to have masterminded, wrote, and executed the Johnny Logic campaign. Miniature graphic novels and campy animated videos centered around a spy character who personified Logicalis’ expertise, fighting against villains who personified clients’ pain points.
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Not only was the campaign attention grabbing – it was effective at explaining Logicalis’ service offerings, and it put more than $4 million in their sales pipeline.
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In addition to its KPI success, Johnny generated enough buzz that the campaign earned features in multiple business and marketing trade publications. It generated such a cult following with Logicalis’ IT Guy target market that, stunningly, a decade later, Johnny is still out there. (I recently came across a Johnny Logic action figure on eBay.)
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Read about the campaign in these trade publications:
“Our target audience is IT leaders,” said Lisa Dreher, Logicalis' Marketing VP. “They have kind of a thankless job, in that people don’t call unless something isn’t working. So, inserting humor into their day is met with a lot of thankfulness.” The campaign wasn’t just amusing, Dreher said. “There was useful, educational information. It provided real information.” Clever is fine, but results matter in marketing — and this program was a success, Dreher said.
ASAE 2019 Annual Meeting & Exposition
Rallying a city to make an impression
When the American Society for Association Executives (ASAE) selected Columbus as the host of their high-profile convention, it presented a high-stakes opportunity for the city to make a winning impression on a high-value target market of professionals who could direct future conventions to Columbus (or prevent them from coming).
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To assure a positive impression, I developed and managed an innovative, all-out communication blitz to ASAE's convention-planning members, starting the year before the conference, including various methods of digital marketing (geo-fencing, targeted placements, sponsored social), face-to-face and direct marketing, and content marketing.
For the 2019 convention, I played an integral part in rallying the entire Columbus community to present the city in the best light, and led the Experience Columbus team in developing a brand look for the event that stayed true to our branding, while adopting elements of the event brand to bridge the gap for attendees - and then displayed it in visible spaces all over the city, from the airport terminal to the lawn of City Hall.
When the ASAE members arrived in Columbus, they were blown away by our citywide united vision. #ASAE19 was the #1 Twitter trending topic in the Columbus market for three of the five days of the conference, with nearly 1,000 uses of the hashtag, reaching an estimated 219,000 unique accounts. The hashtag was used 1,500 times on Instagram.
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The conference generated an estimated $16 million in revenue for Columbus, with a projected $500 million in future convention business, and raised $30,188 for community nonprofits through coordinated giveback efforts among attendees.
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But wait, there's more! See all the details:
“The marketing pieces were brilliant (all brought back as best practices)."
- Client Services Director from Tourism Toronto (friendly competitor of Experience Columbus)
“They have a marketing team who is taking very unique approaches... (e.g. geotargeting prospects a year out from the event to introduce the city). As evidence, I was talking to Nichelle yesterday and she said 'you know I have been hearing more about Columbus' because of ads she has seen over the past year."
- Association Event Manager (Experience Columbus prospect)
Alternative Fashion Mob
Leveraging enthusiasm, in lieu of dollars, to build an organization and amazing volunteer community
A prominent, local fashion designer, with whom I had previously collaborated on a rock-meets-fashion benefit event, approached me to be part of a team to stage an Alternative Fashion Week in Columbus, to give up-and-coming designers a lower-barrier platform than the city's long-running Fashion Week Columbus. I connected some dots and planted a seed with the planning group that we had an opportunity to do something more impactful than a one-time event. Thus, Alternative Fashion Mob, a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to fostering Columbus' local fashion industry was born - and dominated Columbus' underground fashion scene for eight years. We hosted large- and small-scale events, classes and mentoring programs, developed an enthusiastic community and tested a proof-of-concept studio between 2012 and 2019, when the city funded an incubator program. Over that time, we showed collections from nearly 50 independent fashion designers and managed nearly 500 volunteers.
