Author: dev_admin

Case in point: Financial Accounting

A coach wouldn’t send out just one player onto a football field, would he? No. It’s the team that brings success. The same way, when marketing doesn’t venture out alone, whether in the form of an investment deck or a press release, it’s more likely to win.

Here’s what I mean – to empower marketing initiatives with the right angle, a good marketing professional would study startup operations and its target market as a whole. And this includes accounting.

Not long ago, an Israeli agro-tech startup looking for Round A investment turned to me to create their investor deck. When I met them, I was captivated by the simplicity and brilliance of their solution, which introduced full automation to dairy farms.

When they outlined the benefits to the dairy farm, however, they said the benefits came to about only 15% savings in labor costs for the farmer. The calculation didn’t seem right – such a brilliant solution must generate higher savings.

I decided to flex my economic muscles and asked them to show me a typical profit and loss statement of a dairy farm. It turned out that in mid-sized farms, labor constituted around 15% of the total operations costs. (Labor costs, together with labor shortages, high turnover, and lack of skilled workers, are the biggest challenges facing dairy farms today).

I also learned that farm net profit typically stood at around 3-4% of the total gross production value. This meant that the labor savings brought on by our solution translated to an incredible increase in net profits: 47% in small farms, 130% in mid-sized farms, and 37% in large farms.

(If you’re wondering why the increase in net profits is highest in mid-sized farms, it’s because of the worker-per-stall ratio).

Now, this made sense. It clicked. The solution could prove to be a crucial advantage in a market with highly fluctuating milk prices. With such small margins, farmers often incur losses, so a solution that can increase net profits by 100% is a must-have by any account.

To make a long story short, we created an investor presentation highlighting the dramatic increase in net profits, among other advantages, not least of which is the gentler treatment of cows.

Our customer raised $1.5M in Round A Investment and will begin commercial production in Q2 2020.

(The picture shows some friendly cows at the farm where the R&D takes place).

 

Press Release

TEL AVIV, Israel, February 18, 2018 – A. Lavin Communications, a leading marketing communications firm based in New York, has partnered with Cognis to offer Israeli clients top-level public and media relations strategy in the U.S., as part of a fully integrated suite of branding services.

A. Lavin Communications, founded in 1995, provides public and media relations services to major Fortune 500 companies as well as startups in a wide range of industries, including technology, cybersecurity, healthcare, cleantech, financial services, and engineering. In addition to working with many Israeli startups over the past 30 years, the firm handles media relations for Ben-Gurion University (BGU) in the US, garnering high profile media coverage of research innovations and the technology transfer companies. Prior to forming and presiding over his own agency, Andrew Lavin worked at top firms including Porter Novelli and Ketchum.

Cognis Marketing is an Israeli agency that provides full marketing services specializing in servicing Israel-based high-tech companies. Cognis has provided services to more than 50 Israeli companies in a wide range of technologies including SaaS and cloud-based platforms, medical equipment, gaming, enterprise solutions, and telecom.

“Working with A. Lavin in the past year, we have been able to achieve exceptional results for our customers,” says Tal Harel, CEO of Cognis, “including facilitating customer and investor interest. This partnership is part of our continuing effort to provide our customers with exceptional all-encompassing services and promote quick growth in the U.S. and European markets.”

“Over the past year we recognized that our complementary talents, as well as a strong foothold in each of our markets, would be a win-win for Israeli companies,” says Lavin. “As PR and marketing become more interlinked, it would benefit firms to have one centralized marketing service and to leverage international expertise usually not found in communications organizations.”

About A. Lavin Communications

A. Lavin Communications, founded in 1995 is focused on creating brand connections with strategic communications to generate awareness, engage audiences, and drive sales. We are a unique group of passionate and creative communications experts that execute superb international programs for products, services, and causes with aggressive media relations, compelling content development, and strategic consulting. For more information, please visit www.alavin.com.

 About Cognis

Cognis provides high-tech companies with services across the complete marketing cycle, working with customers to translate their business goals into a viable marketing strategy and deploy advanced data-driven marketing tools to ensure optimal ROI. Services include strategy and planning, marketing management, content development, social media, interactive and digital marketing, and inbound marketing. With over 50 customers in the last seven years, Cognis has accumulated experience in helping companies build strong corporate identities and generate leads. For additional information, please visit www.cognis.co.il.