Client Stories

TRANSLOC

Thanks to technology innovators such as TransLoc, public transit is undergoing a quiet revolution. A division of Ford Smart Mobility, TransLoc works with metropolitan transit agencies and university campus transit systems across the country to help transit operators provide services that better meet the needs of today’s sophisticated public transit rider. For instance, with TransLoc’s Microtransit on Demand program, riders download a smartphone app they can use in cities and campuses across the country to schedule rides in advance and select their own pick-up and drop-off locations.

All exciting stuff – and yet even as the new service was being beta tested in cities across the country, TransLoc realized that most transit system operators had only a vague idea of how riders actually felt about their public transit choices and the role it played in their lives. Set of 1 was asked to uncover critical insights about these riders and create high-impact concepts, messages and visuals for transportation agencies and college campuses to adopt and customize as they promoted the new TransLoc service.

Our research revealed that microtransit riders are far more engaged with drivers than riders on typical public buses, and Microtransit drivers quickly come to know all of their regular riders by name. The research also showed that Microtransit serves a well-defined community of repeat riders in familiar neighborhoods, and the on-demand scheduling and door-to-door features make the service feel more like a private car service, chartered bus or Uber/Lyft service.

Armed with these new insights and ideas, SO1 created relevant profiles, clear rider journeys and a new positioning around “Public Transportation Just Got Personal”, giving TransLoc an impactful and influential messaging strategy to put Microtransit On Demand on the map.

University of central florida

In 2008, a report from The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education described cost, quality and access as forming an unbreakable “iron triangle” of interlocking constraints on colleges and universities: any effort to expand access will degrade quality and/or raise costs; any effort to improve quality will limit access and/or raise costs – and so on.

With more than 68,570 undergraduate, graduate and medical students, the University of Central Florida near Orlando (UCF), is the largest public university in the United States. But it’s not size that makes the university proud; it’s a 20-year initiative that flatly disproves the notion that universities must play a zero-sum game.

The school’s latest enrollment statistics speak for themselves: in 2018, the average SAT score of the entering freshman class at UCF was 1328, with an average high school GPA of 4.12. More than 47% of students are minorities; 26 percent are Hispanic. Fully 72% of undergraduate students received financial aid, 50% of first-time-in-college students at UCG graduate with zero educational debt – and UCF's six-year graduation rate is 72.6 percent.

When the opportunity came for UCF to apply for a $100 million-dollar grant via the MacArthur Foundation’s “100 & Change” competition, UCF knew that breaking through the clutter would be a tough challenge. There were more than 2,000 applicants – and each application was limited to seven pages of specific answers to tough questions. 

Set of 1 worked with the university’s development leadership team to distill a meta-story that could guide not only the application language, but overall university communications and messaging.  We also crafted the final language used in the application and provided a visual concept and script for a required video to highlight their idea.

While UCF ultimately did not win the MacArthur grant, the story developed by Set of 1 provided messaging guidance to drive myriad development efforts with other funding sources that bore substantial fruit - as well as communications in support of the university’s ongoing vision for change in higher education.

CREE lighting

Cree was established in 1987 based on semiconductor technology originally developed at NC State University. A company literally built to innovate, Cree developed the first blue light-emitting diode, released world’s first commercial SiC wafers, created the industry’s first GaN HEMT on SiC and launched the world’s first commercially viable LED fixtures, including the first IPx5-Rated SMD LEDs for video screens. All before 2010. This pace of innovation has never slowed, and Cree Lighting is now a separate business owned by IDEAL Industries.

If you think Cree Lighting sounds like a company of smart engineering geeks striving to change the human experience of artificial lighting, well, you’d be right.

But the majority of people who buy Cree Lighting products— building facility managers, architects, commercial developers, hospital administrators and the owners of big box retail , sports arenas and automotive dealerships—don’t speak much geek. Which is where we come in.

Set of 1 works regularly with Cree Lighting to help name, brand and position new technologies and products, and to create message strategies and content such as case studies, white papers, brochures, digital content and videos that capture the details of their technologies sufficiently for fellow engineers, but in ways that still engage, excite and educate their laymen customers.

bioventus

A global company established in 2012, Bioventus develops and/or markets orthobiologic solutions for bone healing, bone graft and osteoarthritis (OA). The company’s EXOGEN Ultrasound Bone Healing System uses safe, painless ultrasound waves to activate cells near the site of a broken bone to stimulate the body’s natural healing process, a proven, cost-effective alternative to more invasive options. Bioventus’ joint pain injection therapies provide a natural joint lubricant that relieves OA pain, improves mobility, and helps patients get back to their normal activities.

