Work: Case Studies
Copper Fire
From Inconsistent Posts to a Standout Social Presence
Services: Social Media Management | On-Site Content Production | Video & Reel Creation | Entertainment Calendar Management | Brand Voice Development | Community Engagement
The Problem
You’ve built something real. A packed calendar, a loyal crowd, staff that feel like family. But your Instagram looks like an afterthought – last-minute event posts, inconsistent visuals, nothing that actually captures what walking through your door feels like.
That was Copper Fire. One of the busiest entertainment venues in Metro-East St. Louis — live music every day, great food, a community that genuinely loved the place — and a social media presence that didn’t come close to reflecting it.
The Cost
Today, most people decide whether to try a new spot before they ever leave the house. They’re checking Instagram, watching Reels and TikToks, looking for proof that a place has energy worth showing up for. A weak or inconsistent social presence doesn’t just look like neglect — it looks like a quiet night. It signals to potential customers that maybe there isn’t much going on, even when the opposite is true. Meanwhile, the regulars who already love you have nothing to share, nothing to tag, nothing that makes them feel like they’re part of something worth talking about.
The energy inside Copper Fire wasn’t making it online. And every week that went by without content that reflected the real experience was a week of missed discovery, missed word-of-mouth, and missed connection with an audience that was already out there looking.
The Approach
Bee Young Comms didn’t come in with a template. We came in and learned the business, the regulars, the staff personalities, the rhythm of a week at Copper Fire, and built a content strategy around what was already there.
That meant showing up on-site quarterly for dedicated shoots: live performances, behind-the-bar moments, the faces that make the place feel like a hometown tavern. From those shoots, we built a consistent weekly rhythm — entertainment calendars, event promos, food and drink features, and Reels that leaned into the staff’s humor and personality. The audience responded because the content felt like Copper Fire, not like a brand package dropped on top of it.
As the social presence grew, it also exposed a weak link: their website. So we extended the work there too — building a modern digital home that matched the venue’s energy and gave customers a central place to find events, explore menus, and stay connected beyond social.
The Result
Copper Fire went from sporadic posts to a consistent, high-performing content engine. Follower counts and customer numbers have grown sharply — and more importantly, the content has built a community, not just an audience.
“Michelle came in, learned our business, and built something we’re genuinely proud of. She took everything that makes Copper Fire feel like family and turned it into a social media presence that reflects who we truly are. She’s not just a vendor — she’s part of the team.” — Renae Eichholz, Co-Owner, Copper Fire
What This Means for You
Most businesses are better than their social media suggests. You have a real culture, a real offer, real people behind it – but online, it reads as inconsistent, generic, or just quiet. That’s not a creativity problem. It’s not a time problem. It’s a strategy and execution problem.
Whether you’re running a restaurant, a fitness studio, a retail shop, or a service business with a story worth telling – if the gap between who you actually are and how you show up online is keeping you from growing, that’s exactly the problem Bee Young Comms is built to close.
The story is already there. It just needs someone to show up and tell it.
Naismith Trophy
A Full-Service Social Media Operation, Season After Season
Services: Social Media Strategy & Seasonal Playbook | Multi-Platform Content Management | Team Leadership & Training | National Media Outreach | On-Site Game & Event Coverage | Video Production | Paid Advertising | Sponsor Campaign Integration
The Problem
You have something prestigious. A name people respect, a history worth honoring, a moment every season that the whole sport looks toward. But prestige alone doesn’t build an audience — and a social media presence that doesn’t match the weight of what you represent is leaving reach, relevance, and revenue on the table.
That was the tension at the Naismith Trophy – one of the most storied honors in basketball. The brand had credibility. What it needed was a strategic communications partner who could build and run a full-scale operation: managing multiple platforms, leading a content team, integrating sponsors, showing up courtside, and doing it all with the consistency and professionalism the brand demanded. Season after season.
A part-time hire or a freelance content creator wasn’t going to cut it. This required someone who could think like a communications director, execute like a producer, and lead like a head coach.
