Peppercom

Company: Peppercom
Company Description: Peppercom, Inc. is an award-winning, strategic communications firm based in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and London. Its business approach to strategic communications drives new opportunities for clients. Peppercom is also known for its Sales PositioningSM and proprietary crisis management program CrisisRxSM, as well as its pioneering role in the CyberCrisisNetworkSM. www.peppercom.com.
Nomination Category: Company, Office & Product Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Best Agency, Brokerage, or Satellite Office or Facility

Nomination Title: Peppercom – Re-inventing the PR Agency Model

Tell the story about what this nominated agency, brokerage, or satellite office or facility achieved in 2003 (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

Many public relations professionals would agree that the industry as a whole is
being threatened by a growing “commoditization” of such PR services as media
relations and special events. Even as the economy brightens and a host of new
business opportunities open up, PR agencies are often still relegated to a "vendor"
status, with clients demanding as much as possible for as little as possible. Let’s
face it: in today’s marketplace, traditional PR services are becoming more of
a "nice to have" resource than a "must have" solution.

Which is why Peppercom believes the key to success is innovation and
reinvention. For us, innovation and reinvention begins by understanding our
clients’ “pain.” We define “pain” as the everyday, critical problems that keep
clients up at night. By conducting marketplace research, we continually identify
new “pain points” in the market that our clients are dealing with, and in turn
increase investment spend to develop new service offerings that address this pain.
We uncover our clients’ and prospects’ needs in variety of ways, including
partnering with leading business publications and organizations to co-host
surveys. For example, in 2003 we partnered with BritishAmerican Business Inc.
(BABi) and Continuity Insights Magazine to gauge the current thinking on
corporate governance issues. Previous co-branded surveys uncovered pain points
in such areas as crisis preparedness and perception gaps between sales and
marketing groups within an organization. We’ve also forged partnerships with four
independent like-minded PR agencies to create Lumin, the industry’s
first “intellectual collaborative”.

Specific Peppercom services offerings that have come directly from market
research include:
q CrisisRx, which helps clients to respond to a post 9/11 world
q Pain-Based Selling (PBS), which uncovers the pain points keeping
company’s customers up at night
q Positioning, our proprietary method of differentiating clients from their
competition
q Partnership Development, creating new ways for our clients to expand
awareness and drive new revenue streams
q Sales Shield, designed to re-energize the sales forces of companies in
crisis
q Business Outcomes, designed to evaluate program performance.

The best way to measure innovation is by results – the proof is in the pudding –
and 2003 was a banner year for us with the addition of some of corporate
America’s best businesses seeking out our unique service offerings. For example,
GE Corporate has incorporated Peppercom’s Pain-Based Selling (PBS) service
offering to enhance communications between its sales and marketing. Bank of
Montreal asked Peppercom to create a state of the art training program to work
with both business development and relationship managers to help them sell
against their customers’ pain points. Another Fortune 500 company asked
Peppercom to conduct a two-day crisis management workshop for 16 separate
business units around the country. Another major corporation incorporated
Peppercom’s Business Outcomes service offering into its overall marketing plan,
seeing it as the first truly cost effective measurement tool. And, MasterCard has
retained Peppercom to launch an entirely new business unit, relying on
Peppercom’s expertise in positioning.

It is one thing for Peppercom to say that we are innovative, but to have mainstream
publications regularly report on our unique service offerings is another testament to
this fact. Articles based on CrisisRx have appeared in publications such as US
Banker, Informationweek, Investors.com, and Silicon Valley Business Ink.
Peppercom’s Pain-Based Selling approach has been covered extensively in
publications including Effective Customer Service, B2B Magazine, PRWeek, and
The Holmes Report. Most recently, Sales Shield has “peppered” publications such
as Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management, and Money
Management Executive. 

List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: List each link on a separate line, begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.website.com]:

http://survey.peppercom.com/news/anmviewer.asp?a=65&z=2 Selling Power
http://survey.peppercom.com/news/anmviewer.asp?a=62&z=2 PRWeek
http://survey.peppercom.com/news/anmviewer.asp?a=60&z=2 Money
Management Executive
http://survey.peppercom.com/news/anmviewer.asp?a=55&z=2 Silicon Valley Biz
Ink
http://survey.peppercom.com/news/anmviewer.asp?a=53&z=2 The Holmes
Report

Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader of this nominated agency, brokerage, or satellite office or facility:

From two people working out of a one-bedroom apartment eight years ago to one
of the nation's top mid-sized strategic communications agencies, Steve Cody and
Edward Moed, co-founders and managing partners, have been together for over a
decade and provide a complementary blend of strategy, creativity, and
responsiveness. Both partners play a key role in creating innovative service
offerings for Peppercom's clients. Ed is widely known for his expertise in crisis
management, marketing, and public relations measurement programs. He most
recently developed Sales Shield, which combines the best of crisis
communications and sales training to help sales forces continue to sell and
maintain credibility during a crisis. Steve has pioneered partnership development,
and most recently spearheaded Peppercom's Pain-based Selling (PBS) service
offering, which connects clients to their customers in totally new ways, and
authored a book on PBS commissioned by McGraw Hill called “What’s Keeping
Your Customers Up at Night?” The book sold 3300 copies in the first six months.