At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the NYC Deputy Mayor for Strategic Initiatives launched Employee Ownership NYC, the nation’s largest municipal initiative to protect and sustain small businesses through conversion to employee ownership. To help business owners keep their doors open by selling their businesses to their employees, the City of New York set up a rapid-response program called Owner to Owners as part of the initiative. 

SVM was hired to develop and manage the multi-phase strategic communications campaign to educate businesses about the financial and social benefits of employee ownership and drive New York City businesses to the Owner to Owners rapid response hotline to find out if employee ownership conversion was right for them.

What
we did

• Produced a comprehensive community partner analysis, consisting of a robust literature review, insights from interviews with 10+ key partners and a stakeholder map of 337 relevant organizational partners across over 20 business ecosystems.
• Designed a multi-phase strategic communications campaign that aimed to reach and engage New York City businesses by leveraging existing networks and trusted community voices as messengers. This decentralized approach aimed to:
  • Educate and equip community partners within distinct business communities to act as Employee Ownership NYC ambassadors.
  • Drive referrals to the Owner to Owners hotline.
  • Support narrative change around the business case for employee ownership. 
  • Establish sustainable referral processes that continue to exist beyond the scope of this campaign.
• Implemented a communications campaign grounded in two outreach tactics: 
  • A community-driven campaign to educate and equip CBO partners to act as the face of the Owner to Owners campaign through customized micro-campaigns and events.
  • A paid media strategy to further amplify the reach of Owner to Owners messaging through online and offline platforms, including social media, Google, radio spots, digital publications and flyering. 
• Customized and A/B tested story-based and data-driven ads, delivered to different business communities, to identify the most effective messaging with each target segment.

As part of the emergency response to COVID-19, the State of California Department of Social Services (CDSS) was tasked with reaching vulnerable communities with information to protect their health and to get vaccinated. For this campaign, CDSS sought to engage community-based organizations across the state to act as trusted messengers and deliver this information to the highest risk communities.SVM was contracted to provide onboarding and technical training for more than 119 CBO partners, in addition to building and maintaining the infrastructure for both CBO reporting and campaign collateral.

What
we did

• Facilitated collaboration among 119 CBO partners to increase reach in geographic and demographic communities disproportionately impacted by COVID-19
• Led a multi-day technical onboarding for CBOs and partners participating in campaign
• Trained CBOs and partners on the campaign’s custom digital platform (CORD), which housed weekly outreach reporting, custom outreach materials, reported activity data and trends, and campaign resources
• Provided ongoing technical support for CBO partners, including weekly office hour sessions, a ticketing system, and 1:1 sessions to improve tech literacy 
• Developed and maintained a custom digital solution for searching, filtering, and easily downloading hundreds of campaign assets across 32 languages
• Coordinated across multiple state agencies, funding agents, media partners, and related campaigns to maintain consistent messaging and seamless execution
• Established campaign-wide reporting processes and facilitated the evaluation of data in real-time on an ongoing basis throughout the campaign

As part of the emergency response to COVID-19, The Labor and Workforce Development Agency (LWDA) was tasked with slowing the spread of COVID-19 in high-risk industries across California. LWDA launched a campaign to educate both workers and employers on California health and safety protocols and workers’ rights related to paid sick leave. This campaign sought to engage community-based organizations across the state to act as trusted messengers and deliver this information directly to their communities.SVM’s role was to develop the technical and strategic infrastructure to mobilize a vast network of community-based organizations and reach California’s most impacted workers and employers with local, trusted voices.

What
we did

• Mobilized 62 contracted CBOs to conduct outreach to workers and employers in higher-risk industries across 6 regions of CA and in 30+ languages
• Supported the development, planning, and training for the CORD platform, which imported real-time COVID, demographic, and employee data from across the state to inform regional targeting strategies and facilitate CBO reporting and evaluation. This platform is now being leveraged by multiple CA state agencies to support community outreach planning and campaign execution.
• Provided overall administrative campaign management, oversaw execution, and acted as conduit between multiple state departments, media agencies, and the CBO network
• Devised a ‘Regional Lead’ structure for the campaign (empowering 12 organizations to manage 9 regional coalitions of CBO partners across the state) and met weekly to analyze regional gaps and strategize on data-informed, hyperlocal outreach tactics
• Developed a collaborative structure to gather local CBO insights and inform the earned and paid media strategies
• Collected and analyzed real-time data to inform individual CBO campaign strategy at the neighborhood level and track trends in outreach tactics and community sentiment
• Provided ongoing marketing support and training to increase CBO capacity and long term skill sets, optimize campaign performance, and reduce day-to-day resource burden

The San Diego and Imperial Valley Network Small Business Development Center (SBDC) in partnership with The Brink SBDC and The University of San Diego, launched the first annual San Diego Angel Conference (SDAC). The SDAC is comprised of a series of events and workshops for high-growth start-ups and leads up to a 1-day conference where $200,000 in angel backed investment is awarded. 