The Cost
When a brand of this caliber shows up inconsistently online, the damage isn’t just aesthetic. Sponsors start questioning the value of their partnership. Media relationships go uncultivated. Moments that should generate national conversation — a Final Four run, a Player of the Year announcement — disappear into the feed instead of dominating it. And every season that passes without a real communications infrastructure in place is a season of compounding missed opportunities. Audiences don’t wait. Attention moves on. And rebuilding momentum is always harder than maintaining it.
The Approach
Bee Young Comms doesn’t just post content for the Naismith Trophy. Now in our fourth season together, we run the operation.
Every season begins before the first tip-off. Michelle writes a comprehensive seasonal playbook — setting strategy, content standards, sponsor integration guidelines, and team structure so that when the season starts, everyone is already moving in the same direction.
From there, Michelle leads a team of 21 — captains, returners, and interns — managing weekly Zoom sessions, daily content oversight, and platform coordination across every channel. This isn’t a one-person content shop. It’s a managed communications program with real accountability at every level.
The work extends well beyond social scheduling. Michelle maintains active relationships with the sport’s top voices — Debbie Antonelli, Paul Biancardi, Brandon Clay, John Fanta, Fran Fraschilla, Andy Katz and Terrence Oglesby — sourcing video commentary and expert analysis that gets woven into content throughout the season. That access elevates the brand from administrator to authority.
On the ground during the 2025–26 season, three teams – men’s college, women’s college, and high school – covered 42 regular season and NCAA Tournament games including the Final Four, plus the Naismith Golf Tournament. That presence produced 28 interviews, 118 video snippets, and 76 Final Four clips featuring winners, finalists, and national media across every major award category.
For sponsors: Jersey Mike’s, Werner Ladder, Molecule, AXIA Time, Branded Bills, and Sharpie, we built and managed dedicated social campaigns that grew each brand’s visibility well beyond prior benchmarks. We also launched the program on Threads in its inaugural year and significantly expanded paid advertising on X.
The Result — 2025–26 Season
- 74.3M impressions: exceeded goal by 90%, surpassing target by 35.3M
- 14,375 new followers: +88.1% audience growth
- 2.1M engagements: exceeded engagement goal by 15%
- Instagram +168% impressions, Facebook +187% reach: platform growth across the board
- Ad spend down 26%: more reach and more content for less investment
“We are fortunate to have Michelle lead our social media activation. She brings a first-class approach to content creation and strategy — an idea machine who constantly adds value through fresh thinking and more efficient processes.” — Eric Oberman, Client President, Naismith Trophy
What This Means for You
Most organizations with a serious brand treat social media like an administrative task — something to check off, not something to build. A post here, a highlight there, a hire who does their best with no real structure behind them. And the gap between what the brand deserves and what it actually gets online keeps growing.
If your organization, association, brand, or event has real stakes – sponsors to serve, audiences to grow, a reputation to protect – then social media isn’t a support function. It’s a communications program. And it needs to be run like one.
That’s what Bee Young Comms was built to do. Not just create content, but build the infrastructure, lead the team, and deliver results that compound season after season.
AXIA Time
Building a Luxury Brand at the Intersection of Sport and Legacy
Services: Social Media Management (Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn) | Brand Storytelling & Content Strategy | Product Launch Content | Live Event Activation and On-Site Coverage | Championship Campaign Execution
The Problem
John Kanaras, founder of AXIA Time built the brand around Swiss Made precision and a deep reverence for sport and legacy. What he couldn’t do was also run four social media platforms, show up at championship events, and build the kind of premium content strategy a luxury brand demands all at once. He needed an expert who understood both the art of storytelling and the culture of sport.
The Cost
For a luxury brand, inconsistency online isn’t just a missed opportunity, it’s a credibility problem.
When your product exists at the level of Heisman weekends and national championships but your social presence doesn’t reflect that world, the disconnect erodes trust before a potential customer ever reaches out.
