Category: Uncategorized

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.

Recently a client asked me, “What has Cognis been doing in the past year?”

2017 was in fact quite the year for all of us at Cognis. Many projects, many challenges, many successes. Below is a quick snapshot.

PUBLIC RELATIONS

We started the year off with BGN Technologies, the technology transfer company of Ben-Gurion University (BGU). Although BGN initially hired us to draft a new marketing strategy and the marketing plan for 2017, we found ourselves focusing on public relations. It turned out that Lavin Communications, the PR firm working with BGU in the U.S. was doing excellent outreach and media focus. To deepen and expand the impact, we created interesting stories with strong messaging that got across to the right media and end-customer.

Our ten press releases on BGN research-based ventures got extensive coverage by targeted publications, but what’s more important – five of them gathered either investor or customer interest – or both.

Examples include the new therapy for ALS, research on protection from cyber threats posed by peripheral equipment, and a new company to commercialize the first Israeli AUV.

Following in tow was Qmarkets, an innovation management company that hired us for the second time (they previously participated in the SaaS consortium I managed). This time around, we provided them with PR and social media services, including a Twitter campaign to connect with journalists and potential customers, create brand awareness, and promote company events.

BRANDING

We also landed a large-scale branding project with Phytech, an agriculture IoT company. Omer Kotzer, a seasoned creative designer who worked for years in the U.S., brought us on board, and it was a great opportunity to learn from the very best.

We created company positioning that is geared with surgical precision to its customers, as can be seen on their website and the polished visual language that seamlessly encompasses all their communications, including the product user interface.

We also conducted a branding project for Exodus, a startup system for evacuating and managing crowd safety, and Creo Partners, a capital raising and M&A advisory venture, for which we created the company name.

OVERALL MARKETING

Next came Amdocs, which hired us to provide overall marketing services for their Services R&D unit, an in-house incubator for new services and technologies.

Cognis’s core specialty is SME’s, but we took the plunge, built the positioning and messaging for six new ventures, and created marketing tools (both internal and external).

RavTech, a new kid on the Israeli software services block (with a twist: all its employees are Haredi rabbinical scholars), took us to do some hardcore branding, and build their website and marketing collateral.

RavTech provides religious scholars with a vocation that utilizes their capabilities, and our role was to build a coherent story that would emphasize their uniqueness, and place it in the right context.

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

CENS, a portfolio company of Incubit Ventures, develops technologies for rechargeable batteries. We developed marketing tools for them and launched a highly successful LinkedIn campaign to contact potential customers, who are major battery manufacturers. Some of the leads we landed include Panasonic Automotive & Industrial Systems, 3M electronics & energy, and Samsung SDI – oh yes, we’re proud.

INVESTOR PRESENTATION

Last but not least is MiRobot, a startup in the field of dairy farming. We created an investor presentation, including content and design, but – as often happens – we didn’t stop there. We also took a closer look at the projections and showed much more clearly how much the farmer would save using the product, and presented additional benefits in a more clearly defined way. One investor liked what he saw and they are now in talks.

Indeed, a fruitful year.