Market Axess

Market Axess

Welcome to the reintroduction of the MarketAxess brand - the world’s foremost bond and credit market platform. It took us exactly 3 months to go from concept stage to launch, including original creative filmed and photographed in six countries.

The core idea. MarketAxess introduced an Open Trading platform allowing investors, brokers and traders alike to trade directly and anonymously with each other driving up the velocity and efficiency while improving the pricing.

Our positioning was simple: We created Open Trading. You created the Open Market. We gave the investing community their share of the credit for using MarketAxess’ tool to create a highly functional and successful Open Market.

Results: After two weeks remarkable results came back. Numbers we've never seen before. For instance, average time spent on our landing pages measured 173% above the norm - we're talking well above 4 minutes. The average click-through rates on paid display, showed results  above 50% and 85% of landing page visitors went on to explore the MarketAxess website.

We filmed in Tokyo, Berlin, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Paris, London and New York City. Because of the extreme time pressure, we ended up shooting guerrilla style with few permits. Above you see filmmaker: Ivo von Renner wearing special clothes to stand out. The philosophy being, if authorities try to question the production, they’ll speak to him first, thereby giving the rolling camera extra seconds to finish the shot or scene. It worked.  

People Embracing People

People Embracing People

When the State of New York awarded Maranatha Human Services a grant to grow and promote their unique initiative, Darling was naturally compelled to join forces.

Maranatha’s Objective

To place individuals with developmental disabilities into people’s private residences to be cared for and supported in greater Queens, Brooklyn and The Bronx NY areas. This is an alternative to traditional care options that include group homes and the like. By placing a person with a developmental disability into the hearts and homes of people we call "caregivers", they receive not only care, but guidance and nurturing to become more independent and higher functioning. This shift from institution to home environment allows for tremendous growth and better quality of life. In return, caregivers are compensated for their efforts and also receive the invaluable gift of companionship.

THE IDEA

Darling’s task was to design a compelling advertising program that would drive awareness and bolster interest in becoming a caregiver. We began by branding this initiative ‘PEP’, which stands for the essence of this program: People Embracing People. 

With the guidance of employees and caregivers currently fulfilling these roles, we devised an emotional strategy to find the 1% of people who have a strong desire to change a person’s life. That led us to a 2-part campaign; the first represented a true call to action, asking people directly if this emotionally and spiritually speaks to them. The second was based on the notion of “natural born caregiver”, alluding to people who were "naturally born" to make a difference in someone’s life by sharing their own.

The campaign began with a soft launch in late June 2016 consisting only of OOH media (subway car cards, subway platforms, bus sides, and bus shelters), producing an inspiring response of over 100 caregiver inquires in less than 3 weeks.

THE RESULT

The hard launch of the campaign came at the beginning of June 2016, boasting additional media efforts including television, traditional and digital radio, local print, digital banners, and SEM. These initiatives saw the amount of inquires skyrocket, driving an astronomically high amount of new traffic to the site. Within a month, site traffic soared an additional 119% and inquiries were up by 70%. The placement count currently stands at 12, with another 65 candidates in the caregiver screening and on-boarding pipeline, slating us to not only hit our benchmark of 21 placements, but to exceed it.

While creating an advertising campaign, we also managed to help PEP cultivate their business. We created a public relations strategy that swelled not only program awareness, but general awareness for advances in disability care as well.

We crafted a simple, effective language that resonates with people and excludes polarizing jargon, fitting enough to be adopted by the New York State Office for People With Developmental Disabilities (OPWDD). And—icing on the cake—we even spiced up their offices with a small makeover to further inspire employees.

As the seeds of PEP continue to sprout, we look forward to the on-going results of this campaign not only in data and metrics, but in successful placements that yield companionship and growth.

Dutch Cheese Makers

Dutch Cheese Makers

One of the largest importers of Dutch cheeses in the US, Dutch Cheese Makers tasked Darling with developing and tailoring multiple brands for the US market chiefly through naming and packaging.

Cheeses included young, aged, goat, and our personal favorite, truffle. Names were created based on organically Dutch terms, but curated in spelling and pronunciation to be American-friendly.

Watch how a cheese label gets attached to a Gouda wheel. >

We developed these names and tested pronunciation (and mispronunciation) amongst a wide array of audiences. The goal set in dubbing the brands was simple; Names, even when mispronounced, still needed to sound Dutch (or in one case European), or names could hint at the kind of cheese or age of the cheese inside the package. All images are either designed in-house, or original woodcuts by Steven Noble. 

