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Case in Point

Capital One’s Small Business unit launched Slingshot, a revolutionary social networking site designed to engage small business owners and create an online community. The company wanted the site to contain highly relevant content, with marketing materials that “recruited” new small business owners as network members.

Client Company Info

Capital One Financial Corporation is a financial holding company whose subsidiaries, which include Capital One, N.A., and Capital One Bank (USA), N. A., had $114.5 billion in deposits and $209.7 billion in total managed assets outstanding as of September 30, 2009. Headquartered in McLean, Virginia, Capital One offers a broad spectrum of financial products and services to consumers, small businesses and commercial clients. Capital One, N.A., has approximately 1,000 branch locations primarily in New York, New Jersey, Texas, Louisiana, Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. A Fortune 500 company, Capital One trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “COF” and is included in the S&P 100 index.

Challenge

West Cary Group (WCG) analyzed the needs of the client in order to identify precise goals. The following objectives were established:

• Make joinslingshot.com a preferred destination for small business information, resources and infotainment
• Drive incremental traffic to joinslingshot.com through the power of compelling content
• Provide informative content that would propel small businesses forward
• Develop content that could stand alone and grow virally throughout the Web 2.0 environment

Solution

WCG’s strategy for the campaign began with research about the small business owner segment. Data showed that owners cared about finding qualified leads that could drive their business. Also, time was at a premium, and they were only willing to invest it in content that would help them get ahead from a business standpoint. Finally, they were interested in networking with other small business owners in their communities.

Leveraging these consumer insights, WCG assembled a content strategy that addressed these needs and incorporated aspects of Web 2.0 content. Communications solutions included:

• Blogs capturing real-life experiences in the first days of a burgeoning business
• Web video in a “mini-documentary” format featuring interesting small businesses
• Information-packed articles concerning important issues like finance, law and technology

During the content development process, WCG worked closely with Hawkeye Worldwide, an agency in Dallas, TX, that provided back-end coding and development of the website. The two teams became seamlessly integrated, then presented solutions to the client as a cohesive unit.

As always, WCG was keyed in to the importance of branding. Even though Capital One was the sponsor, the decision was made to downplay their association and brand Slingshot’s presence as its own unique entity. Careful execution led to strategic branding of the Slingshot site as a stand-alone unit, while at the same time leveraging the power of Capital One’s brand in a less visible, yet resonant manner (communicated as “Powered by”).

Outcome

In assessing the campaign, WCG demonstrated quantifiable results. The initial three-city launch of Slingshot was highly successful—each site featured “at-capacity” events, and the business owners were highly enthusiastic. Further, Slingshot exceeded expectations in terms of new businesses registered. Though exact numbers remain confidential, actual small business registrants exceeded the Small Business Unit goal of 2,000, and the number of new registrants topped that of competitor—Bank of America’s small business social network—during the same time interval.

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