SVM was hired to recruit 40  qualified start-ups to participate in the program through a community led communications campaign.

What
we did

• Worked with SBDC to map and prioritize local organizations reaching the start-up community. Then, defined levels of partnerships with clear expectations and benefits for each.
• Onboarded 14 partners with timeline and customized strategy for 3-week outreach campaign.
• Created customized, trackable assets on behalf of each partner and the SDAC for email, newsletter, social, and other customized placements.
• Managed paid social campaign through Facebook and Twitter of 2 local partners.

Literacy Inc. sought to develop a public awareness campaign on behalf of City’s First Readers (CFR), a NYC Council-funded coalition of eleven early literacy organizations including all three public libraries.

Prior to SVM, the campaign focused primarily on awareness and social media engagement. SVM was contracted for year two to drive quantifiable engagement in the early literacy resources and programs offered by the coalition.

What
we did

• Coordinated an outreach campaign with 11 nonprofit partners and public libraries, providing hyper-local targeting in specific neighborhoods in all 5 boroughs
• Built a new City’s First Readers website that aggregated local events from all 11 partners, providing users with a public calendar of activities in their neighborhood
• Developed an opt-in text and email subscription service to automatically remind users of upcoming events within a half mile of their home
• Launched a communications campaign through multiple partners driving to the new website; this included designing customized posters, flyers, and social media posts for partner-led communications
• Placed paid ads in bus shelters, phone booths, grocery markets, salons, pediatric offices, and daycare centers in targeted neighborhoods and coordinated ad placements in the facilities of all of our partner

The Mayor’s Office of Domestic Violence (OCDV) designed a campaign to highlight the complexities of domestic violence and be more representative of all relationships that are impacted.

The goal of the campaign was to increase the number of people getting help from local support centers, the support hotline, and a newly launched online portal that housed connections to support. Due to the sensitivity of this issue, OCDV saw an opportunity to work with community-based organizations to more effectively reach specific communities with the message.

They wanted to introduce both a digital and grassroots component to the campaign since it was initially launched with mostly traditional media (i.e billboards, subway ads, taxi TV) and did not deeply integrate local groups.

In 2018, SVM was hired to launch a partner-led digital outreach campaign to connect survivors of domestic violence with support offered by NYC.

What
we did

• SVM collaborated with OCDV’s network of city agency and community-based partners to coordinate an outreach campaign targeting 7 verticals.
• SVM managed a concentrated 3-week campaign with each partner that utilized their existing distribution channels as well as paid social.
• SVM worked with 16 different organizations to design social posts and emails that would uniquely resonate with each community.
• Also, SVM managed OCDV’s social channels for an organic 6- week campaign.

Emblem Health was looking to increase their brand presence in six target communities in NYC, positively impact the health and wellness of the people living in these neighborhoods, and create a pipeline for new insurance membership.

What
we did

• SVM identified 20 nonprofits offering the strongest fitness classes, cooking demos, and health education classes in the six target communities.
• Co-branded creative materials (online/offline) were developed, translated into Spanish and Chinese, and distributed each week for three years promoting the platform.
• All program data was presented in real-time to the client using a customized digital dashboard, tracking event attendance, online/offline reach, social reach & engagement, emails captured, digital leads, phone calls, and earned media fiscal value.
• Working with these partners, we aggregated and launched a branded platform of free wellness programming offered by EmblemHealth in these 6 communities.
• All partners drove to the same registration portal and tracked both online and offline engagement using tools and platforms provided by SVM.

Treehouse Eyes hired SVM to build out a hyper-local outreach campaign to educate parents on the disease state of myopia and corrective options available.

The campaign’s goals were to increase awareness of myopia, increase awareness of the Treehouse brand, and drive appointments to two offices which had just launched outside of Washington D.C.

What
we did

• SVM identified a community partner who was offering health services to both Chinese and Korean Americans in Washington DC, a demographic often impacted by myopia.
• SVM translated all content into Korean and Chinese.
• Working with this partner, SVM built the creative and helped oversee the launch of an educational outreach campaign, arranged local speaking opportunities, secured local media coverage, and ran a paid social campaign.
• The campaign drove people to the website and registration form.