Luxury buyers aren’t searching for a deal. They’re looking for proof that a brand belongs. Every event attended without content, every product launch without a story, every championship moment that passes without the brand in the room is a signal – to buyers, to partners, and to the market – that the brand isn’t quite ready. And in a space where perception is everything, that signal is expensive.
The Approach
Bee Young Comms manages all four of AXIA Time’s social platforms with a strategy built on three things: premium brand positioning, consistent storytelling, and showing up in the rooms where history is made.
Before the big moments, we built the foundation. It starts with a consistent content calendar and product storytelling cadence that established AXIA Time as a credible voice in the collegiate, government and professional sports space. The brand needed to already feel authoritative before championship season arrived.
Then we showed up. Bee Young Comms has represented AXIA Time on-site at the 2024 and 2025 Heisman Trophy Weekends in New York City, the 2025 and 2026 CFP National Championships in Atlanta and Miami, and the 2025 and 2026 Men’s and Women’s Naismith Award Ceremonies. At each event, we captured real-time content, including player interviews, behind-the-scenes moments, award presentations, and product showcases. The kind of access that can’t be replicated from a desk.
That access produced the brand’s strongest performing content. Posts featuring 2025 Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza, 2025 Jersey Mike’s Naismith Trophy Player of the Year Cooper Flagg, and 2025 Lott Impact Trophy winner Caleb Downs consistently drove the highest engagement and saves across every platform. Content tied to the AXIA Time pop-up at the CFP Fan Shop drove meaningful audience growth during peak championship season.
The Result
- 30.9M impressions: cross-platform reach across Instagram, Facebook, X, and LinkedIn
- 6,110 new followers: audience built through championship season activations
- 162,687 engagements: driven by live event content and real athlete moments
AXIA Time’s social presence now reflects the luxury and legacy the brand was built on — embedded in the biggest moments in college and professional sports, reaching the right audiences at exactly the right time.
What This Means for You
Building a premium brand takes years. Losing ground online can happen in a single season of inconsistency. If you’re a founder, a luxury brand, or a business with a story that deserves to be told at the highest level – the question isn’t whether social media matters. It’s whether your presence is doing justice to what you’ve built.
That’s the work Bee Young Comms does. Not just content, but positioning. Not just posts, but proof that your brand belongs in the room.
Peninsula Building Materials
Building a Digital Presence as Strong as Their Product
Services: Social Media Strategy & Management | Paid Social Advertising | Content Creation | Website Overhaul | SEO Blog Writing | Brand Audit & Competitive Analysis | Vendor & Customer Relationship Development
The Problem
You’ve been in business long enough to have earned a reputation. Your work speaks for itself: contractors trust you, customers come back, your product is the real thing. But online, none of that shows up. Your website is outdated, your social presence is scattered, and the story you’ve spent decades building isn’t reaching the people who are actively looking for exactly what you offer.
That was Peninsula Building Materials – a family-owned business in Silicon Valley entering its second century of operation. The credibility was there. The digital presence wasn’t. No consistent brand voice, no strategic social plan, and a website that was quietly costing them business every day it went unaddressed.
The Cost
For a business built on trust and relationships, a weak digital presence doesn’t just limit growth — it creates doubt.
When a contractor, designer, or homeowner searches for a supplier and your website looks a decade old or your social channels haven’t posted in months, they move on. Your competitors, many with less experience and a lesser product are winning that click simply because they showed up better online. In a market like Silicon Valley, where buyers have options and attention is scarce, an outdated digital footprint isn’t a minor inconvenience. It’s a competitive disadvantage compounding quietly in the background every single day.
The Approach
We started where every smart strategy starts — with a full audit. Every platform, every performance metric, their competitors, their customers. From that foundation, we built a content strategy with stronger visuals, sharper messaging, and a consistent posting cadence across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
Paid social and video content became a core driver. Targeted campaigns kept PBM in front of the right audiences — contractors, designers, and customers across the Bay Area — while direct vendor and customer relationship development helped strengthen the brand’s presence beyond the screen.
