What We Do

Brand Identity and Narrative

Our team of marketing experts has a proven track record developing successful rebranding strategies for various organizations and campaigns. We understand the significance of branding as a vehicle for effectively conveying mission, vision, and values.

We also understand how to bring together coalitions, affiliate groups, and multiple partners to ensure teams are collaboratively speaking with one voice under one  message framework. Our deep bench of experience collecting and curating stories from diverse communities means we know how to communicate issues in a way that’s personal, authentic, and relevant.

Strategic Communications Planning

Our senior team will combine decades of strategic communications expertise to develop approaches that support your organizational goals by delivering clear plans, tactics, and guidance. 

Collaborating with the communications lead, our team can help elevate and promote campaigns with a 360-approach. Our team approach is anchored by data-driven strategies that include key goals and objectives, buttressed by innovative and compelling tactics, tools, and resources, and a calendar to meet and exceed those goals.

Earned Media Support

News cycles no longer exist. Our deep relationships with journalists across media platforms mean we get your perspectives in front of the audiences that matter most, in real-time. From media interviews to op-eds, speaking engagements to blogs, radio tours to expert panels—we get you and your priorities in the right place at the right time. 

Digital and Social Media 

We create effective online content strategies by taking your communications objectives and layering them with the needs, wants, and online behaviors of your target audience(s). The value GPS Influence can bring you with a content strategy is not just the strategy itself, but our ability to juggle multiple opinions, lead collaboration, and help stakeholders understand the value of creating strategic content. 

We approach digital media from an owned, earned and paid perspective. We are adept at layering in paid strategies by engaging audiences  where they are, with messages that matter. With creative targeting, we can speak directly to decision makers, policy leaders, community activists, and industry leaders in the corporate responsibility space.   

Partnering with Influencers as Trusted Messengers
We know how to reach influencers who create thumb-stopping, culturally relevant content. Our team has more than a decade of experience working with content creators directly and through influencer networks to establish and nurture relationships. Our team creates influencer strategies that make the most out of the work you’re already doing, putting your work in the hands of influencers who will maximize its impact.

At GPS, we know it’s imperative for influencer strategies to complement broader communications campaigns. Whether we approach influencers from an earned or paid perspective, their work has an opportunity to harmonize and create efficiencies with other communications strategies and tactics that are all working toward achieving the same goal.

Learn more about our approach here. [hyperlink to merchandiser? Open in new tab]

We can also: 

  • Help you create or update your brand
  • Prepare for (or react to) reputation or brand crises
  • Train you for earned media or social media feature opportunities
  • Help you mobilize an audience
  • Audit your social media presence and provide actionable and realistic (owned, earned and paid) recommendations 
  • Create a social media strategy and train your team to execute it
  • Produce creative (video, graphics, templates, merch, etc.)

United States Department of Justice “End Gun Violence” Campaign

The Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office (USAO-MD) came to GPS Influence looking for help promoting and expanding the reach of a cutting edge public service announcement (PSA) encouraging viewers to take action to end gun violence. Our team developed and executed a strategic communications plan aimed at bringing more voices and organizations into the conversation by focusing on sports organizations, business leaders, community organizations and activists, universities, and more. Along with the PSA, we ran an out-of-home advertising campaign consisting of billboards, digital kiosks, bus wraps, and bus shelters leveraging the television ads to receive additional placements in prime locations in Baltimore. The campaign is having a real impact -- as a part of the collaborative and innovative approach Maryland has seen a 20-25% decrease in homicides and nonfatal shootings, and approximately 10% since implementation of the campaign in August 2022.

