A Strategic Partner for
Entrepreneurs and
Small Business Owners
Messaging, Media, & Engagement Strategies that Drive Business Growth
Meet
Dana Rocks
Dana Rocks is a seasoned strategic consultant focusing on food & beverage and woman-owned businesses, with more than a decade of experience in communications, public affairs, and politics. Dana works closely with entrepreneurs and small business owners on successful messaging and media strategies, helping them reach business goals through effective storytelling, and ensuring that their message evolves alongside the business.
Dana recently served as Director of Strategy for Cureate, a startup working to shift the dollar back into local small business through entrepreneur education, procurement opportunities and reimagining the retail experience.
Previously, Dana served as Director in the Strategic Communications division of The Glover Park Group (GPG), a leading public affairs firm, where she managed and executed integrated strategies that drove favorable reputational, business and policy outcomes for an array of corporate and nonprofit clients. Dana has also held communications roles on major presidential campaigns and on Capitol Hill.
Dana earned a Master’s of Business Administration from Columbia Business School, and graduated from Duke University with a degree in Political Science and a certificate in Policy Journalism & Media Studies. She lives in McLean with her husband and four young children.
Meet
Dana Rocks
Dana Rocks is a seasoned strategic consultant focusing on food & beverage and woman-owned businesses, with more than a decade of experience in communications, public affairs, and politics. Dana works closely with entrepreneurs and small business owners on successful messaging and media strategies, helping them reach business goals through effective storytelling, and ensuring that their message evolves alongside the business.
Dana recently served as Director of Strategy for Cureate, a startup working to shift the dollar back into local small business through entrepreneur education, procurement opportunities and reimagining the retail experience.
Previously, Dana served as Director in the Strategic Communications division of The Glover Park Group (GPG), a leading public affairs firm, where she managed and executed integrated strategies that drove favorable reputational, business and policy outcomes for an array of corporate and nonprofit clients. Dana has also held communications roles on major presidential campaigns and on Capitol Hill.
Dana earned a Master’s of Business Administration from Columbia Business School, and graduated from Duke University with a degree in Political Science and a certificate in Policy Journalism & Media Studies. She lives in McLean with her husband and three young children.
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Our Work
in Practice
Kim Bryden
CEO & Founder, Cureate
The Challenge
Several years after founding Cureate, a Mid-Atlantic-based startup working to shift the dollar back into local small business, its CEO was looking for new opportunities to communicate the company’s evolved story and offerings, including a website redesign and more robust media engagement. With three distinct business channels — entrepreneur education, procurement and consulting — and target audiences at varying levels of industry savviness, it was important that Cureate both present a cohesive overarching story and offer specifics about its work and value proposition through each channel.
The Solution
With Cureate’s website redesign as the catalyst, Dana worked closely with the CEO & founder to develop core messaging — including refined mission, vision and values statements — and produced new content describing each service offering, along with case studies. Dana also provided valuable counsel on the site’s layout. Understanding the limitations on an entrepreneur’s availability, Dana strove to preserve the CEO’s time wherever possible, taking the initiative to review existing resources (ex. previous Cureate media coverage and sales collateral) to inform message development.
To help Cureate disseminate its messaging more broadly, Dana ideated and executed a thought leadership plan positioning the CEO as a go-to expert on the food & beverage supply chain, local economic development and small business growth. The plan included strategically timed media engagement around major Cureate activities and regional news, as well as foundational elements for standing up such media efforts: an updated CEO bio, creation of a target press list and development of media outreach templates. Upon the CEO’s approval, Dana conducted outreach, and coordinated and prepped the CEO for interviews. Dana also worked closely with Cureate’s CEO to draft and pitch her first op-ed.
The Result
With Dana’s insight, Cureate’s website redesign became more than a standard series of checklists, providing an important strategic opportunity to refocus Cureate’s core value proposition and supporting activities. The messaging created for the site is now used as foundational material for all Cureate communications — from talking points, to proposals and sales collateral, to social media content — saving the business valuable time and resources in its daily activities.
Cureate’s thought leadership plan generated unprecedented television news coverage, pegged to activities such as the launch of applications for Cureate Courses, a city-specific educational program for food & beverage entrepreneurs (WJLA Good Morning Washington), and current events like the continued challenges faced by small businesses due to the COVID-19 public health emergency (WUSA9). Dana also secured publication of an op-ed penned by Cureate’s CEO in The Philadelphia Business Journal, tied to a then-new “buy local” city initiative. This coverage has provided content for the Cureate website, newsletter and social media accounts, and serves as an example of the CEO’s expertise and media presence for use in future outreach.
Why we should buy into Philadelphia’s latest ‘buy local’ initiative
By Kim Bryden – Guest Columnist
Dec 7, 2018, 11:13am EST
Pennsylvania is home to nearly one million small businesses accounting for 98.2 percent of the state’s businesses and 46.9 percent of its employees.