In 2023, the scope expanded. Bee Young Comms led a full website overhaul, including all content writing for PBM’s new Design & Build blog. The blog became their SEO engine — positioning PBM as a trusted industry resource and pulling in organic traffic from buyers actively searching for what they sell. Not just visibility, but the right visibility.
The Result
By 2025, PBM had cohesive branding, consistent messaging, and a digital footprint built to compete in its second century. At that point, we made the case for them to bring marketing in-house — and handed off a strategy that was firing on all cylinders.
“Michelle doesn’t disappoint. She’s passionate, creative, has great follow-through, and will dig in and do whatever it takes to get the job done.” — Nancy Wallace, Director of Marketing and Development, Peninsula Building Materials
What This Means for You
If your business has been around long enough to know what it’s doing but your digital presence doesn’t reflect that you’re letting newer, lesser competitors define the category while you stay invisible to the customers already looking for you.
A strong digital presence isn’t about chasing trends. It’s about making sure the reputation you’ve earned actually shows up where your next customer is searching.
Lashinda Demus
Managing the PR Campaign for a Long-Overdue Gold Medal Moment
Services: Public Relations | Media Strategy | Press Release Writing | GoFundMe Campaign Support | Media, IOC and USOPC Coordination | On-Site Representation (Los Angeles and Paris)
The Problem
Some stories demand to be told. But even the most powerful story — without the right strategy, the right timing, and the right people telling it — can get lost in the noise.
In 2012, Lashinda Demus crossed the finish line at the London Olympics and won silver in the 400-meter hurdles. She was a mother of twins who cheered from the stands, earning her the title of the fastest mother in the world. What no one knew then was that the gold medalist had doped. A decade later, the truth caught up. In October 2022, the IOC announced the disqualification, elevating Demus to first place. After nearly two years of working with the IOC to make it official, Lashinda Demus was finally going to receive her gold — at the first-ever IOC Olympic Medal Reallocation Ceremony in Paris, 2024.
This was a story about justice, resilience, and a family moment twelve years in the making. It deserved a global audience.
The Cost
A moment like this only happens once. And without a deliberate media strategy, the real cost isn’t just missed press coverage, it’s that the narrative gets written by someone else, or doesn’t get written at all. That’s the real cost, not metrics, but legacy. The story either gets told with intention or it gets swallowed.
Outlets move on to the next story. The ceremony becomes a line in a Wikipedia update. The injustice that took twelve years to correct gets thirty seconds of airtime and disappears. Lashinda’s name — her legacy, her sacrifice, what she modeled for her children and every athlete who ever competed clean and lost to someone who didn’t — never gets the weight it deserved. The gold medal arrives. But the recognition, the vindication, the cultural moment that should have accompanied it? Gone. And unlike a weak social strategy that can be rebuilt next quarter, a moment in history that passes unwitnessed doesn’t come back.
The Approach
This wasn’t just a client relationship. Michelle and Lashinda have known each other since Lashinda was a national champion at the University of South Carolina. When this moment came, Lashinda trusted Michelle to help her tell it to the world — and Bee Young Comms built a comprehensive media strategy to make sure she could.
That meant coordinating media interviews, drafting press materials, building photo and audio assets, and managing on-site coverage from Los Angeles to Paris. The goal was singular: drive global attention to the IOC Reallocation Ceremony at Champions Park, at the foot of the Eiffel Tower on August 9, 2024.
To make sure Lashinda’s family could be there to witness it, Bee Young Comms helped launch a GoFundMe campaign that raised $25,000 enabling her to bring her family to Paris and turning a ceremony into a homecoming.
The story broke wide open. National and international media coverage spanned broadcast, digital, and print: NBC, ABC, CBS, ESPN, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and more. That evening, Lashinda appeared on NBC wearing her gold medal for the first time.
The Result
On August 9, 2024, at Champions Park at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, Lashinda Demus received her gold medal surrounded by her family, IOC and USOPC dignitaries, and the world watching.
With that medal, Lashinda and her mother Yolanda Demus — who had coached her daughter to her first American title in the 400m hurdles — became the first mother-daughter duo to win a gold medal in Olympic Track and Field.
