When does a transaction morph into something tangible? When do deliverables mean more than just deadlines?
Brian Forbes, John Miller and I found ourselves recently fulfilling a large list of projects for PAR Technology Corporation, a public company (NYSE: PAR) located in upstate New York that dominates the Point of Sale (POS) software and food safety segment in fast casual, quick serve restaurant and grocery category.
Luckily, Brian had kicked off the project with two positioning documents, one for the Brink software line and the other an in-depth coverage of buyer personas. Over a 45-day period, our deliverables included new high-end messaging, new web content, product data sheets, a “gold” presentation deck for Sales, three case studies and two thought leadership e-books.
We had previously developed a blog series for PAR, but none of us had ever been to their headquarters or met any of our counterparts in person. This entire content marketing project would be run off a series of Zoom videoconference meetings (which creates a new kind of digital bonding, commenting upon the background decorations of each participant, be that a formal office that resembles The Office TV series, or the various home offices used by the PAR and Gecko teams).
Everything was supposed to branch from the high-end messaging. Unfortunately, no matter what you develop with for an established company, high-end messaging is like creating a logo. The PAR CMO had some favorites, but nothing was grabbing him the way we hoped. One challenge was that PAR was a 40-year-old company and Brink was a start-up acquisition, so in essence two brands seeking a unified set of messaging.
Despite this lack of traction, we dove in and soon cranked out the web content, data sheets and the Sales deck. On paper, we were at the 50-yard-line, about halfway through the overall project.
Another challenge when working with a large company and established team (up to nine individuals on the PAR side), is clarifying roles and responsibilities. Who are these Muddy Gecko outsiders anyway and why are they working on projects that could have been handled internally? Any errors we made at that point are amplified and must be resolved in numerous iterations, to get each piece into “the red zone,” the last 20 yards prior to final sign-off (aka “the touchdown).
Their CMO did a great job reassuring his own team while making sure the Gecko Team did not hit any tripwires and blow up the deliverable at hand. I would say things really gelled for this project when we turned in the first draft of an onboarding e-book. Admittedly, we missed the mark on the first draft based on some assumptions, but a series of Zoom conferences got us back on track.
By the time we got to the final ebook and the case studies, we really hit our stride and sent the PAR CMO happily toward his July vacation in Hawaii.
I now believe the correct term for this kind of project is positive iteration. There is no possible way our Gecko team could produce something exactly the same as a PAR manager. And that’s precisely the point.
Our most significant contribution is additive. This established public company now has a complete refresh of a wide swath of marketing collateral, and we have a much better understanding of their challenges and opportunities. We don’t quite finish their sentences, but we almost speak the same language.