Want to know more
about our work?
Looking back, we’ve written
500+ blog posts…and counting.
Whew! We’ve been busy.
The following three projects
are where we’ve made
the largest contributions.
Check ’em out.
Corporate Specialties Blog 6 Time PPAI Award Winner For Content Excellence
Since 2013, we’ve been creating content for the Corporate Specialties blog, which features editorial-quality articles that illustrate the core of the company’s concierge service. Like a hotel concierge who knows the best restaurants, the Corporate Specialties team knows what promotional products are on-trend, on-brand and will get results—and that’s what is showcased on the blog.
Our strategy is to create content that focuses on product categories that clients want and are biggest sellers: Eco-friendly, apparel, drinkware, bags and tech. We also talk marketing and branding, including a three-part series on marketing strategy that’s the cornerstone of Corporate Specialties’ consultative approach.
Additionally, we showcase client wins, such as a $70k fundraising campaign built around a t-shirt Drew Barrymore wore on the cover of InStyle, plus company news, such as Corporate Specialties president Valerie Hayman Sklar regularly being published on Forbes.com.
The Corporate Specialties blog not only has been well received by clients and prospects, but it’s also been honored by PPAI six times with the Pyramid Award – Technology for excellence in blog content.
In January 2022, the entire Corporate Specialties website changed platforms, which gave us the opportunity to tidy up the posts, stripping out old content and migrating only what is current and applicable to today’s buyers. In total, we went from approximately 200 blog posts down to 55 of the top-performing pieces.
Throughout 2022, we have revised everything on the blog and began adding new content to complement the existing material. This will continue in 2023, where we will build even more robust product posts, expand the hub-and-spoke model of content production and continue to tie content back to supporting the sales process so that Corporate Specialties customers not only stay informed but get inspired by the products and campaign ideas shared each month. Read the entire collection here.
Compliments From Corporate Specialties
QCA Blog PPAI Award Winner For Content Excellence
While most of the eight years we spent working with QCA was focused on press releases and earned media articles, blogging eventually became an integral part of the communication plan. During the last 18 months of the organization’s existence, we published nearly 50 blog posts.
Product safety, compliance and responsible sourcing are weighty topics. Thus, the goal of the QCA blog was to break down the barriers surrounding compliance so that the issues were easier to understand.
By helping readers gain clarity around product safety and responsible sourcing, suppliers were able to make better manufacturing decisions, distributors and decorators could be more effective salespeople, and end buyers could make more informed purchasing decisions.
We strategically divided the content into four main categories:
1. Partners In Brand Safety: These posts highlighted QCA participants to get their insights on the issues as well as their perspective on what it’s like working with QCA.
2. Industry Issues: These articles dove into important issues surrounding QCA’s Five Pillars—product safety, responsible sourcing, product quality, environmental stewardship and supply chain security.
3. Events: Beyond the organization’s work with suppliers and distributors, part of the QCA mission included sharing the value of branded merchandise with end buyers and educating them on how to better work with their distributor partners to ensure brand safety and responsible sourcing. Thus, QCA staff attended various end-buyer events as well as conferences in the promotional products space—and we wrote blog post recaps to summarize event happenings.
4. News: Whenever we issued a press release, we also created a blog post that covered this piece of QCA news in an editorial format with more extensive interviews and details.
By creating content in these four pillars, we were able to publish a well-rounded selection of stories that not only showcased what QCA did as an organization but also promoted QCA participants and educated all of the constituents. Not only was the content well-received by QCA’s various audiences, it also won the 2021 Silver Pyramid Award – Technology for excellence in blog content.
Unfortunately, when the organization disbanded in 2020, the blog wasn’t kept as a part of the legacy website. However, it can still be viewed on the Wayback Machine here.
Kudos From QCA
Ponoko Blog Laser Cutting For Brands, Makers & Engineers
When we began working with Ponoko (an online laser cutting manufacturer with locations in the U.S., New Zealand and China), they were embarking on a movement to create a new breed of promotional products that completely reinvented how brands market themselves as well as gave designers and DIY makers the tools they needed to create custom products of their own.
For this initiative, we launched a content series—The 12 Immutable Laws Of Event Marketing Swag—to help fire up those creative marketing engines for branded merchandise buyers that are stuck in a rut, completely uninspired. Eventually, the series was combined into a mega post, and it’s still some of the work we’re most proud of to date.
Additionally, we wrote customer profiles (incredible, long-form testimonials with photography) as well as SEO-driven posts, new material debuts and company news. Throughout the years we worked together, the target audience evolved from makers (recreational and small business buyers, typically ordering custom keyboard parts or jewelry pieces) to brands creating promotional products to engineers building prototypes.
The work was vast and varied, and the customer creativity made each blog post unique. Over approximately a four-year period, we amassed quite the collection of 167 blog posts. See them for yourself here.
Praise From Ponoko
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