Re-branded Higher Education Technology Consulting Firm Grows 60%
D4 Creative Helps Consulting Firm Gain National Awareness in the Higher Education Vertical
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. – D4 Creative, one of Philadelphia’s top advertising and branding agencies began working with Ferrilli, a Philadelphia-based higher education, technology consulting firm in late 2015. The goal was to create national awareness and to grow market share in a highly competitive, fragmented, and undifferentiated higher education vertical market that consists of 3,500 institutions. D4’s team, after significant immersion into the higher education technology industry, attending client sales presentations, and the due diligence in understanding their competition, gave Ferrilli a new brand, a new sustainable, differentiated competitive position and a multi-platform marketing plan that would help them win new business. The result was that Ferrilli grew over 60% in 2016.
Rob Ferrilli, CEO and founder of Ferrilli remarked, “D4 Creative revitalized our brand and has consistently developed great marketing ideas for conferences, service offerings, and digitally. Since we have engaged them, we have more than doubled in size and they certainly played a role in that success.”
“D4 has a very strong opinion that both B-to-B and B-to C is ultimately B-to-Me,” says Kurt Shore, President and Chief Creative Officer of D4. “Yes, there are different “buy” triggers in the business mindset than the consumer mindset—mainly related to the rational vs. the emotional side of decision-making—but B-to-B marketing should be no less compelling, interesting or aesthetically arousing.”
“We created a unique brand ‘manifesto’ that expressed Ferrilli’s core tenants in plain language that employees could embrace and rally behind and that were equally believable and compelling when expressed outwardly to their clients and prospects,” added Suzanne Hatfield, CEO and Chief Strategy Officer of D4.
Tactically, we created a new website, www.ferrilli.com carefully reconstructed client presentations, RFP’s, created an emotive brand video, rolled out consistent content via email and business social channels, produced several high-quality video testimonials and case-studies, and created a highly-targeted re-targeting digital advertising strategy and multiple campaigns.
We also crafted a consumer-like multi-platform campaign for Ferrilli for their industry’s national trade shows. The idea was borne from our early research that found when client prospects were asked if they had heard of Ferrilli, they answered, “Sounds familiar, like a sport car, (Ferrari), or a racing tire, (Perilli).” D4 took advantage of those misperceptions by mapping the attributes of those rather famous brands to the attributes of Ferrilli, such as high performance, incredible (client) handling, high-speed responsiveness, etc. The campaign culminated with the giving away of a Ferrari for a day at each major event the firm attended. Awareness, not to mention new business for Ferrilli, has continued to grow rapidly as a result.
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