Star2Star wanted to boost its numbers at year’s end by incentivizing its sales reps to book more meetings with their clients/partners. They needed an engaging way to motivate both the reps and the partners to have the face-to-face meetings, which they know are more productive than calls.
Our Solution
In less than a month, Yalo concepted, designed built and launched a fun, fresh sales incentive program that created a win-win situation for both reps and partners by offering a cash prize just to have a meeting. Partners received instructions and a custom printed die by mail. Reps received a passport to log meetings and their own die. When the two met, they rolled the dice together and checked the combination on a landing page we created to see what prize they had won.
Chart-Busting Results
Within just over a month, the program generated 200 completed meetings across the country.
We’re always excited to provide quick updates on our recent client work even if they haven’t made full case study status yet! We’ve recently been hard at work with Hissho Sushi, helping them to prepare for their biggest conference of the year, IDDBA, which brings together innovators and leaders in the dairy, deli and bakery spaces to show off their latest ideas and products.
This year, Hissho unveiled new concepts for sushi + wine and wellness bars, with delicious new recipes and new Yalo-designed logo and signage that are just as fresh.
Check out some of our work and photos from the event and stay tuned for more of our work helping this client make an impact in its industry. It’s a great day for sushi!
Our client, Tequilas & Wine, is introducing a selection of high-end Mexican tequilas to the U.S. market. As a first step in getting the word out, they created a festival to showcase over 25 Mexican tequilas not yet widely available in the U.S. paired with small plates created by over 50 of Atlanta’s top restaurants. With just three weeks until the event, they needed to boost awareness and ticket sales and turned to Yalo for help.
Our Solution
We helped promote the event with a mixed media strategy that included TV (Telemundo), radio (3 stations), social posts (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram), outdoor and a redesign of the event website to bring the look and content into better alignment with the event’s upscale vibe. We even created a geo-fenced Snapchat filter for event day, giving attendees a fun, branded way to share the experience.
https://youtu.be/O9edcW6LIL4
¡Viva Results!
Our efforts netted a 300% increase in site traffic over the three week period, 300,000 Facebook impressions over two weeks and a well-attended, fun event.
The 139th Airlift Wing in St. Joseph, Missouri needed a bolder new look and feel for its recruiting materials and campaign to reach out to potential recruits. The goal was to portray the unit as a cool career option for young adults soon or recently graduating high school, who didn’t have plans for college, by highlighting the variety of jobs they could do (much more than just flying planes!) and incorporating local flavor.
Our Solution
We developed a campaign concept that encompassed all the reasons young men and women would want to join the unit — from things like camaraderie and helping their community to tuition assistance — in the idea of being a part of something bigger. Our campaign tag line, Be A Part of Something Bigger, took center stage, along with a graphic badge we applied to everything from ads to t-shirts and window clings. We used photography and video clips featuring local places and personnel, rather than more generic U.S. Air Force stock, to help recruits better identify with the unit and its members. The campaign included TV, radio, billboard, brochure, newspaper ad and social posts that all drove right to the recruiting office for more information.
Ready for Liftoff
Recruiting season is just beginning and our client now has all the materials they need for a successful mission.
This innovative healthcare technology startup engaged Yalo to help them clearly articulate a value proposition that is differentiated, meaningful and memorable. This messaging would then need to be communicated to multiple audiences through a new website that positioned the company as an innovator in the healthcare technology space.
Our Solution
Through customer and prospect interviews, collaborative work sessions and extensive industry research, Yalo and GenomOncology created a powerful new messaging strategy that served as the foundation for creative work that followed. Using industry research and competitive analysis, we built a message house to define key components of GenomOncology’s marketing strategy. We also developed three distinct personas using information gathered from interviews with prospective customers.
Our site redesign focused on creating easy ways for our audiences to quickly find the information most relevant to them. Visually, we created an overall sleeker look with a tech feel that also incorporates human elements through photography to allude to the impact of GenomOncology’s solutions on the patients that ultimately benefit. See it here.
