Earlier this year, we worked with a nonprofit that was widely known in core audiences but had little name recognition outside of it. That name recognition issue was especially problematic due to a need to differentiate from a similarly-named competing organization.

Leadership recognized an opportunity to use a summer conference for almost 20,000 teenagers to spread its narrative and mission to:

• Increase trust among core stakeholders.
• Elevate brand awareness among secondary nonprofit national and regional audiences.
• Establish further credibility through local, industry, and national media.

The key to success was the client’s willingness to trust the process that we recommended, including:

• Spending several weeks understanding core narratives, establishing SME voices, and being introduced to state-level leaders.
• Building trusted relationships with leaders and SMEs at all levels.
• Crafting customized narratives for each voice that would resonate with target verticals.

The results included:

• National op-ed media placements, including at Fox News Digital by a teenage conference attendee who shared how her father saved her life after a car accident.
• Op-eds by event leadership and state-level coordinators in secondary outlets relevant to the client’s core audience.
• Interviews of attendees and event volunteers in statewide and community news outlets – including the major daily of the event host city.
• Placements secured in top faith-based outlets like The Christian Post and WORLD Magazine feature comments by executive leadership on complex social issues facing young people and challenges for similar institutions.
• Turning op-eds and placements into marketing collateral by national, state, and local partners.

Following the conference, our final report showed more than just success metrics. We provided a template for marketing and public relations best practices for not only the parent organization, but also regional offices and affiliate partners.

Our team has provided public affairs support to a client whose interests range from health care and small business to national security and foreign affairs. The goal wasn’t to create a groundswell of support; the client’s audience was much narrower: influencing Members of Congress, their staff, and federal agency leaders to take specific actions.

In over four years, we’ve found authors and secured op-eds at some of the top national, regional, local and industry outlets in the country, including but not limited to:

• Newsweek
• The Washington Post local opinion page
• The Washington Examiner
• Federal News Network
• Real Clear Policy
• The Arizona Republic
• The Nashua Telegraph
• The Boston Herald
• Palm Beach Post

The AI client was founded by a former IBM Watson leader, had $9.5 million in investor money, and had several significant clients. But the launch of ChatGPT 30 days after we joined the team meant there was suddenly a lot more competition for earned media.

Over the course of eight months, we developed a close relationship with the fintech branding agency, including being trusted to deal directly with the client. The client was wide open to new ideas, which meant there was a lot of productive brainstorming and regular advance warnings about major company news.

The most memorable outcomes were:

• Securing coverage with Fox Business and Real Clear Markets about the client’s study on how news about earnings reports impacted stock market movements.
• Uncovering that the client spends more on paying for content sourcing through paywalls than it does on its cloud software. We used this information to differentiate the client from OpenAI, which had just been threatened with a lawsuit for allegedly illegal crawling of The Wall Street Journal website. Coverage was secured at TabbFORUM and Fintech Finance News.
• Using the aforementioned coverage to secure two interviews with a Wall Street Journal reporter.

The relationship ended as expected, when an internal hire was made and the slowing of the fintech market meant our services were no longer needed. Here’s what our main POC, who was a SVP with the client but is now at a different company, said about our engagement:

Proven Media Solutions helped my agency secure months of high-quality media coverage for two clients. The team got up to speed quickly on the clients’ niche offerings and complex messaging, finding unique and newsworthy angles, developing creative storylines, and regularly incorporating key data that secured op-ed, interview, and comment placements in outlets across multiple verticals.

The company also has a superior client management process, keeping open communication with my in-house team and clients’ spokespeople which ensured alignment throughout the engagement.

Michael Kingsley

• No name recognition
• One client
• A product that had not been fully tested in the market.

After a month of preparation, we used three main storylines to secure coverage:

• Forward-looking strategic and technological pillars from the company’s top executives. This resulted in original coverage at several outlets and republishing of blog posts at an industry outlet.
• New partnerships and clients secured original pieces of coverage and several significant newsletter/round-up mentions.
• How the company was using its previous parent company’s technology to change target industry’s practices. This resulted in a feature in a prominent Forbes column.

The client’s six-month goal was to secure 12 interviews and four pieces of coverage. We secured seven original placements, six newsletter pickups, and several republishings.

With both the AI and Insurtech clients, we were directly embedded both with the end client and the branding firm’s social media team.

Our client experienced these challenges firsthand. As an organization, it had done an excellent job earning trust and credibility with a critical core audience, but now was the time to elevate groundbreaking original research about its unique mental health approach. 

