Challenge accepted. Problem solved. CASE STUDIES
Discover how breakthrough ideas led to impressive results. In the pages that follow, you’ll find four stories of marketing success. Don’t think of these as work samples; think of them as problem-solving examples. Regardless of whether they needed branding, digital marketing, campaigns, or content, these Burns Marketing clients received solutions that were strategically focused and inventive – and most importantly, they generated the momentum these brands were looking for.
BRAND.................................................................... 4 Coalfire
DIGITAL................................................................... 8 Nurse-Family Partnership
CONTENT................................................................ 12 Seagate
CAMPAIGNS............................................................ 16 Cognizant
Coalfire | Brand
Engineering a breakthrough brand for the cyber world
The backstory It used to be easy for businesses to protect sensitive information; secure their four walls, and they were good to go. The digital world changed all that. Now valuable data – everything from financial records and intellectual property to health information and national secrets – can be accessed from a computer, often remotely. Unfortunately, not everyone has good intentions. Coalfire is one of the good guys. They offer cybersecurity solutions that can help businesses ward off cyber threats and simplify compliance. Because the best defense is a good offense, organizations count on Coalfire to help them identify vulnerabilities, adhere to industry regulations, and improve their cyber risk management programs.
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THE OBJECTIVES Recent big-name incidents and breaches have put the topic of cybersecurity on the front page – and in the boardroom. As a result, Coalfire wants to be the company boards of directors call on. That meant shifting from a boutique sales approach to more enterprise-level engagements. And with a higher profile, the company needed to look and sound like the trusted experts they are. Additionally, after an influx of investment capital from The Carlyle Group and The Chertoff Group, Coalfire set their sights on doubling their market share by 2017.
The “before” look: Coalfire’s original logo and visual identity fell short of positioning them as an established industry leader. Plus, a lack of brand standards opened the door for inconsistent execution across marketing materials.
STRATEGY Coalfire engaged Burns Marketing to conduct a brand refresh. As with all brand work, we started with our proven discovery process that focuses on three key areas: customers, competitors, and our client. Using customer interviews and research, we created personas that went far beyond superficial demographics. We dug into motivations, challenges, and behaviors to identify what Coalfire’s customers need from their cybersecurity partner. From there, we looked at the competitors and determined how Coalfire could stand out. Finally, we worked with key stakeholders to determine what Coalfire does best. During this phase, a little vision casting was necessary. We wanted to make sure the new Coalfire brand would represent what the company was today as well as what it wanted to be tomorrow. Five possible themes were presented, each representing different promises that Coalfire could make to customers. The one they chose – cyber solution engineer – highlighted their ability to deliver custom, unified cyber threat management solutions that keep businesses on track.
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COALFIRE | BRAND
THE LOGO Inspired by the discovery process, our creative team began to delve into logo options. Each design incorporated elements that reflected the brand promise: strength, unity, and the ability to engineer custom solutions. Ultimately, we settled on a logo that featured two linked hexagons. The “hex” is one of the strongest shapes found in nature and serves as a powerful symbol of the company’s staff and solutions.
VISUAL IDENTITY With the logo in place, it was time to determine the brand’s visual identity. After exploring a range of color options, graphical accents, and photography styles, Coalfire chose a look and feel that highlights their professionalism and symbolizes their brand values.
Color symbolism played an important role in the color palette selection. The primary colors of orange, steel gray, and white represent Coalfire’s expertise, strength, and insight. The secondary colors highlight their commitment to efficiency and partnership.
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I think very highly of Burns Marketing. They understand the issues of brand and the importance of putting the customer at the center. They brought balanced, useful, and insightful recommendations that have helped us stretch our thinking and get a deeper understanding of our business and what we need to do to win. It is probably the best relationship I’ve ever had with an external advisor and partner. – Donna Sue Mastalka, Director of Corporate Marketing, Coalfire
MESSAGING ARCHITECTURE To help the Coalfire team tell a consistent story, we developed a messaging hierarchy that outlined how to communicate the benefits of their comprehensive solutions. From key messages to proof points, we gave them the foundation from which they can build all future marketing materials.