Release Party
The site launched just in time to be touted at an important industry conference and help GenomOncology wow prospects with a sleek new look and more on-target content.
This provider of engineered materials to the high-voltage and battery markets wants more quality leads in the top of its sales funnel. Electrolock needed a communications refresh and marketing campaign to consistently tell a story that is unique and memorable, and reach engineers who may not be aware of the full range of capabilities they offer.
Our Solution
Yalo performed current state and competitive assessments, examining everything from SEO to design and channel presence, in order to help our client understand its challenges and opportunities for connecting with engineers. From there, we developed a messaging strategy that clearly articulates Electrolock’s value proposition. Channel research and planning helped to define which communications tactics will be most effective in reaching target audiences. Bringing it all together, Yalo’s campaign concepts provided the narrative, visuals and voice we’ll use to communicate Electrolock’s unique message.
Climbing the Charts
Our integrated, multi-pronged approach delivered meaningful results over the course of six months. Electrolock’s website page views per session increased by 30%. The average session length increased by 93%. Bounce rate decreased by 20%. And monthly contact form submissions increased by 83%.
European & North American Account-Based Marketing Campaign
The Challenge
Metalogix wanted to leverage sponsored whitepaper content to interest new European prospects in its services. But time was of the essence with the European summer holiday on the horizon. Our client needed to make a quick impression or lose an entire month of relationship building. Given that vacation, not data security, was foremost on the minds of these prospects, Metalogix also didn’t want to turn up the pressure so high that their prospects were turned off.
Our Solution
We created a memorable campaign designed to pique interest and gain respect by giving these prospects something they needed right then as a teaser to giving them something they would need later. The idea was to convey that the prospects could relax while on vacation because Metalogix had the answer to data security issues they’d need to solve when they returned.
Each prospect received a mailer fastened with a padlock to bring home the security message. Inside the box was a Metalogix embroidered towel and Polaroid Snap to enjoy while on holiday. A series of personal emails from sales reps and a personalized landing page ensured that Metalogix remained top of mind before and after the summer break, but without a hard sell to schedule a call.
Rave Reviews
Our client successfully engaged C-level executives that had not responded to previous outreach attempts both at existing and new accounts. The response to the European mailer was so positive that a second round of the mailers were created for North America and targeted at a larger audience just 2 months later. In total, 130 mailers were sent (50 in Europe and 80 in the U.S.) and generated 52 new opportunities/leads, which was a 40% boost in new opportunities/leads at the ABM targets. The campaign generated a >2x increase in the pipeline ($2.2M vs. $1M) at the targeted accounts. And average deal sizes increased by 20% with the ABM targets.
We’re excited and honored to be heading to New York again next week MediaPost’s Creative Media Awards, where our work for multiple facets of OpenConnect‘s brand and business is up for an award in the Business Media Category. Yalo helped this client develop a strategy, marketing calendar and assets to support both brand and product campaigns and other initiatives with the goal of bringing a more cohesive message and look to each piece of their communications. Below, check out just some of the work that helped produce 32% quarter-over-quarter growth in site visits and 70% increase in LinkedIn clicks and see the complete list of finalists here.
Logimethods is a highly-specialized consulting firm providing Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Integration and Business Intelligence services. Their website had become outdated, lacking responsive design, intuitive navigation, strong SEO or analytics. So, the company called on Yalo to help upgrade their web presence to reflect the innovative set of technical solutions they provide.
Our Solution
Yalo developed a new site that implements a clean, modern, responsive design with breakpoints for tablet and mobile. Updated content is streamlined and re-organized to make the site easier to navigate. Meanwhile, SEO best practices and updated keywords make the site easier for prospects to find. We added a few bits of new functionality, including a blog, a contact form specifically geared toward requesting resources for staff augmentation and data capture for visitors downloading white papers.
Climbing the Charts
With Google Analytics implemented, Logimethods is now gaining better insight into site traffic and adjusting its marketing efforts accordingly to hit new highs.
