Great Night for LP&P at #PubClubofNE Bell Ringer Awards
For communications pros in New England, The Publicity Club's Bell Ringer Awards are a big deal.
Last night, the Pub Club (as it's known in our circles) held its 42nd Annual Bell Ringers Award Ceremony at the Waltham Westin hotel and LP&P was well represented at a table with members of four teams up for awards. Each team was guaranteed at least a "Merit" award, but we all wanted more -- at least a Gold, Silver or Bronze Bell.
By the end of the night, we were celebrating two Golds, a Silver and a Bronze!
Reflecting a Team Effort & Emerging Practices
What was most significant about our hardware haul was the categories for which we submitted and won. The Gold Bells were awarded to the ThingMagic team in the "Social Media" category and to the ClearPractice team in the "Product/Service Launch: Health Care" category. The Silver Bell in the "Photo or Graphic with Caption Placement" category went to the Arbor Networks team and the Bronze Bell in the "Product/Service Launch: Clean Energy/Green Technology Campaign" category was taken by the Scuderi Group team.
These awards all reflect the success of our emerging practice areas, as well as the innovation and creativity required in the always-changing PR landscape as a result of digital and social media. They also recognize the tremendous team effort by each of these groups, because that's probably the most important ingredient for award-winning PR campaigns. The team effort extends to our clients as well, and we were pleased to have Ken Lynch from ThingMagic at our table last night to help celebrate that team's award.
Following are the details of each one of the awards, including the team members responsible and a summary of their innovative campaigns.
Gold Bell - Social Media: ThingMagic RFID 100 Campaign
Team members: Lucie Mann, April Corso and yours truly
With the primary objective of reinforcing ThingMagic’s position as a thought leader in the industry and promote the benefits of RFID to industries ranging from healthcare to retail, and everything in between, we launched a content-driven PR campaign that revolved around the idea of 100 uses of RFID. It was anchored by one blog post every business day for 100 days, each on a unique use of RFID.
The campaign is a great example of the integration of traditional and social media leveraging tools such as ThingMagic’s blog, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn as well as traditional PR practices. The campaign resulted in increased lead generation, website views, blog subscribers, Twitter followers as well as increased visibility in top tier publications (e.g. Read/Write Web, Wired) far beyond the core RFID community.
Gold Bell - Product/Service Launch: Health Care: ClearPractice Nimble Launch
Team members: Brittany McLaughlin, Bill McLaughlin (no relation)
With the Obama administration’s passage of the HITECH act, healthcare providers are being encouraged and financially incented to use technology to increase efficiencies while improving patient care. A key area of focus is the usage of electronic medical records (EMRs) to accomplish these objectives. ClearPractice’s strategy was to pair its EMR software with a transformative device – Apple’s iPad – resulting in a native iPad application called Nimble.
Expectations from the company’s board and primary investor were high, and LP&P was tasked with delivering explosive PR results that would include business, trade and blog press coverage across healthcare and technology categories for the launch of Nimble. With more than 35 unique pieces of feature level coverage in outlets including The New York Times, over 10,000 views of the Nimble promotional video on YouTube, a nearly 100% increase in ClearPractice’s Twitter following, and national broadcast interest from Fox Business News and The Today Show, the team delivered. Six months later, LP&P is still receiving inbound inquiries around Nimble from ClearPractice, and the application is one of the most mentioned in healthcare today.
Silver Bell - Photo or Graphic with Caption Placement: Arbor Networks
Team members: Nicole Shepard, Linsey McNew, Lucie Mann, Christine Simeone
At the end of January, Arbor Networks, a leading network security firm, was faced with an interesting opportunity when Egypt’s government decided to shut down its country’s Internet access. Since Arbor is one of the few companies that has global insight into Internet traffic, it created a graphic depicting the exact moment Egypt’s Internet access was turned off. Due to the extensive coverage surrounding this event, LP&P recognized the potential this graphic gave Arbor to become the go-to source on Internet shut downs. As a result, LP&P jumped at the opportunity and huddled immediately to map out a plan that would best leverage the graphic for maximum coverage and visibility for Arbor.
At the end of the day, LP&P’s results exceeded expectations with over 400 pieces of coverage, including CBS Evening News, Al Jazeera, CNN, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal. You name it, Arbor was in it. In the weeks that followed, the LP&P team verified that it accomplished its goal and was in regular contact with major media outlets such as NBC, ABC, Reuters, and AP on Internet traffic patterns as civil unrest continued in the Middle East.
Bronze Bell - Product/Service Launch: Clean Energy/Green Technology Campaign: Scuderi Group
Team members: Jamie Anderson, Sam Moore, Dustin Blackwell, Lauren Whittenberg, Carol Hanko
Scuderi Group is developing a new “split-cycle” engine design that is a viable option for automakers to meet new fuel efficiency standards requiring cars to achieve nearly a 30 percent increase from current standards by the 2016 model year. As a result, the company needed to draw increased attention to the viability of the Scuderi engine, expand awareness of its potential to new audiences and position it as a breakthrough technology for addressing the upcoming efficiency mandates.
As part of an ongoing relationship approach with the media, LP&P leveraged a January 17, 2011 announcement of vehicle simulations conducted at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) that showed the Scuderi engine consumed 25 percent less fuel than traditional internal combustion engines. The team focused on the Wall Street Journal as a keystone outlet whose coverage would legitimize Scuderi with the remaining business press and demonstrate that this new engine design was a development worthy of attention. As a result of this strategy, impactful coverage was achieved reaching every audience that was important to the Scuderi Group through coverage in Technology Review, Wired, NPR and Popular Science. This coverage led to nearly 50 inquiries from potential investors.
Please join me in congratulating everyone on these award-winning teams!
