Cour Design is a design firm that specializes in stage concert design, lighting, video, and set design for Grammy award-winning artists like Lizzo, Billie Eilish, and Kacey Musgraves. Their sister company, Syne Research, is also redefining the way people listen to music on streaming services with enhanced visual displays.

Both companies recently tapped into Dropbox and DocSend to smooth out their business operations and raise funds to expand their direct-to-consumer audio streaming companion.  

The Challenge

Gordon Droitcour, Co-Founder of Cour Design and Syne Research, wanted a simple way to track client proposals and investor pitch decks stored in Dropbox. 

Before Dropbox, Gordon had been sending simple email attachments—and he had no idea what prospects or investors were doing with the files once they were received. Attachments were clunky for artists to view on their phones on the road, and files with sensitive creative IP could easily be shared with competitors—a massive risk for the business. Gordon wanted a way to protect these files from getting into the wrong hands.

The Solution

Gordon and his team turned to DocSend for its rich analytics and advanced controls. With DocSend, Gordon knows when artists and investors are interested in his offers, and he can see when files are shared with other contacts. Now that he has tight control over file permission, he can rest easy knowing that his team’s designs won’t be stolen, their pricing information is kept confidential, and they’ll receive fair compensation for his hard work.

Scaling and running a design agency with Dropbox Backup and Sync

Lighting and animation files are hefty, and Cour Design goes through computers every four months to keep up with demand. Between the hassle of switching devices and wrangling external hard drives, data loss during these transitions was slowing down collaboration with high-profile artists who could make or break their business. 

Cour Design turned to Dropbox as a reliable cloud storage provider that could handle their creative output. With Dropbox Sync, Cour Design sends only one link, accessible to artists from anywhere on the road—no more back and forth on versions, no more searching for the latest file. 

“The reason we like Dropbox,” says Gordon, “is because I can just click on the file on my desktop, copy the link, send, and it’s done.”

And if anyone needs to access a previous version for whatever reason, Cour Design uses Dropbox Backup to retrieve it for up to 30 days. 

Protecting creative intellectual property with DocSend

Cour Design customizes every project for each client—which means their pricing strategy is just as bespoke.

Setting an expiration date on a scope of work with DocSend is huge. Then the offer is only valuable for two weeks, and no one artist can pull it up and ask about outdated pricing six months later.

Gordon Droitcour

Co-Founder, Cour Design

As an extra layer of security, Gordon says he’ll soon be using DocSend’s email verification feature to make sure confidential designs are viewed only by authorized collaborators. “We don’t usually design mockups ahead of a signed contract, but we will if we want the work badly enough,” Gordon says. “But it’s common in the industry for  artists to pick someone else and potentially take elements of your design they didn’t pay for. We’ve found it very hard to protect against that.” 

With DocSend, Gordon and his team have peace of mind that others aren’t copying their work. DocSend takes the agency to the next level—granting them ownership over their creative ideas through advanced controls. 

Gauging interest from potential clients and investors with DocSend’s analytics

DocSend helps Cour Design generate new business, too. The agency sends almost a dozen proposals to potential new clients every month, so it’s safe to say they value speed—but they also needed a way to gauge true interest from potential clients as a boutique design agency with aggressive expansion goals. 

The agency had previously been sending proposals over email, which wasn’t the easiest for artists to view on their phones. The team also didn’t know when someone had viewed their decks and when to anticipate hearing from potential clients. DocSend’s analytics allows Cour Design to track activity on every proposal, so they know what’s working and what should be revised for future engagements. 

When working with high-profile clients, it’s critical to anticipate questions and follow up on them quickly. With clear anticipation of potential client needs, Gordon can easily close business faster and use the additional time to focus on his other ventures.  

Making fundraising easier for long-term growth

We were really excited when we found out Dropbox had a product that would give us intelligence over our fundraising materials. DocSend makes it easy for us to upload the latest versions of our pitch decks and gives us full control over who is accessing them.

Gordon Droitcour

Co-Founder, Cour Design

Cour Design isn’t only focused on design for live entertainment—they also fundraise for their sister company, Syne Research, a venture that’s redefining the way people listen to music with enhanced visual displays.

Similar to their proposals for artists, the agency needed a way to gauge investor interest in pitch decks stored within Dropbox accounts. To analyze investor activity, Syne Research uses DocSend analytics to gain a better understanding of potential investor activity on their pitch decks. Gordon and team can see real-time, page-by-page insights, allowing them to know what parts of his deck to focus on in follow-up conversations. 

“I like that I can see whether an investor opened or shared the pitch deck,” Gordon says. “Without DocSend, there was no other way to see if somebody opened the deck or not.” 