Twelve years late. Right on time.
“There’s no one I would have wanted by my side more than Michelle to help tell my story. She’s creative, she truly cares, and she never stops going the extra mile. Having her there every step of the way — right up to the finish line in Paris at the foot of the Eiffel Tower — was everything.” — Lashinda Demus, Olympic Gold Medalist
What This Means for You
Every organization, brand, or individual has moments that matter — product launches, milestones, announcements, or stories that deserve more than a press release sent into the void. The difference between a moment that lands and one that disappears is strategy, relationships, and someone with the skill and conviction to tell it properly.
If you have a story worth telling, Bee Young Comms will make sure the right people hear it.
USF Health & Premier Healthcare
A Strategic Communications Campaign Built Around Prevention
Services: Strategic Communications Planning | Internal & External Messaging Development | Digital Marketing Direction | Patient-Focused Content Strategy | Health Equity & Prevention Campaigns
The Problem
Most people don’t avoid preventive screenings because they don’t care about their health. They avoid them because no one has made it easy, relevant, or urgent enough to say yes. The messaging doesn’t reach them. The language doesn’t reflect them. The system feels designed for someone else.
When Dr. Alicia Best of USF Health’s College of Public Health and Premier Healthcare needed a communications partner, the goal was clear: improve health outcomes for their patient population through routine screenings — with a specific focus on breast, colorectal, and cervical cancer detection. The clinical infrastructure was in place. What was missing was a communications strategy that could actually move people to act.
This wasn’t a marketing campaign. It was a public health mission.
The Cost
When prevention messaging fails to reach the right people, the consequences aren’t abstract. Cancers go undetected until they’re harder to treat. Patients who could have been caught early enter the system at Stage 3 or Stage 4. The communities that already face the greatest barriers to care — language, access, trust, cultural distance from institutional medicine — are the ones most likely to fall through the gap. And for healthcare organizations, a communications strategy that doesn’t convert means resources spent without impact, and patients who needed them most never walked through the door. In public health, a missed message isn’t just a missed opportunity. It can cost someone their life.
The Approach
Bee Young Comms developed a comprehensive strategic communications plan aligned with the core values of both USF Health and Premier Healthcare. The strategy addresses internal and external audiences alike and ensures consistent messaging across every touchpoint, from patient-facing website content to organizational stakeholders.
Every piece of content was designed around one question: what does it take for this specific patient to say yes? That meant removing barriers in the language, meeting patients where they already were digitally, and framing prevention not as a clinical obligation but as an act of self-advocacy. The strategy built trust before it asked for action — positioning both organizations as proactive, community-rooted healthcare partners rather than distant institutions.
The Result
Every piece of content was designed to educate, motivate, and remove barriers to care. The strategy reached patients who had historically been underserved by traditional healthcare messaging and made preventive screenings feel accessible, relevant, and worth prioritizing.
“Michelle’s knowledge of healthcare marketing and institutional communications helped us build a strategy that was both credible and compelling. Because of her work, we were better equipped to reach the patients who needed us most. We couldn’t have asked for a better partner.” — Dr. Alicia Best, USF Health College of Public Health & Premier Healthcare
What This Means for You
Whether you’re a healthcare organization, a nonprofit, or a mission-driven institution — if the people you exist to serve aren’t hearing your message, the work stops there. A good communications strategy isn’t about broadcasting louder. It’s about understanding exactly who you’re talking to, what’s keeping them from engaging, and building every message around removing that barrier.
If your organization is doing important work that isn’t reaching the people who need it most, that’s a communications problem Bee Young Comms was built to solve.
JJ Team Homes
From Rebrand to Top 1.5% in the Country
Services: Brand Strategy & Rebrand | Logo Refresh | Name Change Consultation | Social Media Management | SEO Blog Strategy & Writing | Website Content Overhaul | Community Page Development | Competitive Analysis
The Problem
In real estate, your brand is your reputation before anyone picks up the phone. When buyers and sellers are searching for an agent, they’re not just evaluating credentials — they’re evaluating trust. And trust starts with how you show up: your name, your visual identity, your website, your social presence. If any of those feel inconsistent, outdated, or generic, the client you were the right fit for moves on to someone who looked more ready.
