Cercone Brown Blog

Join CBC this Friday, January 22 from 6pm to 9pm at the Vault in downtown Boston for an afterwork gathering of great drinks, great prizes and a great cause.

Hosted by Boston advertising and PR firm Cercone Brown & Co., some of Boston’s best will be lending a hand, from the Red Sox and Celtics to Nantucket’s Triple Eight Distillers and some of the city’s finest chefs. And every nickel raised will go to the American Red Cross to help the dreadful suffering of the disaster victims in Haiti.

Just $20 bucks covers you: free food, great drinks from Triple Eight (starting at 8:00 p.m.), music and a chance at amazing prizes:

Red Sox tickets, Celtics Premium Club seats in the Heineken Boardroom, one-on-one cooking lessons with Chef Rich Garcia of Tastings Wine Bar and Bistro, a private party hosted by chef Jay Silva of Bambara in the Hotel Marlowe, and gift certificates to Garden at the Cellar, a private party at Crush Boutique in Beacon Hill, and more.

Follow us on Twitter for updates: twitter/cerconebrown and friend us on Facebook to get the invite @ “cerconebrown”.  News as it happens.

PR agencies spend so much time talking about PR 2.0, bloggers, online media, social media and the like, as marketers we forget that we live in the real world, too.  And often, what we do in the real world is the very fire that fuels success in online marketing and spurs word-of-mouth across it all.  

To this end, I overheard a conversation at lunch where two marketing execs were talking about what they could do to drive Word of Mouth.  Aside from the fact that they shouldn’t talk about plans in an Au Bon Pain, it was clear that these guys were confused on some of the basic tools, such as guerilla marketing, publicity stunts and grassroots programs.  The terms were jumbled together in a mashup of craziness and swag, seemingly with very little direction.  Never mind they seemed to be clueless how to translate their ideas to online or social media marketing.

For what it’s worth, I thought I’d take a shot at providing some context to the conversation.   Hey, I may be completely full of s**t; talk to 50 marketers and you may get 50 different definitions for these same words. But defining these tactical kissing cousins is the key to having a good reference point to begin a plan.

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I came across a good article on effective media relations I thought I’d share. It’s from the Bulldog Reporter, a news source for PR professionals. It was from the blog Journalists Speak Out, which is a must read for all PR agency folk. While there’s not a lot of new information for people who work hard on packaging news with specific media needs in mind, it’s at very least a quick and easy reminder of some major do’s and don’ts for media relations agencies from Boston to Baton Rouge.

The big tip for me is the “nut graph.” You can be sure that all of our publicists at CBC will be adding this to their pitches and releases.

Enjoy…

New Year’s Resolutions Journalists Wish PR Practitioners Would Make
By Brian Pittman
“A resolution many journalists probably wish PR people would make could be to commit to doing more homework before calling us,” says Kristin Bender, the Berkeley reporter for the Bay Area News Group-East Bay, which owns The Oakland Tribune. “It doesn’t have to be extensive. Just ‘use the Google,’ as President Bush says,” continues Bender, who is also a freelance writer and frequent Bulldog Awards for Excellence in Media Relations and Publicity judge. (more…)