We love to tout the great work we are doing for the major, market-leading brands like Adobe, CA, CSC, Cisco, Google, Intel and McAfee. All one-time challenger brands in their own right, each came to us because they recognize that our more progressive, digital-first approach to brand engagement allows them to deliver the kind of real-time customer experience that so perfectly meets their goals. These companies need to continue to feel very now…hot, innovative and culturally relevant…and stay one step ahead of the new generation of brands challenging their dominance.
This becomes increasingly more difficult – and as a marketer…equally more exciting – as these original mavericks of technology begin to slow with age and become mired in bureaucracy. It’s the challenge to make a difference within such a tight box that fuels our creative firepower to think outside of it and deliver game-changing results for even the most established brands.
It is, however, for quite the same reason that we love to keep our thinking fresh with a healthy client mix – and working with less established, but well managed startups and challenger brands is a key part of that. Their nimble and enterprising character allow our teams the freedom to create and rally around new ideas and deliver the forward thinking digital and creative strategies to help our clients in this category disrupt and realign market perceptions and redefine the boundaries of the category to challenge, deposition and ultimately displace the number one brand in the market. Here are some recent examples of that work:
Canvas
Canvas has rapidly established itself as one of the fastest growing mobile business application services in the world, with thousands of organizations leveraging Canvas’ cloud-based, “as-a-Service” mobile app platform to replace cumbersome paper forms with highly customizable mobile business apps that work on nearly every smartphone and tablet on the market.
When Canvas first turned to the Bluetext team as its global PR agency of record, Bluetext put in place a public relations program designed to support high growth and market leadership, penetrate target verticals and also support expansion into global markets. Bluetext has supported Canvas the past two years through triple digit revenue growth and the opening of international offices in Sydney and London.
The media relations and thought leadership program developed and executed on behalf of Canvas represents how Bluetext successfully elevated Canvas’ brand and services to business and national press. It accomplished this by honing in on this through multiple strategies, including a unique use case for Canvas technology that would hold appeal to a new set of media. In this case, it was the use of Canvas by an African reserve to combat Rhino poaching. Bluetext focused on messages that would still communicate the technology’s value proposition, and placed Canvas-centric articles with Associated Press, Bloomberg Business Week and The Washington Post. This coverage snowballed into dozens of additional global articles and led directly to new customer acquisition.
Gamescape, the brainchild of two die-hard fantasy sports enthusiasts and marketing entrepreneurs, came to Bluetext with a clear mission: create a gamification experience leveraging daily fantasy sports that drives customer loyalty as a brandable solution for bars, restaurants and other venues nationwide.
Bluetext took this concept and, with the Gamescape team, and did every aspect of their branding, marketing, and platform design and development. Gamescape wanted to create a sophisticated application that included a robust sports fantasy system, a messaging system for patrons to interact together, and profile creation with location-based geo-fencing. On top of all of that the new platform had to be visually striking, extremely intuitive and easy-to-use.
From loyalty-building rewards points to new ways to communicate with your customers, the mobile-first digital platform Bluetext developed for Gamescape offers an impressive suite of features focused on increasing the opportunities to interact and connect with your guests while offering them new entertainment options. Gamescape’s geofencing technology requires players to be in your establishment in order to join a game.
HelloWallet
HelloWallet, a financial services provider for large enterprises backed by AOL founder Steve Case, wanted to make a big splash in the national media with the value it brings to the market. Bluetext helped package original research on 401k challenges, and crafted a media rollout strategy that leveraged the research and pitted competing publications for the best coverage. The result– a front-page article in The Washington Post followed by major network coverage and more than 50 separate articles in national and business publications including Forbes, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
Bluetext is an equal opportunity branding, digital marketing and strategic communications agency – from leaders of global industry to the upstarts that may one day threaten them.