Overview
Smartling, a leading translation technology and services company, engaged PANBlast to promote its brand campaign, “Move the World With Words.” The goals of the campaign were to highlight multilingual translators as the heroes of the global economy and increase sales conversations which included Smartling’s language services.
Challenge
Sales of Smartling’s language services offering was lagging behind the sales of its technology platform, and the company sought to increase awareness and the number of new deals including its translation services. To do this, Smartling crafted a campaign to highlight the lives of its translators and position them as vital to the global economy. To begin, Smartling sent a photographer around the world to profile 12 translators, capturing their daily lives in a series of images and stories. The content was then compiled into the campaign’s centerpiece, a coffee table publication called “Move the World With Words.”
PANBlast was challenged with obtaining press coverage around the “Move the World With Words” brand campaign, with the goals of:
- Increasing language services bookings
- Elevating the profile of translators
- Repositioning Smartling and the industry as essential to global commerce
STRATEGY
PANBlast understood there must be a comprehensive PR strategy to gain traction, as simply pitching a coffee table book alone would not obtain the desired earned media results. PANBlast approached campaign promotion by focusing on three aspects:
Promote the book to translation and marketing trades
With a coffee table book as the campaign’s centerpiece, PANBlast pitched “Move the World With Words” to several outlets in the translation and marketing space. Specifically, the pitches encouraged book reviews from translation trades and outlets that had previously reviewed coffee table books. Marketing trades received a targeted press release about the book.
Leverage the “Move the World With Words” brand campaign strategy as marketing thought leadership
The brand campaign itself stood out as a unique idea among marketing professionals. PANBlast capitalized on this opportunity by working with Smartling to develop thought leadership content about the campaign’s inception and goals. Specifically, the content focused on:
- Why Smartling sent a photographer around the world
- The importance of cultural and human branding for B2B companies
Post campaign, highlight results/ROI in case study about the campaign itself
Smartling was capturing marketing and sales data as the campaign unfolded. After analyzing the data, PANBlast developed a case study about the campaign, expanding on marketing thought leadership and tying key points to facts and figures. PANBlast then pitched the case study and the campaign’s outcomes to marketing trades as an example of a successful and measurable brand campaign.
CAMPAIGN RESULTS
PANBlast and Smartling realized 104% of the campaign’s earned media goal, earning features in top-tier media like Fast Company and AdAge. Specifically, PANBlast secured 10 pieces of feature coverage for the campaign, including:
- 2 book reviews
- 1 Q&A
- 4 content pieces
- 1 interview with a translator
The “Move the World With Words” campaign ran from May to October. During this timeframe, PANBlast helped the client achieve the following campaign business objectives:
- The percentage of new deals including language services grew from 20% to 80%.
- Customers using Smartling for translation services increased by 6%, double the campaign’s goal.
- Following the book’s launch, organic traffic to the company’s website increased by 11.4% month-over-month.
- The top nine SERP results for “Move the World with Words” all mentioned Smartling, including the online book review by MultiLingual.
Additionally, BLASTmedia’s efforts on the “Move the World With Words” campaign won a PRSA Pinnacle Award in the outstanding media relations campaign category.