SourceCode Signs Pindrop and Cambridge Mobile
SourceCode Communications has expanded its portfolio in both the security and the mobility industries with the addition of Pindrop and Cambridge Mobile Telematics, two new agency of record relationships. A pioneer in voice security and authentication, Pindrop is trusted by seven of the world’s 10 largest banks. Cambridge Mobile Telematics, fresh off the close of a $500MM investment from the SoftBank Vision Fund, is on a mission to create safer drivers through the elimination of distracted driving via its award-winning DriveWell Platform.
“Pindrop and CMT are two exciting additions to the portfolio – both with a focus on shifting the narrative around their respective industries and, most importantly, their own brands,” said Rebecca Honeyman, Managing Partner of SourceCode Communications. “Both Pindrop and CMT will allow our cross-disciplinary teams to deliver thoughtful creative, data-driven storytelling and drive actionable business results.”
Pindrop on-boarded SourceCode in December for a program surrounding the launch of a new Voice Identity Platform at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). In 2019, the agency is managing a robust communications program to elevate Pindrop’s presence in the security and Internet of Things landscape through product communications, customer success programs, executive positioning, trade show management and more. Pindrop is the latest addition to SourceCode’s growing portfolio of enterprise security companies, which includes PCI Pal and Wallarm.
“SourceCode’s combined knowledge and experience of the consumer and B2B tech landscape really resonated with us, and has resulted in immediate success for the Pindrop business,” said Josh Soto, vice president of marketing at Pindrop. “They quickly immersed themselves into our business and have become integral partners beyond traditional public relations.”
Cambridge Mobile Telematics, founded, in 2010, as a spinout from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, has engaged SourceCode to build and execute a communications program focused on increasing awareness among insurers, driving app downloads and recruiting top talent. The company’s DriveWell behavior-based program has helped users achieve a 40-percent reduction of digital distractions in just 60 days. In 2019, Cambridge Mobile Telematics aims to broaden its capabilities to reach drivers of the 1.2 billion cars on the road through creative, integrated communications programs.
"Early on, we knew that SourceCode could be the right partner for us. There was a natural synergy between our teams and a strong desire to help tell our story to improve the safety of roadways around the world,” said Ryan McMahon, vice president of marketing at Cambridge Mobile Telematics. “The agency’s appetite to tell human stories enabled through technology and innovation represented a true philosophical match.”
This announcement comes on the heels of SourceCode receiving a number of PR and marketing accolades in late 2018 and early 2019, including Bulldog Reporter’s Best PR Agency of 2018 and Observer’s 2019 Top Tech Specialty Firms. The company, which recently celebrated its first birthday, was also shortlisted for two 2019 Holme’s In2Sabres Award and as an Outstanding Boutique Agency of the Year from PRWeek.
Becky Honeyman Speaks to The Observer About Crisis
Microsoft’s ICE Issues Show Yet Again That It Doesn’t Respond Well to Crisis
The Observer spoke with Managing Partner Becky Honeyman about Microsoft's employees revolting over the company's contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). As the agency’s “zero tolerance policy” gets heavily criticized worldwide, the workers are demanding that Microsoft cancel its contracts with ICE and enact a clear policy that it will not work with clients who violate international human rights law.
http://observer.com/2018/06/microsofts-ice-issues-crisis-response/
SourceCode's Becky Honeyman Featured in PR Daily
Why PR pros should focus on audience emotions
Managing Partner Becky Honeyman spoke with PR Daily about knowledge that PR pros only recently uncovered from marketing and advertising creatives.
“That is, if you can make someone ‘feel’ something, you will increase the response rate or engagement level tenfold,” Honeyman says. “It's fundamental for brands today to build relationships with their audiences. They can only do that by communicating consistently and authentically on subjects that are genuinely meaningful to them."
Check out the full piece here!
Need Help Growing your Tech Start Up?