The brands are launching early 2017 in all Whole Foods stores. At present, we are developing additional brands for other countries.

Tom might’ve finally caught Jerry using this Dutch cheese, Darling’s tastiest client, in a mousetrap.

Rimini Street

Rimini Street

Darling is thrilled to be riding down Rimini Street, an international third party ERP vendor servicing large software accounts at a fraction of the price with more deeply involved, dedicated assistance.

The Rimini Street team approached Darling as they were gearing up to embark on a major marketing push. Rimini is clearly the superior choice in enterprise software services—our task was to devise a media strategy and creative campaign that simply showed consumers why.

We dubbed the campaign "On Rimini Street”, featuring memorable plays on words and eye-catching dashed lines, which focused on points of differentiation while highlighting the numerous benefits of "moving" to Rimini Street.

THE RESULTS

The “On Rimini Street” campaign consisted of (inter)national TV, print, digital, video and social executions. Paved in part by our campaign, Rimini Street has seen an incredible year with sales eclipsing their previous record highs.

SWITCH PITCH

Shifting our sights on the social communities of LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, we recently crafted a sub-campaign to help aide the Rimini sales team. Switching ERP vendors is not a decision made lightly or swiftly in companies. To kickstart these tough conversations we let fly a social campaign called, “The Switch Pitch”. Numbered tips and tidbits offered up impressive facts and statistics about Rimini Street, wrapped up in wit and humor for share-potency in the social space.

Rainforest Trust

Rainforest Trust

Darlings believe, as did Franklin D. Roosevelt, that “forests are the lungs of our land”. 

With the Earth suffocating, as rainforests are being destroyed at the whopping rate of 1.5 acres per second, it was a no-brainer to help boost the reach of The Rainforest Trust.

Pivoting from the norm, our campaign takes a fun and witty approach as opposed to the expected somber, scare-tactic tone. Aligned with the trust’s goal of saving 20 million acres of rainforests by 2020, the campaign playfully focuses on purchasing acreage.

Using typical real-estate vehicles and common sales language, our call to action is to “buy” (donate) to save rainforests.

BMC Digital

BMC Digital

82% of the Fortune 500® relies on BMC. It's an impressive fact and makes for quite an intelligent client. We're into our fourth year with them and second campaign. Meanwhile, brand recognition has gone up by 38% to a whopping 68% total.

Fast Track

Darling put the pedal to the metal for BMC with the "Fast Track” campaign, an idea birthed out of research and a company culture that showed how BMC enables enterprises to grow, monitor, learn, and profit better and faster than any other enterprise software solution company.

Current executions of the "Fast Track" campaign include brand videos, pre-rolls, other forms of digital marketing, print ads in consumer and technology publications, event marketing, and much more.

We invented the term 'Multi-Cloud' to underscore the need for hybrid, business, personal and public cloud solutions. This mini-campaign brakes the mold of the seen-that, done-that type of video. By juxtaposing different birds, we immediately highlight the complexity of cloud expansion and how simply BMC manages it.

Bring IT to Life

We were given two weeks to create a compelling advertising campaign for BMC Software to increase both brand and product awareness across all IT channels as well as C-Level audiences.

The Idea

“Bring IT to Life” was the strategic starting point that led to a campaign utilizing a headline structure always beginning with “IT” followed by an action. This personified IT, to literally “Bring IT to Life”, and simultaneously brought the famous and diverse software solutions that BMC offers together. The results (Q4/2016) have been an average of +65% CTR compared to previous campaigns across all media, with an overall 2.9K form fills.

IT saves lives

“IT saves lives” was a headline for a case study ad about their work for the Swedish Coast Guard, while “IT revolutionizes” was a headline for certain star products that revolutionized the category. The campaign was employed via multiple mediums, from advertising to web to sales materials and beyond. While the early onset of the campaign helped BMC to carve out their niche in the category and gain market share, “Bring IT to Life” has evolved ever further into a campaign that cements BMC as truly different, a unicorn among industry competitors. 

Genpact - Lean Digital

Lean Digital

Acting beyond the client’s expectations, we recently broke down and built up Genpact’s core branding from the inside out.

With a Lean (mean) 6 Sigma heritage, we strategically spun Genpact’s legacy of “lean” methodology with their unique digital focus, yielding not only a campaign, but an entirely new business mantra: Lean Digital.

