Case Studies

Volvo Ocean Race | Women's ProFESSIONAL Soccer | SwimOutlet

Golfer Geoff Ogilvy

Volvo Ocean Race

Objective

Six months before the start of the Volvo Ocean Race 2014-15, event organizers wanted to position the Volvo Ocean Race as a unique global sports property at the intersection of sports, adventure and technology.

Solution

Invite key journalists to go sailing on a Volvo Ocean Race boat training in the U.S. to experience the event first-hand prior to race start.

Outcome

"Experiential" feature pieces in high-reach media outlets including Wired, Forbes, Daily Beast, Wall Street Journal, Al-Jazeera America and other lifestyle outlets.

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Women's Professional Soccer

Objective

After the launch of Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS) in Spring 2009, the challenge was to raise the visibility of the league beyond football fanatics and into mainstream sports articles.

Solution

Developed 1999 trophy tour PR story together with U.S. Soccer and WPS marketing team to celebrate 10th anniversary of the 1999 Women's World Cup. Pitched stories to newspaper columnists about the anniversary, looking back 10 years later at women’s professional football landscape in America.

Results

Feature stories in 19 of 20 biggest circulation newspapers in the United States, including cover stories in USA Today, NY Times and San Jose Mercury News, as well as a primetime feature on CBS News and NPR Radio story.

SwimOutlet Fashion Influencers

Objective

SwimOutlet.com is the web's biggest swim shop known for its large offering of competition swim gear, suits and accessories for performance and fitness swimmers. In the past few years, the company has wanted to branch out beyond competition swim and grow its customer base in areas including fashion and kids swim.

Solution

We put together an influencer campaign that targeted popular fashion blogs, websites and social media personalities who share links, favorite styles and product reviews on various social and digital channels. They were offered a product for review or gift card to order a product to photograph.

Outcome

SwimOutlet.com had more than 50 backlinks and mentions from key bloggers as well as numerous social media tags helping to grow its audience on Twitter, instagram and Facebook. SwimOutlet.com has been recognized as a Hot 100 Internet Retailer and was named part of the Social Media Top 300 among online retailers.

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Golfer Geoff Ogilvy

Objective

2006 U.S. Open golf champion Geoff Ogilvy was little known by the media and public outside of Australia. His primary clothing sponsor, PUMA, wanted to help "tell his story" and highlight Ogilvy's personality and style in the U.S. and globally going into the 2007 U.S. Open.

Solution

Bring Ogilvy to New York City to participate in a series of media interviews, roundtables, autograph signings, photo shoot and other publicity opportunities -- all of it organized and scheduled by Robert D. Penner.

Results

Ogilvy appeared live on two television shows (CNN/HLN, ESPN First Take), took part in a roundtable luncheon with global media at a midtown hotel, sat down with NBC Sports for a feature in advance of their US Open coverage, completed an ESPN Magazine interview with Dan Patrick, appeared in an autograph signing at a golf shop and took photos for Australian media in downtown New York City. An in-house Q&A appeared in more than half-dozen languages.