Marketing & PR

TAGLINE PR
- A G E N C Y -

Presents
 Marketing & PR

TAGLINE PR
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Table of Contents

Tagline Mission Statement .. 2

Tagline Team Bios ...... 3

Zikher's Brand Blueprint 4

Research ............. 7

Planning/Strategy .... 11

Press Release ......... 12

Social Media Plan ..... 13

Crisis Management .... 15

Implementation/ Sample Tweets ...16

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Tagline PR Mission Statement

Tagline PR is a marketing and PR agency that

values excellence, honesty, and big ideas. Our team
carefully executes strategies to craft our clients
message and image. We are a team of unique
personalities and diverse backgrounds that have
one goal in mind: to tell our clients stories.
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Meet the Team

Whitney Besser is the CEO of Tagline PR. She is a Senior at

Saint Mary's College of California and is majoring in
Communication with a concentration in Public Relations. After
graduation, she will continue her position at Zikher as a digital
marketer.

Nanette Thompson is the COO of Tagline PR and a Sophomore

majoring in Communication with a concentration in Public
Relations and a minor in Business Administration.

Natalie Kuczkowski is the researcher for Tagline PR and

currently a Senior majoring in Communication at Saint Mary's.
In the future, she plans to start a career in Public Relations
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Meet the Team

Grace Becker is the Social Media Specialist for Tagline PR

and a junior working towards a Communication major and
Women's and Gender Studies minor. In the future, she hopes
to work in the entertainment industry

Jessica Fahner is a Communication major and French Minor

at Saint Marys College of California. She is a Senior and is
excited to graduate this May 2017. Jessica hopes to continue
working in the field of PR in the future.
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Brand Blue Print

 Marketing & PR

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Brand Blue Print

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Research
Client: Zikher

Colleagues:

First Republic Bank

Headquarters:111 Pine Street
San Francisco, CA 94111
Bank that provides exceptional service which has helped them to earn their
high level of client satisfaction, and why they were named Best Private Bank
in North America recently by Private Asset Management Magazine. They have
more than 60 offices on the West Coast and in the Northeast and offer a
complete range of lending, deposit, investment, trust and brokerage services.

Bank of the West

Headquarters:180 Montgomery Street
San Francisco, California 94104
Bank of the West employs a business model that lets the bank make service-
focused decisions-about credit, products and other aspects of its operations-
as quickly, consistently and as close to the customer as possible. The bank
operates distinct units to provide a range of superior services-Commercial
Banking, Regional Banking, National Finance and Wealth Management.
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Research

Union Bank
Headquarters: 400 California
Street San Francisco, California 94104
Union Bank has been a trusted member of your community since 1891. They
serve individuals needs in growing their businesses and support and give back
to the communities through a multitude of programs and special events.

City National Bank

Headquarters: City National Plaza
555 South Flower Street
Los Angeles, CA 90071
Bank provides banking, investment, and trust services through 74 offices,
including 16 full-service regional centers, in Southern California, the San
Francisco Bay Area, Nevada, NewYork City, Nashville, and Atlanta. In addition,
the company and its investment affiliates manage or administer $55.7 billion
in client investment assets.

Sterling Bank and Trust

Headquarters: One Towne Square Suite 1900
Southfield, Michigan 48076
A trusted neighborhood bank that provides a comprehensive choice of
banking solutions, innovative loan products and outstanding personal service
to individuals, professionals, businesses and commercial
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Research
customers. They are known for highly competitive deposit rates, expertise in
mortgage lending and keeping deposits at work in the local community.
They have fourteen neighborhood branches in San Francisco, with additional
locations in Burlingame, Daly City, San Rafael, San Mateo, Cupertino and
Alhambra, California.

Competitors:

Roostify
303 2nd Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
A web and mobile service that simplifies and accelerates the home-buying
experience by providing step-by-step guidance in the home and loan closing
process, allowing agents, loan officers and home buyers to share and track
critical information.

