Monday, November 7, 2011

Re: The Occupy K Street Account

The following represents a privileged client communication of Ferguson and Cohen, LLC as defined by federal law, SEC Section C642.h - C645r, 1992.   Any unauthorized distribution of this material represents a violation of the aforementioned statute, and will be subject to felony prosecution and penalties.





CONFIDENTIAL
DATE:  10.28.11
TO:  R. Cohen, D. Ferguson
FROM:  J. C. Morgenstern
RE:  Occupy K Street Account Development Strategy Session

Following our new client development strategy session last month, I and my staff were tasked with doing an initial development FTF with Occupy K Street.

As the management team discussed during our September 17 planning meeting, the Occupy movement has increasing brand visibility, with all media-market metrics since brand incept showing explosive and exponential growth.   This growth is coupled with a strikingly positive brand-identity in broad and multiply replicable public survey data, a yield that is verified by our own internal assessments.

Our review of recent contract-chatter through informal professional social networks indicated that, amazingly, neither Occupy Wall Street nor its subsidiary Occupy K Street have retained the services of brand management and strategic planning consultants.  Clearly, this represented an opportunity for F&C to expand our client base into a new and growing market.

Our New York office was charged with initial contact with Occupy Wall Street, and I and my team began preliminary work on potential front-end deliverables for the K Street subsidiary.

To that end, my client development staff conceptualized some preliminary Six Sigma/POLIS Delta protocols for the movement, which we felt would clearly represent the value-added of engagement with F&C's branding team.  The two most promising POLIS/Delta yields:

1) Increased Drilldown on Brand-Specific Marketing Events:  In our assessment, Occupy K Street has the potential to be the most viable of the Occupy subsidiaries, particularly given its location at the nexus between corporate power and the American political system.   Its primary location is within several hundred yards of some of the most influential and well funded corporate lobbying firms.   To date, however, it has failed to leverage that synergy to any discernable advantage.

Instead, it appears primarily focused on impromptu dance parties in intersections, making cardboard signage, intense respectful discussions, and drum circles, none of which are recognized as mission critical functions in our Six Sigma protocols.  It has also diluted brand-identity by engaging in non-productive partnerships with previously established brands, such as FreeTibet LLC and GazaCorp.

Our value-added on this front would be to identify individual lobbying firms, their partners, and their office locations.   Focusing media events on the entities that define K Street in the public eye would, in our assessment, yield a positive and predictable process result.  It would also expand brand appeal into the fragmenting Tea Party market.

2)  Improve Social Media Messaging Brand Protocols:  A review of social media outputs indicated considerable potential for improvement in messaging strategy.   The primary twitter feed, for example, seems primarily used to say there isn't enough water/shelter/pizza, or to fret about the cops, or to talk about interpersonal disagreements.  As messaging goes, this could use some refinement.  A market-identity that is hungry/thirsty/cold is unlikely to draw significant support in the key 18-34 young urban demographic, and while highlighting interpersonal drama works well within the reality television marketplace, it has been shown to be less effective as a tool for mass movement mobilization.

Refocusing primary social media messaging away from damage control, in-house-chatter, and development efforts and towards the aforementioned Brand-Specific Marketing Events would increase the visibility of the Occupy K St movement.  Those functions could be dealt with by secondary outlets.

With these two primary yields, our team endeavored to approach senior management at Occupy K Street to establish the front-end relationships necessary for proposal negotiations.  Background research indicated that the management structure at all Occupy subsidiaries is a carefully guarded corporate secret, and our experience onsite confirmed this research.  Each initial contact insisted they had no knowledge of senior management.  Most seemed unwilling to admit to any knowledge of CoC structure, and would stay messaging-consistent, insisting that there was no such thing.   Despite this considerable and impressive control over management access, we persisted.

Our eventual on-site FTF came following a chance encounter with an individual named Johnny Justice Muffin, who admitted that he was, in his own words, "The Supreme High CEO of All This [Fornicating] [Excrement], Bro."   CEO Justice-Muffin indicated that there is some distance between our anticipated front-end billables (150 hours at a staff-average $100/hr, plus 35% overhead) and their fiscal year 2012 budget for management consulting (a previously used tarp, two hand-made free-range squirrel-fur caps, and a package of what was described as "some seriously kind [stuff], it only looks like shake, man.")

Given this hard-line approach to contract negotiations, it is our recommendation that next-stage conversations be subcontracted to our contract development specialist team.  I will look forward to further conversations on that front, and to responding to your questions, at this next months client development strategy session.

JCM