Company: EMC and 11mark
Entry Submitted By: 11mark
Company Description: 11mark is an integrated marketing agency that serves up innovative communications solutions. We offer independent counsel and big ideas to help clients influence opinions, shift perceptions, and win in competitive markets.
Nomination Category: Communications & Marketing Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Communications or PR Campaign of the Year - Marketing - Business to Business

Nomination Title: Disruptive Research Program: The Big Data Cure

In up to 525 words, tell the judges about the nominated campaign: its genesis, development, planning, commission, and performance to date:

With Federal mandates, such as the Affordable Care Act, Meaningful Use, and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Feds are leading the charge with healthcare reform. But are they practicing what they preach? EMC, MeriTalk, and 11mark created a multi-channel “disruptive” marketing program, sharing new insights and confronting the status quo with new ways to think about the issues.

The program, called, “The Big Data Cure,” examined the current state of Big Data in Federal healthcare – and how it might redefine healthcare in the future.

Marketing challenges:

-Break through market clutter
-Create a leadership position around an emerging focus area
-Differentiate in the minds of buyers

Goals:

-Grow market profile and credibility
---Increase Federal healthcare market awareness
-Raise visibility of EMC thought leaders
-Increase Federal stakeholder intimacy
---Demonstrate Federal healthcare market commitment, leadership, and relevance
---Strengthen relationships with Federal healthcare government leaders – delivering important executive-level partner and customer sales relationships
-Drive qualified leads
---Generate customer and partner leads, as well as upsell opportunities
---Build pipeline
---Influence the influencers
---Build communities of interest

Key strategies:

-Microtarget
---Leverage a focused community of interest (MeriTalk Government Big Data Exchange) newsletters, website, and database of Federal healthcare professionals

-Sell with versus to
---Incorporate and leverage peer-to-peer insights for the risk-averse government market (peer insights in the survey, peer-to-peer networking breakfast, etc.)

-Leverage multiple channels
---Leverage a series of print/online/broadcast/in-person channels to amplify the total impact of the campaign

Tactical approach:

-Create/deploy a targeted survey to collect new insights
-Analyze data to create report, infographic, and press release
-Develop/execute a public relations and marketing campaign to promote the study and drive Federal executives to the landing page to download the study (registration required – qualified leads)
-Promote study to Federal healthcare stakeholders with a targeted campaign

Marketing tactics:

-Landing page feature panel and banner advertisements
---Posted on MeriTalk.com
-Email marketing
---Email blasts to a database of 100,000+
-Social media: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn
---Posted daily promoting the report. Retweeted coverage when posted via social media
-Radio ads
---Achieved local awareness by promoting EMC and the study results on 103.5 WTOP
-In-person event
---Connected with Federal healthcare IT leaders during a C-level breakfast roundtable – presented and discussed the study results

Public relations tactics:

-Created press release, pitch, and media list to support the public relations efforts
-Pushed press release out over the wire while conducting media outreach to relevant media outlets
-Created infographic to visually tell the story to media and target customers; utilized in media outreach
-Pitched to media outlets that cover Big Data, Federal, and/or healthcare
---Secured coverage in influential Federal health IT outlets, such as FierceHealthIT, InformationWeek, and Government Health IT

Performance:

-Media placements: 23
-Press release pickups: 400+
-Total impressions: 165M+
-Report downloads: 215+
-Social media impressions: 50,000+

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Provide a brief biography of the person or persons who lead the team that created and carried out the nominated communications campaign (up to 125 words):

Karen DelPrete is Director of Industries Marketing for the Americas at EMC Corporation. DelPrete has two decades of experience leading and developing marketing teams and programs. Currently, she is responsible for field marketing for the public sector. DelPrete received EMC’s 2009 Global Alliances Award for top vertical marketing and GovMark’s 2013 All-Star Award for outstanding IT marketing. DelPrete also supports philanthropic endeavors, including USO of Metropolitan Washington-Baltimore.

Nicole Burdette is Principal of 11mark. She joined the 300Brand family of companies in 1997 and today leads creative, digital, research, and content teams to develop and implement strategic communications programs for leading B2B and B2G IT companies. Clients have included Cisco, Dell, EMC, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Northrop Grumman Information Technology, Polycom, Salesforce, and Red Hat.