This year, OpenMarketing’s Principal, Roberto Tiscareno, became the Marketing Chair for DIFFA’s DINING BY DESIGN San Francisco chapter. Even though OpenMarketing took on DIFFA SF on a pro-bono basis, we treated the organization and their needs as if they were one of our retainer clients.
We joined forces DIFFA SF for a few reasons:
- Brand Equity – DIFFA San Francisco, as one of the many chapters under DIFFA National, needs to have a strong connection with local designers and potential sponsors in order to thrive. In the beginning, however, the DIFFA San Francisco brand name did not resonate much within the San Francisco Bay Area design community.
- The Cause – The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the annual rate of new cases of HIV/AIDS is United States is rising. To help bring awareness to this cause, DIFFA San Francisco supports the UCSF Positive Health Program at San Francisco General Hospital and DIFFA National.
- Educating the Design Trade – Unfortunately, the design trade plays catch-up when it comes to digital/online marketing, especially in the era of content marketing and inbound marketing. By joining DIFFA SF, we wanted to educate designers on how they can take their portfolio and transform it into sales content that can attract potential clients online.
GETTING STARTED
Our first task was to create a website that acts not only as a resource for the annual event, but to educate the public around the cause. The site would house individual portfolios for designers to showcase their table concepts for the DINING BY DESIGN events.
As soon as we started to build out the site, we realized that DIFFA SF not only needed a website, but a marketing infrastructure that allowed the organization to communicate with the public in a consistent and engaging manner.
What followed was a full agency effort to bring DIFFA SF alive online several types of content marketing tools:
- Messaging – “Forward the Cure”
- Brand Identity
- Interactive Website feat. designer portfolios
- Event Marketing (Eventbrite)
- Email Marketing
- Print Ads (7×7, California Home + Design, San Francisco Fall Antiques Show)
- Social Media Design Templates
The results? See for yourself at diffasf.org
