The Fresh and Only

About

My name is Alex Hisaka. I specialize in keyword research, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), inbound marketing, copywriting, community management, and online conversation auditing and analytics.

I help many web 2.0 companies and fast-growing startups building with their marketing.

You can email me at akhisaka@gmail.com

Follow me on Twitter at @alexhisaka

Desk.com

THE CHALLENGE:
Last September, Salesforce bought our SaaS startup Assistly for $50 million-plus to help expand our service cloud offerings to small businesses. As part of our acquisition, we have now become the new Assistly-inspired social and mobile customer service platform for small businesses, called Desk.com.

THE APPROACH:
Rebranding called for us to redesign our website, revise our content, devise a link building campaign to help SEO and CTR, create new interactive content and develop and new in-bound email marketing strategy. In addition to creating new content, we devised a social media marketing tactic to help spread the word about Desk.com.

THE RESULTS:
Within 72 hours of our launch, we generated 25,400 perspective visits to Desk.com, 1,139 new registrations, and 131 press articles in TechCrunch, Mashable, VentureBeat, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fast Company, PSFK, eWeek, PC World, Business Insider. Information Week, Daily Finance. We also wrote a getting started ebook and produced three getting started videos.

Desk.com Boloco Giveaway THE CHALLENGE: Last September, Salesforce bought our SaaS startup Assistly for $50 million-plus to help expand our service cloud offerings to small businesses. As part of our acquisition, we have now become the new Assistly-inspired social and mobile customer service platform for small businesses, called Desk.com. THE APPROACH: Rebranding called for us to redo our website, in-trial emails to new customers, getting started videos, customer videos and ebooks. In addition to creating new content, we devised a social media marketing tactic to help spread the word about Desk.com We partnered with Boston burrito chain Boloco to help us give away 1,000 burritos to hungry lunch-goers across Boston and Cambridge. Customers had to tweet a message to @Desk with the hash tag #getdesk and check-in at Boloco on Foursquare in order to get in on the free burrito. and if that wasn’t enough, we gave a $600 Apple Store gift card to one lucky customer who tweeted a photo showing the Desk.com logo on their burrito to @Desk. THE RESULTS: Within 72 hours of our launch, we had 25,400 perspective visits to Desk.com, 1,139 new registrations and 131 press articles written about Desk.com High-res

Desk.com Boloco Giveaway

THE CHALLENGE:
Last September, Salesforce bought our SaaS startup Assistly for $50 million-plus to help expand our service cloud offerings to small businesses. As part of our acquisition, we have now become the new Assistly-inspired social and mobile customer service platform for small businesses, called Desk.com.

THE APPROACH:
Rebranding called for us to redo our website, in-trial emails to new customers, getting started videos, customer videos and ebooks. In addition to creating new content, we devised a social media marketing tactic to help spread the word about Desk.com We partnered with Boston burrito chain Boloco to help us give away 1,000 burritos to hungry lunch-goers across Boston and Cambridge. Customers had to tweet a message to @Desk with the hash tag #getdesk and check-in at Boloco on Foursquare in order to get in on the free burrito. and if that wasn’t enough, we gave a $600 Apple Store gift card to one lucky customer who tweeted a photo showing the Desk.com logo on their burrito to @Desk.

THE RESULTS:
Within 72 hours of our launch, we had 25,400 perspective visits to Desk.com, 1,139 new registrations and 131 press articles written about Desk.com

Coke Happiness Factory 3

THE CHALLENGE:
For the third iteration of Coca-Cola’s Happiness Factory, we were asked us to create a website that encapsulated the Factory mythos while exploring the “physical uplift” found in every bottle of Coke: the burst of joy, refreshment, and energy you get with every sip.

