Innovation and creativity are at the core of everything we do. We partner with our clients to strengthen their businesses and to make a difference in the world. With big-picture thinking and years of experience, we design sustainable programs and bring solutions to life. Contact us to learn more about this work and how we can help you transform your challenges into opportunities and objectives into outcomes.

Harnessing the Power of eLearning in National Training Programs

We believe in utilizing every tool at our fingertips to advance our clients’ objectives. In the case of the We Card Program, the right tool for the job was a comprehensive eLearning program. Our strategists played an integral role in creating We Card’s website, which provides training to retail employees on identifying and preventing underage tobacco purchases in accordance with federal and state-specific laws. The program includes interactive games and role-playing exercises and gives trainees a behind-the-retail-counter perspective as it takes them through the steps of carding customers and spotting fake IDs. It also provides them with real-world strategies for denying sales to minors, dealing with angry customers and handling other service issues that trainees may face. To complete the training course, participants must pass a variable multiple-choice test with a score of 70% or higher, and those who complete the course are awarded a certificate. This national training program continues to help retailers prevent the sale of age-restricted products to underage customers and is widely viewed as the premier training and education program for the sale of tobacco and age-restricted products.

Helping Clients Achieve Regulatory Compliance

When a legal challenge arose for a client that required a skilled assessment of the situation and a roadmap for achieving regulatory compliance, OTM Partners was called into action. We provided strategic guidance on how our client should best navigate the regulatory environment and created an action plan that enabled them not only to achieve full compliance, but also to enhance their image as a good corporate citizen and stay a step ahead of any potential new regulations.

Inspiring Grassroots Action

Rallying your troops to take grassroots action in the public policy arena is never easy. When the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) faced such a challenge, they turned to OTM Partners for help. We devised a testimonial-driven strategy as part of our overall work plan for SHRM and created a grassroots recruitment video for their members. In addition to explaining the organization’s advocacy efforts, our materials also successfully challenged and inspired members to take an active role in advancing the organization’s public policy priorities.

Educating & Motivating Target Audiences

When the American Insurance Association (AIA) needed to communicate issue priorities to its member companies and their employees, OTM Partners created a hard-hitting message guide that drove the creative and interview structure for an educational video and training manual. The overall goal was to ensure that employees of every member company knew exactly what the critical issues were and how AIA was working to advance them. Even more importantly, employees needed to know what actions they could take to support their company. In the end, the communications package our team put together was instrumental in educating thousands of employees and motivating them to take action.

Transforming Learners into Advocates Through Innovative “Edu-train-ment”

With a legislative campaign underway to tackle high swipe fees – fees retailers pay to credit card companies – the Association for Convenience & Fuel Retailing needed a way to educate decision-makers, consumers and the news media about the challenge swipe fees pose to a typical retail operator. The perception was that retailers profit from these swipe fees for gasoline sales and other in-store purchases. To counter this perception and educate target audiences about how little profit, if any, store owners make on these sales, we created and distributed an innovative and interactive 90 second online module or “issues widget.” Our efforts to convert these learners into advocates paid off, and thousands of clicks later, those who participated in this online learning experience took action to protest high swipe fees.

Identifying and Testing Key Messages

ICMA-RC, a nonprofit independent financial services company that provides retirement plans and related services, needed a strategy to increase plan participation and awareness of its retirement offerings. OTM Partners stepped in and conducted an A to Z evaluation of their direct communications efforts and identified key themes that would help them achieve their goals. We then used those themes to create a matrix of test communications packages. The result was a 60% increase in target variables over the previous year.

Building Broad Coalitions to Achieve a Common Goal

Bringing together a diverse group of companies and organizations with vastly different agendas and unifying them around a single common issue is a challenging prospect. But, that’s just the kind of challenge we like to tackle. For this project, we built a coalition out of a group of leading sports organizations – Penske Corporation, International Speedway Corporation and the PGA to name a few – and leveraged their combined influence to demonstrate the economic impact that major sports organizations have on local communities. To drive home our point, we held regional press conferences and disseminated nationally broadcast video news releases. Our efforts underscored the coalition’s message about the importance of its sponsored events and raised national awareness of the positive role they play in local economies.

