McGuffin Creative Group Mega Case Study
As the Manager of Marketing and Brand for McGuffin Creative Group, I wear a lot of hats (as most marketers do!). In my role, I manage all brand, marketing and comms efforts and support new business development for the agency. What that looks like:
Thought Leadership
McGuffin Mix: After sunsetting an unsuccessful financial news blog, I wanted to launch an agency newsletter that would elevate our thought leadership. The biggest learning from the previous blog was that we had been focusing on our clients’ world instead of our own. Also we didn’t have time to report on news in a timely manner. So, I recruited a team and dug into strategy. What have similar companies done that have been successful? Who are we trying to reach? What subjects are we authorities on? How often can we publish a newsletter at a regular cadence, realistically?
After nailing down our strategy, we launched into creative and developed McGuffin Mix, a thought leadership blog and monthly email newsletter. This would not be a typical agency blog, rather a platform for our team to dig further into topics that are relevant to clients and agencies alike and showcase our expertise in those areas. After launching McGuffin Mix, we saw a 45% open rate and a 30% click-through rate in the first quarter.
I now manage the content team, write articles, manage production, and write all email and social content for our 3,000 subscribers.
McGuffin Mornings: I turned our long-standing in-person speaker breakfast into a webinar series in 2020 and doubled our attendance rates. We were not only able to connect with speakers, clients and prospects across the country in converting to a webinar strategy, but also able to use content for social media clips and event recaps on our website. I also implemented a post-event survey for attendees to give us feedback. I plan every event, scouting speakers, creating outlines and questions and ensuring each live event goes smoothly day-of. I’ve also hosted several webinars, including a DE&I panel I’m incredibly proud of having had the chance to facilitate. Some clips:
Events & Sponsorships
I lead sponsorships and events, including annual industry trade show sponsorship for The Financial Brand Forum in Las Vegas and ongoing sponsorships with associations such as the American Marketing Association Chicago and the Financial Communications Society.
For the Financial Brand Forum, I spearheaded creative for our booth and production of all creative assets for the show including educational materials, backdrops and an event-specific landing page as well as on-site activations, including a live magician and giveaways of VR headsets and AirMax headphones to drive booth traffic. I also managed the execution of on-site dinners, complete with gifts for dinner guests, client events and meetings with potential clients, which resulted in a new client signing on within 2 months of our first Forum sponsorship.
Social Media & Ad Campaigns
I lead the social media team and am responsible for the creation of our social media strategy and all organic content, ensuring all social media content is on-brand and reaching our target audience(s).
Our paid advertising campaigns have included creating specific content for leading financial and healthcare publications to reach clients, LinkedIn and Instagram paid advertising to promote our events and content, and a Google Ads campaign for general agency awareness and consideration.
Featured results:
Within my first year of managing social channels, impressions increased +25%, engagements increased +57%, link clicks increased +134% and followers across channels increased +20%.
Launched targeted Google Ads campaign resulting in 9x contact form fills in 6 mos.
We won Outstanding Small Agency MUSE Creative Awards for 2024 and 2025.
Brand Governance
I am responsible for maintaining the agency’s established brand voice and guidelines. Along with my design partner, we created a set of brand guidelines that reflected the visual brand dos and dont’s, the brand voice, type, color palette, digital vs. print guidelines, positioning, etc. I also owned the re-design of our agency website to reflect the new brand standards. Part of brand governance also includes creating and maintaining all new business development and account management materials/templates such as: case studies, proposals, presentation templates, one-sheeters.