Alissa Blate, executive VP/director of consumer lifestyle marketing with the MWW Group, is the winner of PR News' Brand Marketer of the Year Award.
Is it any coincidence that Alissa Blate majored in psychology but ended up in PR? You may be envisioning your resident PR manager lying on a couch and reliving his
professional obstacles, but for Blate, there was some method to her madness.
"You're dealing with people, and everything is about communication," she says of her work at MWW Group with clients like McDonald's and Nikon. "You really
have to put yourself in their shoes and understand how they think to be able to market to them. There's a lot of psychology to that."
Beyond the task of getting into her clients' heads to develop a killer marketing strategy, Blate confronts the challenges set forth by the PR profession as a whole: "Getting a
client to understand the value of public relations and to understand that they need to market to today's consumer."
Her means of overcoming these barriers? Reconciling the new media beast, for starters. Being an Internet junkie herself, that's all in a good day's work for Blate.
"Technology has really infiltrated the industry, and we really have to embrace it as professionals," she says. "Some accept it and some don't, and the ones who don't aren't
going to be able to deliver."
In between delivering winning campaigns and managing the schedules of her four children, Blate hopes to do some volunteer work in a third-world country. But until her schedule
opens up, it's onward and upward for her contributions to the PR industry.
"You just continue on a path," she says, "and don't look back."
Contact: Alissa Blate, 201.507.9500, [email protected]