Bringing focus to a market expansion with too many viable targets.
Stelo was expanding beyond its core diabetes audience with eleven distinct healthcare provider cohorts on the table and no clear framework for where to start. A qualitative research engagement — spanning market sizing, 22 internal stakeholder interviews across five Dexcom teams, and structured analysis — helped bring the field of opportunity into focus and give the marketing and sales teams a strategy they could actually act on.
Every cohort looked like an opportunity. That was the challenge.
With eleven HCP cohorts on the table — from primary care physicians to concierge medicine providers to corporate wellness buyers — the team had real options but no principled way to prioritize. Spreading resources across all eleven wasn't viable. The question was which cohorts to focus on, why, and what to say to each of them.
Three phases to build confidence in the decision.
The engagement was structured in three phases: a market sizing pass to establish the scale of each cohort's opportunity, in-depth interviews with 22 internal experts across User Research, Clinical Education, Digital Education, KOL Programs, and Sales, and a dual-synthesis analysis that paired AI-assisted transcript review with independent qualitative reading — to surface patterns without confirmation bias baked in.
Three audience groups. Six message themes. One clear path forward.
The research produced a framework that grouped the eleven cohorts into three meta-audiences — Lifestyle-Empowerment HCPs, Clinical-Behavior HCPs, and Organizational Gatekeepers — each with distinct motivations and messaging implications. The work directly informed how the team allocated budget and targeting resources, and served as the hypothesis set for a Phase 2 quantitative study with Dexcom's Decision Science team.
A social media playbook that gave a state tourism brand a real strategy for six platforms.
Visit Massachusetts had an active social presence but needed more than a content calendar — they needed a clear framework for how each platform should behave, how content should connect to the traveler journey, and how an influencer program should be structured and measured. Working closely with the client and creative team, we developed a comprehensive playbook that brought that direction to the whole operation.
Posting across six platforms without a shared rationale for any of them.
The team was managing an active presence across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Threads, and Bluesky, but without a unified framework governing how each channel should behave, what content pillars should guide creation, or how paid and organic should work together. New platforms had emerged, test-and-learn insights had accumulated, and the team needed a strategy to make sense of all of it.
Organizing everything around how people actually plan travel.
The strategy was structured around the traveler journey — mapping content goals, audience mindset, and channel role from passive inspiration through post-trip sharing. From there, the playbook addressed each platform's distinct role and posting approach, a three-pillar content framework, a competitive landscape audit, an influencer program structure with selection criteria and measurement approach, and a paid/organic integration strategy for amplifying high-performing content.
A practical, scalable system the team could run with.
The influencer program launched with three creators and generated strong early viewership across all three placements. The playbook gave the content team clear direction on what to post, where, and why — and the paid/organic integration model created a feedback loop for identifying what was working and extending it into paid reach. An early-mover recommendation for Bluesky also positioned the brand ahead of a platform that was gaining meaningful traction among Massachusetts-aligned audiences.
Sharpening the messaging strategy that guides every piece of campaign copy.
Capella's campaign messaging framework needed a meaningful update — one that incorporated performance learnings, added a priority audience segment, and gave creative and media teams clearer direction at every stage of the enrollment funnel. Working with copywriters and the broader campaign team, we refreshed the communications plan and supporting messaging guide to bring more consistency and strategic intent to the work.
Too many messages, not enough logic connecting them.
The existing framework had accumulated over time — the lower funnel was crowded with underperforming messages, the connection between funnel stage and audience wasn't always clear, and a new priority audience (prospective business degree students) needed to be meaningfully integrated rather than bolted on. Creative and media teams needed a cleaner, more actionable foundation to work from.
Clarity at every stage, for every audience.
The updated plan defined a distinct strategic task, messaging approach, and KPI set for each of three funnel stages — upper (inspire with emotion), mid (prove with detail), lower (drive action). Five core reasons to believe were mapped across all stages and audience segments, including the new business degree layer. A confidence-building message thread was added across all phases to address application hesitation that performance data had flagged, and a companion messaging guide gave copywriters ready-to-use language for each scenario.
A single reference that aligned creative, media, and strategy.
The refreshed framework gave the full campaign team — copywriters, creative directors, and media planners — a shared strategic logic to work from. By consolidating the lower funnel and concentrating effort on the message themes with the strongest performance history, it also helped sharpen how budget was being allocated across the campaign.
A playbook that brought strategic coherence to an organic social presence across six platforms.
Capella had an active organic social program but no unified framework governing it — what to post, how to sound, which trends to pursue, or how content should connect to paid. Working closely with the creative and social teams, we developed a comprehensive playbook that addressed all of it: from brand persona and content buckets to platform roles, trend guardrails, and a formal paid amplification process.
Active on every platform, guided on none of them.
Capella was posting across Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and a newly launched TikTok — but execution varied, the brand voice wasn't consistently defined across channels, and there was no formal process connecting organic performance to paid amplification. The audience challenge added complexity: enrolled students and alumni needed motivation and community, while prospective learners needed awareness and credibility — and the same content had to serve both without feeling like two different brands.
Start with the audience, build everything else from there.
Rather than organizing around a posting schedule, the playbook was built out from the two distinct audience objectives. That foundation informed everything else: a social persona with platform-by-platform tone guidance and copy examples for both RTB and non-RTB content; a five-bucket content framework with topic lists, creative execution guides, and monthly cadence targets; trend guardrails organized as pursue/consider/avoid; a hashtag strategy calibrated to each platform's current algorithm; and a formal paid/organic integration model with clear engagement thresholds for boosting eligibility and a structured trafficking workflow.
One document to govern all six channels — and improve over time.
The playbook gave the social and creative teams a practical, shared framework they could start using immediately — and a repeatable system for learning from what worked. The paid amplification model, launched with an initial Meta Reels test budget, created a feedback loop between organic performance and paid reach that compounds with each campaign cycle.