THE APPROACH:
To accomplish these goals, we created a site that allows users to step into the shoes of the most common member of the Factory, the indispensable Worker. Users attempt to complete a variety of fantastical tasks, completing all steps necessary to ensure that every bottle of Coke with come out perfect. The concept of physical uplift is communicated through the game’s energy meter: players must grab Coke bottles while they work. My partner and I worked on two of the four levels.

THE RESULTS:
The Happiness Factory 3 site launched globally and received over a million visits in the first six months. On average, 5,000 people spend over seven and a half minutes a day on the site. Since its launch, the website has won a number of awards, including: Best in Show at the MIXX Awards, gold W3 Awards in Games and Gaming and Food and Beverage; the Adweek Buzz Award for Best Integrate Campaign; a WebAward for Outstanding Website; and the Creative Website Award for Top Flash Website. The campaign was also a finalist for Cannes Cyber Lions and the Clio Awards and was named Site of the Day on the FWA.com.

Enloop THE CHALLENGE:The noble business plan can be the bugbear of many bright, energetic yet disorganized entrepreneurs. As a result, we’ve seen a lot of people break into their savings and 401ks only to end up empty-handed because they didn’t understand their risk. The simple trust was that there was no system that could help people answer the simple question of ‘how do you know if a business idea is a good idea?’ That’s why Enloop created a cloud-based system that allows anyone to evaluate the potential for success of a business idea, or improve existing businesses by using a predictive scoring algorithm. This allows the user to immediately understand the impact of their planning choices. THE APPROACH: We discovered there was an untapped market of frustrated small business entrepreneurs on the social web who didn’t have the financial know how or proper tools to start a business. We wanted to find a way to bring these people together and help them find the right information at the right time. Engaging on the social web gave us the chance to interact with consumers, and helped us better understand what consumer’s value. We created an online community where people could get answers, share feedback and receive financial management advice, without ever leaving the computer. It also gave us a heads up on everything from emerging trends to product pricing and service issues so that we were never in the dark about consumer discussions. RESULTS: Enloop created a community of people who were not just interested in our product, but as a thought leader in small business planning. Our active engagement online led to building relationships with many small business influencers who helped us share our brand message with the masses.This led to coverage from some major publications such as Forbes, Read Write Web, INC , LifeHacker, TechCrunch, About.com, PC World, Young Upstarts, CNN, Killer Startups, Startup Beat, Business Insider, BNET, Outright, and Make Use Of. We were also featured on MSNBC as the “Website to Watch” and covered in the September issue of Entrepreneur Magazine. With only five employees, we managed to accumulate over 10,000 unique visitors per month, 52,000 page views per month, and 4,000 members all within six months of our public launch. High-res

Enloop

THE CHALLENGE:
The noble business plan can be the bugbear of many bright, energetic yet disorganized entrepreneurs. As a result, we’ve seen a lot of people break into their savings and 401ks only to end up empty-handed because they didn’t understand their risk. The simple trust was that there was no system that could help people answer the simple question of ‘how do you know if a business idea is a good idea?’ That’s why Enloop created a cloud-based system that allows anyone to evaluate the potential for success of a business idea, or improve existing businesses by using a predictive scoring algorithm. This allows the user to immediately understand the impact of their planning choices.

THE APPROACH:
We discovered there was an untapped market of frustrated small business entrepreneurs on the social web who didn’t have the financial know how or proper tools to start a business. We wanted to find a way to bring these people together and help them find the right information at the right time. Engaging on the social web gave us the chance to interact with consumers, and helped us better understand what consumer’s value. We created an online community where people could get answers, share feedback and receive financial management advice, without ever leaving the computer. It also gave us a heads up on everything from emerging trends to product pricing and service issues so that we were never in the dark about consumer discussions.

