BUSINESS CHALLENGE

Penn Mutual wanted to take a dramatic step and transform itself from a lesser-known, B2B brand into a powerful voice in financial services, one heard by consumers, regulators, and the agents and advisors upon whom the success of their brand depends.

With more than $100 billion of life insurance in effect, Penn Mutual’s CEO Eileen McDonnell foresaw a real and present threat as agents aged, and Millennials chose to invest less in life insurance. To address this, Penn Mutual selected Gregory FCA to craft and extend a narrative of diversity and product need into a market with waning interest in buying life insurance or joining the ranks of its advisory network.

SOLUTION

Gregory FCA developed a multi-faceted communications and public relations campaign to fully leverage both earned and owned channels and tell the Penn Mutual story in a new, contemporary way. To reach consumers, Gregory FCA relied on Penn Mutual subject matter experts to educate consumers on the power of life insurance in national consumer media. For brokers and advisors, Gregory FCA made heavy use of the financial services trades, consistently penetrating them with powerful stories about the need for industry change. For Millennials, Gregory FCA created new Penn Mutual digital platforms, including the company’s first ever blog, and supported Penn Mutual’s sponsorship of the Penn Mutual National Rugby Collegiate Championship.

RESULTS

A new narrative, combined with an integrated communications approach, has increased Penn Mutual’s social presence an estimated 250% since implementation in September 2014, and has improved the company’s share of voice 10% through strategic media placements in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, U.S. News & World Report, and others.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

CA Technologies is a global IT management software and solutions company. While CA is one of the world’s most-recognized enterprise brands, it was best known for solutions used in large, complex, heterogeneous IT environments. However, the company wanted to establish a leadership position and derive significant revenue in several highly competitive emerging markets: cloud computing, social media, and mobile computing (smartphones, tablets, and apps), among others.

SOLUTION

Gregory FCA developed a thought leadership strategy to help CA engage the most influential media and bloggers covering IT and marshal their audiences into CA’s pipeline through digital demand generation and sales enablement techniques.

Gregory FCA helped CA identify, cultivate, and interview a deep bench of subject matter experts. The interviews powered an editorial calendar of custom content developed, syndicated, and socialized by Gregory FCA, including blog posts, guest blog posts, ebooks, infographics, cartoons, bylines, videos, podcasts, and more. All content was optimized for search and social media, and was syndicated across the enterprise IT blogosphere and Twitterverse.

RESULTS

CA’s custom social content appeared regularly in the most-read enterprise and business media today, including The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, ReadWriteWeb Enterprise, CIO, ZDNET, IT Business Edge, and AllTwitter. Moreover, CA’s articles were shared widely across social media, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, Reddit, and DailyMotion.

CA’s content now appears on Google page one when people are searching for information about CA’s targeted topics, attracting legions of fresh prospects to CA’s digital destinations. In the end, CA’s content generated over one million impressions per month, and has reached over 120 million users worldwide.

Company leaders credit the thought leadership strategy with generating $42 million in new pipeline, and pushing $24 million in existing pipeline through to close.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

Kimco Realty, a NYSE-traded REIT, desired a high-impact communications strategy to establish the company and executives as industry thought leaders. They wanted these messages to be based on a single narrative to simultaneously serve the needs of their various audiences, complementing their traditional media outreach with a very aggressive social media presence.

SOLUTION

At the heart of Gregory FCA’s integrated communications strategy was a groundbreaking blog – one of the first blogs for a REIT. The Kimco blog serves as a social media networking platform, communicating directly to key audiences, including investors, shoppers, analysts, independent retailers, national retailers, and employees. Working with Kimco subject matter experts, Gregory FCA creates fresh, new original content covering industry trends and developments.

RESULTS

Due to its fresh and insightful content, readership traffic on the blog is strong and 60 employees are now featured authors (the blog launched in 2011 with only four). The blog is now frequently used as the main way to communicate news to employees. This content is repurposed on many levels to drive Kimco’s media relations efforts, and has been featured inThe WallStreet Journal, Forbes, Newsday, The Boston Globe, National Real Estate Investor, Seeking Alpha, andReal Estate Forum.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

ETFs are perhaps the hottest financial products since Index Funds were introduced in the 1970s. But along with the interest has come lots of noise, with issuers introducing a record number of ETFs in 2014.

