GREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA (March 16, 2022) —Pace, the largest independent integrated content and brand storytelling agency in North America, has selected three new North Carolina small businesses in a variety of industries to partner with for the second cohort of the Pace Impact Project:
Rebecca Gridley, owner and trainer of Total Pet Care, a Cary-based business offering “safe, humane, effective force-free training” for pet owners and parents shares her excitement. “There is small business and then there is my business: a hectic, critter-filled micro-business,” she says. My first thought was, ‘No way! Wait? This is real! Holy cow!’ I read it twice and couldn’t wait to reply and get started!”
“This year’s submissions were awe-inspiring! There are so many underrepresented small business founders out there doing important work in the communities Pace calls home, making this decision very difficult. We ultimately selected small businesses at the cutting edge of their respective industries, and we can’t wait to see the great work we achieve together,” says Leigh Ann Klee, president and chief operating officer of Pace.
Launched in 2021 to help small businesses as they navigated the COVID-19 pandemic, the Pace Impact Project partners with multicultural, LGBTQ+, female and veteran entrepreneurs as well as entrepreneurs with disabilities to provide pro bono social media marketing services and training. The goal of the program is to help create social media campaigns that are unique to each participating business and its needs, and most importantly, to establish a strong social media foundation for these businesses to build upon in the future.
“We learned so much from partnering with last year’s participants. We’re sure this year is going to be even more dynamic with our new cohort of entrepreneurs,” says Britta Waller Melton, group creative director and the lead of operations for the Pace Impact Project. She continues, “Social media marketing can be intimidating to small and new businesses. We want to help these entrepreneurs build the skills, strategic thinking and creativity to make social accessible and easy to do.”
The Pace Impact Project’s 2021 cohort included four Triad North Carolina businesses: Rising Hope Clinical Assistance, Hotel Denim, Brilliant You Denim and Ghassan’s Fresh Mediterranean Eats. Leaders at all four of them finished the year more confident in their social media marketing, and with measurable progress toward their business goals.
“Ghassan’s Fresh Mediterranean Eats is so grateful to have been chosen for the Pace Impact Project. The Pace team was incredibly talented, creative, patient and easy to work with. I am a marketing team of one at work, so to be part of a larger group of peers while engaging on a creative level was so very rewarding. I learned so much about social media from them and am excited to use that knowledge for our social media planning moving forward—not to mention click rates are up, and that is wonderful,” says Lina Fleihan, brand director at Ghassan’s Fresh Mediterranean Eats and part of the inaugural cohort of the Pace Impact Project.
The Pace Impact Project is an extension of the marketing agency’s many social initiatives, including the sharing of 10% to 15% of the company’s profits with philanthropic causes every year and offering employees a paid day of service to volunteer in the community. For more information about the Pace Impact Project, please visit Paceco.com/pace-impact-project.
Pace
Pace is a woman-owned, national full-service marketing agency that specializes in integrated brand storytelling based in Greensboro, North Carolina, and with offices in New York City and San Antonio. Serving clients regionally and globally, Pace helps move a brand’s customers and employees to action through a potent combination of audience-first, data-driven thinking, smart strategies, technology and amazing creative. The agency’s talent is made up of creatives, strategists, analysts and technologists located across the country, who are shaping the marketing world each second. For more information, please visit Paceco.com, Twitter or LinkedIn.
Media Contact: Stephen Taylor, 336.378.6065, stephen.taylor@paceco.com