As a founder with multiple businesses to oversee, Gordon runs on limited time. Finding the right decision maker can sometimes feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. Luckily for Gordon, he doesn’t have to spend hours painstakingly figuring out the right person at a venture capital firm. After sending out a DocSend link, Gordon receives email notifications when a deck is passed around at a firm, potentially saving him hours of searching for the right managing partner. With DocSend’s advanced analytics, Gordon is able to not only secure meetings with the right managing partner, but also prioritize the most compelling parts of his business with potential investors. 

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Before using DocSend, 104 West organized and managed media relations across different lists, Google Drive folders, and documents. Maintaining a running list of pitches, press drafts, and media kits per client was both tedious and time-consuming. “As an Account Manager, I’m always striving to provide transparency to our clients of our pitching process and status. The pitching progress we can share with clients is pretty black and white. We either pitched and didn’t hear back or we pitched and received a response. This leads to a decent amount of hypothesizing on our part to determine when and how it’s best to follow up with the media contacts we don’t hear from,” shares Laura Kubitz, 104 West Account Manager.

When pitching a story to a targeted list of media who could be a good fit for a story, reporter interest and pickup depends on a number of things including a compelling story, an existing working relationship, and of course, chance. Timing, current projects, and the news cycle can all impact media interest and inclusion in a story. 104 West utilizes DocSend to host the content they are pitching, such as a press release or piece of content, using a unique trackable link per story so they have aggregated analytics into the amount of interest a particular pitch is experiencing. This allows 104 West to anticipate the expected interest or on the other hand, if a new angle should be tried or a different group of media should be pursued.

“Now with DocSend, I can provide a much more tangible and accurate status report of our pitches to our clients. For example, has the media looked at the pitch, how much did they dig in, and even if they shared it with colleagues. This then empowers us to strategically approach certain media based on how we know they’ve interacted and proactively propose the best next steps,” said Laura.

One simple and secure link for maintaining and distributing client media kits

104 West maintains their client’s media kits to ensure that the imagery and copy that’s published about each client is the most accurate and up-to-date. Previous to DocSend, Allison Heard, 104 West’s Creative Services Manager, would maintain a Google Drive folder per client and at times even per media outreach, in order to ensure that the relevant stakeholders saw all of – or only – what they should see. With Google’s limitations in user provisioning and secure sharing, this led to having to manage multiple media kits per client based on the pitch. At other times, media kits were shared as an email attachment but many times the files were too large causing delivery issues and lag time or confusion during a critical time.

“At times, we only want to share a certain video or custom graphic with the media. Alternatively, one media contact we may want to share a different level of detail with than another. So we would find ourselves creating multiple folders for a single client pitch, which then created internal confusion and led to issues with a single source of truth,” recalls Allison.

“With DocSend, we’re able to easily maintain our client’s media kits in Spaces – a central, secure place. The link is always live and up-to-date, so I no longer have to worry about media having an outdated logo or incorrect boilerplate, and we can also provide different levels of access or custom views to different sets of media contacts. This is a game-changer for us when it comes to ensuring we have the right information in front of the right folks,” shares Allison.

104 West manages their client’s media kits in DocSend

Managing an embargoed story through secure sharing

For 104 West, managing embargoed stories can be tricky when sharing a highly anticipated or highly classified bit of information or upcoming story. Prior to DocSend, this was managed over email either with an attachment or Google Doc link. Although Google Docs is great for real-time editing and collaboration, when it comes to securely pitching highly anticipated information, a link or PDF attachment in the wrong hands can ruin a story’s debut.

“With DocSend, we can protect the security of our embargoed pitches by requiring an email in order to view it. Even if that link is forwarded to someone else, we are notified of that and they also can’t view it without providing their email. This not only gives us a great peace of mind that a story can’t leak but also provides us insight into the media’s interaction and consumption of our timely pitch,” shares Brian Mast, Managing Partner, 104 West.

“With DocSend, we have real-time insights as to which part of our story resonates – or not. With these insights we are building better relationships with the press and providing better transparency, media strategy, and overall service to our clients.

Brian Mast

Managing Partner, 104 West

A new lens into client and media relations

With DocSend, 104 West is now able to more proactively manage media relationships as well as provide their clients with more detailed and specific insight into their pitching process and strategy. With real-time, secure sharing, tracking and maintaining of client assets, 104 West is able to spend more time nailing the story angle than playing the follow-up.

“DocSend has transformed the way we pitch and share information with the media. The best way for us to work with the media is to give them relevant and valuable information. We now have real-time insights as to which part of our story resonates – or not. With these insights we are building better relationships with the press and providing better transparency, media strategy, and overall service to our clients,” concludes Brian.

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