Lean Digital is substantiated by our discovery that digital budgets within enterprises are estimated to be as astronomically high as $593 billion globally. Of that, a jaw-dropping $394 billion is unnecessarily wasted, most due to dust-covered legacy processes and obsolete technologies.

Lean Digital allows Genpact to help solve this problem by applying their unique thinking processes to their clients’ digital demands, in turn Generating Impact. Upon presenting the idea to their CEO he exclaimed, with ‘eureka' beaming from his eyes, “this will be my legacy.”

“Darling helped us crystallize, in one simple moniker, both an extremely powerful market positioning as well as an organizing principle that helps our strategy and its execution well beyond marketing.”

— Gianni Giacomelli, CMO, Genpact

Genpact

Genpact

Genpact, masters of Lean Six-Sigma, expertly enhance a variety of companies everyday, rendering them more efficient and effective than ever.

Creating meaningful campaigns for all-star clients is embedded in Darling’s DNA. Naturally, a marriage formed between the two. With 70,000 employees worldwide, a General Electric heritage, and a roster of impressive clients, Genpact is a major player in business operation optimization.

All that remained in order to ascend higher, was key industry positioning to match their prowess; enter Darling. We created a meaning behind Genpact – Generating Impact. The phrase not only encompasses their name, but also their ultimate goal: creating positive impact for their clients.

With a highly successful print and digital campaign in tow,  we then flexed further Genpact muscle in a corporate video explaining Generating Impact, and crafted a rippling thought leadership app. Simultaneously, Darling also led a complete overhaul of the company’s website, adding the concise, crisp look befitting of Genpact’s caliber

Watch Video >

A 45.7% lift in unaided brand awareness after the campaign ran for just three months.

Red Cross

RED CROSS

The American Red Cross has an ongoing problem: she is 68 years old. With other words, their volunteers are mostly retired – which makes growing their volunteer-ship increasingly troublesome.

EMMY NOMINATED EDUCATIONAL, RECRUITING AND FUND-RAISING CAMPAIGN

To pack the necessary punch, the campaign had to check off 4 critical boxes : 1- educate young parents about the services the Red Cross provides, 2- attract a new generation of volunteers, 3- raise funds and 4- get people to donate blood.

Results

The campaign pulled together real Americans in the TV and print. No actors, just real people pulled off the streets to 'volunteer' in an ad. The results were quite surprising; after one year, volunteers between the ages of 37 and 58 grew by 29.5%. Unaided awareness of the importance of the work the ARC does, grew by 41.3%. (Narrated by Julianna Margulies).

Maranatha Human Services

Maranatha
Human Services

An organization of all-star caliber individuals who have dedicated their lives to the well-being of developmentally disabled people.

They believe, as do we, that the future of caregiving lies in placing adults with developmental disabilities in private homes, instead of group homes. New York State, with the help of federal funds, is sponsoring an ongoing pilot program to measure the practicality of home care, and Darling has humbly absorbed the communications aspect of this program.

The M-heart identity we developed is just a small piece of the branding of Maranatha and its PEP program. It has a clear meaning; if not for the boundless love the Maranatha team pumps into their work, hundreds of people would be abandoned without care. If not for their tireless and sometimes anonymous labor, developmentally disabled people would remain an afterthought, their needs silenced. Thanks to the selfless attitude that embodies this organization, Maranatha is adamantly respected by the multitudes who have come to rely on them.

visit website at www.maranathahs.org

OXO

OXO

Don’t know OXO (pronounced Ox-Oh)?
Well, you should by now. They’re the leader in universally designed household tools— most people have a healthy slew of OXO products in their kitchen drawers and don’t even realize it, quite the unique branding conundrum to have. 

With a laser-sharp digital strategy, we decided to issue a wake-up call to the kitchen-dwellers who walk amongst OXO, unaware, executed in the form of a letter. The brand campaign was dubbed “Love, OXO” and allowed us to communicate directly to specific consumers based on their niche needs or lifestyle. Mango Slicer banners targeting Mango Manglers could be found on dessert recipe pages, and Measuring Cup banners targeting Meticulous Measurers popped up on baking pages via foodnetwork.com. The creative kernel was designed with specific mediums of media in mind, adding to the campaign’s efficiency, power and pop. 

