Most of us in PR are not happy about the shift away from traditional media to the Internet because of the painful consequences it’s caused journalists and news organizations. On the flip side, our agency has found promising opportunities in the new ways that information is shared. We’ve always been fortunate to have an “early adopter” on our team who has led the way for our agency and delivered benefits to our clients.
We’ve committed substantial resources to our digital media capabilities over the past few years and are now ready to launch High Impact Digital, a division dedicated to the digital world. With internet marketing blogger Mike Fruchter as Director of Digital Strategy, we’re providing the full menu of creative online media applications, social networking and search engine optimization. Two of our campaigns already have won industry awards.
For example, we’ve been instrumental in formulating International Dairy Queen’s social media strategies, including setting up its Facebook page, contributing to blog posts and utilizing creative promotions to establish relationships with bloggers. We also recently orchestrated a successful online “Tools for Teaching” contest for Catalogs.com, the Internet’s foremost authority on catalog shopping and savings. The contest for public school teachers to win $5,000 in school supplies generated 500 written submissions in the first two weeks, with more coming in every day. A campaign for Tampa-based Joffrey’s Coffee & Tea generated a 256 percent increase in traffic to the coffee company’s web site, posts from more than 1,500 bloggers, more than 7,000 online mentions and a 50 percent spike in Joffrey’s sales.
On another front, we’re also building our business in Raleigh, N.C. with the participation of Katie Lennon, our vice president who relocated to Raleigh and already is servicing clients there. So our motto for this year is, Nothing is more constant than change.
Jane Grant, September 15, 2009