Fluid Advertising

Please describe your organization.

We are a Utah-based nonprofit, and we work with community action agencies across the state. We also lead a statewide effort to provide earned income tax credit outreach, free income tax systems, and asset development opportunities. We do a little bit of direct service around free tax preparation, but the majority of the work that we do is with agencies across the state, providing them grant money, technical assistance and program design as well as training them in technical systems, helping with policy and advocacy, and doing professional development.

What is your position and responsibilities?

It is my role as the program director to lead our workaround "earn it, keep it, save it," which is our workaround free income tax services, and asset development opportunities.

What business challenge were you trying to address with Fluid Advertising?

We had been interested in locating a marketing firm to be able to help us create a marketing strategy, so that we could increase the number of tax returns that we file each year. We hold the grant for the federal government in the state of Utah to provide free income tax services and earned income tax credit outreach. We use different media tools, including social media. Approximately 60 percent of our clients come back to us every year, and we serve more than 20,000 clients a year in doing free taxes across the state.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

We have been doing all of these informal marketing strategies. Three years ago, we hired a marketing firm, and we had this marketing firm for two years. They really helped us with our social media strategy, and they helped us connect with newspapers. What we really needed to do was expand the work that we were doing, which is how I ended up with Fluid. What we needed was not just social media anymore and working with newspapers, but we really wanted to enhance our marketing and create a campaign message, and really target families specifically within certain demographics with clients that we were hoping to serve.

We brought Fluid on board, and they created a tax campaign for us. They did videos, and they did YouTube ads. They did an entirely digital campaign for us, which was good because we could track what was happening and where our peaks were. We, for example, thought that ads were going to be really good and effective, and it turns out that it wasn't nearly as successful as we thought it was. Being able to track that and know where we put our money and where we put our resources was huge. That's what they did for us. Because of their work and their dedication to us this tax season, I'm going to bring them back onboard.

How did you come to work with Fluid Advertising?

Fluid came to us as a referral from an old friend and colleague of mine.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

The cost of the work was around $30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The initial project is completed, and I'm about to enter into a new contract with them to do volunteer recruitment.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We went from 18,897 tax returns in tax year 2013 – which was in 2014 – and this year, tax year 2014, we're currently at 20,483 tax returns in the state of Utah. We were able to, through our marketing efforts, see a correlation in the regions that experienced an increase in tax filing. In most of those cases, we were able to see an increase in users to our website, people who are engaging with us through social media, and there's been an overall increase in the amount of people searching for us and coming to our services.

How did Fluid Advertising perform from a project management standpoint?

We have an incredibly small budget. When you tell them, "I only have $30,000 to do this work," they didn't laugh in our faces. They said, "OK, let me put together something that can work." We ate up all of the money super quick, and they provided a lot of in-kind support to us once the money was out because they said, "We're interested in making sure that you're successful." Which is why I'm going to go back to them for a volunteer recruitment campaign, and why we'll rehire them again for our next tax campaign. To be able to work with an organization that believes in the work we're doing, and realizes that we're doing a great work but we can't pay a lot of money, and they don't treat me poorly, is a huge selling point for me.

What distinguishes Fluid Advertising from other providers?

Their team seems to be knowledgeable, and every time I've gone into their office for a meeting, they have all been present and aware. They are invited to these meetings specifically because they have something to share with me, and I find that professional and put together.

In hindsight, are there areas in which they could improve, or things you might do differently?

Yes. The work that we do is around taxes. It's not an incredibly sexy topic, and you have to have the right words. They tried hard to make sure that the Facebook posts were right, and to make sure that the wording that they used was good. They did a good job, but a lot of the information that they sent to me I had to really go through it and provide some very critical feedback, which I accepted because they don't specialize in tax help, and particularly a message around free tax preparation.

In Utah, where our politics are quite conservative, we have to figure out a way to appeal to both sides. Fluid didn't necessarily nail that on the head, but they were incredibly open to all of my suggestions and my criticisms, quite frankly. I provided them past information. I would have liked to see them not try and be creative about the verbiage and create their own stuff; I would have liked to see them just utilize what was implemented, but take a marketing spin on it.

