Greentarget

Greentarget

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Challenge 

Share Our Spare is a Chicagoland organization that provides essential items for families with young children, such as diapers and baby wipes, to make sure every child has a healthy start to life. While many parents in financial stress can turn to service agencies for food and other necessities, these organizations often struggle to provide baby hygiene items – which is where Share Our Spare fills the gap. Since its founding in 2011, the organization has reached over 50,000 children and distributed millions of diapers, baby wipes, and other essential items across the Chicago area.  

Yet Share Our Spare has struggled to raise awareness about both the critical need for diapers among parents in the community and its work collecting and distributing resources. Its leaders knew that a higher profile locally, particularly among parents, could expand the donor base and allow them to help more families in need. The organization came to Greentarget with the goal of raising awareness and boosting donations at a time of acute diaper need. 

Solution 

Greentarget met with Share Our Spare leaders to learn to learn about its upcoming donation efforts, such as the March Madness Diaper Bracket and the Christmas in July event. The team then developed a strategy that would leverage Chicago media outlets and timely news stories to bring attention to SOS and its mission.  

To put Share Our Spare in front of a broad Chicago audience, Greentarget focused on outreach to local broadcast media and Chicago event calendars. Local TV and radio’s focus on human stories enabled SOS to reach its target audience and convey the emotional impact of its mission. Event calendars also provided a practical way for families looking to give back to the community to connect with SOS, since it is one of the few Chicago nonprofits that allows parents to bring children when volunteering. 

Results 

In just three months, Greentarget secured nine pieces of media coverage for Share Our Spare in both local and national outlets, including WGN TV (two separate segments),  Wintrust Business Lunch, Fox 32, Outside The Loop Radio, Yahoo News, MSN, and more. Additionally, the organization was featured in six local event calendars.  

In the coverage, Share Our Spare was able to advance its signature donation drives, ensuring that relevant audiences consistently heard about their mission and how to help. In March, the organization’s diaper bracket was listed in event calendars from Choose Chicago, WGN, and Daily Herald. In May, WGN featured an interview with SOS Executive Director Alex Goodfellow about how Mother’s Day was the perfect time to donate diapers. Greentarget also secured a full-length TV story with Good Day Chicago for June to create visibility for their Christmas in July campaign. SOS said that these efforts helped revitalize donation campaigns and significantly boost interest in their mission. 

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As the digital landscape gets noisier and your clients’ challenges become more complex, it’s increasingly difficult to craft thought leadership content that stands out, offers utility to readers, and attracts prospective clients. 

Research-fueled campaigns can help. Much more than just another content marketing tactic, research campaigns are a powerful, revenue-building engine that can offer significant benefits to forward-thinking professional services firms.

In this guide, you’ll discover:

  • The four primary attributes clients are looking for in thought leadership content 
  • How research helps you create content that contains those attributes
  • How research can help you win new business and strengthen existing client relationships
  • Five steps to start leveraging the power of research-backed content at your firm

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When your audience views your professional services firm as a trusted authority, they’re more likely to come to you for help in solving their toughest challenges.

That means your firm’s authority — which is established and strengthened through proactive thought leadership campaigns — is the catalyst for your firm to win new business and capture a larger portion of your current clientele’s marketing spend. But with all the noise out there, how can your firm stand out?

The answer lies in bespoke signature research projects that speak to your audience’s unique pain points.

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Leaders at professional services firms are under enormous pressure to communicate effectively and authentically in today’s volatile world. From global crises to social shifts, they’re expected to comment on issues even when situations don’t directly impact their business.

Deciding how, when, and what to communicate — or even whether to say anything at all — is a minefield.

Greentarget tackled this challenge in our recent webinar, Communicating in an Increasingly Volatile and Complex World: A Roadmap for Professional Services Leaders. In it, we offer important insights on navigating today’s toughest communication scenarios and provide guidance on how to speak out authentically while staying aligned with your firm’s values.

Topics include:

  • Geopolitical and generational shifts
  • Diversity, equity, and inclusion
  • The impact of AI

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Challenge 

AmLaw 100 firm Polsinelli has a top-tier healthcare practice that regularly produces high quality thought leadership. The firm’s long-running Healthcare Dealmakers Conference, for example, brings together healthcare providers, innovators, and investors to discuss the state of the industry, while the quarterly Healthcare Services Distress Research Index has tracked and benchmarked industry data for more than a decade. 

Though the firm’s reputation in the healthcare industry is strong, Polsinelli wanted to do more to elevate its brand and cement its position as a healthcare law leader among prospective clients. After all, the practice has grown considerably over the past few years—bringing on former administration healthcare officials and experienced deal counsel—and the firm wanted to make sure that potential clients and the market more broadly understood it as a healthcare powerhouse. 

To stake out this territory, Polsinelli looked to Greentarget to help elevate its healthcare practice through strategic media relations.  

Solution 

The Greentarget team started by holding more than 40 meetings with firm shareholders to understand the work they do for clients and the developments they were watching over the next few months. Armed with this knowledge, the Greentarget team pitched select journalists at key publications who were covering these issues, setting up interviews and nurturing relationships between reporters and shareholders. 

At the same time, the Greentarget team conducted outreach for marquee thought leadership campaigns like the Distress Research Index and Healthcare Dealmakers Conference, setting up 1:1 reporter meetings and a media roundtable with 12 journalists from top-tier and leading industry outlets.  