SourceCode Featured in Small Business Daily
Small Business Daily singled out SourceCode Communications as agency to check out if you're looking for growth communications strategies for your technology start up. See the full piece at the link below. Thanks for the love, Rieva!
https://www.smallbizdaily.com/focus-best-practices-content-marketing-businesses/
SourceCode's Becky Honeyman Featured in The Observer
Facebook, Uber and Wells Fargo’s Apology Ads Don’t Get the Job Done
The Observer spoke with Managing Partner Becky Honeyman about the effectiveness of companies releasing apology ads to make amends with consumers from a PR crisis communications perspective.
http://observer.com/2018/05/facebook-uber-wells-fargo-ad-campaigns-apologies/
PRC Diversity & Inclusion Action Pledge
SourceCode signs PRC Diversity & Inclusion Action Pledge
At SourceCode, near and dear to our hearts is the value of diversity of our team, the way we think and the experiences we all have. We believe a diverse team and an open and welcoming culture is not only the right thing to do, but the way to provide better client service. From this position, we assure you we'll never waiver. Thus, we're excited to sign the Diversity and Inclusion Pledge by our friends at the PR Council. The full pledge we signed is below.
-Greg & Becky
Diversity and Inclusion is a priority of the PR Council (PRC) and its Member agencies. The PRC, along with our Member agencies pledge that in 2018, we will continue to increase our efforts in building and promoting greater diversity and inclusion in our industry. We aim to create cultures of inclusivity where professionals of all backgrounds— race, color, national origin, ancestry, religion, disability, medical condition, marital status, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, or age —are supported and encouraged.
The PRC has been and remains committed to creating resources, providing tools and holding informative seminars like unconscious bias trainings to foster productive and inclusive conversations around these issues. With this pledge, we encourage agencies to learn from and work together through one another’s accomplishments and missteps, by sharing best practices.
Outlined below is our Member Agencies’ commitment to the industry.
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We will make our organizations a place where all employees feel safe, valued, welcomed and included. We will celebrate our employees’ differences, and create open dialogue and foster environments to encourage trust and inclusion among peers. We will encourage collaboration and shared learning among our employees.
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We will inform our employees about our company’s Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) strategies through ongoing communication, and encouraged participation in events and initiatives.
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We will strive to provide mandatory D&I and/or unconscious bias trainings (webinars, workshops, e-learning, etc.) to educate our employees. This can include free webinar trainings that the PR Council and other industry bodies, including the Arthur Paige Society and the PRSA Foundation, have provided.
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We will work collaboratively with other agencies to share our experiences and will participate in the PRC Diversity Census to track industry progress. We will provide details on our successes and our missteps, to keep the conversations honest and relevant.
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We will strive to recruit and retain diverse talent within our organizations at each level. We will work with and proactively engage outside organizations and programs, including higher education institutions, affinity groups, professional organizations, etc., to foster diverse talent. We will strive to widen our networks and continue to diversify the outside sources we tap into.
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We will commit to having our agency leadership teams (SVP and above) establish targets to make meaningful change on an annual basis.
SourceCode's Becky Honeyman Quoted in Adweek
Why WPP’s Cryptic Handling of Martin Sorrell’s Resignation Is the Wrong Move
SourceCode co-founder and managing partner, Becky Honeyman, was quoted in Patrick Coffee's piece around WPP handling of Martin Sorrell’s resignation on Adweek. Her excerpt below!
“Given the circumstances, there was no ‘good outcome’ here for WPP,” said PR consultant Becky Honeyman, managing partner at New York’s SourceCode Communications. “From the perspective of an outside observer, WPP operated very much by the book from the moment the allegations were made public.”
Honeyman added that there were “clear attempts at transparency during the investigation” as evidenced “by sharing client and employee communications.” But that’s where the attempts ended. “The statement, ‘the allegation did not involve amounts that are material,’ at its conclusion has exposed them to attack from some in the U.K. for a lack of transparency,” Honeyman said.
To read the full piece please visit Adweek at http://www.adweek.com/agencies/why-wpps-cryptic-handling-of-martin-sorrells-resignation-is-the-wrong-move/
Six months in
SourceCode's Becky Honeyman Reflects on the First Six Months
We had wondered how best to mark or celebrate being in business for six months but we hadn’t quite anticipated something quite this awesome.
We started our week by being notified that we had been shortlisted by The Holmes Report as one of its Best New Agencies in its Agency of the Year Awards. Now, I’m not going to lie… there were tears. And squeals. And stunned silences.