Still, PureFunds, from International Securities Exchange, thought they had a unique new offering, when they created HACK, a new ETF based on publicly traded internet and data security firms. Fast-track SEC approval gave them only two weeks to launch. PureFunds turned to the industry’s leading ETF public relations firm, Gregory FCA, for quick action that ensured success.

SOLUTION

Gregory FCA packaged the story with an eye to capitalize on inevitable but intermittent data breaches that spawn major media coverage. The strategy included identifying media most likely to cover breaches and piggybacking on breaking news in real time. On the week of launch, as news of a breach began to surface, Gregory FCA’s financial services practice swung into action, newsjacking the coverage to client advantage.

In the first week alone, Gregory FCA strategically secured dozens of media appearances, resulting in record volume for the ETF. A CNBC broadcast exclusive featuring ISE consultant Christian Magoon further catalyzed trading activity.

RESULTS

HACK was one of the most successful ETF launches of 2014, and is now considered textbook for how to effectively introduce a financial services product to the industry and consumer investors. Outlets from Barron’s to Bloomberg, FinancialAdvisor to Investor’s Business Daily and TheStreet covered the product’s launch, many of whom published within 48 hours of the IPO.

HACK ETF reached $231 million in its first three months and exceeded one million shares traded during one day. As of mid-June 2015, HACK hit $1 billion AUM and has received an overall positive endorsement from the major outlets of Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Bloomberg as one of the strongest ETF launches in Q4 2014. This is what one reporter called HACK in a recent Tweet: “…Def #1 in media attn…”

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

Post University, a regional bricks and mortar academic institution, wished to promote and establish best practices for their Online Education Institute offering to increase this program’s visibility and Post University’s brand credibility to their target audience of adult learners.

SOLUTION

As Post University’s first PR agency, Gregory FCA crafted an online consumer awareness and student acquisition strategy comprised of an integrated campaign emphasizing media relations and enhanced by social media. Media relations generates “unbranded” credible exposure in the media and blogs to drive prospective students to a new Post University multimedia blog and, over time, other integrated social platforms.

The blog served as a central hub with a three-fold purpose: build the Post University brand via thought leadership; showcase examples of Post University’s model of online education; and promote breakthrough research that raises awareness of crucial issues of interest. TV, radio, print and web exposure is repurposed on all Post digital platforms, building greater buzz and credibility for its academic programs.

RESULTS

Gregory FCA secured traction in top-tier trades, including Campus Technology, University Business, Investors Business Daily, Inc.com, Forbes and Huffington Post.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

United Capital, a Financial Life Management company, sought to strengthen its brand and establish the thought leadership of its CEO, Joe Duran. United Capital sought to leverage national media coverage and exposure as a way to support the firm’s recruitment brand and acquire additional offices and staff.

SOLUTION

Gregory FCA formulated a media relations campaign that distinguished United Capital as an innovator within the crowded financial advisory landscape through top-tier national media placements. Gregory FCA managed outreach for all of United Capital’s news, which included the launch of new products, acquisition stories, and high-profile additions to the team. Duran’s brand development was supported with coverage in leading financial and mainstream publications.

RESULTS

Duran is a frequent contributor on CNBC, PBS Nightly Business Report, and Fox Business, among other prominent networks. He is also a contributor to InvestmentNews and Money.com, writing a blog series for both outlets. Duran, United Capital corporate executives, and managing directors have been quoted in TIME, Family Circle, Redbook, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, Inc., Bankrate.com, and REP. Since the campaign’s inception, United Capital has achieved hundreds of media placements in print, online, and broadcast outlets. Today, United Capital is recognized as the standard bearer for innovation in financial planning, having grown to more than $15 billion under management with more than 80 office locations around the country.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

Lose It!, an app-based weight loss program with more than 24 million members, needed to hire their first-ever public relations firm to raise the profile of the brand, secure coverage for their advisory board members, and encourage additional downloads by potential members.

SOLUTION

Gregory FCA designed an all-encompassing communications strategy that targeted lifestyle, technology, and business outlets. Gregory FCA interviewed Lose It! members on their personal weight-loss stories to build a database for media relations.

To further raise the profile of the brand, Gregory FCA developed a year-long event and awards calendar to submit Lose It! for awards and speaking engagements. Additionally, Gregory FCA embarked upon a thought leadership campaign for Lose It!’s CEO, drafting a series of bylined articles and submitted him for a range of speaking opportunities in the technology, lifestyle, business, and mobile sectors.

