In this article, the second of two parts, we focus on the effectiveness of campaigns and strategies that companies employed in 1998. What follows are first-person accounts, from either the clients or the agency that handled the project.
Agency: GCI Group, New York
Contact: Frank Mantero, Bell South, 404/927-7435
Client: Bell South
PR Relief: The PR was for our Business Continuity Service product, a disaster recovery program for large businesses. It included the initial launch in the spring of 1998 and follow-up PR in the summer. What we wanted to do, through our partnership with IT disaster recovery firm Comdisco, was position our core capabilities on the network side to provide disaster planning for large corporations. This project allows Bell South's people to walk into a client and say, "We'll develop an eight-step planning methodology for you and our partner Comdisco will have a remote office set up."
We set up pre-briefings with analysts at Aberdeen, Gartner Group, Yankee Group and Kagan Telecommunications Associates to secure media references and to get a sense of the credibility of this product. What we wanted to do is draw awareness in the trade press, to take it to the next level to assure the business world that our network is reliable in case of a disaster.
We timed the initial launch in March and did follow-up during the first week of hurricane season in conjunction with FEMA. We got tremendous coverage, including The Charlotte Observer. We also did a VNR, an audio news release on the Web and B-roll for broadcasters. We ended up receiving four awards from the International Association of Business Communicators.
Agency: Innis Maggiore Gp., Canton, Ohio; Contact: Dan Pecchia, IMG, 330/499-4295
Client: Preferred Rubber Compounding Corp.
The PR Bounce Back: The custom rubber compounding industry isn't widely known for being newsworthy. A campaign last year for Preferred Rubber Compounding Corp. in Barberton, Ohio, however, relied on news coverage to communicate with customers and generate sales leads.
The campaign, with Innis Maggiore Group of Canton, Ohio, featured the launch of a quarterly, four-color news publication mailed to a list of 600 current and past customers and prospects.
Other highlights included publicity in the rubber trades and regional newspapers in northeast Ohio, as well as a three-dimensional direct mail piece to tout Preferred's new color compounding line.
By leveraging similar information for the publication, direct mail effort and trade publicity, the client was able to achieve remarkable cost efficiency and ended up with a very newsy year.
Agency: Sawchuck, Brown Associates, Albany, N.Y.
Contact: David Brown, SBA, 518/462-0318
Client: Albany International Airport
PR That Flies High: To introduce the region's new $70 million Albany International Airport, Sawchuk, Brown Associates designed and developed a six-month marketing and community outreach campaign.
Its three objectives were to position the airport as a leader in regional economic development, to educate the traveling public about the new facility and role of a regional airport and to enhance relationships with government, business, the community, the airlines and the travel industry.
The initiative - "Opening the Gateway to the Capital Region" - achieved the desired outcomes, reaching key opinion leaders and other targeted audiences through:
- a series of events drawing more than 20,000 (charity gala, community open house honoring veterans, economic development forum, travel/tourism industry breakfast and grand opening/VIP ribbon cutting); and
- a media relations effort resulting in extensive regional, national (Parade magazine, Associated Press) and trade press coverage; and
- broad community outreach which included hosting the annual regional art exhibition and presentations to schools, organizations and businesses.
Agency: Strategic Communications Group, Silver Spring, Md.
Contact: Marc Hausman, SCG, 301/408-4506
Client: Alta Software
First-Time Foray: Alta is a 60-person company with $10 million in revenues. The systems integration firm specializing in back-end, business to business e-commerce sites competes with a crowded market space, going up against companies with more than $200 million in revenue, including PriceWaterhouseCoopers and US Web.
Strategic Communications sought to establish Alta as experts in its field, even though the company had never conducted a PR campaign before.
"It was the ultimate media relations challenge," says president Marc Hausman. "This was the client's first time working with a PR agency and therefore they didn't know how to evaluate the results of the campaign.
Strategic's efforts to help Alta overcome its challenges were two-fold: First, Strategic positioned Alta's CEO, Nelson Carbonell, as an expert voice on the technologies that impact the Internet market.
Second, by setting up briefings with industry analysts, Strategic garnered editorial placements for Alta which helped increase awareness, including some high profile technology publications such as Computerworld, Info World and Internet Week.
"We spent a lot of time (two weeks) researching the editors by reading their articles and knowing what beats they covered," Hausman says. That Carbonell had substantial knowledge about technology allowed Hausman to pitch the media more successfully. Instead of simply requesting a profile on Alta, Hausman offered Carbonell as a source for the journalists covering the industry. "This led to a logical follow-up call about Alta and allowed us to maintain a relationship with the journalist," he says.