It was one of those moments that makes all the hard work so worthwhile and we still can’t quite believe that our name is up there (I have checked and re-checked more than once this week, just to be sure). That’s not to say that I don’t think our team deserves to be nominated. I just can’t believe just how much we have achieved in such a short time.
Last summer this business didn’t exist outside of an Evernote folder so it is amazing to look around our office at a team of seven incredibly talented individuals, all working to deliver incredible, thoughtful and AWARD-WINNING work for our clients. There are a ton of milestones we could pick but it seemed easiest to break the months down by the numbers...
FOUR award shortlists. Now, this seems crazy for a business so young but it is testament not just to the hard work and brilliance of our team and the courage of our clients, but also to the vision of co-founder, Greg Mondshein. One of the biggest lessons for us all is that we have to have the bravery and belief to engage in the industry at that level (even when we were so young we felt like it might be the longest of shots).
ONE award win. See above; we won an In2 Sabre for work we did in our very first quarter with relationship app, Hinge. To be nominated and then to win, speaks volumes about the caliber of work this team was producing even in its earliest days. I had read this in a hundred ‘start-up’ and founder articles but it’s so true. Act like you're the business you want to be, even when there are four of you hanging out in your buddy’s office. It shapes how you grow.
TWO tax payments. Building a business is about so much more than doing amazing work with talented teams. Both Greg and I have spent more time than we could have anticipated working through legal, tax and operational agreements. Learning to trust outside counsel and support with your baby can be difficult - we’ve been lucky to get recommendations from trusted mentors that have helped guide and advise us through our first six month, and build systems that will support more growth in the coming six.
THREE published thought leaders. Very early on, we got some very good advice from a very smart founder (thanks Binna!) to ‘play big’. We’ve tried to adopt that across everything we do - creative, client work and industry engagement, and we encourage big opinions from everyone on our team. The result is that half of us has seen their own thoughts published across marketing and PR outlets. And we’re just getting started.
FIVE incredible hires. Seriously. The adage that your first hires shape everything is entirely true (based on our admittedly limited empirical evidence). It all started with a recommendation from a great industry pal (thanks Jay!), and we were off. We’ve been lucky enough to persuade some incredibly talented (and much smarter than us!) people to join this journey. The big lesson has been just how much we all have to trust each other to do the right thing for the business. Raw talent, attitude and trust are more important than industry experience or traditional PR skills. That will continue to drive our recruitment decisions as we try to build the best team of communicators and client partners.
HUNDREDS. We owe hundreds of thank yous.
Not least to the incredible clients that were brave enough to take a punt on a small new agency with big, noisy opinions. We love you, we love working with you, and we promise we will always be as excited as you are about amazing coverage, your award wins and all the possibilities.
And then our mentors; some of the smartest people in the comms world and beyond. For every email, every coffee, every recommendation and good word you have put in. We hope one day we can find a way to repay you, and better yet, pass it on.
We are so aware and so grateful to have what feels like an army of supporters with us on this journey. We couldn’t do it without you and we’re just getting started.
SourceCode Builds Martech Portfolio
SourceCode Communications Builds Martech Practice, Announces AOR Relationship with Yotpo
Fresh off an In2 Sabre Award win and expanding team, agency expands adtech practice with the leading consumer reviews and user-generated content marketing platform
April 3, 2018, 12:00 PM EST - New York, New York - New York tech agency SourceCode Communications announces today a new client engagement with Yotpo, an eCommerce digital experience and marketing technology fresh off a $51 million Series D lead by Bessemer Partners, Access Industries and Blumberg Capital. The team will focus on telling the brand growth and corporate narrative and building creative campaigns that position Yotpo at the forefront of brand commerce. The signing marks seven consecutive months of growth off the heels of the agency launch this past September.
Yotpo has developed the most advanced platform for user-generated content marketing, helping direct commerce brands easily collect and leverage higher-converting customer content like reviews and photos throughout the buyer journey to deliver a more engaging customer experience. Enabled by artificial intelligence, the platform also analyzes review data at scale to deliver real-time business intelligence to inform operational, commercial, and product development strategies.