Health Forward Foundation

When the Health Forward Foundation asked GPS Influence to build and lead a strategic communications and awareness campaign, the team knew trusted partners rooted in each of their communities would be key to the campaign's success. As a result, the team prioritized ensuring trusted messengers were equipped with the right communications tools and tactics to meet folks where they were, educate them, and guide them through the complex and confusing process. The work with 22 different organizations across the Kansas City Metro meant arranging individual meetings, as well as regional meetings, to develop a strategy and assess the program throughout the awareness campaign. The partners expressed their appreciation for our team in delivering digestible materials that could easily be edited and shared and for our role as facilitators, keeping everyone focused and united around the issue. GPS also used paid, earned and owned strategies to deliver key information that reached a variety of communities and ignited conversations that sparked action. 

NextEra Energy

NextEra Energy, with its affiliates, is the world’s largest generator of wind and solar energy. When NextEra sought to expand capacity into Southeast Michigan, they turned to GPS Influence to help build relationships on the ground, earning trust with stakeholders, lawmakers and community members. Our work his since expanded to Arkansas, Kansas, Georgia and Iowa. Our team’s deep roots in organizing and campaigns helped build support among community leaders and elected officials that has provided the essential groundwork for the advancement of NextEra’s expansion.

UnidosUS

UnidosUS is the largest Latino civil rights and advocacy organization in the country. They turned to GPS Influence to help strengthen their internal marketing and communications teams, elevate leaders’ profiles, and guide media strategy across all platforms. Our teams work side-by-side on everything from Instagram posts to running media operations at UnidosUS’ national conference featuring Dr. Jill Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

American Civil Liberties Union

GPS Influence works closely with national ACLU teams and state affiliates throughout the country to provide everything from daily communications support and rapid response to strategic guidance on campaigns and legislative priorities. We tell the story and sound the alarm to engage audiences, whether it’s the fight for reproductive rights in Arkansas, the inherent racism of the death penalty in North Carolina, or the threat to our democracy at issue in the U.S. Supreme Court.

We most recently supported the ACLU of Carolina in its campaign with the North Carolina Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. We had two goals: to raise awareness of the issue and to pressure Governor Cooper to commute death sentences in the state. To raise awareness, we created social media ads and worked with a North Carolina-based influencer with a record of creating strong, relevant content. We amplified the content with paid on Meta. Once awareness was established, we amplified our call to action for audiences–to sign the ACLU’s petition to commute death row sentences in North Carolina. To amplify awareness with political insiders, we used the influencer content as a Connected TV ad running during Sunday political shows.

Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity

The Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP) conducts critical research and provides essential thought leadership on income inequality in the U.S. – they needed someone to tell their story. Enter GPS Influence: We work with LISEP leaders to leverage and grow relationships among policymakers and business sector influencers, while executing a dynamic media strategy that has earned LISEP an important role in the national conversation on economic policy.

Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law

The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law is one of the most influential nonpartisan law and policy institutes in the country, dedicated to improving our systems of democracy and justice. GPS Influence works closely with Brennan Center’s communications team to raise awareness and shape messaging around litigation, priority legislation, and amplify the work of state-based coalition partners working on the ground to protect voting rights and elections.

Energy Foundation

Clean Wisconsin, an initiative of the Energy Foundation, aims to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy by supporting policy solutions that create robust, competitive markets and the benefits they bring. GPS Influence worked with the Energy Foundation to increase earned media outreach and further develop the communications strategy and infrastructure that will position the initiative for long-term success. In our work together, GPS has been an integral part of the Wisconsin Local Government Climate Coalition, helping to provide a coordinated voice for local governments that are pursuing clean energy and climate change solutions in the state. 

Forward Together Wisconsin

Forward Together Wisconsin is a nonpartisan organization founded by former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, that exists to make sure federal climate investments are spent to make a positive impact in the state, especially for communities of color, working class families, Tribal communities, and rural communities. When the organization wanted to get out the vote by promoting the fact that Wisconsinites can register to vote on Election Day, GPS Influence enlisted influencers to help. 

In less than two weeks, GPS pitched the campaign to influencers who had tens of thousands of followers in the state, enlisted four partners, briefed them, reviewed their content, and had them post in the weekend before election to the morning of Election Day.