RESULTS:
Enloop created a community of people who were not just interested in our product, but as a thought leader in small business planning. Our active engagement online led to building relationships with many small business influencers who helped us share our brand message with the masses.This led to coverage from some major publications such as Forbes, Read Write Web, INC , LifeHacker, TechCrunch, About.com, PC World, Young Upstarts, CNN, Killer Startups, Startup Beat, Business Insider, BNET, Outright, and Make Use Of. We were also featured on MSNBC as the “Website to Watch” and covered in the September issue of Entrepreneur Magazine. With only five employees, we managed to accumulate over 10,000 unique visitors per month, 52,000 page views per month, and 4,000 members all within six months of our public launch.

Levi’s Girl Contest

CHALLENGE:
We created a video contest for Levi’s on Facebook to find the first online “face and voice” of Levi’s womenswear, who will be known simply as “Levi’s Girl.”

APPROACH:
We filmed a video featuring our Levi’s guy Garrett who announced the contest and its rules. Users were asked to submit a 1-2 minute video via the company’s Facebook app explaining why they would be the perfect fit for the role, which involved reaching out and engaging with Levi’s female fan base on Facebook and Twitter. The video was posted on the Levi’s YouTube page, its Facebook page that boasts more than 300,000 fans, and tweeted by the Levi’s Guy to over 5,000 followers. We narrowed down the entries and selected five finalists, whose videos were shared on Levi’s Facebook Page. Community members had one week to vote for their favorite candidate, to be announced at the end of July. The winner landed a six-month paid position in Levi’s San Francisco headquarters, working alongside “Levi’s Guy” in the marketing department.

RESULTS:
The campaign attracted a lot of attention, including an article on Mashable. Perhaps even more importantly, it increased engagement with existing Facebook fans and attracted new fans from contestants’ social networks. Our winner became the first ever face and voice of the brand, and focused on the social media efforts and engagement with the Levi’s female fan base. This became the start of the first ever major social campaign for women called Shape What’s to Come.

Levi’s Shape What’s to Come: Manifesto

As a part of Levi’s commitment to understanding young women, a global study of 1,000 millennial women was commissioned to find out what the future means to them. Based on these insights, they simply needed a network of peers and mentors to help them navigate the complex web of choices. We created Shape What’s to Come, a global, online community that encourages millennial women to pursue their passions. The site featured collaborative discussion boards, an ambassador program and interactive livecasts.

Levi’s Shape What’s to Come: Documentary

We asked 50 inspiring young women from across the globe to inscribe hand-crafted journals with how they’re shaping the future and who inspired them along the way. These “Traveling Journals” will be revealed as part of a global Levi’s® brand sponsorship at the first-ever TEDWomen conference in Washington, D.C. 

Gymboree

THE CHALLENGE:
The Gymboree Play and Music Centers (part of The Gymboree Corporation) was created to help stimulate mental and physical growth through activities such as art, sports and music-making. Gymboree already had the resources to create compelling content. All Gymboree had to do was figure out how to advertise all of this and build a brand voice to provide context and relevance to the Gymboree experience, and drive consumers to the site.

THE APPROACH:
There’s a theory that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to really master a subject area or skill. It doesn’t have to do with genetics or test scores - practice makes genius. We created the campaign “Skip Ahead” aimed at inspiring new and existing consumers to enroll their children in Play and Music classes, and start kids practicing early so that their creative genius is preserved.

THE RESULTS:
“Skip Ahead” is proof that branded content, when delivered in a meaningful and authentic manner, is a powerful means for engaging consumers, the media and influencers with a brand. With the increased use of technology both in and outside the classroom, we developed the website to be an information resource for all audiences as well as a dynamic online tool for educators and students involved in the program.

