Challenge: Aptera, Greek for “Wingless Flight,” tasked Zenzi with the company’s official launch and unveiling of its ultra-green vehicle, the hybrid version of which is capable of 300 miles per gallon! While competitors have more marketing dollars, Zenzi has turned that challenge into an advantage for Aptera. To set the company apart from the pack, messaging, focused on what the competition lacked; safety, uniqueness and firsts in design innovation. Zenzi avoided focusing too heavily on automotive trade publications and shows, opting for venues that spotlighted Aptera such as celebrity green events, motion pictures and commercials.

Solution: In order to maximize attention while steering completely clear of “the other guys,” Zenzi planned a consumer media campaign focused on top tier consumer press with the largest audiences rather than automotive trades. The plan also eliminated automotive tradeshow pursuits where other competitors with larger budgets were heavily involved. This would set the company away from the pack and create a mystery and intrigue about the Aptera that would not otherwise be possible if the vehicle was made more widely available to the public. Instead, Zenzi would make the vehicle accessible only to key media for reviews, video demos in order to secure critical validation to instill consumer confidence and secure deposits while still maintaining mystery, newness.

Results: Zenzi’s media campaign indeed reached the largest consumer audiences with stories in outlets such as including Good Morning America, CNN, 60 Minutes, LA Times, Fortune, Time Magazine, Popular Mechanics (cover), Wired (cover), USA Today (cover) and Yahoo! (homepage). Top tier media coverage validated Aptera and created a “trickle down” media blitz. Zenzi also pursued alternative opportunities in the green-friendly celebrity community including Global Green Pre-Oscar Party, which secured key Hollywood coverage and invitations to participate in other green celebrity events. Top tier stories were also responsible for Aptera’s participation in Paramount Pictures’ Star Trek movie as well as Touchstone Energy’s commercial, which can now be seen all over Southern California, resulting in invitations to feature the vehicle at other major events.

Through strategic planning and execution of a targeted top tier media campaign, Zenzi significantly increased Aptera’s exposure, leadership positioning and consumer awareness. In just five months, Zenzi secured 223 news clips. That is $658,527 in ad dollars, 1,361,738 online impressions and 20,583,110 in total readership.

And the best part? This campaign was executed for just $20,000.

Challenge: Emergen-C tasked Zenzi with the goal of promoting the Emergen-C brand and the company’s commitment to the cause of breast cancer awareness. Emergen-C’s objective was to promote its “Pink Lemonade” product to a youth demographic and make the community aware that 50% of proceeds for this product went to support their cause marketing partner, the Keep A Breast Foundation. Zenzi proposed a state-wide college tour with a wrapped RV bus, a great cross-promotional partner, “cool” giveaways and a doctor on board to educate women of the importance of breast health.

Solution: Zenzi conceived and planned a State-wide college tour with a wrapped bus, a great cross-promotional partner, “cool” give aways and a doctor on board to educate women of the importance of breast health. Zenzi chose the perfect cross-promotional partner in Roxy the girls action sports clothing brand, branded the tour and the bus wrap with a cool youthful look. The tour kicked off at the Roxy Jam surf contest in San Diego. Zenzi coordinated and contracted with UCSD, UCI, UCSB, USC, Cal Berkeley to promote and sample Emergen-C and educate college women on Campus about breast health and the importance of self examination. Giveaways included Roxy flip flops, cotton candy, and pictures with celebrity surfers.

Results:

An estimated 10,000 samples were given out, Over 60, 000 students were exposed to the Emergen-C branded tour bus and the bus toured up and down the coast of California for 10 days with great exposure to the general public. The campaign Secured over 453,226,983 media impressions, including print, TV, radio, and online. It was talked about in college dailies and the buzz around the display was felt well beyond just the girls who participated.

Emergen-C and Roxy join forces to raise funds for Keep A Breast

College students flocked to the Roxy booth to make flip flops

Art students painted casts to raise awareness during college tour

Challenge: Zenzi was tasked to create awareness and recognition for Ignify’s e-commerce platform in the small to medium enterprise space. Zenzi formulated a strategy to differentiate and leverage Ignify’s unique features such as heuristic trending and advanced security precautions that are common in the large enterprise space – but not affordable to the smaller enterprises.

