Case Study Monday:Award-Winning Marketing Through Collaboration

Today, we'd like to feature a case study that demonstrates how two companies collaborated to utilize multiple marketing channels to create an outstanding and award-winning marketing campaign. By receiving these awards, KG Partners and Con-Way Inc. really demonstrate how marketing success can be realized by effectively working together, thus creating a real partnership through true collaboration.

KG Partners and Con-way Win Six Transportation Marketing & Communications Association (TMCA) Compass Awards

KG Partners, a nationally recognized advertising, public relations and interactive agency, and Con-way Inc. (NYSE: CNW), a $4.7 billion freight transportation and logistics services company, today announced that they have won six awards from the Transportation Marketing & Communications Association (TMCA).

The companies won six TMCA Compass Awards -- one of which achieved the Best in Class designation for marketing excellence in the transportation and logistics industry. The awards were presented at TMCA's recent annual conference held in Ponte Vedra, Fla.

"The TMCA Compass Awards are well-respected throughout the industry and could only be won with a strong relationship between our companies and a shared strategic vision," said Tom Nightingale, chief marketing officer, Con-way. "Developing and implementing an effective, results-driven marketing and communications program is vital in an industry as competitive as ours. Recognition from our industry peers is indicative of the type of meaningful work the teams are producing in collaboration."

KG Partners and Con-way received the highest number of awards of all 2008 TMCA entrants. The Compass Award-winning entry, "Con-way Truckload: Driver Recruitment Advertising Campaign," was the recipient of the 2008 Best in Class award. The Best in Class award is one of the two highest honors in TMCA's Compass program. Winners must have excelled in all areas of the judging criteria and achieved a perfect or near perfect overall score.

"The creative marketing, media relations and interactive campaigns KG Partners executed for Con-way last year were extremely successful in helping promote its Con-way Freight, Con-way Truckload and Menlo Worldwide Logistics lines of business as well as its driver career opportunities," said David Goldberg, principal, KG Partners. "Being honored by our industry colleagues at TMCA for our transportation and logistics industry communications expertise makes the success of our campaigns for Con-way even more gratifying."

The six TMCA Compass Awards earned by KG Partners and Con-way are as follows:

* TMCA Excellence Award & Best in Class: Advertising campaign -- Con-way
Truckload: Driver Recruitment: A national print advertisement series running in several driver-targeted publications promoting a lifestyle oriented career and Con-way Truckload as a leader in the industry.

* TMCA Excellence Award: Integrated communications program -- Filling the Seats: Con-way Truckload Q1 2007 Driver Recruitment Campaign: Planning and execution of a 10-week program that included public relations, advertising, search-engine marketing and online advertising resulting in a 166 percent increase of new driving teams hired each week.

* TMCA Merit Award: Media relations -- OceanGuaranteed(SM) Expanded Service Offering from Con-way Freight and APL Logistics: A media relations campaign creating a thought-leadership position in the global supply chain industry for Con-way Freight and APL Logistics, who teamed up to provide a new service offering on the cutting edge of international supply chain management.

* TMCA Merit Award: New media -- Con-way Inc.: Con-way Enterprise Web Site: A complete redesign of www.con-way.com by KG Partners to improve the customer experience, build the Con-way brand and more clearly define the company's business units.

* TMCA Merit Award: Media relations -- Con-way Inc.: Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve Campaign: A media relations campaign to communicate Con-way's support of the National Guard and Reserve and its win of the prestigious Department of Defense Freedom Award -- given to employers who have shown exemplary support of employees who also serve in the National Guard and Reserve -- was developed to leverage the company's thought-leadership position on this issue.

Finally, Con-way Inc. also earned the following TMCA Compass Award for their direct marketing campaign:

* TMCA Merit Award for Direct Marketing Campaign -- Experience The Road Systems Advantage: A video campaign sent to select transportation providers that had a need to extend the lives of their 28-foot trailer fleets. The campaign was developed into a flash module, which served as the focal point of the new Road Systems Inc.(RSI) Web site, a resource for media interest and an ongoing online search presence for RSI.

Links of the Week!

Another week has come to an end -- so time for the weekend!