THE EXECUTION Once the building blocks of the brand were established, it was time to bring the new Coalfire to life. Why did it work? ++ Positioned Coalfire as the experts in cybersecurity and elevated them into the enterprise space – where they belong. ++ Took a balanced approach between educating and empowering audiences, steering clear of the fear-mongering that’s typical in this industry. ++ Achieved cohesion among business units. ++ Standardized the look and feel, while offering design flexibility. ++ Created a foundation for marketing campaigns. Deliverables: ++ Brand strategy, materials, and launch ++ Persona development ++ Visual identity and logo development ++ Messaging architecture ++ Sales collateral and templates
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Nurse-Family Partnership | Digital
Helping nurses advise new moms – one download at a time
The backstory Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP) is a national nonprofit that assists lowincome, first-time moms. Through the program, nurses provide the support these moms need to have a healthy pregnancy, become knowledgeable parents, and give their children the best possible start in life. The organization came to Burns Marketing seeking a complete rework of the delivery mechanism for their documentation and educational materials. NFP is evidence-based, so the program needs to be implemented in accordance to a strict model. Nurses travel with massive folders of printed information to guide discussions and offer moms reference material – but these were inefficient, distracting, and frequently out of date. To support their nurses and ensure fidelity to their model, NFP wanted a new, digital solution that would improve portability and accuracy of content. 8
THE OBJECTIVES Our partnership with NFP focused on building a content portal, called Visit-to-Visit, for nurses to access and organize materials for each of their client portfolios. This was both a technical exercise and a strategic one – the system needed to be designed for an audience that might not be familiar with medical record software, mobile devices, and streamed content. We prioritized an intuitive UX so that the portal wouldn’t be a barrier to nurses’ ability to provide care and guidance. Concurrently, we knew that Visit-toVisit could go far beyond content provisioning. We set out to make it an organizational tool that would allow nurses and the local implementing agencies to track services provided, organize clients and their evolving needs, and anticipate future areas of attention.
STRATEGY NFP benefits from a vast bank of peer-reviewed prenatal care content, so our job was to help nurses get the most from it. We began by understanding our audience of in-home care providers. What were these nurses’ pressures on the job, and how could the Visit-to-Visit tools alleviate them? What were their most important needs aside from content? What onboarding and training would be required to utilize
the company-provided tablets that displayed meeting guidance notes and medical information? In the end, we built the new Visit-to-Visit application to be tablet-native and simple. It’s a browserbased portal that also provides organizational and interactive functionality to aid nurses wherever their job takes them.
The Visit-to-Visit portal allows nurses to provide content and contextual care. Through the easyto-use interface, they can discover, order, and package appropriate content for their clients through keyword searches.
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NURSE-FAMILY PARTNERSHIP | DIGITAL
USING THE APPLICATION Visit-to-Visit not only retrieves important discussion-facilitation notes and medical information; it also allows nurses to assign future content, tag content if it has been successfully conveyed or if parents need more time with it in later meetings, and track the progress of moms over time. And it’s multilingual.
Nurse home visitors from around the globe needed to be able to access, search for, and produce collections of relevant content wherever they were, on a variety of devices. Because NFP helps women of many different cultures, the system had to support English, Spanish, five U.S. tribal languages, and six other languages. 10
We have been extremely happy – Burns Marketing set up a system that has allowed our staff to focus on producing great content for our community. We have staff from a variety of disciplines who contribute and manage their own content on a regular basis. We have also taken advantage of Kentico‘s flexibility and have continually added new features and content for our constituents. – National Director, Marketing & Communications
RESULTS Today, the nurses travel with a single tablet and can retrieve thousands of publications and discussion facilitation tools whenever they need – ensuring that they’re prepared, confident, and nimble. Because their work is so personal, the biggest outcome of this project might be enabling nurses to focus on building relationships, rather than navigating a digital system or a box of outdated printouts. This evidence-based community healthcare program has been championed for delivering solid results for mothers, children, and communities in which they live. The organization is perceived as an innovator in its field, largely because of the digital tools that help empower moms all over the country.