RESULTS

Lose It!’s media coverage has risen exponentially. Lose It! members have been featured in Women’s Health, Woman’s Day, Men’s Health, Closer Weekly, and other lifestyle publications. Lose It!’s data and subject matter experts have appeared in Live Science, Yahoo! Tech, Yahoo! Health, The Active Times, Redbook, Boston Globe, Re/Code, PC Mag, Complex, and others.

Lose It!’s CEO has been a featured speaker at CE Week’s The Health & Fitness Plan panel, as well as Massachusetts Innovation and Technology Exchange’s Technology State House Day: The Internet of Things in Massachusetts, and the Wearable Tech Expo.

Lose It! was named a finalist in the Tabby Awards, the MassTLC Leadership Awards-CEO of the Year, MITX Awards, and the Best Mobile App Awards in the first half of 2015 alone.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

Molecular Health, a global cancer diagnostics company that delivers personalized, precision medicine, tasked Gregory FCA with introducing their company to the U.S. audience in preparation for their commercial launch. Gregory FCA developed a comprehensive North American communications plan and narrative.

There was no public relations plan, no social media, and no clearly defined messaging for its disparate audiences of healthcare professionals (oncologists and pathologists), patients and their families, and payers.

Adding to these challenges was that while Molecular Health was starting their awareness campaign at zero, their competitor, Foundation Medicine, had a major head start in the field and had recently filed for an IPO. Their competitor was dominating the conversation.

SOLUTION

Gregory FCA began by identifying key constituents and audiences along with messages for each. The narratives formed the foundation for all external communications, including thought leadership presentations, a website, blog, social channels, and media relations.

Gregory FCA developed the company’s North American website, blog, social platforms, video presence, media kit, release schedule and content, and trained and secured Molecular Health’s subject matter experts for media and speaking appearances.

RESULTS

The resulting campaign successfully introduced Molecular Health and its genomic sequencing products and services to medical, investor, and consumer audiences. The company increased its North American share of voice four fold, and won exposure alongside a much larger, more established competitor. Through health and investor related speaking appearances, the company penetrated a network of key healthcare influencers, and leapfrogged an increasingly competitive space to become the second most recognized brand in personalized cancer diagnostics.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

Friendly Planet Travel is an exotic international group travel service. With a limited advertising budget, the company wanted a cost-effective means to increase its visibility and brand awareness, build a community of engaged travelers, educate fans about special deals and offerings, and unleash the passion of their legions of satisfied travelers to inform and excite others to Friendly Planet.

SOLUTION

Gregory FCA conceived of a strategic campaign: “Win the World” was designed to leverage Facebook’s open API and allow Friendly Planet Travel to host sweepstakes within its company pages on a shoestring budget. These series of sweepstakes awarded six all-inclusive dream vacations for two to some of the world’s most exotic and desirable locations. Each sweepstakes was monitored daily through posts, commenting, and likes.

Gregory FCA surrounded the sweepstakes launch with an aggressive traditional media relations campaign, targeting top tier media, travel websites, and travel writers and bloggers.

RESULTS

Gregory FCA secured exposure in top tier media outlets, blogs, and industry trade publications such as The New York Times, USA Today, The Chicago Tribune, Huffington Post, ABC News, The Los Angeles Times, About.com, Deals4Dummies.com, Smarter Travel, and more. Sweepstakes sites alone exposed the brand to more than 9.6 million unique monthly viewers, and the Facebook page now boasts a community of more than 53,000 (from its start of 1,500), giving it a larger presence on the platform than AOL Travel, Gadling, and Smarter Travel.

The word of mouth marketing objective was achieved with over 200 positive testimonials from customers. Media coverage, coupled with Gregory FCA’s aggressive marketing tactics, helped increase Friendly Planet Travel’s Facebook fans by more than 14,000 in the first 90 days alone while concurrently expanding the company’s email database. User engagement rose dramatically and has remained high, from a baseline of 1,200/month prior to the initial sweepstakes, to an average of 9,652 monthly engaged users one year later.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

Yoh, a leading staffing solutions firm, faced a number of business objectives in their public relations program. They needed to raise awareness of their technology practice; promote issues facing HR pros trying to hire technologists and developers; establish Yoh as a thought leader in the space; generate demand among HR pros looking for technologists and developers; and create demand for highly skilled technologists looking for new career opportunities.