JJ Team Homes came to Bee Young Comms for social media help. But a closer look revealed something bigger: the brand itself wasn’t keeping pace with the business they had built. The name, the identity, the digital presence — none of it reflected the caliber of the team or the market they were competing in.
The Cost
In a saturated real estate market like Silicon Valley, agents who look the part online win the introduction. Buyers and sellers rarely reach out to someone whose digital presence doesn’t instill immediate confidence and in a search-driven industry, a website without an SEO strategy is essentially invisible to the clients actively looking for you. Every week without a cohesive brand, a keyword strategy, or a consistent social presence is a week your competitors are capturing the leads that should have been yours. The business was strong. But without the brand to match, the growth had a ceiling.
The Approach
Before a single post was written, we took a step back. A full review of their website, social presence, competitive landscape, and even their name revealed that the foundation needed work before the strategy could scale.
The first move was the rebrand. Under Michelle’s guidance, the team transitioned from JJ Peninsula Homes to JJ Team Homes – a name that better reflected who they were and where they were headed. A refreshed logo followed, giving the brand a visual identity that matched the professionalism of the work behind it.
With a stronger foundation in place, we built the growth strategy. A keyword-driven blog gave the website an SEO engine — creating content that spoke directly to buyers and sellers searching for homes in their target communities. Consistently updated community pages reinforced that effort and helped JJ Team Homes show up where it mattered most: at the top of search results. A refined social media strategy and consistent messaging across platforms completed the picture — turning a fragmented digital presence into a recognizable, trustworthy brand.
The Result
The payoff was significant. JJ Team Homes earned recognition as a top 1.5% realtor in the country in 2023 — backed by a brand, a website, and a digital presence finally built to match the business they had always been.
“Michelle has been instrumental in helping us grow our business and expand our reach. Her assistance in SEO, branding, and consistent messaging has been so helpful — allowing us to focus on our core business of real estate. Michelle is simply the best!” — Jaime Lynn Jones and Julie Cassel, Founders, JJ Team Homes
What This Means for You
If your business has outgrown its brand – if the way you show up online no longer reflects the quality of what you actually deliver – that gap is costing you. Not dramatically, not all at once, but steadily. In any competitive market, the businesses that look the part and show up consistently in search are the ones that win the introduction. Everything else follows from there.
AC Public Relations
Teaming Up with Riggs and CASP
Services: Social Media Strategy & Audit | Multi-Platform Content Management (Instagram, X, Facebook, LinkedIn) | Content Calendar Development | Static Posts and Reels | Press Release Amplification | Content Repository Building
The Problem
PR and social media should work together. In most organizations, they don’t. Press wins get announced in a release and never make it to the feed. Social content runs on its own calendar, disconnected from the media cycle. And the audience that should be seeing proof of the brand’s credibility — in real time, across every platform — never gets a coherent picture.
AC Public Relations is a full-service PR firm managing communications, media relations, and brand campaigns across industries. When they brought in Bee Young Comms, they didn’t need a content vendor. They needed a social media team embedded in their workflow — one that could move in sync with their PR efforts, maintain brand consistency across four platforms, and operate as a true extension of their team.
The Cost
When PR and social operate in silos, earned media loses most of its value. A placement in a major outlet should generate momentum but if it never gets amplified socially, the reach stops at the publication. Audiences who follow the brand don’t see it. Partners and stakeholders miss it. The credibility that was just earned disappears. Meanwhile, an inconsistent or inactive social presence tells its own story to anyone who looks: that the brand isn’t quite organized, isn’t quite serious, or isn’t quite ready. For a PR firm whose entire value proposition is built on communications excellence, that gap isn’t just an inconvenience it’s a contradiction.
