Cincinnati Sports Leagues

www.gocsl.com

Cincinnati Sports Leagues (CSL) is a lifestyle marketing company that is best known for its diverse athletic leagues, parties and special events for young professionals ages 21 to 36+ in the Cincinnati community. They came to O'Keeffe to help strengthen awareness of their programs and their lifestyle marketing efforts. The organization, which serves more than 30,000 young professionals each year, wanted assistance creating a consistent public relations strategy.

Challenge

To support the launch of its new corporate website and its heightened focus on the healthcare industry, General Data partnered with O'Keeffe to promote its healthcare line of barcode-based data capture solutions, along with its solutions for distribution, transportation, warehousing, and mobile workforce.

Solution

O'Keeffe worked with CSL president Brian Polark to identify opportunities and create a strategic plan to leverage CSL's strengths during a time of economic turmoil. O'Keeffe started with brand awareness efforts such as new hire releases to strengthen name recognition. Soon after, O'Keeffe created pitches around CSL's new ad strategy and Brian himself. Because Brian fully understood the importance of social media, together, O'Keeffe and CSL used social media outlets, including Twitter, to re-market their PR hits. O'Keeffe also coordinated an opportunity for Brian to be a featured blogger on a Cincinnati-area website, Soapboxmedia.com. Working together, Brian and O'Keeffe crafted messages that hit its intended demographic and demonstrated CSL's varied capabilities.

Results

O'Keeffe found the local media to be receptive to the announcements sent for CSL. They appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Business Courier, thereby achieving Brian's goals of generating awareness among Cincinnati's key ad agencies and marketing executives. Brian's blog was very well received, with some posts receiving over 10 positive reader comments. O'Keeffe counseled CSL to include a blog and other social media components in their upcoming Web redesign. Based on his experience, Brian wants to continue to blog and use social media, and has even partnered with O'Keeffe on presenting the benefits of integrated social media/PR campaigns to area business leaders.