To get your weekend started, here are our favorite links this week:

Ron Shevlin's Direct Marketing Whims: Ron has a great blog -- and he is really smart and better than that, he's extremely funny. So, we love reading his posts. Our favorite post this week concerns his favorite industry -- banking -- and how two particular marketing channels (branches and online) interact to create satisfied customers. And, further, he makes the point that particular customers need to be able to interact through different channels -- depending upon their specific preferences. Bottom line: all channels are cost centers but are very important to the customer experience. Our take is that no matter what the industry, if you're utilizing all channels to better serve the customer, and taking the time to understand customer preferences, the costs incurred will be money well spent because you'll keep your customers satisfied -- and loyal to your brand.

With our celebration of Earth Day this week, here is a wonderful post from Dan Smolen's Sturdy Roots blog. Dan is a marketing recruiter, and he specializes in in hooking up environmentally conscious companies with like-minded direct marketing professionals. His post this week was a great one about the need for businesses to embrace the concept of virtual office employees -- especially those outside of sales. Both Suzanne and I have been virtual office employees for most of our professional career -- whether in corporate America or self-employed. It's definitely a good thing -- it saves time, wear-and-tear and the environment. Check out this post -- we think you'll like it. Dan gives some great ideas about how to open your mind to allowing more employees to be virtual, and how to do it most effectively.

Mobilestorm's Digital Marketing blog had a very interesting post this week on how internet video is the 21st Century Gold Rush. The post quotes the NY Times as saying: "A Florida-based producer, whose clips are on varied topics like 'how to turn a flashlight into a laser' and “how to simulate a gunshot wound,” earned more than $102,000 in a year from MetaCafe, which pays content owners according to how many views their videos garner." This is wacky -- but there is a whole revenue-generating world out there making bazillionaires with internet videos. Crazy!

Finally -- and selfishly -- take a listen to my favorite acoustic finger-style guitarist, Steve Berger. Steve also happens to be my husband who has just created a site featuring many of his original songs over the past 25 years or so. I'm pretty proud of him as you can probably tell! If any of you would like to become his fans after listening to his music, please feel free to do so (you just sign up with SoundClick as a listener, then select the "Fan+" button from Steve's page)! Take a listen to the song "Time to Live My Life," which is the story of how Steve made the difficult decision to leave his life in Corporate America to pursue his musical passions. I think that this song will resonate with many!

Have a great weekend!

The Shift in Direct Marketing is Happening NOW!

As time goes on, all of the excitement around social media, viral and online marketing seems to be changing our world. Even the folks that have been around the block a time or two are referencing this change. Check out this post from our friend, Dean Rieck, on his Direct Creative Blog. He recently interviewed copywriter extraordinaire, Bob Bly, and asked him what he thought the future holds for traditional direct marketing -- i.e., direct mail and print advertising. Talk about a loaded question!

Anyway, here's what Bob said: "I do not think print will disappear, but right now, all the focus and excitement is about online marketing. I am not a futurist so I don’t make predictions, but many feel that online marketing is fundamentally changing the way marketing is done … specifically, giving the customer a greater voice and moving away from advertiser-generated copy and content."

Dean then questioned Bob about what effect the internet will have on direct marketing over the next few decades. Dean asks some tough questions! How Bob answered this question is the whole point of today's post. Here's what Bob said: "The web is moving marketing from an advertiser-to-prospect model, where the advertiser sends promotions out to prospects, to a customer-centric model, where customers instead of marketers do a lot of the selling. Examples include viral videos where prospects pass your video on to other prospects, and Web 2.0 sites (e.g., Amazon.com) where customer-generated content (reviews) is more influential than marketer-generated content."

Hence my initial comment about how our direct marketing world is shifting. We love this shift. The idea of customers selling on behalf of marketers is an idea whose time has come. Think of all of the time we spend trying to isolate that perfect consumer or business that may be willing to hear our message. Think about the hours of sleep lost over whether the DM campaign that's hitting mailboxes in the next week will reap us a .5% or a 1.5% response rate -- and the repercussions of either. With this shift, it's all about the customers preferring our product, and preferring it so much that they discuss why they prefer it. What a concept!

Therefore, we really like the direction that our industry is heading in -- and we agree with Bob Bly and his comments. We've already started to encourage our clients to integrate these concepts into their marketing strategies now -- to be proactive as opposed to reactive. The shift has already begun -- and it will be interesting to be a part of this, and to create success around it for our business and those with whom we consult. It'll be a fun ride!

If you'd like to share what you're doing within your business or with your clients to integrate social, viral or online marketing into your marketing plan, we'd love to hear your story.