It's something that they improved on in time. I would have these conversations with them where I provided critical feedback, and they took it. Ultimately, they made it work, and I was satisfied with it. But, we had a lot of confusion at the beginning that we didn't need to have, if they had just gone with what I had given them initially.

Please describe your organization.

We've been in the business of recoveries on government contracts for the past 38 years. Now, we're making the move into commercial analytics in health care – looking at health care fraud prevention.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I head up marketing strategy. Most of my focus is on developing the health care part of the business.

What was your goal for working with Fluid Advertising?

The goal is to move our company away from the legacy business that we've been involved in while working with the government. We had some real challenges in that because part of that collections or recovery space that we were in were tax collections. They were very large like Department of Education and Department of Treasury contracts. But, there's a stigma associated with collections work. 

We really wanted Fluid to impress us and see if they could develop a brand to help connect the dots as to why we would get into the health care space. We also needed help to lose some of the negative flavor of the past that we continue to carry with us.

Please describe the scope of their work.

Web, digital assets, online ecosystem in general is where I find them to be most valuable. They also work on the digital architecture - everything from logo, design, and development. If you look at our website right now, you'll see the new content posted. 

They've also developed style guides and internal reference documents to help socialize what we need to do across our company internally. We have ad hoc projects with Fluid as needed – other projects that are more focused on collateral needs that are specific to the sales cycle and new offerings that we have and how to pitch those offerings.

What was your process for selecting Fluid Advertising?

When I joined, we already had a marketing agency. I helped fire those guys. We had another company come in that was a smaller shop, and we gave them a chance to do some of the bigger website and logo work. They did not impress us. We knew we had to find somebody else. 

We looked nationwide for a company that wasn't huge, but not tiny. But we wanted to find a strong mid-size player. I think they came up coincidentally as part of the pipeline that we developed. 

Somebody on my team happens to live in the area where Fluid is located and, through her search, and the list that she developed, they became part of the vetting process. Then, the way we gave them a shot was we wanted to see some logo concepts put in front of us as a test project. 

We saw it as a design exercise and more of a do they understand us exercise, can they incorporate that understanding into a brand – the brand elements? Fluid really blew us away. I would say everything we saw from there before we signed a contract with them was really project management skills that set them apart from any other vendor in this space that I've dealt with. They are good to work with. When you give them feedback, they tend to think about it instead of getting defensive.

Can you give a sense of the size of the initiative?

It was from $50,000 to $200,000

When was the work completed?

We've been working with them around 18 months [as of 2015]. It's ongoing work.

Do you have any statistics or metrics on the project?

We've got a very geeky audience because the website is truly designed for the new commercial health care space. We're targeting people who deal with analytic technologies as well as people who are dealing with fraud in health care. These folks tend to be focused on the details. Our website right now doesn't get into a lot of details. However, that's the intent. 

We feel like we need a real person telling the story. The whole design of our site is to steer them toward a demo. Our audience base is small. We have five requests from qualified leads coming in a month is good for us. 

Are you satisfied with their performance?

Yes. We are quite satisfied.

What differentiates Fluid Advertising from other partners?

The project management piece is special. You'd think that some of these big advertising houses would have this so well wrapped up but, after dealing with Fluid Advertising, I just saw project management taken to a different level than I have seen before.

I found that to be their secret weapon. I think it allows them to make connections and get to know companies better than they otherwise would. They really get it, and they treat it as a process and the process works. That is something that I really like about working with these guys.

What advice would you give to future clients of theirs?

Use the product management process to your advantage. Make sure you put the time in advance before the project starts so that the first set of deliverables are going to be as close to the line as possible. Don't assume they're going to get it.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or that you might do differently?

You always like them to get the creative stuff right on the first pass and to be able to see what you see when you're working on designing some new piece of collateral together. We've minimized those revisions in the process. It's all based on context and perspective.

After going through two other agencies of this particular firm that just didn't deliver, and they couldn't get anything right – even the final product we had to compromise. 

It's great to have somebody that you feel like you're working in sync together. We understand one another. We can have constructive debates.

Maybe video would be something to improve. I know they do video. We actually use a different vendor for video, and the reason why is because this other vendor is sort of an organization that pulls together creative talent from around the world. They have standard pricing on all of their video products. They do a killer job on the animation series. They are strong visually. I don't think Fluid is quite at that same level.