SOLUTION

Gregory FCA provided an integrated communications strategy that leveraged broad, national media exposure with lead nurturing abilities of advanced digital strategies. Working with Yoh, Gregory FCA’s content creation team developed and maintained a monthly editorial calendar that transformed the Yoh website each month into a content-rich, online resource that tackled a specific topic per month. “The Seamless Workforce” looked and appeared like an online, issue-oriented publication, written to attract both job seekers as well as those in charge of company HR decisions.

RESULTS

Gregory FCA’s content strategy, along with strong media relations efforts and a content syndication component, yielded top placements on Visual.ly, InformationWeek, GigaOM, VentureBeat, and eWeek. Coverage was secured in popular developer websites, including Developer.com and AgileScout, sparking interest in the coding community. Total readership amassed by content placement was over 5.1 million. Yoh broke into the top 10 Google search results for the terms “agile development” and “agile hiring,” including all top six results for “yoh agile”, all key objectives set at the outset of the campaign.

In one year, Yoh was featured in 120 local, regional, and national media. By closely tracking the blog; identifying, and analyzing engagement, Gregory FCA was able to create a graduated pipeline of prospects for Yoh.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

Safeguard Scientific builds value in growth-stage technology and life sciences businesses by providing capital as well as key strategic, operational, and management resources to its partner companies. Gregory FCA serves as Safeguard’s communications partner, telling the Safeguard story, as well as the stories of its partner companies, to various, high value audiences.

With no sales or revenue of its own, Safeguard communicates its value proposition through the success of its partner companies. Gregory FCA developed an integrated communications program that better enabled Safeguard to tell its nuanced story in a way that resonates with investors, potential partners, entrepreneurs, and deal sources around the country. The program was comprised of media relations, message development, speaker training, an industry first investor relations blog, and various social media initiatives.

SOLUTION

From identifying and prioritizing partner companies’ news, to releasing it in a coordinated, timely fashion, and connecting these companies with reporters, bloggers, and influencers who could amplify their message, Gregory FCA generated a steady flow of news that demonstrated the growth of these private companies. That drumbeat reflected favorably on Safeguard’s public value.

Additionally, Gregory FCA developed close relationships at every level of Safeguard, which enabled us to discover unusual story angles that connected with the media in a manner that advanced Safeguard’s overall business objectives. This resulted in stories as varied as a half page Wall Street Journal article on Safeguard’s unique compensation model, bylines describing the differences between venture capital investing on the East Coast vs. the West Coast, and how new small business legislation can potentially affect employment.

To leverage the storytelling to new audiences, Gregory FCA launched Safeguard’s Investor Relations blog in 2010; at the time, one of the only IR blogs in the world. This groundbreaking blog evolved into Safeguard’s primary communication tool to inform investors, showcase internal expertise, spotlight partner companies’ successes and growth, and otherwise tell stories that would have been overlooked, if not for the power of digital communications and the evolution of social media.

RESULTS

As Safeguard’s Vice President of Investor Relations tells it, “Gregory FCA operates as an extension of our communications team. They work hand in glove with us to track the trajectory of our partner companies, find and distribute news and stories about them, and find innovative ways to have this news reflect back on Safeguard’s value. They are hands on, active participants in our success who work with, and in advance of, us to keep our story fresh, exciting and of interest to audiences that include sophisticated investors, potential partners, entrepreneurs.”

Placements include FOX News, The Wall Street Journal, The Scientist, The Motley Fool, Red Herring, Dow Jones Venture Wire, The Daily Deal, and Medical Device Daily.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

In 2010, Gregory FCA was named Mitsubishi TV’s agency of record after a national search to replace their existing AOR who had failed to gain high-impact, national media coverage for Mitsubishi’s line-up of world-class TVs. Mitsubishi needed the exposure to remain relevant in the quickly advancing world of consumer products, even though their technology was lagging.

SOLUTION

Gregory FCA developed a brilliant, strategic campaign that positioned Mitsubishi TVs as an inexpensive alternative to more advanced and more costly competitive offerings. The campaign specifically researched and focused on those demographics that value fast refresh rates and outlandish oversized screens. The effort focused on twenty-somethings and gamers, movie buffs and current and retired military, the latter due to their limited budgets but love technology.

As part of the effort, Gregory FCA supported Mitsubishi at key conferences and trade shows in order to showcase their products in ways that emphasized a limited but critical advantage that resonated with only select buyers. To extend the story, Gregory FCA reworked the company’s social channels to assume a more customer friendly voice, establishing dialogues over what was once a one-way monologue from the company.

