Sylvia Marketing & Public Relations — Case Studies
Ten case studies.
Outcomes that outlast
the headlines.
Nearly two decades of work across education and healthcare, deathcare and law, real estate and the nonprofit sector — reported the way we report it to clients: the problem as we found it, the outcome as it landed, and the number that proves it. Every card below links to the complete case study on sylviamarketing.com.
01 — The Case Files
Start with the work.
Ten engagements, numbered and linked. Each card carries the problem as we found it, the outcome as it landed, and the number that proves it — and opens the complete case study on sylviamarketing.com.
Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools
Putting a Charter School Movement on the State Media Map
A fledgling statewide movement lacked the mechanism to communicate its issues to the press and its value to potential members: no messaging operation, no trained spokespeople, and a public record written entirely by critics while legislation threatened to end charter funding outright.
Sylvia Marketing took over media and internal strategic communications — six in-person editorial board meetings and steady contact with education writers statewide made PCPCS the go-to source for the media’s charter school questions. School leaders who once hesitated to join began to see the value, and membership doubled.
The Fight for Patients’ Access to Physicians
Patients and Physicians Alliance · Healthcare
Pennsylvania was losing its medical specialists to out-of-control malpractice insurance premiums — the price of widespread lawsuit abuse and settlement shakedowns. Fourteen maternity units closed in Northeast Philadelphia, neurosurgeons left Chester County until none remained — the county’s last billed $360,000 a year in premiums — and the shortage was being measured in lives.
PAPA’s ads brought harmed families forward, its doctors united to educate patients — convening the Healthcare Delivery Crisis Summit — and a statewide radio, television, and newspaper interview tour carried the debate to the Pennsylvania Trial Lawyers Association. Then the coverage proved the point: Katie Couric reported the maternity crisis for CBS national news, FOX 29 devoted five minutes to families whose loved ones might have lived with access to neurosurgical care, and the White House invited PAPA to meet the President’s domestic policy advisors — later consulting the alliance for the State of the Union.
Making Deathcare a Comfortable Conversation
StoneMor Partners · Deathcare
StoneMor needed to generate more pre-need sales than its traditional direct marketing campaigns were pulling in — and wanted media exposure that would get the public comfortable discussing death in terms of burial pre-planning: a topic most news and public affairs shows never sought.
Sylvia Marketing ran two campaigns — “The Economy Is So Bad, People Can’t Afford to Die” and “Don’t Bequeath Your Burial Expenses” — and news and public affairs shows accepted both, with the storylines landing hardest on radio talk shows, from business radio to satellite radio. Paired with direct mail, the combined effort lifted pre-need sales by more than 25% for the world’s second-largest deathcare provider — helping usher in a new era for the industry.
Reversing Bad Press
Portnoff Law Associates · Legal
A council member moved to terminate the firm’s municipal contract on a rumor, behind an article so unbalanced it never quoted the law firm. Portnoff Law Associates had not yet seen the story when Sylvia Marketing called; the firm engaged the agency, and an editorial board meeting was arranged to state the facts.
The newspaper answered with a full, balanced follow-up on the work PLA was doing for the municipality — collecting delinquencies from absentee landlords and others with means who felt they shouldn’t have to pay, a burden that fell on honorable taxpayers. The editor followed with an editorial laying out the need for services like PLA and condemning council members for playing politics, and a third positive article ran shortly after the firm was reinstated.
Lobbying Stops the Story
Client withheld · Multinational servicer to the nuclear industry
A state regulator’s report was set to praise the client by name for river discharges that measured under the limit — discharges the Department of Environmental Protection itself directed, because the company’s preferred method was the sewage system. The praise was the danger: opposition groups would have pointed to the article, named the company, and started protests.
Sylvia Marketing met with its counterpart at the PA Department of Environmental Protection and explained what the well-meaning release would cost: the praise the agency prepared was small next to the damage of opposition groups pointing at the article and claiming the company was poisoning the river. The release was withdrawn. Sometimes the best work is the news people never see — the unfair, incorrect, or biased story negotiated away or killed before it ever runs.
Proving the Government Wrong
Client withheld · Industrial manufacturer
A federal EPA report was set to anchor a factory-discharge story — it indicated the company was over its discharge limits and named discharge materials the company never discharged at all. The report was damning, and it was wrong.
It was more than a mistake: a biased report, built to harm a business certain government employees didn’t like. Sylvia Marketing tore the work apart the way a powerful trial lawyer dismantles a prosecutor who has abused the office to win a case — and put one question to the newsroom: if the federal government cannot get its own facts right, nothing in its release deserves trust. The editor killed the story. Nothing published, nothing followed.
Charter School Ribbon Cutting
Keystone Academy · Education
A circa-1900 landmark school building was returning to daily use as Keystone Academy’s new home — and the ribbon-cutting had to be equal to it: the right people in the room, and Tacony and Philadelphia’s newsrooms paying attention.
Sylvia Marketing ran the event end to end — staging, speeches, press, and the outreach that filled the room with dignitaries. Philadelphia’s outlets treated it as a city story, not a school event: a century of heritage on the public record, and the school’s charter-renewal case given a public stage.
Nonprofit Groundbreaking
Intercultural Family Services · Nonprofit
Weeks before the nonprofit’s biggest build in its history was set to break ground, its founder departed suddenly — and the room still had to be filled with the right people.
6abc read the press release verbatim on air, the Business Journal featured the headquarters, and came back months later for the strategy behind it.
Ribbon Cutting · Real Estate
Hope Capital Investments · Real Estate
A new headquarters ribbon reaches only the room it is cut in — and the business model behind it deserved a regional audience.
Five earned placements across three outlets: 6abc ran the story twice, the daily papers followed, and a company profile arrived months later.
Keystone Academy — two decades of history, published on one page.
Keystone Academy · Education
Two decades of school history — founding, leadership, expansion, recognition — with no single page the school itself controlled.
The entire history published on one page as a permanent owned asset that owns its own search results — while enrollment climbed from 700 to 1,000 students and media mentions reached 25 in a single year.
02 — More Than Coverage
What the coverage was for.
We will say it plainly: the work in these case studies generated headline news, social media buzz, and search engine and AI reference domination. That visibility is real, and we build it into every engagement on purpose. But we have never treated it as the finish line. Coverage is the delivery system — what it carries is what counts.
What it carried: a statewide charter school movement was taught to make its own news and doubled its membership. A K-8 school’s ribbon-cutting returned a century-old landmark to the city’s evening news and put its charter renewal on the public record. A nonprofit’s groundbreaking drew philanthropists, city leaders, and television cameras to a seven-story bet on West Philadelphia — weeks after its founder departed.
And when a story threatened a client, we measure the same way — by what happened next. A motion to terminate a municipal contract died once the follow-up was balanced and a positive editorial came down on the firm’s side — and a third positive article followed the firm’s reinstatement. A regulator’s report had its praise withdrawn before it ever ran — the good news would have named a target. A factory-discharge story was never written at all. No retractions to demand, no corrections to chase — and five-figure legal bills that never arrived. That is what the coverage was for.
Headlines fade. Dividends compound.
I’ve watched a lot of organizations hire public relations. This was different. Sylvia Marketing didn’t just win us coverage — they taught an entire movement how the media works, and how to make it work for our students.
Dr. Timothy Daniels
Executive Director, Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools
03 — The Engagement
Reserve a discovery session. The first hour is the diagnosis.
Bring us the story the category never tells, the crisis already drafting itself, or the milestone worth a region’s attention. We will read the situation back to you with the pressure points named and the story that should be told in its place — and if the outcome is not there, you will hear that before you spend a dollar.
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