+273%
Monthly Audience Reach
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Startup Digital Strategy
A Starting Point
Media Startup founded by actor Chris Evans
A Starting Point is a media and civic engagement startup founded by actor and "Captain America" star Chris Evans, director and producer Mark Kassen, and technology entrepreneur Joe Kiani. The organization retained Ink, Inc. for brand development, organic content initiatives, social media management, and paid media campaigns.
13x
Organic Content Production
+150%
Social Following
+$40M
EMV Growth
The Challenge
A new entry to the media landscape, the civic engagement app and digital news platform founded by "Captain America" star Chris Evans, producer and director Mark Kassen, and technology entrepreneur Joe Kiani had succeeded in garnering initial public attention. The organization, however, lacked consistency in brand presence and the high-quality cross-channel content required to foster the trust and professionalism needed to sustain continued growth.
The Approach
After aligning on vision, A Starting Point retained our services for a strategic overhaul of its digital presence and inbound solutions. We implemented a multi-pronged strategy spanning comprehensive brand development, content strategy, new social formats, and a dynamic asset generation workflow — later expanding into paid media, email marketing, SMS messaging, and SEO.
“Since launching in July 2020, the nonpartisan ASP has grown into a reputable civic media brand viewed by millions of Americans monthly.”
Our Strategy
Driving growth through self-reinforcing strategic initiatives
We initiated our approach with a strategy to meet a series of mutually-reinforcing objectives — each supporting the furtherance of another — aligned for strategic impact: build a consistent and professional brand image, develop content to match, and extend the value, reach, and efficacy of this content through a dynamic process for generating brand-consistent, cross-channel assets.
At the core of ASP's mission, impartiality, objectivity, and simplicity were essential pillars of our new messaging architecture.
We began by developing a brand style guide for visual and copy collateral that aligned with these values. This style guide formed the foundation of engaging new content formats, standardized into a fully modular content production process using Adobe Creative Cloud MOGRT libraries.
This shared library served both our content team and the client's in-house editing team, enabling ASP to respond consistently and swiftly to urgent news — exponentially amplifying output capability and the value of the client's content archives.
Featured in
“Politicos talking policy may seem like heavy fare for the TikTok cohort, but the venture has so far defied gravity. It has more than 140,000 Instagram followers and 72,000 followers on Twitter—big numbers for politics-only content, especially given the site's non-partisan approach.”
Brand Development
Developing consistent professional standards to communicate core values clearly and effectively
The client found itself quickly receiving significant nationwide attention, both in traditional media and digitally; however, still in the early stages of its startup lifecycle, its brand identity had yet to be fully explored, outlined, and solidified.
We began by exploring the core principles of the organization, using these to serve as the conceptual pillars for each aspect of its brand strategy and subsequent collateral. A unique aspect of ASP's value proposition — the direct connection of elected leaders to their constituents — our communications strategy would echo this filter-free, straightforward style.
From typography, color palettes, and standardized asset formats to both visual style and copy tone, these values of integrity, simplicity, and approachability were infused into our approach.
We developed the organization's first brand style guide to unify external messaging and clarify internal values to both employees and contractors added to the team over the following year.
Media coverage
“The platform's social media team pushes out potentially newsworthy clips ... the King clip was viewed more than 400,000 times on the Twitter account, compared with the 10,000 who caught it on CNN's social media.”
Digital Content
Building process equity with a dynamic workflow for social media management
Initially, the client's digital presence consisted primarily of company updates, news, and launch information. While some effort had gone into attempts to voice the expanding core content of the platform, the assets lacked visual consistency and a repeatable workflow for production — particularly on social media, a core pillar of support for ASP.
Now facing the opportunity and pressures of a public spotlight, A Starting Point required a sustainable path to expand and refine its content production. Our strategy included methods for quickly iterating both urgent, time-sensitive content and developing new formats to utilize ASP's extensive library of archival content.
We brought on political science experts and copywriters with a public policy background to develop accurate domain-specific content on topics including public health, the economy, international affairs, and more.
Our design team built new, engaging motion graphics for social formats — including Explores, Explainers, Trending Points, and Counterpoints — that would each communicate in a distinct style while providing the audience with consistent, familiar expectations.
We developed innovative systems to standardize and expedite content generation in broadcast mediums, including a shared Adobe Creative Cloud library for VFX elements and MOGRTs that served a team of over 15 video editors, enabling content output to scale ten-fold.
This cutting-edge approach earned our agency praise from industry peers, including a community nomination as a requested speaker at the international Adobe Max conference.
After developing this dynamic workflow, we continued with strategic assessment and tactical execution — providing social media management services and seizing upon tools including Community (SMS Messaging) and Later (LinkInBio), generating 50% more web traffic in the first month alone.
Social Media Transformation
Before & After
Standardized elements including lower-thirds, overlays, callouts, and media containers were formed into modular building blocks — enabling agile and responsive content iteration across existing and new asset templates.
Before
After
Instagram feed consistency before and after Ink, Inc. engagement
“Because it's short-form media, we're engineered to be social ... The key is to use modern tools to push out content that's tonally different from what you might find on modern cable news. Or on social media.”
Email Marketing
Developing communications strategy to segment, target, and engage audiences on new channels
In the lead-up to ASP's launch, the client garnered a significant amount of email list subscribers; however, this list remained dormant without the infrastructure or strategy to implement the channel. We saw a tremendous opportunity to deepen engagement with specific content releases and to drive traffic to the website and mobile app.
Establishing the information architecture for the channel, we aimed to continue our successful approach from other digital methods: developing standardized, iterable content formats that remain both flexible and familiar — including a weekly newsletter with regular sections, a monthly updates series for ASP Homeroom, and special events or one-off campaigns.
In the ever-shifting news environment, it was essential for our implementation to utilize modular building blocks for each campaign — sections for archival content, breaking news, special events, and promotions, to be slotted in or out as needed.
The strategy proved highly successful, serving an audience of 125,000 subscribers with open rates and CTRs exceeding industry standards, as a powerful new channel driving traffic, product engagement, and boosting WAUs.
Partnerships & Paid Media
Building credibility through meaningful partnerships and high-performing campaigns
Building momentum towards the project goal of improving brand recognition and trust, we worked closely with the client to execute highly successful partnerships and content collaborations with external organizations.
Facilitating these partnerships, we set strategy for, coordinated, and implemented multi-stakeholder campaign strategies with large media organizations including MTV/Viacom, Newsweek, SXSW, and WebSummit.
Managing ASP's social promotional strategy, we led incredibly successful in-house campaigns for the client, with results including campaign CTRs in excess of 70% on Twitter at 91% lower CPCs, outperforming industry standards by multiple degrees of magnitude.
We partnered with leading digital agency Klientboost to generate paid media strategy and creative assets for social and PPC campaigns, including multi-touchpoint funnel design.
Client Results
Establishing brand renown, expanding audience reach, and building process equity
The results were highly successful, including a more than ten-fold increase in content production and output, a near tripling of the client's monthly organic audience reach, and paid media campaigns that outperformed industry standards by multiple degrees of magnitude.
Additionally, our content marketing and social media management services led to a 150% boost in social followers (YoY), generating over 1.5 million monthly video views consistently across the channels and contributing more than $40M EMV through organic social content.
Motion Graphics & Asset Gallery
Driving engagement with consistent formats that develop familiarity with the brand
Motion graphics, animations, and video assets brought life to a subject area typically considered uninspired — a core differentiator for ASP and its audience base.
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