Why did it work? ++ Utilized NFP’s already-rich content bank – so when Visit-to-Visit went online, they saw immediate, seamless results. ++ Clarified nurses’ needs at the outset, providing us with good strategic direction. ++ Designed and implemented Visit-to-Visit with NFP’s strict regulatory environment in mind – ensuring compliance to governmental standards. ++ Took the project beyond simple content delivery – leveraging NFP’s willingness to make other improvements and brainstorm even bigger solutions. Deliverables: ++ Visit-to-Visit application, created with Kentico software ++ End-to-end development, digital strategy, information architecture, user flows, and deployment ++ Instructional and onboarding help ++ Optimization and program management
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Seagate | Content
Turning a tech leader into a content leader
The backstory A global leader in data storage, Seagate provides the products and thought leadership that businesses and consumers need to keep pace in such a rapidly changing field. Seagate is customer-facing and enterprise-facing, so their solutions must be as diverse as their audiences – which is one of their challenges from a content perspective. When Seagate came to Burns Marketing, the company had already completed various analytic, SEO, and persona work – but they needed a partner to validate it and create a unifying strategy to bind everything together. They also sought compelling new content to bring their brand story to life.
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THE OBJECTIVES Our partnership with Seagate focused on building a workable content marketing strategy and a variety of compelling content deliverables – all directed to important audience personas and key messages. The overarching aim was to assert Seagate as the industry leader, living up to the promise of their impressive product portfolio. That meant creating a whole new suite of content across several media. Our first project was Seagate’s Fast Storage e-magazine – a cornerstone of their long-form thought leadership that creates affiliation and trust – and we quickly moved on to tackle even more challenges than either group had foreseen at the start.
The overarching aim was to position Seagate as the industry leader, living up to the promise of their impressive product portfolio. STRATEGY We validated and expanded Seagate’s existing research related to personas, SEO, and keywords, lending a strategic backbone to their content marketing efforts. By focusing on three key personas, we mapped out entire content campaigns that encompassed several media and deployed keywords and key messages intentionally – all while allowing for the creativity that makes great content stand out. Our content initiatives were broken down by priority, topic, content type/medium, targeted keywords, persona, and stage in the buyer funnel. We oriented these outputs around the buyer funnel because that helped us focus on content marketing’s ultimate purpose: move audience members closer to affiliation and conversion, regardless of their initial relationship with the company.
Aw a r e n e s s
Consideration
Purchase
Loyalty
This highly orchestrated approach also allowed for excellent tracking and analysis after the fact, and it provided a scalable template for future initiatives.
To help simplify the content creation process, we developed a tool that identified the relevant content, topics, and associated keywords for the targeted personas during each phase of the funnel. 13
SEAGATE | CONTENT
THE CONTENT SERIES This strategy covered webinars, white papers, blog posts, videos, infographics, social media, and email. At each step, we asked what the purpose of the content was: ++ Who’s targeted (personas)? ++ What is this persona searching for? ++ How does the keyword bank inform the content? ++ How does this content fit into the broader strategy? ++ What’s the best place to begin? One of the key ideas here is that these content media are symbiotic – they weave together to create many different customer experiences and conversion opportunities. By viewing them holistically, we were able to leverage each one much more effectively.
We created a variety of resources for each topic – including social posts, emails, videos, infographics, and more – allowing Seagate to reach their target audience in all relevant channels. 14
RESULTS We helped Seagate establish efficient, executable systems for their content marketing. This client partnership, which grew over time to include many of Seagate’s different divisions, culminated in an integrated content marketing strategy that reflects the excellence Seagate demonstrates in other areas. Seagate’s new strategy has increased customer engagement as measured by content downloads and social shares. Not only does it demonstrate the value of such intentional content creation; it also increases the value of Seagate’s SEO and persona work. Why did it work? ++ Leveraged SEO and persona research to develop a compelling and executable content marketing strategy. ++ Delivered content that resonated with target customers across Seagate’s business divisions, resulting in increased downloads and social shares. ++ Capitalized on new creative opportunities that arose from the holistic content strategy. ++ Created a bank of content assets that could be repurposed, parsed, and reformatted according to Seagate’s needs – ensuring that they got a lot of mileage out of the work. Deliverables: ++ Content strategy ++ Fast Storage e-magazine (multiple issues) ++ Blogs ++ Infographics ++ Emails ++ Web content ++ Standalone flipbooks and other long-form pieces 15
Cognizant | Campaigns
Decoding digital health
The backstory Digital technologies have the power to transform healthcare, just as they did for the retail and travel industries. These tools can help organizations deliver new products and services that not only improve the patient experience but also enable more cost-effective, coordinated care. While digital health is gaining attention, many healthcare executives don’t understand how digital strategies can impact their organizations. Cognizant has a proven digital strategy consulting methodology that helps organizations start their digital transformations, and the company needed to educate C-suite executives on the possibilities. Cognizant was relatively new to the healthcare market, specifically providers. The company acquired TriZetto, a leading provider of IT and other services to providers and payers, in late 16
2014. Their combined solutions have the power to impact the way health is managed and delivered. But first, executives need to know they exist.
