Integrated Marketing
On the Fast Track: GSA FAS—Economic Recovery Advertisements
Background
The new administration recently issued the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan to help jumpstart the economy, create and save millions of jobs, and put a down payment on addressing long-neglected challenges so the country can thrive in the 21st century. The Act provides for unprecedented levels of transparency and accountability so that citizens will be able to know how, when, and where tax dollars are being spent. Spearheaded by a new Recovery Board, the Act contains built-in measures to root out waste, inefficiency, and unnecessary spending.
The Act also provides funding to various federal agencies to help stimulate the economy and create more jobs. GSA quickly saw this as an opportunity to launch a promotional campaign marketing its own value-added services. The objective was to create awareness as to how government agencies can spend the stimulus money quickly (within 60–90 days) and still achieve fair competition, transparency, and accountability. The campaign focused on messaging that enabled GSA to communicate how it already had the contracts in place to enable federal agencies to respond quickly to the new plan.
JDG's Solution
Tasked with implementing a new recovery-focused campaign while already in the midst of rolling out a suite of ads for GSA's Federal Acquisition Service, JDG swiftly responded to the task surrounding the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. JDG provided a flexible strategy that identified the value proposition and a range of print, outdoor, and online channels of communication. JDG confirmed the primary audience to be civilian federal government contracting professionals, program managers, and executive-level decision makers.
Through a series of meetings and culling from our previous experience working with GSA, our team immediately determined that the best approach to drive awareness of GSA's offerings and services would be to promote GSA as the source best positioned to meet the demands of the new initiative swiftly. The idea was to help communicate that GSA is ready to help agencies spend the money provided in the new government recovery package with transparency in a way that meets all the Act's regulations and requirements. Further, GSA already has the proven solutions available for virtually any contractual service or product category within the scope of the recovery package, including energy and environmental solutions, technology and telecommunications, engineering and professional/technical business consulting, and facilities modernization, management, supplies and equipment, as well as many others.
To help set the campaign apart from previous marketing efforts and to create a distinctive look and feel, JDG created a series of 3 unique concepts tailored to its target audiences—one specifically tailored to contracting officers and two geared towards program managers and agency executives. For the broader audience appeals, JDG chose two different concepts. For the first concept, our team chose to move forward with a text-only design and omitted any use of imagery to place the focus squarely on the listing of benefits. We highlighted specific key words (such as "speed," "transparency," "accountability," and "simplify") by increasing the point size and bolding these benefits to make them pop out against the rest of the copy. The second concept incorporated a more traditional GSA brand standard approach, leveraging and expanding on the current look and feel of the GSA ads. Using the same underlying themes of patriotism and customer focus, the image selected was visually symbolic of the agencies working together with GSA to get America back on track through the use of a photograph of various hands holding on to a piece of an American flag. The ad copy emphasized empowerment and supported the concept that the agency is in control of the procurement process.
For the concept targeting the contracting professionals, JDG took a less traditional approach and selected an image of a business person who appears to be distressed, banging her head against a wall. This image was chosen to connect with the target audience (contracting officers) who are faced with the daily challenges of acting swiftly while ensuring compliance standards are being met.
Understanding the need to gain maximum exposure and to attract both general and specific audiences with varying degrees of decision-making authority, JDG identified the DC-area metropolitan transit system as a strategic locale for distribution and targeted Metro stations near government agencies within the area that received funding from the Act. JDG developed a bus back for Metrobuses and Metro station posters, as well as print advertisements for commuter publications, such as the Washington Post Express and The Examiner. In addition, JDG created print ads in targeted publications to contracting officers, including Federal Times and Contract Management. We also created several web banner advertisements to help carry out consistent messaging and awareness across the government trade press.
Results
Through our targeted advertising campaign, GSA has communicated its ability to provide agencies with cost-effective, high-quality and environmentally friendly products and services. Various direct mail packages, an email campaign, and additional magazine advertisements will round out this fully integrated campaign. The campaign resulted in a significant increase in traffic to GSA's website from other government agencies that are seeking solutions to respond to the Recovery Act.
The series of print ads and web banners JDG created ran in a variety of government trade publications, securing nearly 9.7 million impressions between print and interactive media.
JDG developed a bus back for Metrobuses and Metro station posters, as well as print advertisements for commuter publications.
