Cercone Brown Blog

Boston Advertising & PR Firm One as Six “Honorable Mentions from 800 Submissions for “America’s Least Wasteful Cities” Campaign for Bottle-Maker Nalgene

Blending social media marketing, interactive design, and press relations has become a hallmark of Boston advertising and PR firm Cercone Brown & Co., helping brands such as GMAC Insurance, adidas, Quiksilver and others build campaigns that drive awareness, sales leads and ROI.

On October 21st, the firm was honored for Best Online Campaign for 2009 for the prestigious Platinum PR Awards for its “America’s Least Wasteful Cities” work for reusable bottle icon Nalgene. Cercone Brown & Co. was among the top eight companies with the Best Online Campaign out of a total pool of 800 submissions.

With thrift and conservation on the minds of many Americans, the campaign put the spotlight on wasteful behavior in our nation’s top cities. “The Nalgene Least Wasteful City Study” ranked 23 waste-focused habits of urban Americans, from recycling, to using public transportation, to shutting off lights. When the results were tallied, San Francisco earned the title of America’s Least Wasteful City, while Atlanta ranked last.

Launched just prior to Earth Day, the program leveraged social media networks including Twitter and Facebook as primary channels.

“From a simple strategy of creating usable, compelling content, the effort quickly caught fire and extended beyond our hopes,” said Caroline Budney, director, social responsibility, Cercone Brown & Co.  “Almost immediately the ‘Net reacted with Twitter the clear epicenter of activity, as our frequent tweets were fueled by the tweets of columnists and bloggers.”

In total, the campaign reached more than 1 million on Twitter alone, and was extended by numerous television and print new stories. The campaign allowed Nalgene to strengthen its online community, adding fans to Facebook and followers to Twitter, making direct conversations with important alpha consumers easier and stronger.

The Platinum PR Awards

Del Monte Foods, GE, Time Warner Cable and American Express are among the organizations competing for honors in the 2009 Platinum PR Awards. Presented by PR News, the leading information resource among communicators, this highly competitive program honors the best PR campaigns and initiatives of the year.

The finalists in this year’s awards program included corporations, nonprofits and agencies large and small. The award winners were announced at an October 21, 2009 awards luncheon at the Grand Hyatt in New York City and in PR News’ Platinum PR Awards special issue in October.

The awards were judged by a blue-chip panel that includes PR executives from corporations, agencies, nonprofits and associations, and leading educators and industry consultants.

“It is remarkable how far the PR discipline has come in the past few years in terms of impacting an organization’s bottom line and reputation,” says Diane Schwartz, vice president and group publisher of PR News. “This year’s finalists in the Platinum PR Awards reinforce how powerful public relations is in moving the needle.”

PR News’ Oct. 26 Platinum PR Issue profiles the top PR campaigns of the year and will serve as a users guide to PR departments of all sizes and missions. Coverage will include profiles of the top innovative campaigns, the smartest communications initiatives and the people behind them.

This is the second of three entries on Word of Mouth techniques for PR agencies and professionals. In the last entry, I talked about the first word of mouth tool, guerilla marketing. Today, it’s the publicity stunt. Granted, one could argue that they are very similar, but in my book there is one basic, but important difference: the stunt is about media coverage, including consumer generated media.

A stunt is an unabashed and often brazen play for publicity. Again, Red Bull has a great example: the Flutag. Otherwise normal, semi-emotionally balanced folk leaping from great heights in a hilarious, self-effacing attempt to fly on contraptions of their own design. You can’t help but look, and it makes great TV.

Stunts are easy to spot: skydivers, streakers, even the ol’DJ-on-the-billboard are stunt stereotypes. But to be successful, stunts have to do more than just grab attention. They must create compelling images, a can’t miss photo op. TV and print photo editors think of what looks good on the screen or a page, and it doesn’t always need to be outrageous.

Before baseball player Johnny Damon defected from the Red Sox to the Yankees, Gillette had extensive coverage for the launch of its new razor thank to him. Johnny agreed to shave his Grizzly Adams beard in public for a local charity. Complete with attractive female barbers (it’s a man’s razor, after all), they captured the city’s attention. Johnny’s clean-shaven face looked great on the evening news, leading all to believe that the M3Power must be one helluva razor.

But the best part of stunts these days? You don’t need the traditional media to be successful. We have YouTube. Still, it’s a crowded viral world out there. To be successful, you should the same press-savvy thinking to your viral videos as (good) PR pros have for years with the Stunt.

And in a shameless plug, check out a video of a stunt my firm, CBC, did for Nantucket Nectars back in 2004 when the Red Sox won the World Series. The World’s Largest Thank You Card brought thousands together from around New England, and made it all the way to the network news. Enjoy!

Next Up: Grassroots marketing.

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…)