Yotpo’s Sr. Director of Marketing Communications, Cristina Dinozo, stated: “SourceCode clearly researched and understood our market, developed some truly insightful thinking and came to the table as if they were already a partner. The approach helped accelerate the ramp up so that we could begin seeing immediate results.”
SourceCode Communications Managing Partner, Becky Honeyman remarked: “We’ve seen six months of growth across the business but the team’s expertise in communicating adtech, brand and retail stories has fueled a series of wins, of which Yotpo is the most recent. We’re passionate about consumer behavior and the ways in which brands engage to build meaningful relationships in an increasingly promiscuous world - and Yotpo is a clear leader in this space.”
Since launching in early September 2017, its focus on strategy, insights and creative narrative development has won the SourceCode team more than 10 clients as well as key industry accolades. SourceCode Co-founder Greg Mondshein was named to the PR Council Next Board, The agency was recently named a top NYC tech agency by the Observer and won an In2Sabre Award this past February. SourceCode has also relocated to accommodate the growing business. The agency will operate out of TechSpace, the co-working office in Union Square, Manhattan.
About SourceCode Communications
SourceCode Communications, a 2018 In2 Sabre Award winning communications marketing agency launched in 2017 by technology PR industry veterans Greg Mondshein and Rebecca Honeyman. Based in New York, the agency is focused on delivering measurable business impact to brands in five major sectors - consumer lifestyle, enterprise technology, marketing technology, mobile and telecommunications and financial technology. For more information, please visit www.sourcecodecommunications.com.
Media Contact for:
Greg Mondshein
Managing Partner
greg@sourcecodecomms.com
+1.352.246.5532
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The times, they are a changing…
SourceCode co-founder Becky Honeyman on Brands Taking a Political Stance
Just over a year ago I was at a PR Council debate about the outcome of the 2016 election, the rise of ‘fake news’ and the role of brands in trying to grab back some of the trust that had been eroded throughout. One data point in particular struck me as odd back then - a consumer survey showed that the majority of Americans did not want their most loved brands getting involved in politically charged debates. As a comms professional I found this strange - we talk a great deal with our clients about the importance of brand values and identity, and we counsel them to take a stand on debates that truly matter to them.
Anyone who knows me knows that brand purpose and standing for things we believe (as citizens and corporations) is incredibly close to my heart, so this discussion rattled around in my mind for months afterwards. Were we missing the point when it came to all things politics? And how were consumers deciding what constituted ‘political’ when it seemed almost everything could be up for debate?
Just a few weeks ago, I attended the reprise of the PR Council’s debate - keen to see one year on what had changed. The data point that had so engaged me over a year ago had swung significantly in the opposite direction. Rather than the traditional American ‘let’s keep politics out of this’, consumers were clamoring for the brands they love to take a stand on the issues close to their heart. More than this, it became very clear that brands were increasingly pulled into social and political debates whether they like it or not, and those that try to sidestep the debate are no longer applauded. And organizations that do take a stand are seeing immediate brand equity improvements, and importantly, a positive impact to revenue. The risk/benefit equation of saying nothing is changing. Research from Sprout Social last month confirmed this shift - finding that two thirds of consumers no longer want the brands they use and identify with to stay silent on social and political issues.
The times do indeed feel like they’re changing. We’ve long seen purpose-driven brands like the wonderful Ben & Jerry’s marching, campaigning, donating and supporting the causes they hold dear but we’re seeing this phenomenon spread before our eyes. Last night I watched with (I’m not going to deny it) a tear in my eye, as brands that I would have placed on the conservative edge of the corporate world, began to take a stand on a highly divisive issue. First, the First National Bank of Omaha announced it was cutting ties with the NRA. Within the hour I saw tweets from Enterprise, Alamo and National confirming they too were ending their NRA member discount.
Social media reacted immediately. Some people commented that they would take their business elsewhere but statements from the businesses announcing the decision each explained that it was driven by and in response to their own customer feedback. In what can only have been the tensest of boardroom discussions, each of these brands took a stand to side with their existing customers at the risk of losing others. I hope and expect this trend to continue as we see consumer dollars increasingly spent with social impact in mind, and brands responding in kind. As they say, with great power come great responsibility - but we’re finally seeing consumers demand to understand who they’re purchasing from as people. Bring it on.