Blog Archives for Public Relations
New West Honored for Pro Bono Support to Military
Pictured, from left to right: ESGR Area Chair Jim Papovich, New West Senior Account Manager Gary Elder, New West CEO Becky Simpson and New West President Tom Howell.
Kudos to us!
Representatives from the Kentucky ESGR (Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve) dropped by the New West offices last week with a nice and unexpected gesture.
They presented New West with the prestigious Seven Seals Award, which recognizes employers who provide outstanding support for the men and women serving in the U.S. military. New West Senior Account Manager Gary Elder provides pro bono public relations to the ESGR to help the Department of Defense organization promote its mission: encouraging employers to support guard and reserve members and recognizing those employers that go above and beyond in demonstrating that support.
Kentucky ESGR Region 3 Chairman Jim Papovich and state Public Affairs Director Harry Wiley presented the award.
We are honored to receive this award and happy to do our part to help the men and women who serve our country.
Whew! What a month it was!
Posted by Tom Howell on October 28, 2010 · Comment
Hundreds of thousands of visitors explored the Kentucky Experience at the FEI Alltech World Equestrian Games.
The last four weeks have been a blur of activity here at New West. And before we light out to our next assignments, we thought we’d catch our breaths for a brief recap.
It all began with the load-in of all things Kentucky into The Kentucky Experience at the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games. Two years in the planning, the three pavilions and courtyard gardens welcomed the 500,000-plus people who visited or participated in the Games at the Kentucky Horse Park. From Corvettes to crafts and bourbon to bluegrass bands – every item, every activity and every inch of space was carefully designed, decorated and displayed to showcase the best Kentucky has to offer. For 16 days, the International (and NBC-TV) “sun” shone bright on this Kentucky home! For that work, the Kentucky Department of Travel presented New West with its “Partner of the Year” award. Thanks for the recognition. It was FUN!
Visitors to the Louisville Water Company's 150th anniversary celebration enjoyed a carriage ride. The historic Water Tower stands in the background.
While WEG was in high gear, we were also helping our friends at the Louisville Water Company prep for a big 150th anniversary celebration. The water branded Pure Tap by New West more than a decade ago was first delivered to businesses in what is now the Central Business District on October 16, 1860. Highlights of the celebration included tours of the magnificent buildings that water company leadership has carefully preserved and maintained over the years (photos) and carriage rides around the Water Tower property on River Road. And through May of 2011, visitors to The Frazier Museum in downtown Louisville will be treated to a display of LWC firsts, facts and artifacts (See http://www.fraziermuseum.org/).
New West helped celebrate a major economic development announcement as well. Our writers, designers and event management teams helped our GE Appliances and Lighting client orchestrate some world-class good news. It began with an early October announcement at the GE Lighting plant in Bucyrus, Ohio, that will double its workforce over the next two years and ended just last week with the simultaneous announcement at four GE facilities in middle America involving hundreds of millions of dollars of new investment and hundreds of new jobs.
Ohio marketer praises ‘Kentucky Unbridled Spirit’ brand
It’s one thing to toot your own horn. It’s another to get a ringing endorsement from a peer.
We checked our Google alerts recently and discovered that Jean Gianfagna, founder and president of a marketing consulting firm in Cleveland, had nice things to say about the Unbridled Spirit brand New West created for the state of Kentucky in 2004.
More on that in a minute. First, though, Ms. Gianfagna wanted to talk about her home state’s new “Beautiful Ohio” plate. The plate, Ms. Gianfagna said, “makes a classic branding and marketing mistake: Obscuring the name of the product through ‘creative’ graphic design. In fact, it’s hard to imagine what else the designers could have done to bury the brand.” She complained about typeface that’s too hard to read, “clumsy” visual elements, an overly busy design, and positioning of the word “Ohio” in such a way that plate frame holders will cover up at least part of it.
Many other states have made similar mistakes, Gianfagna said. Kentucky, on the other hand, “designed a clean, attractive license plate whose main visual element is its ‘Kentucky Unbridled Spirit’ branding, the official logo of the brand strategy that applies to all of Kentucky’s tourism marketing and promotion – including its license plates.” This strategy has paid off, she said, noting that public perceptions of Kentucky have improved as a result.