To build on the momentum, a corresponding Facebook application was launched in tandem with the “Love, OXO” campaign. The application was home to the “Dear Culinary Contraption Compiler,” a contest that asked participants to creatively convey why and how they enjoy their OXO products.

The Sound of OXO

What do you do with over 1,600,000 fans spread out over various social media platforms? You put them to work! You challenge them. If you want to call yourself an 'OXONIAN' you better know your stuff. What better way to engage an audience that to test their loyalty? The Sound of OXO is a way to let fans and future fans listen to a certain noise coming from an OXO product. You guess it? You get it! And if you don't guess it, share it.

Insight

Insight

Insight came to us a bright company itching for notice, primed to grow beyond the veil of the mid-west behind a push from Darling.

Client's Brief:

Do what you have to do to make sure that someone will buy us within 3 years.

Recently purchased by Time Warner, Insight Communication was bar-none the largest cable company in Kentucky, sporting an elastic reach to Indiana and Ohio as well. For three years prior to the eventual sale, we developed and delivered consumer, business, brand and multiple product campaigns.

These campaigns didn’t fly— they soared, converting retaining and ultimately helping to sell Insight to the highest bidder.

Clip Radio

Clip Radio

Clip entered the Darling family seeking to flip their budding start-up into a fully functional brand. Their concept: radio listeners can now interact further with what tunes they hear on their favorite stations by using the Clip Radio app.

Free mp3's, contest entries, coupons and more are sent instantly to users’ smart phones, based on what’s bumping on air when you “clip”. We helped take Clip Radio from alpha start-up to full-launch testing in two key markets. By forming a new look and identity, and refacing the app to match, we shaped Clip Radio into a sleek, modern brand.

Our campaign I Got It On the Radio, launched in Portland and San Diego with posters, billboards, train wraps and radio spots, putting music aficionados on blast to the fresh presence of Clip in the radio market

I Got It On the Radio
became a roaring success
among a much wider audience
than we expected.

XLEAR

XLEAR

Xlear (pronounced: clear), a brand for natural nasal health products containing Xylitol (a sugar alcohol with numerous medical benefits), sniffed out Darling to design awe-inspiring advertising for their flagship product, Xlear Nasal Spray.

With fresh national distribution channels funneling into red-hot retailers such as Target and CVS, it was crucial to support distribution and drive sales. But why Xlear? Why another (natural) nasal spray? Consumer education was “xlearly” necessary.

As a non-medicinal product, the FDA limits the types of bold statements placed on new products, forcing Darling into our favorite corner: having to find a crafty, novel creative approach. 

Blunt and bold, we decided to have some smelly fun with the campaign “Go Wash Your Nose.” This silly phrase is not only attention grabbing, but simultaneously educates the consumer of the ample benefits of Xlear and how those benefits come to pass. Xlear is composed of saline and Xylitol, the saline essentially “washing” the nasal passages while the Xylitol helps keep the nose protected with its antibacterial properties. Fun fact—nearly 90% of all infections begin via bacteria entering the nose. The line “Go Wash Your Nose”, highlights the overlooked importance of nasal health; Just like you wash your hands on a daily basis, washing your nose is equally as important. 

The campaign launched September 2016 in print and mobile, and plans to extend the message to radio and TV mediums in 2017 are excitedly underway.

Experimental

"Employees Must Wash Nose" signs were placed in the restrooms of Xlear HQ as a fun spin off of the campaign. The overwhelmingly positive response lead us to placing them in various public restrooms across the US for consumers to stumble upon.

The Medical Letter

The Medical Letter

Call us sentimental, but we’re quite proud to help position, redesign and reintroduce the only 100% independent medical publication on the planet.

Throwing the clock back to 1959, a doctor and a businessman understood together that unbiased medical information pertaining to pharmaceuticals and treatments was scarce. Ahead of their time, they guessed that drug companies would start manipulating publications through pressure or by sponsoring research.

Thus, the Medical Letter was born.

The Medical Letter is a non-profit newsletter that – yes – still exists in that old-school, classic printed form. We’re slingshotting this small publication into the 21st century by digitizing the paper newsletter and reintroducing them to today’s generation of tech-savvy doctors and medical students.

Hamilton Beach

HAMILTON BEACH

Hamilton Beach: a perennial beacon of class and quality. But with low brand awareness and four new products to push, Hamilton Beach came to us hungry for new inspiration.

