Public Relations Case Study

Emburse Builds Awareness with Executive Thought Leadership

Emburse is a provider of modern spend management software. Born out of a merger of six companies, Emburse relaunched under a new name in 2020 and needed to establish awareness for the new brand among finance and corporate travel professionals. Our strategy was to elevate the topic of spend management from expenses and invoices to a message of responsible, socially-impactful spending – and to use that as a foundation for a multi-faceted executive thought leadership program.

Fast Company article with headline, The not so hidden bias of corporate expense policies.

CFO Dive article with headline, Automation called key to improved AP compliance.

World Economic Forum article with headline, Business travel won't be more sustainable post-COVID unless companies take action.

Key Results

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Reached finance audience with articles in Fortune, CFO Dive, CFO Magazine, Strategic CFO 360, CPA Journal, Chief Executive, Accounting Today

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Reached travel professionals with data-led commentary in Barron’s, Marketwatch, The Company Dime, Business Travel News, Skift and World Economic Forum’s blog

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Built Emburse’s overall position as a significant player in the spend management category with multiple articles in TechCrunch, byline in Fast Company and a CEO appearance on the Masters of Scale podcast

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Achieved 50% increase in media impressions from 2021 to 2022

Approach

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For finance professionals we built a thought leadership program around Emburse’s CFO, highlighting her passion for building modern, diverse finance departments. Tactics included a research-led campaign on women in finance, byline articles, profiles and commentary on the changing nature of the finance profession.

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For travel professionals we leveraged data from Emburse’s platform to provide insights and executive commentary on business travel trends. We published a quarterly travel trends index and offered data on timely news topics.

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To build overall brand awareness we leaned into Emburse’s focus on humanizing the employee experience, using this to position the company against competitors during product announcements and in CEO interviews. To support this message, we also placed stories about Emburse’s own social purpose initiatives though bylines (e.g. Quartz), podcasts and social media.

In their words

“Firebrand’s content team consistently nails our executive leadership team’s voice. The consistent and skillful nature of Firebrand’s media insights and relationships has increased our reputation with finance writers at national outlets Emburse had not previously worked with.”
– Tim Wheatcroft, Senior Director of Corporate Communications at Emburse

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