THE OBJECTIVES Because the acquisition of TriZetto occurred late in 2014, both companies had already secured their exhibit space at the HIMSS Conference, an annual gathering of more than 40,000 healthcare professionals, executives, and vendors. That meant there would be two separate booths with different messages. To introduce the allimportant C-suite audience to the newly expanded company, Cognizant/TriZetto planned to hold a social reception event during the HIMSS conference. The main goal of the reception was to secure follow-up in-depth discussions with C-suite decision-makers who wanted to unlock the possibilities of digital health.
STRATEGY To secure “hot leads,” Cognizant/TriZetto first needed to encourage qualified people to attend the reception. And that meant developing a campaign that would stand out from all the vendors vying for the attention of this desirable audience. The Burns Marketing team started with the goal of helping the audience understand the powerful changes that digital health makes possible. To do that effectively, we proposed a storytelling approach that explained both the business and patient benefits. This approach was applied to all communications – from pre-show promotions to post-event follow-ups. Since we were targeting extremely busy executives, our campaign had to be hard-hitting and unique –
and start well before the actual event. We developed a campaign strategy that incorporated emails, direct mail, and personal phone calls that kicked off approximately 45 days before the HIMSS conference. Once a person registered to attend our reception, they did not receive additional promotional pre-event activities, except for a reminder email. For the actual reception, we wanted to create an environment that would be conducive to networking and engaging discussions. That meant no boring presentations. Instead, we recommended a series of educational stations. Attendees could visit each station at their own pace and interact with Cognizant/TriZetto representatives along the way.
We developed the event strategy, putting careful thought into traffic flow. The final floor plan allowed guests to learn about Cognizant, network, and unwind after a busy day at HIMSS.
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8-step methodology
Bar-top tables
Check-in/ welcome
Monitor stand (HealthActivate)
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48’6”
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Code Halo (books available here)
Monitor stand (Code Halos)
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COGNIZANT | CAMPAIGNS
THE CAMPAIGN The event was positioned as a chance to “decode digital health.” By mixing intrigue and education, the theme helped the audience understand the opportunities digital health provides and how Cognizant/TriZetto can make these possibilities come to life. Using a targeted list of desired attendees, we sent a direct mail piece that had two purposes: invite recipients to the event and educate them on digital health with Cognizant’s existing thought-leadership publication, Cognizanti.
The Cognizanti was wrapped with a belly band that featured a peel-off sticker. This technique encouraged recipients to interact with the magazine. A strategically placed bookmark helped drive the message and invitation home.
The signage told the story of Rebecca, a 58-year-old woman with diabetes. By assigning a face to the patient journey, we were able to make the idea of digital health far more relatable.
Signage told the story of digital transformation – from the eyes of the patient and the provider. Using size to capture attention, the 20-foot-long banner showed the target audience what digital health meant and how it could provide tangible benefits for patients and the business.
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To further drive home the campaign message, attendees received a follow-up mailer containing a Fitbit and additional information. Now they could harness the power of digital health for themselves – and fully understand how Cognizant/TriZetto makes digital transformations a reality.
RESULTS The executive reception registration and attendance far exceeded the client’s goals. Pre-conference registration was more than 40% higher than expected. The sales team received solid leads – and was confident they would secure follow-up meetings. Cognizant was able to reuse the signage and other materials at additional events to help sell the value of its digital health consulting services. Why did it work? ++ Provided concrete examples of how digital health impacts patients and the business of health care.
Deliverables: ++ Campaign strategy and theming
++ Used a different technique to deliver the message – not a typical demo or presentation.
++ Emails
++ Encouraged people to move throughout the room and network with the sales team and their peers.
++ Call scripts and text messages
++ Demonstrated Cognizant’s expertise and ability to help clients capitalize on digital technology in a variety of ways. ++ Told a complete story by the only company that can help clients with every aspect of the transformation.
++ Direct mail pieces ++ Landing page ++ Infographics ++ Event signage ++ Video production and editing ++ Event coordination
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