Solution: Zenzi called on its trusted relationships with technology and business media and analysts to establish Ignify as a thought leader in e-commerce solutions for the SME market and creatively pitched story ideas to editors and analysts. We positioned Ignify as an excellent business model for feature stories and company profiles as well as an expert source to comment on the validity of current trends. By developing case studies that showed the value and benefits of Ignify’s solutions, Zenzi was able to penetrate an incredibly crowed media space and garner accolades for Ignify from analysts and top-tier media alike.

Results: Sandeep Walia, President of Ignify is now considered an authority in e-commerce order placement and security and fraud prevention, appearing in top national business publications such as Forbes and BusinessWeek. They have had frequent appearances in top-tier trade publications including CRN, Computerworld, eWeek, Internet Retailer, RIS News, E-Commerce Times and others. As a result of a well-rounded PR campaign, Ignify has been able to leverage media recognition creating a name in the industry for e-commerce while expanding into areas such as ERP, Business Intelligence and CRM. The media attention has helped foster attention from Microsoft. Today, Ignify is a Microsoft Gold Partner and has expanded into the large enterprise market, serving customers including Black & Decker, Microsoft, Aerosoles and Giant Bikes among others.

According to Walia, “Zenzi has been a strong element of Ignify’s success story. The amount of positive coverage we have received in two years has been more than what we expected. We couldn’t have made the ranking of the 178th fastest growing business in America without their help.”

Challenge: Zenzi was tasked by the California Restaurant Association to direct all marketing, public relations and advertising efforts. Zenzi established several goals for the event: to elevate San Diego’s reputation as a dining destination among local San Diegans and visitors alike, expose restaurants to new patrons, boost sales during a traditionally slow time of year, engage local community to explore new restaurants and maximize attendance during the event.

Solution: Zenzi enlisted and increased participation from restaurants all over the city: 60 restaurants in 2005 and 105 in 2006 to 130 in 2007 and 150 in 2008 and breaking 200 in 2009. Zenzi partnered with San Diego Magazine and San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau and was personally responsible for securing major sponsorships from Clear Channel, Carnival Cruises, American Express, Specialty Produce, Haagen-Dazs Ice Cream and others. In order to illustrate community and government support, we host annual conferences with Mayor Jerry Sanders and dozens of chefs who showcase their finest dishes.

Results: In addition to successfully enlisting the participation of over 150 restaurants, Zenzi drove traffic to restaurants during that week increase the bottom line for restaurants during that week from 20% to 50%. Zenzi also procured a number of sponsorships with local media, including SignOnSanDiego.com, DiningOut Magazine and the San Diego Union-Tribune, San Diego county’s most high-circulated print publication. The campaign garnered 601,223,845 million impressions in TV, radio and print. 250,000 diners were sold that week at fixed price 3-course meals.

Challenge: fix8 tasked Zenzi with the product launch of a little-known technology that allows IM users to create customized avatars and animated video using webcams. Its main objective was to introduce the product to consumers and drive its free download offering online. Their initial target market was heavy Internet users age 25 and under who use Instant Messenger, AIM, Skype etc. to communicate to colleagues or friends. The primary obstacle was that no one would be looking for this technology online so education about the technology and leveraging ways to demonstrate the functionality and utility of the software was crucial.

Solution: Zenzi planned a viral and interactive online campaign to reach their target audience and accomplish their download goals. The plan incorporated key data from research based on how to penetrate tech savvy, youthful Internet users by studying habits of this demographic. The integrated plan employed the use of social networking sites, tech blogs, creative demonstrations at tradeshows, traditional media outreach and analyst relations to blitz the market and drive traffic to the website.

