We Are Rassak

Opportunity

Buena Vista Alternative Elementary is a famous educational institution in San Francisco's Mission District---offering bilingual immersion education. The school, however, suffered from a lack of effective communication.

Solution

Rasak created a pro-bono communications plan for the principal that was was truly "cross-platform"--utilizing auto-dialers, a dynamic, community-driven website and plain-old-fashioned-paper communications. We built the website using Ning and it is now entirely community driven. But getting it going going took more than digital chops. It took plain old community building--walking the halls, teaching, and evangelizing.

Results

Decidedly more effective communication and a growing online community, with new members (including grandparents across the globe) signing on daily.

Links: www.escuelabv.org

Opportunity

NBC-Universal approached BigFix, our client, to be a promotional partner for the 2008 sci-fi thriller HellBoy II: The Golden Army. BigFix and HellBoy audiences have a great deal of demographic and psychograhpic crossover. The question was how to tie the brands together?

Solution

Tie the idea of being a rebelious, powerful iconoclast (Hellboy) to the aspirational goal of making IT better at work (the role of the BigFix audience) then host an online sweepstakes to make your audience heros. Support the effort with banner ads, Stumbleupon buys, provacative print and follow it up with metrics that let you know where to throw your media money.

Opportunity

BigFix is a fast-growing, disruptive software company, rapidly gaining ground on it’s far-larger (and slower) competitors (Microsoft, Symantec and McAfee). Outspending these companies’ leviathan marketing budgets is not an option. Outsmarting them is why BigFix calls on Rassak.

Solution

In an irreverant viral campaign, Ray Hopewood, a software mogul who heads a company just like BigFix's competitors, runs for president.

Results

• International press coverage
• 250K+ Unique Visitors
• Millions video streams
• Multi-million $ Leads
• Huge ROI
• Word of Mouth got BigFix noticed.
• 6 figure investment, 7 figure cash return,
  priceless industry recognition
• Won BMA-Procomm Global Campaign of 2008 Award

Background

Ricoh Innovations are a talented, forward-thinking group based far from headquarters on Silicon Valley's Sand Hill Road. Their job is to help photocopier maker Ricoh thrive in the emerging digital era.

Solution

Rassak assists Ricoh Innovations with several services including strategic communications and research. In this recent project, we looked at forms--yes, those ubiquitous pieces of paper we all have to fill out seemingly every day. We studied forms from the perspective of those who fill them out, those who enter the data and those who design how the data flows in large and small organizations.

Our favorite quote from a large public institution -- "for a 'paperless organization', we sure push a lot of paper."

Experiment

Slide hired rassak to help position their just-launched photo service and explore ideas for weaving advertising into Slide’s widgets. They also asked us to try an experiment: see if offline marketing at big events be an effective way to drive online registrations. Armed with cellphone cameras and thousands of “You’ve Been Cool-spotted at CES” postcards, our team of mobile-bloggers and coolspotters hit the floor at Las Vegas’ largest tradeshow, the Consumer Electronics Show.

Results

While we proved that getting slide into the hands of conventioneers could generate great pictures, we did not see strong uptake in registrations.

Looking Forward

We believe that the most effective offline-to-online conversions leverage mobile in some way to provide a more immediate conversion channel.

Links: www.slide.com

Problem: As Tom Petty sings, "the waaaaaiting is the hardest part." That's particulary true in waiting rooms.

Solution: Strollabout.. a mobile-based ....

Results: "Love it" says staff, and patients

Links: www.rassak.com/strollabout

Opportunity

In 2006, StumbleUpon was hot (and still is). Their community of 2,000,000 was growing fast and the "StumbleUpon Guys" Justin, Garret and Geoff had just moved to San Francisco from Calgary. They asked us to improve their main revenue stream--selling advertising on their network.

Solution

When we talked to their current advertisers, most had discovered StumbleUpon as an ad medium through their website referral logs. We suggested turning the referral link into a hard-hitting sales page.

Results

StumbleUpon’s revenues jumped. In 2007, eBay bought the company for US$75 Million (which happens to be about the same amount of Loonies).

Links: stumbleupon.com, stumbleupon.com/ads

Background

Ricoh Innovations are a talented, forward-thinking group based far from headquarters on Silicon Valley's Sand Hill Road. Their job is to help photocopier maker Ricoh thrive in the emerging digital era.

Solution

Rassak assists Ricoh Innovations with several services including strategic communications and research. In this recent project, we looked at forms--yes, those ubiquitous pieces of paper we all have to fill out seemingly every day. We studied forms from the perspective of those who fill them out, those who enter the data and those who design how the data flows in large and small organizations.

Our favorite quote from a large public institution -- "for a 'paperless organization', we sure push a lot of paper."