RESULTS

Since the beginning of their business relationship, Gregory FCA has generated over 2,000 media placements for Mitsubishi TV in such notable media points as USA Today, New York Times, Associated Press, Wall Street Journal, ABC News, Consumer Reports, Popular Science, PC World, Rolling Stone, and more.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

Exchange Traded Concepts (ETC) offers an ETF-in-a-box platform to launch private label exchange-traded funds in as little as 75 days. As a new company, ETC was unknown and was one of the first white label platforms to market without an ETF issuer partner, who could offer first-hand experience about the power of the platform.

SOLUTION

Leveraging Gregory FCA’s deep knowledge of the investment and ETF industries, the firm’s financial services team formulated a strategic launch plan to introduce ETC to the media, and thereby drive awareness among those interested in launching ETFs. By conducting media outreach and education, media training, and regular NYC media tours, Gregory FCA secured major media coverage for ETC as well as their sub-advisors.

RESULTS

During the course of Gregory FCA’s representation, ETC has averaged one national broadcast appearance per month and regular coverage in top-tier financial trades and The Wall Street Journal.  The effort has resulted in ETC now offering 16 different ETF products from 13 different ETF issuers. Today, Gregory FCA manages the public relations efforts for four different issuers on the ETC platform.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

GreenDrop is transforming the way Americans donate used goods and support their favorite charities while doing good for the environment and their communities. Their story is not easy to tell, advancing non-profits through a unique for-profit model that transforms abandoned gasoline stations into brightly lit, branded donation centers where attendants help unload donations. Gregory FCA was called upon to tell their story, in simple, compelling terms to build and protect their reputation, educate consumers, and deliver a lower cost solicitation strategy than traditional direct mail and call center outreach.

SOLUTION

Gregory FCA created a year-long plan that deployed hyper-local media relations and a social media campaign, along with community relations and a reputation management program designed to build awareness and goodwill in the communities where GreenDrop operates.

RESULTS

GreenDrop is growing fast, opening eight new donation centers this year, and has established itself as a committed member of the community through good works and the promotion of these efforts. Effective storytelling has won new loyalty among customers and township officials who control zoning approvals for what could be wrongly viewed as a nuisance business. Instead, GreenDrop is now welcomed by the community for its good citizenship, a lynchpin of its growth.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

CAST provides software testing technology services to large enterprises that prevent system errors and resulting crashes from unknown source code bugs. CAST wished to eliminate the perception that system crashes are “the price of doing business” by promoting their software solution to targeted companies to generate new business opportunities.

SOLUTION

Gregory FCA’s overarching strategy for CAST media placements was to be the first to respond to the media when system errors occur, to promote CAST’s thought leadership, and to secure media coverage by positioning CAST as an objective third-party commentator on the crisis at hand. In early 2013, BATS Global Markets, Inc., the third-largest U.S. stock exchange operator, suffered a coding glitch that led to hundreds of thousands of trades being executed improperly, a violation of U.S. SEC rules. Gregory FCA, with CAST’s input and approval, issued a press release for an audience of one: the Chief Operating Officer of BATS Global Markets.

A letter to the executive was posted to the CAST blog and linked to in a press release.

RESULTS

Within two weeks, the press release showed up in Google Alerts. CAST’s blog and website analytics confirmed multiple visits from BATS Global Markets. Gregory FCA relayed this visitor data to CAST for its sales teams to follow up with BATS Global Markets, who built a relationship that resulted in a major sale.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

CBIZ, Inc., a NYSE-listed company with business lines in employee benefits, insurance, public accounting, tax and consulting, came to Gregory FCA in 2005 to establish a national brand after acquiring a number of complementary firms.

SOLUTION

For the past ten years, Gregory FCA has worked with CBIZ to develop an integrated corporate communications effort, blending an aggressive thought leadership campaign with strategic deployment of company news and internal data. Gregory FCA has helped develop and promote the company’s thought leadership blog and the CBIZ Small Business Employment Index, which through consistent media coverage has become a bellwether of American economic activity.

RESULTS

Today, CBIZ is regularly featured in mainstream financial media outlets including CNBC, Bloomberg, and The Wall Street Journal as well as in niche media, Accounting Today, CFO Magazine, and Risk & Insurance. The CBIZ Small Business Employment Index is now considered a leading economic indicator covered regularly by the media.

In addition, the CBIZ blog, which Gregory FCA built and manages, has seen 40% year-over-year growth. CBIZ has enjoyed more than 250 thought leadership opportunities in top-tier media during the past year.