BroadBased Communications: Marketing, Public Relations, Graphic Design

Building a brand identity is challenging for any company, but imagine how much tougher it becomes when your company is actually three businesses under one umbrella. That was the situation confronting The CSI Companies, a Jacksonville-based people solutions provider, when it set out to redesign its website.

CSI partnered with BroadBased Communications to find a solution, and the resulting website that launched in April has turned out to be a great example of how carefully crafted messaging, graphics and site design can pull together a complex company into a cohesive whole.

One of the most recommended and top-performing staffing resource providers in the nation, The CSI Companies is composed of:

• CSI Professional, which assists companies across a wide range of industries in meeting their staffing needs for administrative and clerical support, clinical and non-clinical healthcare employees, and financial services personnel, as well as executive leadership.
• CSI Tech, which combines professional staffing experience with field-proven technology capabilities to provide solutions to a wide range of IT challenges.
• CSI Healthcare IT, which provides consultants and project teams that design, implement and optimize patient and health information systems.

“The challenge was to help the company articulate, through its website, an identity that not only captured the company’s businesses and benefits, but also sharpened and strengthened its brand story,” says Jan Korb, BroadBased president. “The CSI leadership had a compelling vision for the organization, but they needed the website to bring it across, and that wasn’t happening on the old site.”

BroadBased worked closely with the CSI leadership to craft a unifying tagline for company: “We get the people business right.” We also helped the company refine and sharpen its mission and vision statements as part of the project. At the same time, we introduced new design elements to make the site more attractive and dynamic, and we addressed structural issues to create a more user-friendly experience and support the concept of three divisions with individual strengths but a common culture and customer service commitment.

Take a look and see how the new CSI website gets its Web presence right.

Posted in Brand Development, Marketing Planning

BroadBased Communications is helping Rayonier with a coordinated communications campaign to support the global forest products company’s comprehensive health and wellness initiative called Stay Strong!

As part of the campaign, we have researched, written and designed a series of 11 x 17 posters for distribution in break rooms and common areas. Each poster features a Rayonier executive with a photo and profile of that executive’s fitness routine. The poster content also will be re-purposed as Reader Board slides and for emails and the company intranet.

In addition, the campaign includes a series of monthly postcards based on the Stay Strong! campaign’s health and wellness calendar. The postcards are mailed to employees’ homes with program updates, health tips and employee testimonials.

Posted in Corporate Communications

Please join us in welcoming Nikki Haywood to the BroadBased team. Nikki impressed us so much during her seven-month internship that we hired her full time in January.

As a junior graphic designer, Nikki’s official job description is “creator of all things beautiful.” (Nobody ever accused us of aiming low.) She’s a graduate of the University of North Florida, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts. Nikki is a member of AIGA, the professional association for design, and an AIGA Discover Design Mentor.

Click here for more about Nikki and her contact information.

Posted in BroadBased

The Broadbased team is honored to have been recognized by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office for our work with the Police Athletic League of Jacksonville. At a ceremony in January, we received a Special Presentation Award from Lt. Matt Nemeth for pro bono services we provided to PAL in 2012. We worked with PAL to develop marketing and public relations toolbox items, and we’re currently in the process of assisting Jax PAL with the development of a new website, projected to launch this summer.

The Police Athletic League is one of the oldest citizen-building youth programs in the nation, and Jacksonville PAL has been helping instill positive values, character and leadership skills in local youth for more than 40 years. The organization engages Jacksonville’s at-risk youth and reduces crime through afterschool programs, sports teams and mentoring.

From left to right: Sheriff John Rutherford; Jan Korb, Joy Watson Jarrell and Despina Pappas from BroadBased Communications; PAL’s Managing Director Renee Naughton and PAL’s Executive Director Lt. Matt Nemeth

Posted in BroadBased

In late 2012, the manufacturers of VitaChef^® Steamer Skillet announced the launch of a new healthy lifestyle cooking system that bakes, steams, fries and sautés. The combined brainchild of a Jacksonville restaurateur and manufacturer, VitaChef needed a soup-to-nuts branding strategy that captured the excitement of its unique approach to food preparation and identified messages that would resonate with varied consumer segments. Enter BroadBased. “It’s been quite a process since we were ‘brought to the table,’” says Jan Korb, BroadBased’s CEO. “We started with focus groups and a marketing plan last spring and finished up branding and packaging later in the year. From Web strategy to instruction development, it was a fun and comprehensive project with lots of taste testing along the way!”

Learn about and view videos of the VitaChef Steamer Skillet online at VitaChef.com. To take advantage of a special launch discount ($49.95 off retail), email Jan for details!

Posted in Brand Development

MarketingCharts.com reported in January on Optify’s 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report that the most successful drivers of B2B website traffic is email as the source with the highest conversion rate. Also included in the article is reference to a new study from NetProspex that reveals that 64% of B2B companies believe that their databases are unreliable (64%) or questionable (34%). You can read the entire article here.

B2B Conversion rate, by Web Traffic Source:

• Email: 2.89%
• Referral: 2.04%
• Paid search: 1.96%
• Direct: 1.65%
• Organic: 1.45%
• Social Media: 1.22%

Posted in Web/Interactive Development

Like Goodwill

Like Bluetique

Using social media to keep consumers informed and cultivate customer relationships can be a productive strategy, but companies often discover that there’s more to it than simply creating a Facebook page. “We tried to maintain a Facebook media presence in the past, but it was difficult to execute with our in-house staff. We needed guidance,” said Karen Phillips, chief administrative officer at Goodwill Industries of North Florida.

She found the expertise she needed at BroadBased, which launched two Facebook pages, one for the main organization and one for its upscale designer retail store, Bluetique. “BroadBased developed an editorial strategy and posting style that serves each of our brand’s key messages and showcases store merchandise and specials,” Phillips said.

In addition to the Goodwill stores you are used to seeing, the Bluetique store, located in Ponte Vedra, was created to offer higher-end and designer apparel while continuing the Goodwill mission of training and employing people with disabilities and special needs. Additionally, Goodwill’s six Job Junctions (walk-in career centers) offer an extensive array of employment services, free of charge to anyone seeking employment. Learn more at www.goodwilljax.org.

Posted in Social Media Planning

If you live in Jacksonville, chances are very good that you have heard about (and hopefully participated in) JAX2025, a series of community visioning events designed to excite residents about shaping the city’s future. JAX2025, a community-owned and -driven initiative funded entirely by private donations, is facilitated by JCCI – the Jacksonville Community Council Inc. The BroadBased team has been working with the JAX2025 team since October on marketing and public relations initiatives.

JAX2025 Steering Committee member, Al Letson (of http://stateofthereunion.com), shares a moving spoken word piece on what Jacksonville means to all of us.

More than 14,000 people completed the JAX2025 survey, and approximately 700 people attended the first JAX2025 Launch Event where survey results were revealed. View the results of the open discussion of priorities here. The second event, to be held Feb. 2 from 9 a.m. – 11 a.m. at the Prime Osborn Convention Center, requires no invitation and is free to the public. You can register to attend here but registration is not mandatory. We hope to see you on February 2^nd and at the remaining visioning events in March, April and May!

Posted in Web/Interactive Development

The popular Social Media Revolution video of 2011 by author and speaker Erik Qualman has been updated for 2013.  The video shares statistics about the size of the social media audience that just may surprise you including, for example, that the 1 billions users of Facebook make it the largest country in the world, behind China and India. Check out the video here.

Posted in Social Media Planning

To make this season even sweeter, we’ve compiled more of our favorite holiday recipes for your enjoyment. Please view the online flipbook, or click here to start an immediate PDF download here.

Posted in BroadBased