Increasing Compliance Through Recognition & Reward Programs

OTM Partners was on the front lines of a year-long effort in Alabama to help prevent the sale of age-restricted products to underage customers. For this campaign, we pulled together a coalition of retailers, wholesalers, manufacturers, NGOs and enforcement agencies and created a program for retailers based on recognition and reward. This retailer-recognition campaign focused on positive reinforcement and rewards for employees who passed state-run compliance checks and who refused to sell age-restricted products to underage consumers. Because the program focused on compliance behavior, it stopped problems before they started. The campaign culminated in a statewide press conference where coalition members recognized the winning retailer for their outstanding compliance track record and presented a five-day cruise vacation award.

Creating Effective and Sustainable CSR Programs

Creating a program with a sustained commitment to training and educating the nation’s retailers about compliance with laws regarding age-restricted products is no easy task. We led the collective effort to launch such a program and to establish the parameters around best practices for training and education. Two decades later, this national brand is still going strong, and government agencies, law enforcement and NGOs regularly turn to this organization to implement training and education programs. As a result of this initiative, underage access to age-restricted products has dropped dramatically.

Multi Channel Marketing

We developed a direct mail promotion integrated with an online sweepstakes and interactive game to introduce the new Body Creations line for the Hanes Her Way brand. The direct mail promotion was sent to nearly half a million unique names, resulting in a 44 percent response rate on registration prompted by the mailer – a response rate nearly unheard of in the business to consumer direct mail space. We were also successful in meeting coupon redemption targets for the promotion, and consumers came back an average of five times to play the online game. By merging online and offline communications in this way, we were able to meet all of our target objectives, and in turn, to build brand awareness, drive sales and capture a whole new set of unique consumer data for our client. In short, by tackling this business challenge our way, we were able to deliver superior results to Hanes Her Way.

Maximizing Brand Value

“Exciting” and “memorable” are words rarely – if ever – used to describe cat foods or their related PR campaigns. OTM Partners was brought on to change precept. Our challenge was to solidify the relationship between Morris the Cat and the 9Lives brand in consumers’ minds. To raise awareness on the national level and boost consumer purchases, we implemented an all-encompassing messaging and PR campaign. Specially marked cans of 9Lives were redeemable for merchandise through a catalogue, and there was a grand prize for one lucky winner. This campaign generated a great deal of cat-worthy buzz for 9Lives and Morris and earned the loyalty of satisfied customers – both new and returning – across the nation.

Turning Local Grassroots Marketing into a National Success Story

To be successful in today’s competitive financial environment, banks must differentiate their services and provide excellent customer relations. This can be even more challenging for the largest banking groups, which sometimes have a harder time creating a local identity and a community-specific service portfolio. The fifth largest banking group in the United States came to OTM Partners seeking a solution to this very problem. To answer this challenge, we created a comprehensive incentive program within their banking operation that encouraged local level employees to be more creative with service offerings. Creating a Marketing Support Desk at the bank’s headquarters became a key component of the solution. Those affiliated with the Marketing Support Desk were tasked with providing advice and assistance to branch-level employees on innovative promotional programs. With HQ oversight, the support desk created dozens of unique community-specific promotions that incorporated standardized bank branding. Through these promotions, branch managers were able to increase product awareness and engagement among their customers and tie bank incentives and activities to the community. This local engagement filtered up to the national level – with increased brand awareness and overall customer satisfaction.

Serving as a One-Stop Shop for CSR

It is critical for convenience store retailers to ensure that their employees are well trained. But how do you assess the efficiency of a training program? By measuring enactment — are employees putting the skills they have been taught into action in the workplace? OTM Partners helped create Train & Verify, a one-stop solution for convenience store owners and managers that ensures employees are doing what they are supposed to be doing. Equally as important, it allows users to manage and measure all the variables in one place. Train & Verify is a proven, convenient solution for users who are managing eLearning for multiple stores, checking carding behavior for age-restricted products or performing a variety of other functions. See for yourself at TrainAndVerify.com.