| Plexus Consulting Group | Success Stories | ||
| Professional Photographers of America, inc.(PPA) |
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229 Peachtree Street, NE CEO: David P. Trust
Plexus Consulting Group, LLC |
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Vital Stats: Professional Photographers of America, Inc. (PPA) is the world's
leading certifying agency for imaging professionals and the world's
largest not-for-profit association for professional photographers,
with more than 14,000 members in 64 countries. The Challenge | The Solution | The Process | Unintended Consequences | Unforseen Benefits | Measurements & Results | Lessons Learned
How to help members grow their businesses and generate new customer leads? Prompted by the board of directors, which knows that photographers
tend not to be "the world's best business people," PPA set
out in 1996 to improve the marketing ability of its members. How could
the association leverage its brand identity to drive business to its
14,000 members nationwide? To create a nationwide advertising campaign: World's Great Storytellers. "Provide a steady diet of information." The process behind PPA's World's Great Storytellers campaign involved the following steps:
Branding When PPA's board decided to develop an umbrella brand to help members to leverage their marketing efforts, the association outsourced the project to Brighthouse, an Atlanta-based "idea agency". Brighthouse developed the logo, tagline, preliminary marketing materials and idea for the Storytellers. The goal of the campaign was to create and market a brand identity behind which PPA members could rally to market their services, focused primarily on the following three markets:
Subsequently, PPA outsourced the implementation of the nationwide ad campaign to Napoltano & Co., which placed Storytellers ads in target market publications including:
Presentation & Campaign Following the branding phase, PPA set out to obtain buy-in
from members, something easier said than done. To promote Storytellers
internally, PPA published articles in the association magazine and
newsletter. The strategy was to consolidate the support of the board
of directors and association opinion leaders first, and then focus
on members at large. Testimonial advertising helped, and the success
story trickled down from the leadership throughout the membership.
Ultimately, PPA linked national and local efforts through the advertising
campaign and drove consumers to its website via a 1-800 number to
generate business referrals for members. PPA catalogued the referrals
by zip code to be sensitive to consumers, and avoid having flocks
of members unwittingly pounce on the same customer. Surprisingly, it proved to be a significant challenge to obtain buy-in from members and to encourage them to use the new brand and logo in their studio operations. It was difficult to bring change into an established, 120-year old organization. There was quite a bit of resistance from long-time members in particular. To make things easier, PPA explained to that this $250-300,000 ad campaign was developed for their benefit. While some members felt more comfortable using the old logo as a reference in addition to the Storytellers brand, all they needed to do was to link to the campaign. The association took care of all of the "legwork" and provided ads to get them started. Two spin-off programs emerged as a result of Storytellers:
To date, the Storytellers campaign generated over 1,000 business leads per month for PPA members. Anecdotal results include numerous member testimonials. Quite often, customers would run across a Storytellers ad in a magazine and feed their business directly to the nearest PPA member. A number of members became strong advocates for the program due to the success that they experienced as a result. The primary lessons drawn from PPA's experience with Storytellers are:
From a staff perspective, PPA learned that for a campaign to be successful at a national level, it must be readily accessible to local affiliates, who need to participate actively in the program. Members of the association's board of directors were "early adapters", who saw the benefit from the beginning and put their wholehearted support behind the campaign. To bring along the members, PPA made it as easy as possible for them to plug their businesses into the campaign. Also, PPA stayed "on message" throughout the program. Consistency was essential. Also, PPA found that it helped to vary the magazines. If Storytellers
stayed too long in one publication, the association noticed that referrals
began to drop off, reflecting a saturated audience. Every few years,
PPA switches publications to keep the idea fresh. Also, the association
"looks for the best ad package on a limited budget." PPA
hires ad placement professionals and has been able to negotiate large
discounts on advertising book rates. |
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