Month: September 2013
Matter Spotlight – Melissa Garabedian
A Lesson AT&T Will “Never Forget”
We have all heard it time and time again: From the moment you send a tweet or post to Facebook, your words are forever on display for the entire world to see – even if you press delete. Talk about pressure! Social media marketers and public relations professionals are well aware of the embarrassment the simplest typo could cause a brand. You don’t have to remind… Read more »
Rounding the Mark with Powerful Images
Two top-of-mind topics collided yesterday when I was forwarded a dynamite article about the technology that goes into the catamarans currently racing in the America’s Cup. My affinity for sailing overlapped with my day job – the article provided another reminder of how it behooves all of us to always consider using visuals to help tell our story. Read this, this or this, and you will… Read more »
5 Ways PR Firms Impress New Clients
We started working with a few new (and terrific!) clients in the past couple of months, and early reports indicate that all systems are go and we’re off and running positively. These same reports also indicate that our smart and savvy public relations and social media teams execute in a way that is a welcome change from the process, behavior and lack of results generated from… Read more »
5 Steps to Social Media Success
If your company is not utilizing social media in some capacity, it is not taking advantage of a valuable tool to engage with its target market. Social media is still quickly evolving from a place to just simply communicate to an environment that can help inform and promote brand messaging. Many people follow companies to stay in the loop on products, promotions and progress, more than… Read more »
Thank goodness. Football is back.
I’m pumped about the start of football season, and am so looking forward to watching my Patriots weekly this fall and (fingers crossed!) early winter. If Tom Brady and our boys can meet the expectations of Sports Illustrated – that the Pats will meet Seattle in the Super Bowl – I’d be thrilled. Despite a rather unusual off-season – you can say that incomprehensible criminal activity… Read more »
My Life in #Hashtags
While scanning my Facebook homepage, Twitter feed, or Instagram page it’s rare for me to not come across a hashtag. Whether it’s a tweet, status update, comment, or caption chances are I’ll find a word or phrase with a hashtag. Although a once scarcely used practice, the hashtag has come to define our day to day actions and thus describe our lives. This has happened… Read more »
Is All Press Still Good Press?
Who would have thought that adding a handful of french fries to a hamburger would spark such a controversial conversation online? Burger King launched the $1 “French Fry Burger” because apparently, that is what their customers wanted. It seems like such a simple strategy, listen to your customers and then implement their idea, just like Burger King did. But is the outcome always going to be… Read more »
Along the Western (PR) front
I – along with Jesse Ciccone, a Managing Director here at Matter – have had the luxury of spending the week in the Pacific Northwest with Kent Hollenbeck and Josh Rein, two of the dynamite professionals who joined Matter earlier this summer when we acquired The Hollenbeck Group, based in Portland, Oregon. In addition to getting together to cover timely topics such as recruiting, cross-agency happenings,… Read more »
Johnny Manziel and the NCAA's PR Dilemma
Did anyone else see what Johnny Manziel did in the second half of last Saturday’s opening game against Rice? Aside from completing six passes for 94 yards with three touchdowns, the Texas A&M superstar quarterback also went on to embarrass himself, the university and the entire NCAA brain trust by mocking the opposition and pretending to sign an autograph. My issue as it relates to PR… Read more »
The Ever-Changing PR Salesperson
My LinkedIn profile lists the (modest in length) stops I made as a PR professional. For the past 20 years I held corporate-side gigs and carried the business card of a number of public relations agencies. I worked in shops large and small – some internationally focused and some local – and in shops that had a focus in almost every category of business, including high-technology,… Read more »
Five Pitfalls of Bad Copy
Good copywriting is often more an art than a science, but as with any skill, there are a few common mistakes that can knock your finished product off the rails. Comma Chameleon: In 1962, a single misplaced overbar in a line of code for the Mariner 1 space probe cost NASA $80 million and a boatload of bad press, a bungle that Arthur C. Clark notably… Read more »