Zenzi provided detailed recommendations for the improvement of the fix8 site, software and download process as wel as web developer referrals to expedite the remodel so that it was ready to publicize. Zenzi used our connections to outreach to syndicated bloggers, consumer review sites, free download sites, video sharing sites and social networking page development and cross-promotions.
We leveraged top properties including MySpace, Facebook, Technorati, Bebo, BlackPlanet, Classmates, Cyworld, eCrush, Friendster, LavaLife, MSN, Tagged, Twitter, Xanga, Yahoo!, YouTube, 606Tech, Blogburst Network, BlogoWogo, BusinessWeek’s Tech Beat, CenterNetworks, Darla Mack, Business 2.0’s Dawn Patrol, GigaOm, Gizmodo, Mashable Social Networking News, ReadWriteWeb, Red Herring’s Internet & Media, Rojo, Techquila Shots, Business 2.0’s ThirdScreen, Wired’s GadgetLab and GameLife, and ZDNet’s Office Automation. Social pages on Myspace Facebook and LinkedIn were used to share the latest news, videos and coverage to validate fix8’s offering, and invite their rapidly-increasing friends’ groups to share the software, participate in top software reviews, and comment on blogs to achieve maximum viral impact.An educational video was developed and pushed to media, bloggers and analysts to introduce and illustrate the technology.

Results: By leveraging relationships with top bloggers, analysts and tech media the Zenzi team achieved “wire like” syndication of fix8 reviews and news stories to reach key target markets and map our efforts directly back to business development. Positive coverage from such respected bloggers has quickly gained attention, acceptance and validation of fix8 among a typically fickle (and difficult to reach) teen/college market.

We built tremendous momentum for fix8 in just a few months and secured 260 news clips. The dollar equivalency is $1,388,258 in ad dollars, 85,215,532 in web traffic and 213,038,830 in total readership. Zenzi grew the number of downloads on the fix8 site from 554 to over 60, 000 in just four months. Our targeted campaigns have also been instrumental in securing key partnerships for fix8. The company now offers Zenzi’s full support in promoting partnership announcements in order to sweeten deals, and secure targeted agreements more quickly.

ZENZI was hired by Hilton San Diego Mission Valley to promote and publicize the $20 million renovation of hotel facilities and grand opening of its brand new gourmet restaurant STISH.  Hilton wanted to raise its profile in the corporate and meeting/ events industries and become a known destination for business and conference travelers in San Diego.  ZENZI was tasked with developing messaging for a variety of target demographics including local and national media, business community and meeting/ event planners.

ZENZI built a proprietary list of potential sales targets encompassing the event industry, government agencies, corporations, sports teams, business organizations and associations, non-profits, real estate, financial professionals and various other influencers to invite to the event.

To kick off the $20 million renovation, ZENZI created a celebration that showcased all the most unique attributes of the hotel and give guests a taste of the endless ways they could use the venue for meetings and events.  ZENZI set up themed food and drink stations through out the hotel grounds (i.e., the presidential suite hosted an after-hours relaxed atmosphere with champagne and caviar, the lounge served signature martini and mini burgers, poolside cabanas encouraged guests to put their feet up as if they were on vacation, sip Mai Tais and enjoy Pupus).  To keep the party lively, music was staged according the themed station ranging from jazz soloists to a Cuban band.

To make the Hilton experience come alive for guests, ZENZI devised a “scavenger hunt” promotion where contestants toured different stations and collected stamps to be entered into a sweepstakes.  Entrants who completed the full tour of hotel facilities were eligible to win a vacation at any Hilton Hotel worldwide.

In addition to sales prospects, ZENZI arranged for numerous local and national media contacts to attend the celebration, mingle with guests and view the spectacular renovation firsthand.

Results:

The media relations campaign garnered over three million media impressions for the Hilton, including feature stories in meeting/events trades such as Adjourn Magazine, Corporate Meetings and Incentives, Lodging, Financial and Insurance Meetings, and Hospitality Magazine, and local media including signonsandiego.com, San Diego Union Tribune, 944 and many more.  STISH was named in the “Hot Stuff” section of San Diego Magazine, and recognized by the San Diego Union Tribune as “Spot of the Week.”   The value of the media exposure was estimated at over $200,000. Attendance exceeded expectations with over 500 guests and VIPs from numerous targeted industries. Several conferences and events were booked as a direct result of the kickoff celebration.

According to Mark Tennision, Hilton Sales Director, “ZENZI’s precise execution and forward-thinking campaign was vital to the success of our grand reopening. We immediately saw a return on the media coverage.  It directly resulted in new business opportunities.”