If there’s one time of year it’s totally okay to get emotional over TV spots, it’s the holidays. It’s the most wonderful time of the year, when brands put on their sappiest, cutest, most magical shows in hopes of capturing our attention, our hearts and our buying power. Personally, I’m all over it. And yeah, I might just cry.
The $1.5B Facility Solutions segment of Veritiv Corporation was engaged in numerous marketing activities, but did not have a well-defined picture of its audience, a broad view of all its ongoing marketing efforts or any way to measure success. Yalo helped them put all the puzzle pieces in place with an assessment of their marketing operations and overall campaign effectiveness.
Our Solution
Yalo provided persona and content reviews, campaign planning and execution and overall marketing analytics. We analyzed and audited the most utilized content in a library of over 500 unique assets. Then, we generated 4 new marketing personas for the business segment, as well as content calendar planning and execution tactics that can be applied moving forward.
Climbing the Charts
The personas we developed are actively being used by the business segment and our calendar planning and execution tactics were so valuable that they have been adopted by other larger business segments across Veritiv.
With the KISS End of the Road farewell tour about to kick off in January (of course, Arnold already has his tickets!) and the KISS Kruise VIII about to pull back into port from a wild 5-day ride, there’s a lot of buzz around these classic rockers right now. Yalo is getting in on the hype, helping to promote and sell KISS Army wine, the only officially-licensed vintage carrying the band’s name and branding. Keeping it simple with just one white and one red, the wines give fans the ultimate way to toast their favorite band.
We provided creative and content for the official ecommerce site, which is the only place to buy KISS Army wine. Stay tuned for more rockin’ work as we start rolling out promotional efforts on social and in collaboration with Rock & Brews, the restaurant chain founded by Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley. Cheers!
In my experience, the only people who think an advertising photo (or video) shoot is exciting and glamorous are people who have never worked one. The rest of us know they require a crazy amount of planning (which creatives don’t usually excel at!); and then are usually long days full of lots of time spent just waiting, punctuated with moments that require excruciating attention to detail and a focus on keeping your creative vision true, while always balancing all the opinions in the room. There will be highs and lows, drama that needs to be diffused, wardrobe emergencies and always too. much. candy. But yeah, though not necessarily glamorous, shoots are one of the phenomenal parts of doing what we do, because for all the work you put into them, if done right, you get as much back in gorgeous work you’ll be able to use for your next campaign, website redesign, YouTube series . . . or whatever.
Rachel and I recently had the opportunity to spend some time at Black Horse Studio with our client, Hissho Sushi, for a two-day shoot of some new recipes and a few staples that we’ll be helping our client promote throughout the first quarter of next year. This was my first food shoot and, while I watch just enough Food Network to have some idea of what would be involved/pitfalls to avoid, it’s completely different when you’re on set. (One reason I insisted a food stylist be part of the budget!)
What struck me throughout the whole event was the sheer artistry of it all — from the sushi chefs to the photography team.
If you’ve ever watched a sushi chef in action, you know they aren’t just making food, they’re making art. Hissho’s two chefs showed up and were GAME ON! knocking out beautiful rolls and placing them artistically, with appropriate garnishes. What seemed like it might be a quick shot sometimes turned into an hour+ of figuring out where the wasabi should go or whether this exact micro-green leaf was in the exact right place. (Spoiler alert: Tweezers are key.) Then there was the matter of the chopsticks and what looked natural (or not), as well as lighting, lighting and re-lighting for every variation. Oh, and then dab that tuna with some water because it’s starting to look dry! Now, shoot again . . . Our product experts were on point. Our photography experts were on point. Getting it exactly right (and making it look effortless) takes so much more expertise (and time) than anyone knows! And it actually does require all those expert sets of eyes in the room.
Another big take-away is to keep an open mind. Have you ever met a girl who’s a model and thought she was pretty, but not model material? Then you see her photos and are blown away. Backgrounds work the same way. A stucco background we thought would be perfect actually looked terrible when we tried it in person. The marble we weren’t sure about was gorgeous. And our client’s actual faux bamboo shelving didn’t excite us on first glance, but on “film” it looked amazing. You just never know until you try it.