Bioventus products are prescribed by physicians—making the marketing process similar to the one used by pharma companies: promote and sell directly to physicians while driving patient demand. And like pharma, this requires different messaging strategies for physicians and patients.

Bioventus was comfortable speaking to physicians and sharing detailed clinical data. But they found it challenging to simplify that messaging to educate, engage and influence prospective patients. Set of 1 helped the company create patient-directed message strategies and visual concepts that effectively engage and influence patients worldwide, especially for product launches and new websites.

Zejula

ZEJULA is a new, once-daily, oral medicine used for the maintenance treatment of women with recurrent ovarian, fallopian tube, or primary peritoneal cancer when their cancer comes back. It was developed by TESARO, an oncology-focused business within GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).

Considerable patient research was conducted to help launch this new type of oral treatment, and TESARO engaged multiple ad agencies that specialize in pharmaceutical marketing to help them develop a message and creative strategy that would personally speak to women who’ve spent years battling recurring cancer. But creating a message strategy that was personally compelling yet empowering for patients proved to be a difficult assignment.

One of the agency’s contracted by TESARO approached Set of 1 to help uncover some new insights within all that patient data and translate them into effective messaging and creative concepts.

Set of 1’s recommended positioning, creative concepts and suggested patient engagement strategies became the core foundation for ZEJULA’s successful launch.

fusionetics

The founder of Fusionetics, Dr. Micheal Clark is one of the top physical therapists in the world. He spent 11 years as the team physical therapist for the NBA’s Phoenix Suns, was named the “Health and Fitness Visionary of the Year” by Men’s Health magazine, and was the chief executive officer of the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM).

Dr. Clark’s rise to fame began with he created the Optimum Performance Training™ (OPT) model used by thousands of health and fitness professionals worldwide. This model ultimately became Fusionetics, a revolutionary digital solution that uses artificial intelligence combined with three decades of clinical research and input data from thousands of professional and college athletes to automatically assess body movements with pinpoint accuracy and deliver an individualized solution to correct problems or imbalances that hinder performance, invite injury or create pain. 

Fusionetics is a recognized brand in the field of elite sports—top trainers, PTs and strength coaches understand the role and application of movement science for injury prevention. But new technologies such as 2D motion capture and machine learning now put the amazing benefits of movement science within the reach of everybody, regardless of age, skill and level of fitness. Set of 1 is helping Fusionetics brand and message in new ways that will help the company deliver on its mission: bringing the benefits of proper movement to the world.

Samanage

When we first starting working with Samanage, the young company’s messaging was straightforward and product focused: they were the only unified service desk and asset management software built in the cloud. They also exhibited a palpable commitment to outstanding customer service, openly stating that they wanted to be known as “the one company that offers a service desk product, service and community that, for all intents and purposes, customers become happily addicted to.”

But the IT departments Samanage served are now being tasked by their companies to do more than provide a lovable IT service desk experience. The C-suite and department managers of these companies urgently needed to see bottom-line metrics, informed by salient data delivering actionable insights. And every department within a company has service needs; creating a demand for enterprise service solutions beyond IT.

Samanage’s product and R&D departments quickly pivoted, offering an enterprise service solution that makes company data easily visible, with AI capabilities for future growth and a customized solution for companies already using Salesforce.

Now they simply had to tell their prospects, customers and investors about their vision and how Samanage could help companies see everything that matters: the people, the places, the machines and devices, the software—and the relationships between them. Set of 1 worked with the CEO, marketing and product teams to create messaging that captured the imagination of the industry as well as customers. In 2019, the company was acquired by SolarWinds, a leading global provider of powerful and affordable IT infrastructure management software.

NationBuilder

Leaders are always building things – companies and organizations, campaigns and political parties, grassroots movements, bases of subscribers and donor networks. By the late 2000s, it was clear that the convergent trends of Internet ubiquity, social media and mobile smart devices were rewriting the rules of how leaders acquire and wield the tools of leadership – and that leadership itself was undergoing a process of profound transformation and democratization.

NationBuilder has positioned itself squarely on the forefront of that transformation, offering leaders an integrated package of software and apps to help them better leverage influence and galvanize supporters. At the same time, inspired by the work of the late M. Scott Peck and the Foundation of Community Encouragement, NationBuilder’s founders built the tenets of community into their corporate culture.

As a result, various departments, work groups and management levels within NationBuilder regularly convene in “circles” – intense meetings often held in a literal circle of chairs - in which participants engage each other with a respectful authenticity as they seek to reconcile - or at least understand - difficult issues with others in the group. A certified facilitator trained by Scott Peck in the Foundation for Community Encouragement’s experiential form of community building, Eric has been privileged to facilitate several circles and to offer consultative skills to NationBuilder on several occasions since 2017.