Winner: Candice Eng, INK PR, Account Supervisor
Candice Eng is an all around PR badass. And, if PR were an Olympic sport, she would win the "all-around" for sure. Eng started out at INK PR as an Assistant Account Executive and has grown over the last four years to lead clients and teams as an Account Supervisor.
Just like a good PR program, Eng is resilient, persistent and adaptable. You can find her on most days in her "do do do go go go" mode, which involves her perched behind her desk, nose to screen, planning, executing, collecting and analyzing results. Her true specialty, however, lies in media relations. Named PRSourceCode's Top Tech PR Pro in 2013, Eng’s relationships with media are second to none.
Eng knows her media like she knows her clients. She goes beyond pitching and has an intrinsic understanding of what stories her contacts will want to know about to grow their own careers and provide their readers with real value. She has a "rolodex" of national, business, tech and trade media at publications such as Mashable, ReadWrite, TIME, The Verge, FastCo, CNET and more that Don Drapper would be jealous of. In addition to her client management role, Eng also works internally on new business opportunities and works with pro bono clients the Gazelle Foundation and Komen Austin.
Her brilliance was on full display while working with Volusion. Volusion is an ecommerce platform that was looking for ways to capitalize on reporters covering holiday related stories. Eng and the INK team put together a strategy to increase coverage while showcasing the company's thought leadership in the commerce and SMB space. The plan included creating Volusion-branded holiday reports, which leveraged the company's vast wealth of data and statistics from its work with over 14,000 small to medium business merchants across a variety of industries.
The two reports were strategically spaced out to get on media’s holiday radar early and also created thought leadership and coverage momentum throughout the fall and winter. The reports garnered 769 mentions, 19 media interviews, and 33 unique articles. Of the 33 articles, 25 were earned coverage and 8 were owned content/contributed articles. Coverage placement included eMarketer reports, Fierce Retail, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Entrepreneur, Huffington Post, Retail TouchPoints, and more.
Honorable Mention:
· Dan Gregory, Susan Davis International