We’re really excited to see the final shots and start incorporating them into our work! And we can’t wait for the next shoot!
Nypro provides manufacturing and packaging innovation for healthcare companies. They wanted to redesign their Customer Engagement and Innovation Center lobby to create a more impactful and visually appealing experience that blends their history with the innovations leading them into the future.
Our Solution
We developed oversized graphics for specific areas that engage and inform, while contributing to the overall unified, modern aesthetic of the redesigned space. Our goal was to tell the Nypro story of yesterday, today and tomorrow, with a modern feel that respects the company’s history and roots in science, but is visually focused on the company’s exciting, innovative future and transcends the historical feeling of a 70’s plastics company.
Climbing the Charts
Since it opened its newly redesigned doors, visitors from around the world have come to innovate, design, plan, build prototypes and more in this space that blends a rich history with a bright future.
JEMCO News hits Jackson EMC members’ mailboxes and inboxes each month with fresh ideas on how to conserve electricity, stories about co-op initiatives and more. They were looking for a more engaging way to share a few feature stories with their online audience.
Our Solution
Yalo is developing a series of videos to help bring JEMCO News feature stories to life in fun, shareable, bite-sized pieces. For each, we have taken the graphics and imagery from the print articles and animated them, adding a soundtrack and additional footage where necessary to better tell the stories in this format.
Catalog of Hits
In addition to giving Jackson EMC a more engaging, in-the-moment way to share their stories, we are helping them build a content library that can be used and re-used across multiple channels. One of these videos already has received NRECA Gold Award for most innovative use of digital communications.
Jabil Packaging Solutions wanted an innovative, immersive way to show visitors to its experience centers in Tortosa, Spain, and San Jose, California, how a package comes to life. They were looking to tell the story from concept through the entire life cycle of a package, showing along the way how their approach to innovation and expertise in technology creates a first-in-class experience for their clients — whether they are developing a standard plastic packaging or a more sophisticated smart solution.
Our Solution
We developed a 7-minute 3D video that tells the story in a way that makes sense to consumers, not just the product development teams and engineers who will see it during their visits. Products and processes come to life in a large format experience that blends live-action video, graphics and 3D rendered objects that animate off the screens. Yalo provided the concept, script, storyboard, VO talent selection and overall direction, then collaborated with a production studio to bring it all to life.
Rave Reviews
This experience is unlike any other Jabil has ever created, so the stakes were high. The C suite executives deemed the experience “very cool,” “a home run” and “smiles all around.” And their clients felt the same.
When it comes to creating killer events for our clients, Yalo sometimes gets involved at the highest levels, developing concepts and executing all the way through. And sometimes, we’re just called in to create a memorable piece or two of the entire experience. We’ve been busy over the past few months, jumping in at both levels for a variety of clients who wanted to make an impact at industry conferences. Check it out.
OpenConnect — Blue Cross Blue Shield 2018 National Summit
The largest Blue Cross Blue Shield conference of the year assembles professionals from across the network, many of whom are already using OpenConnect’s RPA technology — and others whom OpenConnect would like as clients. Yalo developed a handout designed to drive visitors to the booth for a product demo in exchange for a Starbucks gift card.
Jabil AOC Technologies — OFC 2018
The Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exhibition (OFC) is the largest global conference and exhibition for optical communications and networking professionals. Our client wanted to create a space for coffee and conversation where they could share their expertise and show off products they’ve created. Our booth design accommodated room to mingle, shelving to display product and digital signage to attract and educate.
Hissho Sushi – IDDBA 18
This conference provides an opportunity for our client to get in front of the decision makers at grocers and other potential partners who could carry their products and show them what’s exciting and new. Hissho wants to really wow the crowd this year and hired Yalo again to refresh their entire look and experience from an updated logo and graphic badge to invitations to VIPs and others, some cool swag and an event space that shows off their new attitude and new recipes in a fun environment — we’re even dressing their chefs! The conference isn’t until June, so we don’t want to give up all the goods before they actually debut, but we can share the two moodboards we created to drive the entire experience.
