Boundless Network, an Austin Ventures-funded company, has taken advantage of unique proprietary technology and professional sales organization to transform the branded product market. Boundless leads the industry in effectively using technology to connect buyers within organizations to drive down the cost of branded products for customers by as much as 40 percent. Boundless Network also offers is employees and sales professionals strong training and professional development opportunities.

“We’re in the business of providing solutions that help companies control their brand, maximize their marketing dollars and deliver the right message to the right audience,” said Boundless Network CEO, Jason Black. “Diverge has demonstrated the capabilities that will enable us to spread our message and capitalize on digital media opportunities that will further expand our customer base. Additionally, the firm’s online strengths nicely compliment our professional sales training strategy.”

Boundless Network’s innovative use of technology and wide range of professional development offerings provide numerous opportunities for promotion, through both online and offline channels. Diverge will continue to identify key social media tactics that Boundless can take advantage of, including the company’s already-created blog, RSS feeds, social tagging and third-party community functionality such as YouTube videos.

Diverge has already created a video series featuring Black discussing Boundless Network’s fast growth and strategies that sales professionals can use to become high-volume producers in today’s competitive advertising specialty market. To view the series, visit http://www.youtube.com/boundlessnetwork.

“Boundless Network provides its sales professionals with the technology, and the professional development and support to take their business, and the entire promotional products industry, to the next level. We are eager to also provide cutting-edge digital communication technologies to help Boundless Network spread its message in a cost-effective, targeted manner,” said Thomas Terry, Diverge Principle.

About Boundless Network

Venture-backed Boundless Network is transforming the $20 billion promotional marketing industry through a highly trained, professional sales organization and proprietary technology that empower companies to deliver value and measurable ROI for custom branded products. Our patent-pending technology platform connects buyers across organizations to create efficiencies of scale and reduce the cost of branded products by as much as 40 percent. Boundless Network’s award-winning professional development and training opportunities help the company to attract the top one percent of sales professionals, and retain 95 percent if its employees. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Boundless Network is one of the fastest growing companies in the promotional marketing industry with 80 sales professionals and more than 60 employees in 13 sales offices across the U.S. To learn more about Boundless Network, visit www.boundlessnetwork.com

About Diverge

Diverge Communications is a public relations firm that offers its clients digital media capabilities to create visibility, engage customers and manage their reputations in an online forum. Diverge is able to measure and provide campaign results immediately, enabling its customers to refine and enhance their marketing programs. The Diverge goal is help companies interactively converse with customers to learn quickly and efficiently about their demands. For more information, visit divergecom.com.

First, Onalytica had a great article on Predicting Sales from Online Buzz where they pose the question “What if you could listen to the online debate and precisely predict how much you (or your competitors) are going to sell next month or quarter?”

Second, Fast Company wrote an article challenging the conventional wisdom surrounding the relative ability of influential people to ignite social trends. Titled, “Is the Tipping Point Toast?” the article explores the research of Duncan Watts a prominent academic and current researcher with Yahoo!. The article states, “Watts believes this is because a trend’s success depends not on the person who starts it, but on how susceptible the society is overall to the trend–not how persuasive the early adopter is, but whether everyone else is easily persuaded.” Take that Malcolm Gladwell.

Our approach is to start small, test our big ideas with targeted messages, and then measure the response. We optimize the messaging and track the feedback to see what is resonating best. We can help you with the following:

• Public Relations and Media Relations
• Social Media Marketing and Social Media Optimization
• Digital Public Relations
• Social Media Training
• And, much more

Contact Diverge. Get your message out. Increase your success.

You don’t need to rehash the arguments of why PR is so notoriously difficult to measure. Without being directly tied to a transactional process, it is difficult to credit PR with boosting sales or decreasing costs.

Here is my prediction: PR is exactly like marketing just 5-10 years behind the curve.

Starting in the late 1990s and continuing today, marketing has come a long way in the digital age. With a vastly increased access to information, marketers are using data mining tools to extract insights from vast corporate databases, using statistics to build complex prediction models to simulate whether a campaign is likely to be successful and ultimately proving the value of their contribution.

The public relations industry must get to this point.

Digital PR is the future as it provides access to a wealth of data about customer brand perceptions, company sentiment and behaviors. For the first time companies can listen into conversations between customers about a product, engage with customers and better understand and track key influencers online.

Today, we are helping clients test messages online and validate the likely success of a campaign before the launch. In the past some big-budget campaigns have looked great on paper but flopped in the marketplace. With digital and pretesting, the chances of failure are greatly reduced.

As the depth of data that is available increases, PR will be able to have its own list of KPIs (key performance indicators), calculate the ROI and leverage complex statistical models to improve communication and better target the message.

When PR is truly accountable and can deliver hard numbers to the C-suite — increased budgets and respect will follow.

As with any major change, you will see a number of companies adapt, some fail and others become the new dominant players. Regardless, O’Dwyer’s list of the largest public relations firms will look very different in a few years.

With an nod towards Everett Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations, our goal is to understand the process by which a message or idea is spread through online and offline channels, varying social contexts and among people with differing interests, needs and behaviors. Or, how we can send the right message to the right person in the right place at the right time.

At Diverge, we developed a proprietary process called Influence Metrics that is focused on five key pillars: research, strategy, engagement, reputation and accountability.

• Research allows you to reach audiences effectively through a foundational understanding the marketplace and key drivers.
• Strategy identifies the most effective venues to launch an idea.
• Engagement involves, excites and motivates.
• Reputation tracks online conversation and effect on a company’s brand.
• Accountability aligns tactics and goals to key business objectives and provides the tools for demonstrating campaign success.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll describe how we use this process at Diverge to uncover existing barriers and develop messages that resonate with audiences.

Feel free to post a question in the comments or let me know what you are interested in learning more about.

Diverge will provide fully integrated traditional and digital public relations services, social media and enhanced analytics and measurement capabilities to prove success and demonstrate ROI.

“Diverge’s ability to provide cutting edge PR and social media strategies is a good match with Tocquigny’s history of innovative digital marketing campaigns,” said Yvonne Tocquigny, CEO of Tocquigny.” Diverge was chosen for the firm’s uniquely ROI-driven approach to digital PR, their ability to provide the latest new media exposure and their scientific approach to creating successful online public relations campaigns. We are very excited to work with Diverge and look forward to launching a number of cutting edge social media and digital PR initiatives in 2008.”

Diverge will manage the firm’s online and traditional outreach, digital media relations and online reputation monitoring. In addition, Diverge’s advanced measurement capabilities will enable Tocquigny to accurately account for PR’s contribution to the firm’s overall marketing success.

For more news about Diverge visit: http://del.icio.us/divergecom

About Tocquigny
Tocquigny provides blue chip companies the confidence to execute innovative marketing campaigns that result in breakthrough winning business solutions and measurably impact a company’s financials. Tocquigny’s philosophy of measurement, foundation of business accountability and insights-based decision increase the predictability of marketing success and minimize the risk of marketing investment in the digital age. Tocquigny, one of the nation’s premier marketing agencies, is a B-to-B Magazine Top Marketing Agency and Adweek Top 25 Interactive Advertising Agency. For more, visit www.tocquigny.com.

About Diverge
As a digital public relations and social media firm, Diverge offers companies the competitive advantage of innovative, effective and measurable online public relations campaigns. In contrast to traditional public relations, digital PR provides lower risk, faster results and higher return on investment. This is achievable because we can track online influence, measure the speed and success of message movement and gauge the effect of these efforts on a company’s reputation — in real time. For more, visit www.divergecom.com.

- Booz Allen Hamilton
Marketing and Media Ecosystem 2010

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