Results 

In the first year of the program, the Greentarget team secured media opportunities for over 20 shareholders resulting in 48 published articles in key trade publications, including McKnights Home Care, Behavioral Healthcare Executive, MedCity News, Healthcare Risk Management, Behavioral Health Business, Part B News, and Modern Healthcare, among others. Polsinelli attorneys were even quoted in national outlets like Axios about issues involving healthcare mergers and The New York Times regarding healthcare cybersecurity trends. 

Reflecting the breadth and depth of the healthcare practice’s capabilities, stories featuring Polsinelli attorneys covered everything from state laws impacting the industry’s dealmaking, healthcare data privacy and security, the emerging role of private credit, Medicare Advantage issues, home health payment rates, behavioral health trends, and more.  

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The public tends to trust businesses and CEOs more than NGOs, government, and the media. That trust is fragile, though. And in the wake of headlines about everything from social issues to geopolitical conflicts, the way executive leaders navigate the pressure to speak out can either strengthen or undermine their stakeholders’ trust in them.

Entering the fray is not without risk, and it’s all too easy to make a PR misstep. That’s why so many executive leaders struggle to know when to make a statement — and what to say if they do.

In our recent webinar, Greentarget’s Executive Positioning experts — Vice President Abby Aylman Cohen, Director of Content & Editorial Strategy Jennifer Smith, and former Senior Vice President Steve DiMattia — laid out a compelling argument for why leaders can’t afford to be caught unawares by the issues that make headlines. Then, they offered practical advice to help firms protect their reputation and maintain trust with their audience in an age rife with polarization and unrest.

Here are three takeaways from the event.

1. Your Authority Hinges on Proactive Communication Planning

Of the respondents who participated in the 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer survey, 62% said they expected CEOs to actively communicate around changes occurring in society as a whole, not just those affecting their businesses. Gen Z employees in particular said they value CEOs who speak out about societal issues.

But considering how fraught and emotional the landscape of public discourse is, it’s easy for executive leaders to fall into one of two camps: Ignore the headlines completely and focus solely on the issues that directly affect the business, or release statements that attempt to please everyone but say nothing meaningful.

Furthermore, it’s common for unprepared leaders to lose control of difficult conversations, especially if they’ve never practiced talking to the media and other stakeholders about challenging topics. When executives are unable to navigate all-eyes-on-them moments, they risk undermining their own authority and harming their organization’s reputation.

For example, the acute need for proactive communications planning was never more apparent than in 2022, when the Supreme Court’s draft Dobbs v. Jackson decision leaked. Between the time the leak made headlines and the final decision was announced, corporate and firm leaders had about five to six weeks to think about how they were going to communicate with their audiences. Yet very few did.

Unlike Dobbs v. Jackson, most events hit the news cycle without warning. But even so, it’s possible for leaders to create a framework that guides if and how they respond. This can underscore their authority and build trust with stakeholders — if they take the time to develop a smart, informed, and flexible communications platform long before there’s a breaking news story.

2. Don’t Scenario Plan for Every Possible Communication Challenge

Over the past several months, Greentarget’s Executive Positioning team has identified some of the top threats we predict will cause communication conundrums for executive leaders. You can do a deep dive into each of these topics by downloading our Executive Positioning Guide or by perusing our blog.

Our guidance has covered topics such as:

  • Polarized rhetoric around DEI and ESG
  • The promise and peril of artificial intelligence
  • Seismic generational shifts in the workforce
  • The 2024 election cycle and social unrest
  • Geopolitical conflicts

This list is by no means exhaustive because the world is always changing. But the good news is there’s no need to create a specific communication plan for every conceivable headline, world event, or threat to your firm’s reputation. 

The crux of our advice around responding to issues like those above is this: Think about how your firm will respond to a crisis. Which stakeholders will you need to consult? How will you develop a response that aligns with your firm’s values?

By doing so, you can turn tense situations into an opportunity to engage your employees and clients and strengthen your firm’s position as a trusted authority. When you do this, you take an important step toward building a flexible framework that will guide when and why you respond to any issue.

3. Now’s the Time to Develop an Executive Communications Platform

The news cycle moves at warp speed, and you can’t afford to be reactive when weighing in on the issues that matter most to your audience. Foresight, forethought, and careful preparation are key.

By taking time now to decide how and when your firm will respond to salient issues, you can ensure your messaging lines up with your firm’s priorities and reinforces your position as an authority worth heeding with the audiences that matter most.

Our Executive Positioning Guide provides in-depth advice on how to get started, but it comes down to taking the following steps:

  • Consider your audience, and the best channel(s) to reach them
  • Invite a diverse cross-section of stakeholders into the process
  • Get clear about your firm’s values (and make sure your messages align with what your firm stands for)
  • Make your firm’s approach to deciding how and when to speak out public — and communicate your “why”
  • Embrace a commitment to authenticity (i.e., walk the walk of whatever you speak out about; don’t just talk the talk)

Engaging Greentarget to lead you through a rigorous planning process can bring significant clarity here. Entering into this process now — before an urgent PR situation occurs — gives you time to thoughtfully consider all the angles and arrive at a position that’s authentic, well-reasoned, and nuanced.

Want to Learn More About Greentarget’s Executive Positioning Practice?

Exemplifying our commitment to being a trusted advisor to clients, Greentarget’s Executive Positioning team provides C-suite executives (managing partners, CEOs, executive committees, and boards) with insights to anticipate, understand, and respond to important global and social developments—as well establish proactive internal and external communications campaigns around other pivotal moments, be they related to company purpose, talent initiatives, succession plans, and more.

We’ve helped clients navigate how to communicate about racial justice, the invasion of Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas war, the repeal of Roe v. Wade, artificial intelligence, and so much more. We’d love to help you, too — so let’s talk.

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