Good Advertising Leads to PR
People often call and ask, “Do you guys do PR?” We’ve always said no because we are really focused on building brands by other means and we let people who are great at PR and media relations do PR.
But more recently we have offered PR to some clients through doing the kind of work that get talked about and written about. Our work for America’s First Credit Union and Mannington Commerical has proved that our focus on creating great advertising and branding generates its own PR.
In February of this year, we launched the TV campaign for America’s First Federal Credit Union. Each of the five spots featured bankers going into sort of a confession booth on a downtown street to talk about the bad deeds they had done to their customers. Whether they were talking high rates and fees, cut services or bad car loans, the message is the same- that banks stick it to their customers, so it’s smarter to do business with America’s First Credit Union. To illustrate the contrast, we positioned America’s First as “Refreshingly unbank-like.”
These spots garnered lots of attention around the Birmingham area and credit unions all over the country. In June, they were featured in The New York Times, both in print and online. The article was soon picked up by The Huffington Post, The New York Post, FinancialBrand.com and other credit union trade publications and websites. It was also rewarding to be the cover story of the business section in our own Birmingham News.
Our belief that good advertising leads to PR also rang true with commercial flooring client, Mannington Commerical.
We were charged with designing their showroom for the NeoCon World’s Trade Fair. This tradeshow, hosted at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, is the largest commercial interiors tradeshow in the world. After completing several other projects to enhance their brand, we knew this was the biggest of all. Our hard work paid off, as Mannington’s showroom was named Best Small Showroom of NeoCon 2010 by the International Interior Design Association and Contract Magazine . This is a huge honor being up against so many showrooms and being in the good company of Herman Miller who earned Best Large Showroom at NeoCon.
The press from IIDA and Contract did not end there. The showroom design was spotted on several design blogs and trade publications, such as DecorGirl, Interior Design Magazine, even Mexico Design Magazine. And we are pleased that the final result caught the eye of Mannington’s other side of the business, Mannington Residential. We look forward to the exciting projects we will be doing for them.
So what’s our new answer those who ask if we “do PR:” Sort of. We just do it by setting out to create work that is both strategic and newsworthy.