The Approach
Bee Young Comms started with a comprehensive audit of the client’s social presence across Instagram, X, Facebook, and LinkedIn, then built a tailored strategy aligned with the brand standards and internal guidelines for the new website, TheSpectrum.org.
From there, we built a full content operation — developing a content repository in collaboration with ACPR’s partners, creating a monthly content calendar spanning static posts, Reels, and stories, and ensuring every piece of content was visually consistent with graphics and media provided by the agency of record.
The core discipline of the engagement was keeping social in lockstep with PR. Bee Young Comms synced content weekly with press releases and media placements, amplifying every earned media win across all four platforms in real time. Bi-weekly strategy meetings with ACPR and its partners kept messaging coordinated and promotions aligned with new website content as it launched.
On the community side, we managed and optimized all platform profiles, monitored comments, messages, and mentions, and escalated customer service inquiries and sensitive feedback to ACPR as needed — so nothing fell through the cracks.
The Result
By the close of the engagement, ACPR had a fully functioning social media operation running in true partnership with their PR work — a consistent, active presence across four platforms, a documented content system, and a seamless process for turning PR wins into social visibility.
What This Means for You
If your organization does good work that earns real media attention — but that attention never gets amplified, documented, or built into a consistent social presence — you’re leaving your most valuable proof points on the table. PR and social media aren’t separate functions. They’re two halves of the same communications strategy. When they run together, every team wins. When they don’t, both are working harder than they need to for half the result.
CalHOPE Courage Award
Launching an Inaugural Campaign with Impact
Services: Social Media Campaign Strategy & Execution | Paid Social Advertising (Instagram & Facebook) | Influencer & Partner Collaborations | Content Creation (Stories, Reels, Feed Posts) | Hashtag Strategy & Audience Targeting
The Problem
Launching something new is one of the hardest communications challenges there is. There’s no existing audience to activate, no legacy to reference, no proof of concept to point to. Just a vision — and the work required to make strangers care about something that didn’t exist yesterday.
That was the starting point for the CalHOPE Courage Award — a first-of-its-kind recognition honoring courageous student-athletes at universities across California. No audience. No nominations pipeline. No established credibility. The award’s value was real, but none of the people it needed to reach had any reason to know it yet.
The Cost
An inaugural award lives or dies by its launch. But the real cost of a weak one isn’t just low nomination numbers — it’s that the student-athletes the award was created to honor never get their moment. The ones carrying invisible weight, pushing through adversity, doing something genuinely courageous in the middle of a college athletic career — they exist whether or not the award finds them. A launch that doesn’t cut through means the coaches who should nominate them don’t hear about it, the athletic departments don’t engage, and the recognition those athletes deserve simply doesn’t reach them.
And for the organizations behind it, the damage runs deeper than a quiet first year. Universities, athletic departments, and community partners pay close attention to whether a new program can execute on its promise. A launch that fails to generate momentum signals that the award isn’t serious — and in collegiate athletics, where relationships and reputation are everything, that perception spreads fast. Coaches stop paying attention. Partners don’t return calls. The credibility required to grow the program into something lasting gets spent before it was ever fully earned. A recognition program that loses the room in its first season rarely gets a second chance to win it back.
The vision behind the CalHOPE Courage Award was always about the people it was meant to celebrate. A campaign that fails to launch means those people go unrecognized — and the organizations that could have stood behind something meaningful walk away having missed their moment too.
The Approach
Bee Young Comms built and executed a full social media campaign from the ground up — creating content that told the story of the award, highlighted its purpose, and gave universities a clear reason to nominate their most deserving student-athletes.
The strategy leaned into what actually moves people: compelling storytelling, targeted paid social advertising on Instagram and Facebook, and platform-specific content including Stories and Reels built for shareability. Strategic hashtag use expanded organic reach into the right communities — coaches, athletic directors, and university administrators across California.
To establish credibility fast, we secured high-profile collaborations with NFL Hall of Famer Ronnie Lott and NBA All-Star Kevin Love — giving the award immediate legitimacy with exactly the audience it needed to reach. When recognizable names align with a new program, it compresses the trust-building timeline considerably.
