CASE STUDY

Building Visibility and Thought Leadership

CLIENT: APC

The Challenge

APC has a rich history rooted in scientific discovery, as a global leader in manufacturing and selling functional plasma proteins and red blood cell products. Committed to enhancing the well-being of animals and plants through functional proteins, APC desired to elevate company and product visibility to key audiences. While they had developed a wealth of value study results, videos and collateral, they needed to disseminate this information effectively. This need prompted APC to seek expertise in building robust media relations.

Our Approach

APC aimed to increase confidence in its core swine product line while expanding its market share. They turned to Look East to focus their marketing message effectively to key stakeholders and enhance their public relations through trade and industry media.

With its media relations expertise and expansive agricultural knowledge, Look East stepped right in to fulfill the need. Look East started by engaging thought leaders to validate and measure the credibility of APC’s claims with a variety of stakeholders. Industry leaders identified three areas of focus: 1) Biosecurity, 2) Sustainability, and 3) Product Efficacy. Look East utilized this important discovery information to create a message map with these themes. Each message was tested to ensure it would resonate effectively with the target audience.

Additional visibility was gained as APC advisory board members served as podcast guests and were quoted in industry articles, sharing their expertise and valuable message to a global audience. The content was repurposed for social media and other digital platforms, providing consistency, convenient use and effective fits with each platform.

Furthermore, Look East took on the responsibility of developing, managing and maintaining a media list and successfully timed priority news releases to align with APC’s goals and objectives. This boosted awareness of the company’s efforts in biosecurity, sustainability and product efficacy. The expanded capabilities and refreshed content resulted in an increase of news releases created and distributed. Each message was tested to ensure it would resonate effectively with the target audience.

The Results

The thorough steps taken by Look East to conduct discovery with industry experts, advisory board members, pork producers, veterinarians and researchers, yielded measurable results. The impact was evident through increased social media engagement and media placements that exceeded previous APC experience. In 2023, 14 stories were published by trade media, including this unique research featured in the story “APCs spray dried plasma and red cells to launch into space.” Additional news releases and pitches resulted in podcast participation. Plus, metrics reported that interviews with APC company leadership reached 136,000 readers.

Look East has helped amplify APC’s core messages, showcase the scope of their capabilities, and claim their leadership in swine research.

Beth Saxton, APC’s Director of Global Marketing, is thrilled with the outcome of selecting Look East to carve a new foothold for the company’s public relations and media strategy. “Look East redefined our public relations strategy. Their expertise and tactical process have allowed us to reach success with our marketing message and reinforced our position as a leader in the scientific community.”