Progress recently announced Roundtable Software as the winner of the Powered by Progress Award in the Social Media/Web category. Director of Business Development Jaclyn Barnard shares how a desire to “change the conversation” sparked the vision for this award-winning campaign.
Campaign photos featuring Toyota, Chase, Cenveo (Electronics for Imaging), Home Depot, and Eaton.
We have been Powered by Progress for almost 20 years – and proud of it. When Progress Software challenged its partners to “increase awareness” of the Progress brand with a “creative utilization” of the Powered by Progress medallion, we happily accepted the challenge!
A campaign was born.
With this campaign, we wanted to do more than “increase awareness” of the brand. We wanted to positively influence the thinking about it. There really haven’t been many feel-good branding efforts to come out of Progress over the years. Most efforts, like this early one circa 1981 (see below), have been very technical. Perhaps this could explain why many of us have been asked “Progress who?”
We wanted to design a campaign that could help put an end to that. We thought, “Why not create a campaign that sparks a whole new kind of conversation altogether, one that generates excitement in our community, one that builds pride in who we are, in what we have accomplished, and in what we can accomplish?” “Progress who?”, they say. How about “Progress everywhere!”?
It was time to change the conversation, but we wanted to add clarity not noise. And that’s when the inspiration for this campaign came, “What better way is there to do that than to not say anything at all?”
The resulting campaign concept was rather simple – let’s just show (not tell) people what is Powered by Progress, and let the conversations (and enthusiasm) flow from there.
We took more than 200 photos at 24 sites over 12 weeks. We promoted the best ones across 22 Facebook posts, 22 LinkedIn updates, and 22 tweets. We updated our logos on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube to include the Powered by Progress medallion to reinforce the brand with every post. We incorporated the PoweredbyProgress medallion in our blogs, news stories, newsletters, and videos.
All it took was a 12”x18” poster board, a camera, and a wee bit of “creative utilization.” (Of course, there was a little more to that. You could read more about it in our mid-campaign update or outtakes post.)
What we got in return is as follows: a whole lot of enthusiasm!
With Twitter alone, we had 86 retweets of our posts. Progress Software (@ProgressSW), Valeriy G. Bashkatov (vbashkatov), Mike Moore (@micmoor), Phillip Molly Malone (@mollyfud), and John Heggie (@heggiejohn) were among those retweeting. The followers for these five alone add up to 12,819 in total! And that was just Twitter. And that was just a few retweets.
This post was a crowded pleaser. It had a combined reach of 9,983 people across three platforms.
Perhaps the best part is Gary Click (@Clinky) dubbing me “the Roundtable lady.” Or discovering at events like QAD Explore and PUG Challenge Americas that people recognize me from the campaign. Or seeing first hand “the spark” it has generated — people wanting to share, wanting to participate.
At the end of the day, we are pleased to report that we won and much more than the award.
For us, it wasn’t just about increasing awareness of the brand (or the prize that went with it). It was about doing something that could change the conversation in and about our community. With this campaign, we found that a lot of people are talking. And they are no longer saying “Progress who?” They are saying, and quite proudly, “Progress everywhere!” and much more than that. This is a change in which every like, share, and retweet has played a part. Thank you all for sharing (and continuing to share) the message!
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