This wasn’t the first time Bee Young Comms had built this kind of campaign. Our prior work with Doug Drotman on the Mayo Clinic Comeback Player Award produced three high-profile winners in 2021 — Aidan Hutchinson, McKenzie Milton, and J.J. Weaver — and established the playbook we brought to CalHOPE.
The Result
The inaugural CalHOPE Courage Award launched with nominations, an engaged audience, and the kind of credibility that most first-year programs spend multiple seasons trying to build. The campaign established the award as a meaningful recognition in California collegiate athletics from day one.
“Michelle consistently demonstrated an outstanding ability to strategize and execute compelling paid social media campaigns. Her deep understanding of collegiate athletics was a real plus. I am confident that Michelle will bring value to any project or team.” — Doug Drotman, Owner, Drotman Communications
What This Means for You
Every organization, award, initiative, or brand has a first chapter. How that chapter is written determines whether there’s a second. If you’re launching something new — a program, a campaign, a recognition, a brand — and you need it to land with credibility from the start, the strategy behind the launch matters as much as the idea itself.
Bee Young Comms has built campaigns from nothing before. We know what it takes to make a new thing feel necessary.
Get Permission Institute
A Website Overhaul Built for the Digital Age
Services: Website Audit & Competitive Analysis | Website Consolidation and Full Content Overhaul | Mobile Optimization & UX Improvements | Social Media and Graphics Evaluation | Paid Social Media Campaigns
The Problem
When your business moves online, your website stops being a supporting asset and becomes the entire front door. Every potential customer who finds you lands there first. And if what they find is outdated, hard to navigate, or broken on mobile — they leave. Not because they weren’t interested. Because the experience told them the organization wasn’t ready.
When the pandemic forced Get Permission Institute to transition their in-person courses to virtual webinars, their digital infrastructure wasn’t built for the shift. Two separate websites, outdated content, and a poor mobile experience were creating friction at exactly the moment GPI needed to be converting visitors into registrants. The audience was there. The product was ready. The website was turning people away.
The Cost
For an organization whose entire revenue model had just moved online, a broken digital experience isn’t a cosmetic problem; it’s a direct hit to the bottom line. Every visitor who landed on an outdated page, couldn’t find what they needed on mobile, or got lost navigating between two disconnected sites was a registration that didn’t happen. In a virtual education market that exploded overnight during the pandemic, organizations with clean, confident digital presences captured the audience. Those without them watched it pass. GPI had the content, the credibility, and the courses. But without a website built to convert, none of that mattered at the moment of decision – when a potential registrant was one confusing click away from choosing someone else.
The Approach
We started with a comprehensive review of both existing sites — design, content, functionality, and user experience — alongside a competitive analysis that identified where GPI was falling behind and where the biggest opportunities lived. Their social media presence and graphic standards were evaluated in the same pass, so everything would work cohesively once the new site launched.
The two sites became one. The consolidated website was modernized, fully mobile-optimized, and built with a refined user interface and improved navigation that made it easy for visitors to find courses, understand the offering, and register without friction. Contemporary visual elements brought the brand in line with the quality of the content behind it.
To drive registrations further, Bee Young Comms layered in targeted paid social media campaigns — turning the new website into a conversion engine that worked around the clock, not just when someone happened to find it organically.
The Result
The overhaul gave GPI a single, modern digital home that matched the quality of their content and courses. Stronger brand consistency, better audience engagement, and a website that finally worked as hard as the team behind it; backed by paid social campaigns that kept the registrations coming.
What This Means for You
If your organization moved online — fully or partially — and your website hasn’t kept pace, you’re not just leaving a bad impression. You’re actively losing the people who were already interested enough to show up. A website that doesn’t convert isn’t a minor inconvenience. It’s your highest-traffic salesperson doing a bad job every single day.
Whether you’re running courses, selling services, or building a community, the question isn’t whether your website could be better. It’s how much it’s costing you right now for it not to be.