This leading global water technology company’s corporate global web properties were product focused and didn’t tell the complete story of how Xylem solves water, which includes a focus on social and environmental responsibility. This product content satisfied the needs for corporate and investor communities, but the environmental constituents, media and other important audiences were not getting the information they needed. Xylem sought to showcase its thought leadership and gain new exposure through content marketing and needed help making a splash in this new endeavor.
Our Solution
We created an easily-accessible, centralized destination for all of Xylem’s latest news, blog content, whitepapers, case studies and other publications that speak to the brand, the company’s value in the global economy, its innovation and sustainability efforts and the impact its work can have on the environment. This content hub, The Reservoir, targets visitors including new prospects who are interested in doing business with companies that offer a great brand story, as well as environmentalists, media, analysts, investors and suppliers. The Reservoir was developed separately from Xylem.com, then seamlessly incorporated into the site.
Climbing the Charts
This well-designed and optimized content hub is poised to increase brand awareness, time spent on the website and overall engagement with a company’s brand. The expectation is that it will better engage visitors than a typical blog, resource center or newsroom, tying together disparate content into a more cohesive and entertaining presentation with more context, control and analytics. The Reservoir can be used to improve campaigns, lead generation and lead nurturing, while maximizing the value of branded content.
This power cooperative communicates with its members mainly through its monthly magazine, e-newsletter and related social media. When JEMCO News started to feel a little stale, Jackson came to us to amp it up with a little soul.
Our Solution
With a set of fresh eyes and a new, simplified approach to design, we gave the publication a more modern look and feel, while retaining the content members look forward to every month, from billing info and cost-saving tips to philanthropy updates and recipes. We also took on Jackson EMC’s 2016 holiday social promotion that combined a photo contest giveaway and a series of helpful tips for safe decorating during the holiday season. We lit up Facebook, Twitter and Instagram with carefully crafted promo content for maximum effect.
Chart Toppers
Print publication is delivered to 220,000+ households every month.
E-newsletter is delivered to 3,000 households every month.
Video content related to a JEMCO News feature story received NRECA Gold Award for most innovative use of digital communications.
Holiday social campaign received over 70,000 impressions with 5,000 engagements on contest posts and nearly 2,000 contest entries.
One of my very favorite times of the year is upon us! Next weekend, 10 thoroughbreds will run for the roses in the Kentucky Derby, kicking off Triple Crown season. Frivolous fashion, breathtaking physical speed and beauty, high stakes betting and, of course, bourbon cocktails . . . what’s not to love?
The Derby gets the most attention of the three races in the set, but still doesn’t draw anywhere near the widespread viewing audience of other major sporting events, averaging around 16 million viewers versus 100+ million for, say, the Super Bowl. As a result, you don’t typically see anywhere near the same level of marketing efforts as for events with wider appeal (not to mention there’s no time in the approximately two-minute race for commercial breaks!). But of course, there are brands who are there consistently, taking advantage of the smaller field and some creative opportunities to stand out. Woodford Reserve is one of them.
Since 2003, Woodford has put out a commemorative Kentucky Derby bottle featuring original label art. The recurring initiative is an absolutely perfect fit for this Louisville-based Brown-Forman brand, who is this year’s Official Presenting Sponsor and Official Bourbon of Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby. These collectors’ items are a fun way to create brand buzz and loyalty by driving anticipation each year and building excitement for the race among fans of both horses and cocktails. And y’all are obviously gonna need some bourbon for those Mint Juleps! This year’s effort keeps it all in the family by featuring a painting by Louisville artist, Keith Anderson, who also just happens to be a bartender at the Brown-Forman headquarters. This limited production will be on shelves until about mid-May, then . . . they’re off!
If you’ve ever wished for a hot-to-trot branding strategy such as the one Woodford Reserve offers the world of horse-racing every year, you’ve come to the right place. Yalo’s brand strategists and creative design team can help your business go the distance with imagination, style and deliverables that will give your brand a head start out of the gate. Let’s have a chat and run the race together.
