Marketing success stories — and one spectacular failure
Gerry Hanlon’s creative teams have compiled quite a few success stories in the marketing communications business, on projects that include everything from selling fertilizer (ironic for someone in the communications business) to helping to prevent nuclear war.
While the jury’s still out on the nuclear war front, the programs Hanlon produced did manage to sell a heck of a lot of fertilizer, as well as hundreds of other categories of products and services.
This is work that’s won multiple creative awards, including a dozen Addys, eight Gold Awards from the Television and Radio Advertising Association, and as a Clio finalist. As an agency president and creative director, Hanlon has overseen the administration of multimedia advertising efforts for MCI, ARINC, Liberty Mutual, DuPont, Joseph A. Bank and Princeton University. He also wrote a book on product launches and has delivered presentations at the National Press Club on maximizing marketing communications effectiveness.
Today, Gerry Hanlon is the driving force behind HanlonMarketingPartners and your primary contact for a most thoughtful approach to marketing communications approaches that work. Get in touch and let’s talk about helping you to get in touch with selling more than you ever thought possible.
Meanwhile, take a look at the stories behind some of our proudest sales and awareness-generating accomplishments.
Princeton University
Our marketing communications team wrote, produced and directed a fundraising video for the Princeton University Quadrangle Club, yielding $2.5M in funds raised.
We sprang into action almost as soon as we got the call, as the promotional efforts needed to be completed and in the hands of alumni in a matter of weeks. We interviewed dozens of students, alumni and university staff to develop video content. The presentation of the video at venues nationwide did more than successfully launch the fundraising campaign. We helped the university exceed the targeted goal of $500K five-fold.
Avatech Software
Hanlon developed a brand theme and ad campaign for the software division of Avatech, a value added reseller. The theme was credited with helping to change the way the company’s associates thought about themselves, thus paving the way for the organization to expand as a result.
Though Avatach was already an industry-leading design engineering software support company, they planned to enter the software development business. First on their list of needs was a brand theme to support the division launch. Hanlon led the team and created a theme and ad concept, fueling a successful division launch and unprecedented sales company-wide.
Andrews Federal Credit Union
Our team led the creative development of marketing campaigns for Andrews Federal Credit Union, yielding 20% growth.
Though it was one of the largest credit unions in the nation, Andrews Federal Credit Union’s underutilized marketing resources were sorely in need of effective promotion among customers. We developed nearly a dozen product-specific marketing campaigns that included print advertising, direct mail, collateral and in-house branding.
Within six months of the launch of what was at the time an unusual “retail-branding” approach, the campaigns yielded a sustained 20% increase in deposits.
Physicians for Social Responsibility
Gerry Hanlon was instrumental in helping to capture congressional and nationwide attention for Physicians for Social Responsibility.
PSR is an organization that views nuclear war as a health issue, and devotes the bulk of its resources to helping to prevent it. They were looking for a way to call attention to the fact that both the United States and Russia had thousands of nuclear missiles on high alert, aimed at each other, years after the end of the cold war. Each missile was capable of being launched with just a few minutes notice.
As Creative Director, he developed the idea and led the team that delivered 535 toasters to the U.S. Capitol – one for every Senator and Representative of Congress. On the side of each toaster was emblazoned the theme “In the time it takes to make toast, we could all be toast.” When a button was pulled, the toaster popped up paper missiles to drive the point home.
With a press conference event held on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, the effort received national coverage on the Monday morning on which it was launched, with numerous mentions in a variety of publications, including The Washington Post, Roll Call, the Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times and others.
The client congratulated the agency on the remarkable success of its effort, and immediately began the follow-up lobbying campaign to change the status of the “high alert” program.
What makes this campaign a “spectacular failure” is that it was launched on Monday, September 10, 2001. With the next morning’s terrorist attack and collapse of the World Trade Center in New York, the political climate changed so dramatically that the effort was temporarily abandoned in spite of everyone’s best efforts.