“Imagine the impact,” Gianfagna concluded, “if Ohio officials had followed Kentucky’s lead and recognized the state’s license plate as a branding opportunity. Suppose they created a visually striking graphic design that showcased the brand in a readable, engaging, and memorable way and linked to the state’s tourism marketing campaign. Ohio would be making millions of powerful, positive impressions on people everywhere, every day. And that would be a smart branding strategy.”
Thanks, Jean. We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.
For the full text of Ms. Gianfagna’s remarks, see http://www.gianfagnamarketing.com/blog/2010/03/01/a-branding-blunder-averted-ohio-almost-makes-a-classic-marketing-mistake/
Let them rant, or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the criticism
Sometimes the best offense is a good defense. And sometimes the best defense is letting people bad-mouth you.
Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Like a recipe for failure?
But that’s just what Barack Obama did, and many experts are saying that’s one reason he got elected president last November. Obama allowed his critics to come to his own social network site (MyBarackObama.com) and blow off steam. Whether these critics were nudged into the Obama fold or stayed upset with the candidate is almost beside the point. By coming to one site, the candidate’s site, rather than working behind his back to stir up a movement against him, the critics were largely neutralized. In many cases the complaints were countered by Obama’s staff or, better yet, by his grassroots supporters.
The point is, the debate was contained within a defined forum, on the subject’s home turf. The door was open, grievances were aired, and the world went on turning. And in the process the target of the criticism gained credibility.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve accepted the fact that some people are going to criticize me, my family, my business, my clients, my political heroes, my favorite entertainers, my beloved sports team, or my hometown – no matter how much I wish otherwise. Disagreement and conflict are part of being a human. Google “criticism of Mother Teresa” and you’ll get 227,000 hits, for heaven’s sake.
By the same token, if you’re active and visible, people are talking about you. And you know what? Let them talk. In fact, encourage them to talk. Set up a forum or a blog about your product or service and engage them. Maybe they’ll be defanged by your – sorry, guess I’ll use that word everybody else uses these days – transparency. Your supporters might well come to your defense, or at worst, they will make up their own minds about the validity of any criticism and, if they already have a good opinion of you, they’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Most people who have spent a significant amount of time online realize that the Negative Nellies of cyberspace tend to be quite vocal – but not always reliable.
Responding is tricky. If the criticism is isolated, hysterical, or not directly related to your product or service, in most cases you should just let it go. If the same criticism pops up more than once, you should acknowledge it and, if plausible, pledge to look into it. When appropriate, offer to work one-on-one with the critic to resolve the issue. If you do respond, do so with a respectful tone, even if deep down you think the critique is out of line.
Keep in mind that the most valuable lessons in life often come from our critics. Constructive criticism might help you learn how to build a better mousetrap, or how to improve customer service. And in the process, your customers just might become even more loyal than before.
Bashing the embargo
PR people sometimes put “embargoes” on their news releases or other types of information, asking a writer, broadcaster, or blogger to hold off on reporting the information until a time certain. There are a variety of reasons to use embargoes, from legal to tactical, but the effect of an embargo is to give targeted media people time to properly prepare a story before the info is given broader release.
Well, the founder of one of the top tech blogs in the world has come down hard against embargoes, and he’s quite “in your face” about it.
“Death to the embargo,” screams the headline over Michael Harrington’s Dec. 17 post on his blog, TechCrunch.com, which, according to Quantcast, attracts 2.4 million visitors per month.
“PR firms are out of control,” Harrington begins. “Today we are taking a radical step towards fighting the chaos. From this point on we will break every embargo we agree to.” In other words, he’s willing to intentionally deceive PR professionals into believing he will honor their embargo request, when in reality, he knows he won’t. He has also included an image of an extended middle finger – presumably a succinct summation of his thoughts – in his post. See http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/17/death-to-the-embargo/
Harrington says that PR people are sending out so many embargoed news items, to so many competing media, and so many of those media are breaking the embargo, that TechCrunch has decided to simply stop honoring them.
Sure, some PR people are lazy or obnoxious, just like some writers (or some plumbers, or some politicians, or some CEOs) are lazy or obnoxious. Still, whether TechCrunch is being reasonable or not (nearly 400 people responded to Harrington’s post, many of them taking him to task), his site’s decision shows a new level of resistance to standard PR/journalist courtesy that cannot be ignored.
You can’t always set the rules in communicating with the media. But you can avoid missteps by knowing what they’re up to – and by using tried and true relationship-building techniques when dealing with them.