The Idea

Good Thinking, spawned from carefully observing the company for two days and engaging with designers, tinkerers, engineers, sales people and management. What we heard is the minute details of sound they couldn't hear for themselves; Hamilton Beach practiced the art of simply making things better. Their engineers don’t just make the same old coffee makers and toasters, they re-imagine these products to be more efficient, innovative and durable. Even with the consistent pressure of delivering products as competitively priced as possible, they figured out ways to continuously improve appliances we all use, making our lives just that much better.

Good Thinking is what an engineer says to another. It's not exaggeration; it’s the humble truth of what Hamilton Beach thrives at. The idea was bought on the spot.

Results

Together, teamed with Lewis Media in Richmond, we decided to recommend a "Golden 1%" target approach. Since the campaign was part product demo and part brand,  the obvious choice was to communicate to hardcore foodies—often found glued to the Food Network. Hamilton Beach agreed with this single-channel media buy, and two months later metrics of the campaign revealed increased sales by 63.5%. Good thinking.

Today, Good Thinking has become Hamilton Beach's backbone organizing principle. Everything they do, present or communicate is stamped with Good Thinking, down to the Good Thinking cookies they'll bake during shows, events or at PR briefings. Ideas that last.

“In all of my years at Hamilton Beach, no one has ever explained exactly what we are about in under 30 seconds.”

— Dr. Michael Morecroft, President and CEO (emeritus)

ACE

ACE Group

Strong positioning. Two campaigns and 7 years later, we helped ACE Group (now Chubb Limited) become a global company that is highly respected, trusted, and holding over 100 billion in assets. 

INSURING PROGRESS

‘Insuring Progress’: these two words became more than a simple ACE Group tagline, but a mantra for the entire company, embraced from top management down to field agents. This positioning stemmed from their unique ability to insure the complex and often the unknown. ACE’s flexibility attracted future-focused companies with large-scale, interesting, and complex to insure ideas.

‘Insuring Progress’ became an inspiring promise to their clients, big and small, who found comfort in having a partner in charting unknown waters. The campaign idea extended well beyond advertising and straight into their boilerplate, their sales sheets, and other tactical collateral pieces at play. ‘Insuring Progress’ ran for a successful 3+ years in print, digital, and event based OOH.

ACE INSURED

Extensive research enabled us to evolve the ‘Insuring Progress’ positioning into ‘ACE insured’, a spin-off campaign explaining the deeper meaning of what it means to be ACE insured, through the voice of their clients.

As part of the execution of this campaign, we crafted “I am ACE insured” advertising, featuring ACE employees, representative of their clients, speaking candidly as to why ACE was the ideal insurer for them. Again spanning mediums from print to digital to event based OOH, this campaign launched in multiple languages, across the globe.

Our work for ACE Group helped position them as a tour de force to be reckoned with in the insurance industry. To the delight of the Darling family, despite a small communications budget (in comparison to their wallet-heavy competitors), ACE had become the 4th largest insurer in the world.

OPEN

OPEN

The preferred American Express credit card for small businesses used to be called The Corporate Card. Entrepreneurs who had chosen to escape the various corporations they had worked for, had no real credit card dedicated to their world, something that just didn't sit well with us here at Darling. 

While unaptly named, we discovered that the membership perks attached to this product were astonishingly good benefits. Yet, according to Jeremy Diamond's research, no member truly comprehended what the product could do for them. Diving deeper into the world of small business, we learned one more essential truth; no matter the trade, service or product offered, small businesses are always open.

Darling took the lengthy list of benefits tucked behind the product and placed it front and center, turning the perks into the actual new product. The name struck like lightning: OPEN. For the first time, Amex now had a product that wasn't made of plastic. In fact, we had created a vast small business network where businesses could find answers to their questions, benefits for support, and quick financial access. Now, all they needed was the key to 'open' these benefits; The American Express Business Card.

Now ahead of the pack, American Express, with Darling's help, had learned to celebrate one of their core audiences: the independent business community. On a national scale, American Express instantly began competing with the pre-existing closest relationships those small businesses had; their business banker. Within one month of the launch, JPMorgan Chase fired back with their own small business campaign and tried to close the gap on OPEN. You know you're doing something right when a national bank gets nervous enough to defend their territories.

Since its inception, OPEN has been Amex' core and most important business product line, consistently backed by a fierce and dedicated marketing budget. American Express added the OPEN logo to the back of their business cards, something they’d previously avoided with other initiatives; it simply reads: OPEN.