Blend Labs
100 Montgomery Street
Floor 25
San Francisco, CA 94104
A platform that focuses on mortgage lending. It offers end-to-end origination
solutions for data-driven mortgages and loans to lenders. The company
caters to the mortgage industry.
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Research

Magazines: From Twitter:

Fintech Weekly Submit Startup Story

Contact: Michael Schweisthal (no Currently Suspended- not accepting
editor was listed but he handles Email: thomas@alltopstartups.com
content, marketing, and & http://alltopstartups.com/success-
partnerships) story
micha@fintechweekly.com
Biz Tech Magazine
Contact: Ryan PetersonEditor in
chief
ryanpet@cdw.com
BizTech CDW LLC
200 N. Milwaukee Avenue
Vernon Hills, IL 60601
(847) 465-6000

American Banker
Contact: Dean AnasonManaging
Editor
Dean.Anason@sourcemedia.com
One State Street Plaza, 27th Floor
New York, NY 10004
212-803-8200
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Research
Newspaper & News Sites: TV Stations:

Bank Systems & Technology Banking Tech

Editor in chief: Jim Connolly Contact: Antony Peyton
jim.connolly@ubm.com antony.peyton@knect365.com
TechWeb, 240 West 35th St 200 N. Milwaukee Avenue
New York, NY 10001 Vernon Hills, IL 60601
(212) 600-3000 (847) 465-6000

Sillicon Valley.com Blogs:

Contact: Neil Chase--Editor
nchase@bayareanewsgroup.com Crunchbase
1095 The Alameda Contact: Matt Burns-Senior Editor
San Jose, CA 95126 matt@techcrunch.com
408-200-1000
City A.M: London news
Venture Beat Contact:Christian May- Editor
Contact: Sindy Nanclares- Editor christian.may@cityam.com
sindy@venturebeat.com
22 Battery Street, Suite 320 Geeky Gadgets
San Francisco, CA 94111 Roland Hutchinson- rols@geeky-
gadgets.com
Julian Horsey: jules@geeky-gadgets.com
Press: admin@geeky-gadgets.com
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Planning/ Strategy

A financial technology startup company that promotes a more efficient platform

to banks and credit unions.

The Challenge: Zikher hopes to revolutionize the financial industry by improving

the loan application process to be more client and sales focused. However,
because the company is small and newly founded, the company needs publicity
to establish a large clientele. Furthermore, Zikher has an advanced, secure
platform with a modular form builder and a fully customizable interface, built on
top of a modern API to simplify the adoption and usage for banks and their
customers. Zikher is using newer and more efficient technology compared to its
competitors.

The Solution: We will be writing several press releases to news publications that
serve a financial tech audience, such as Fintech Weekly, Fintech Finance, and
American Banker. By reaching out to these news publications we hope to gain
attention. Furthermore, we will also increase social media activity to reach a
broader audience by focusing on twitter and increasing tweets from three times a
day to seven times a day. The tweets will be concerning news about the current
banking industry, financial technology market, and about Zikher. Finally, we plan
to educate the public about financial technology, particularly digital lending, as it
is a relatively new market and concept. We will achieve this through weekly blog
posts on Zikhers website.
 Contact: Amir Khan
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
+1(415) 742-9867
4/27/17
info@zikher.com

Zikher launches online lending platform to disrupt banking industry

Zikher emerges from stealth with digital lending platform that helps small banks and credit
unions compete with corporate banks.

San Francisco, CA Zikher formally launches SaaS platform that uses consumer-facing
technology to streamline the loan application pipeline. This financial technology startup
helps small banks keep pace with technological advances in the banking industry, without
these small banks having to pay high prices. Their model is revolutionary because the
mortgage and loan application is solely online and only takes fifteen minutes to fill out,
which is substantially quicker than the current paper-based process. Customers can access
their application at anytime to get real-time information about their loan or mortgage and
directly talk to a financial advisor.

Small banks are facing revenue challenges, insufficient loan demands, budget constraints,
and the need for technological innovation. Small banks have lost the market share to larger
banks over the last few years. They have a hard time matching up to the technological
advances that larger banks make due to budget constraints. A partnership with Zikher
would help small banks address these challenges at an affordable price.

Current mortgage process is highly inefficient and leaves customers frustrated. Zikher's
service can help us save time and immensely increase the efficiency, says Tyrone Tobias,
Vice President at Union Bank. Zikher's service can remarkably speed-up the lending
process by building a real-time digital pipeline, adds Freddy Beamen, Vice President at City
National Bank. This will overly increase efficiency and help us process more mortgages.

Small banks that partner with Zikher will see a rise in demand of loans, due to the fact that
the process is quicker, easier, and more efficient. Small bank customers used to be in the
dark without up-to-date information about their loan status. Zikher solves this issue by
giving customers loan information in real-time. With simple and affordable implementation,
Zikher aims to disrupt the industry and help level the playing field for small financial
institutions.