We developed a campaign that used influencers, third-party authors, client spokespeople, and the news cycle to spread the word across several targeted demographics, including professionals in the mental health community.

Successful placements over the course of the campaign included:

• Nationally influential news publications like Real Clear Politics and Newsweek;
• State-level daily newspapers such as The Indianapolis Star, The Florida Times-Union, and The Arizona Republic;
• Mental health outlets including Psychology Today and Social Work News;
• Religious news sites such as Religion Unplugged and the National Catholic Register; and
• Political outlets from all over the spectrum, from The Washington Examiner and National Review Online to Reckon News and States Newsroom.

Our task was simple, but not easy: Find third-party authors, develop content under their voices, and place that content in outlets that would help the product stick in people’s minds. We shaped the voices of teachers, police officers, human rights advocates, and health experts to transform scientific studies and academese into relatable content for op-ed placement and interviews. 

Successful media placements over the course of the campaign included, but were not limited to

• National media like USA TODAY and Fox News Digital;
• Major statewide daily newspapers, such as The New Hampshire Union-Leader, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and The Providence Journal;
• Local outlets in New York, Virginia, Rhode Island, and elsewhere; and
• Healthcare- and science-oriented trade publications such STAT News, Autism Parenting Magazine, and Real Clear Health.

We helped the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council (now known as the Pet Advocacy Network), the pet industry’s national trade association, overcome special interest pressure at the national, state, and local levels to make its voice heard. We improved PIJAC’s media coverage and placements by 600 percent in a single year and, in the first quarter of the following year, by a further 50 percent.

This success included:

• Op-eds in national outlets such as The Hill, USA TODAY, and The Washington Post and state outlets such as The Sacramento Bee and New Jersey Star-Ledger.
• Interviews with regional television stations in New Jersey, New York, and elsewhere, as well as with NPR stations in states including Maryland and California. 
• Statements published in The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, and other national and regional outlets. 
• Expanded industry relationships f to include the four national trade publications as well as pet bloggers and niche outlets (such as those focused on reptiles and aquatics).
• Influencer outreach resulted in co-authored op-eds with diverse leading members of the industry. 

The hitch was that NEJM’s team did not see this as a partnership worth promoting beyond a single press release. But it was a huge opportunity for the client, so we were brought in to assist.

Throughout the campaign, we worked directly with the Vice President of Marketing and her marketing and product teams. The earned results included:

• Placements in several target verticals.
• An article link at a prominent news aggregator, which became part of an investor presentation the same day.

The digital results included:

• Website visits more than tripled the week after the launch compared to the prior week.
• Direct click-throughs from third-party websites went up nearly 500%, and social media-driven website traffic went up by 2,500%.
• One third of the client’s monthly X/Twitter engagements took place on launch day and the next day.
• LinkedIn impressions tripled compared to the month’s norm.

While we cannot claim full credit for the social media traction, the client’s VP of Marketing said that her company’s parent organization credited our work as playing a significant role in the marketing success.

Proven Media Solutions was asked by KickCovid.us founders Surendra Goel and Ranjit Kohli to develop a message, content, and media relations strategy to help them “spread the word, not the virus” about what Northern Virginia businesses are doing to keep customers safe. We:

• Advised the Kick Covid leadership team on
  • Crafting effective media outreach content
  • How to best reach key media outlets
  • Best practices to maximize the use of content and media placements
• Developed compelling website content for Kick Covid visitors to become interested in, and to join, the growing grassroots movement to “spread the word, not the virus.”

KickCovid.us is one of many local, regional, and national initiatives to defeat the COVID-19 pandemic and return Americans to normalcy. We were proud to bring our skills to the task.

The client was prepared for success by:

• Identifying their niche target market – wealthy people who want an exclusive, no-stress vacation to the Caribbean.
• Developing relationships with key industry players.
• Focusing on a niche industry message
• Investing heavily in e-mail and social media marketing

Proven Media Solutions accomplished the following for the client:

• Advance coordination of on-site activities with the show’s communications team.
• Coordinating an on-site interview with the show’s president.
• Messaging and media trainings for the company CEO.
• Developed and initiated a long-term press strategy to keep the client in front of key media gatekeepers even after the contract ended.

Successful publicity is not easy, cheap, or fast. Proven Media Solutions was pleased to help a well-prepared client set a foundation to make waves now and in the future.