This week's strategy: Leverage your relationship with your agency to develop unique partnerships that get your message heard. Val Marmillion, president of Pacific Visions
Communications, connects diverse clients on a regular basis to promote causes like saving Louisiana's coastal regions. Marmillion has brought together energy companies and
environmentalists (not your typical bedfellows) to create the America's Wetlands campaign to promote the importance of Louisiana's natural resources.
Pacific Visions first conducts research to identify the key issue in a given campaign and then talks with various clients to see where their interests lie. For the Wetlands
campaign, energy companies like Shell Oil were interested in the natural protection the wetlands offer to oil and gas pipelines.
Environmental defense agencies were interested in preserving the ecological value of the wetlands. Marmillion created campaign themes that lie in the middle ground: "World
Ecological Significance" and "Economic and Energy Security for the Nation." Working off these two themes, the campaign is able to accomplish a single goal - saving the Wetlands -
while bringing together diverse interests that boost credibility in their own sectors. (Marmillion, 202/387-8550)