About Zikher
Zikher is a financial technology startup company that makes it fast and easy for customers
to apply for loans with small banks, credit unions, and other partners. Based in San
Francisco, Zikher was founded in 2015 and is venture backed. Visit their website for more
information: zikher.com
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Planning/ Strategy

The use of social media could be especially helpful for a company like
Zikher, because not only does it assist the company in gaining exposure, but
also it may have an integral role in actually explaining the companys
function. When someone initially hears about Zikher, they may not exactly
understand the service it provides, so using social media to demonstrate
how Zikher can make the loan process easier and less stressful for
individuals would be beneficial. This can be done by posting step by step
guide of how to use Zikher/how Zikher works on social media. Part of
Zikhers appeal is that is an approachable way of obtaining a loan, which is
appealing to many millennials who are not taken seriously by banks.
Highlighting the approachability of Zikher with social media can really take
the exposure of the company to the next level. In addition, featuring the ease
of use and time saving aspects of Zikher (think Geico: 15 minutes can save
you 15% or more on car insurance) would also be a helpful way to appeal to
its target customer base. However, we want to do this in a way that doesnt
alienate traditional banks since after all, banks are one of our target clients.
Thus, we will highlight approachability and ease of use by pitching to banks
that Zikher will help these banks become more approachable. This may be
executed by posting pictures of millennials using Zikher, and ultimately
tying in the millennial image with the company. Also, due to the recent
bank-related scandals, Zikher can also capitalize off of trust and the fact that
it is not a traditional banking system.
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Planning/ Strategy

On top of using social media to gain exposure and new customers, Zikher
needs to maintain its presence in the FinTech community. This can be done by
promoting relevant Fintech and financial industry news, as well as news and
updates from Zikher. Since social media is all about consistency, Zikher should
tweet at least 7 times a day to engage with followers. While Zikher does have
an active Twitter, tweeting more promotional pictures specific to Zikher (such
as those suggested above) would be helpful to captivate the audience.
Zikher already has an aesthetically pleasing and easy-to-navigate website,
but overall a bit more information could be added further explaining the
services Zikher provides so customers are fully aware of what the product is.
Specifically, this can be improved in the about page and how it works page.
Instead of solely explaining how Zikher can help out banks and customers, an
explanation spelling out exactly what Zikher does and how they do it would
be helpful. Overall, a goal would be to make the website a little less vague, but
still simple and approachable. Although Tagline does not have the resources
to produce this, in the future, it would be great if Zikher had an animated
video on their web site walking customers through the app, similar to the
animated gif on the side of the home page, which is very helpful.
Overall, the desired outcome of the social media plan is to gain more followers,
thus both gaining exposure and potential customers.
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Crisis Management
Company Wide Consensus

In the unfortunate case of a crisis occurring, first and foremost it is imperative that
an urgent, company-wide meeting takes place where all Zikher employees are
present. At this meeting, there will be a thorough recap of the crisis so that
everyone is aware of the situation and has accurate facts. This should be done
before reaching out to the public, so that everyone is on the same page. There
should be one individual designated to handle crises to ensure that there is a
uniform procedure in place, and that a unified message is expressed.

Transparency is Key

Once a crisis has occurred, the best way to approach the situation is with honesty.
This means coming forward to the public and being honest about what occurred,
even if Zikher is the one at fault. This way, customers will be receiving accurate
information from the source, and best case scenario, the accurate story will come
out before it is potentially twisted by the media. Trust is the most important
component of a customer/provider relationship and is the what cant be
jeopardized. Thus, by practicing honesty and transparency, Zikher can maintain
the clients trust and progress towards repairing damage. The worst way to handle
a crisis would be to deny the truth, because it is bound to come out eventually
and once a company has denied their way through a situation, there is no going
back. Denial will break the customers trust and cause irreparable damage to the
customer/provider relationship. Conversely, owning up to ones mistake is
forgivable, and speaks highly of the companys morals.
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Crisis Management

Offer Assistance

Once the public has been accurately informed and in a timely manner, Zikher
should offer its immediate assistance to help those affected. Its important to
demonstrate good customer service skills to once again contribute to the trust
of the customer. Customers should be reached out to through social media etc.
and questions should be answered swiftly, and should include information
pertinent to the situation (i.e. dont overshare). Restate/highlight company
values throughout crisis management.
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Implementation
Extensive media coverage was achieved through 3 or 5 Tweets per day. Zikher
has gained 50 followers after increasing our presence on Twitter. Also, several
blog posts have been posted; thus educating the public about our product and
market. SEO marketing has also been implemented in the blog posts as we
have inserted certain tags such as fintech, small banking industry, and
banking innovation. Fintech Finance published an article using our press
release that states the impact that Zikher will have on small banking industry.