Central.ly THE CHALLENGE: Central.ly is a web service that turns your Facebook business page into a sales channel so Facebook Fan’s can buy items right on their news feed. Consumers look for speedy support but also professionalism — friendly, responsive, and accurate resolutions. With the role of social media rapidly becoming a more important part of the picture, the impact of good service via social channels undoubtedly became more important for us to utilize. THE APPROACH: We treated our conversations as a “real-time think tank” and gathered actionable data by listening to consumers. By providing valuable and interesting content via social media, we were able to attract new business and lead to good word of mouth and to positive customer experiences. Twitter and Facebook became our go-to networks to use to uncover information about our customers and what they need and expect from our service. The content that we discovered helped us drive product development, reveal buying patterns and uncover potential problems (which eventually led to a pivot in our business plan). Additionally, we created opportunities to increase our visibility, engage with customers and non-customers alike, and offer them opportunities to buy. THE RESULTS: This led to coverage in some major publications including TechCrunch, CNN, ReadWriteWeb, Business Insider. Central.ly was also named one of the “hot business tools” by Sprouter and raised funding by 500 startups, one of the most recognized incubators in the world. High-res

Central.ly

THE CHALLENGE:
Central.ly is a web service that turns your Facebook business page into a sales channel so Facebook Fan’s can buy items right on their news feed. Consumers look for speedy support but also professionalism — friendly, responsive, and accurate resolutions. With the role of social media rapidly becoming a more important part of the picture, the impact of good service via social channels undoubtedly became more important for us to utilize.

THE APPROACH:
We treated our conversations as a “real-time think tank” and gathered actionable data by listening to consumers. By providing valuable and interesting content via social media, we were able to attract new business and lead to good word of mouth and to positive customer experiences. Twitter and Facebook became our go-to networks to use to uncover information about our customers and what they need and expect from our service. The content that we discovered helped us drive product development, reveal buying patterns and uncover potential problems (which eventually led to a pivot in our business plan). Additionally, we created opportunities to increase our visibility, engage with customers and non-customers alike, and offer them opportunities to buy.

THE RESULTS:
This led to coverage in some major publications including TechCrunch, CNN, ReadWriteWeb, Business Insider. Central.ly was also named one of the “hot business tools” by Sprouter and raised funding by 500 startups, one of the most recognized incubators in the world.

CUT COPY PASTE

In the business of innovation and ideas, we can find inspiration in everything—art, design, film, the sources are endless. CUT COPY PASTE believes that everything comes from something. There are no new ideas, just great executions. It’s a daily update of art, design, culture and technology and an inside look at the people who create them. It’s also a tool to find inspiration and refer to whenever a “fresh idea” is needed.

Visit the CUT COPY PASTE 

Frisk Prickly THE CHALLENGE:It’s a quest to identify good wines for everyday drinking and hidden gems that you may have to hunt a little bit to find. Wading through all the choices and finding the best picks is no easy task, so Old Bridge Cellars wanted to distribute a Riesling that was tasty yet affordable. And thus, Frisk.com was born. THE APPROACH: The strategy was that “good value makes wine taste better.” There are too many wines in the world and not enough demand. We created an affordable and accessible wine made for budget-minded wine drinkers. The wine was distributed at all K&L wine sellers, at Costco, and other major retail shops. Avid wine drinkers were also able to purchases cases of Frisk online without giving any effort of physically visiting a store and buying it. THE RESULTS: A full year after flooding the market largely on the west coast, Frisk is still being sold by the case to wine lovers who can’t get enough. High-res

Frisk Prickly

THE CHALLENGE:
It’s a quest to identify good wines for everyday drinking and hidden gems that you may have to hunt a little bit to find. Wading through all the choices and finding the best picks is no easy task, so Old Bridge Cellars wanted to distribute a Riesling that was tasty yet affordable. And thus, Frisk.com was born.

THE APPROACH:
The strategy was that “good value makes wine taste better.” There are too many wines in the world and not enough demand. We created an affordable and accessible wine made for budget-minded wine drinkers. The wine was distributed at all K&L wine sellers, at Costco, and other major retail shops. Avid wine drinkers were also able to purchases cases of Frisk online without giving any effort of physically visiting a store and buying it.

THE RESULTS:
A full year after flooding the market largely on the west coast, Frisk is still being sold by the case to wine lovers who can’t get enough.

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