Perkins&Will

With a tight-turnaround for multiple campaigns, PONY Comms had to be nimble, quick and engaging in its execution. P&W’s campaigns exemplifies PONY Comms’ expertise in generating high-impact content, thematic messaging, and results on a tight timeline.

In January of 2020, PONY Comms started working with the San Francisco office of Perkins&Will (P&W), a global design and architecture firm. Less than three days before launch, our firm learned that the P&W Urban Design team had been integral in helping SF’s Market Street go car-free. P&W was key in the formulation of the project and laid the foundation for what is now car-free Market Street, but the firm was not involved in the 10-year long lead-up preparations. Despite this, PONY Comms committed to getting P&W recognized for their work and securing top-tier coverage.

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After the success of this campaign (see below), PONY Comms worked to maintain the momentum by creating a related campaign: “Resilient Cities.” To put a human face on this, PONY Comms oriented the campaign around Geeti Silwal, the Urban Design principal at P&W San Francisco. PONY Comms made resiliency the theme of her work and emphasized it as an aspect of P&W’s practice more broadly.

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PONY Comms carefully researched the project and turned around creative pitches within hours. To build the media list and targeted contacts, PONY Comms scoured media databases like Muckrack, Cision, and Google for reporters covering car-free Market Street and pitched journalists interested in urban design and walkability. Given the tight time frame, many top outlets had already covered the announcement, so PONY Comms had to get scrappy and offer a different angle: creating people-centric cities. With email tracking, PONY Comms was able to see which subject lines were working and quickly pivot in response. The pitch was succinct, clear, and to the point, and we tailored our subject lines to both local and national outlets.

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The approach to the Resilient Cities campaign was different in that we were not really able to promote the individual projects—hence our emphasis on Geeti and the human element of urban design.In order to validate this, we highlighted four of her projects and how she has been behind some of San Francisco and Sacramento’s most progressive development projects. With forethought, intuition, and an eye for adaptability, Geeti is focused on making cities people-centric.

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Results

For the Car-Free Market Street pitch specifically, PONY Comms was able to secure 10 features and highlight P&W as the urban design team behind a carless Market Street. With coverage by outlets including Forbes, Curbed SF (twice), Grist, and KRON4 on local TV, Geeti Silwal, Urban Design Principal, P&W, quickly emerged as a known sustainability leader in SF.

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The Resilient Cities campaign also generated widespread interest and secured features in SF Business Times, Sacramento Business Journal, ABC10 Sacramento, and SF Chronicle. Both campaigns totaled 19 articles, with 89% in top-tier outlets.

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