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Engage PR Newsletter
Volume V, Issue 1
March 20, 2007
Engage
PR Launches Company Blog
To further
differentiate Engage PR from other small to mid-sized boutique PR firms,
the agency has expanded its New Media Communications program to include its
own blog, InsidEPR, launched in November 2006.
The blog provides readers with insight into what
it's like to work at the agency, with topics ranging from media/analyst
relations to EPR's company culture and commentary
on trends in the technology space. Recent topics include a 2007 technology
market outlook, the awards both Engage PR and our clients received in 2006,
and why analyst relations are important to technology start-ups.
Each quarter, Molly Miller, principal for Engage PR, contributes at least
one post highlighting her thoughts about the industry and the agency's role
in new media. All employees are encouraged to contribute topics that are
important to their lives and their PR careers. To that end, posts reflect
the culture of the agency as well as why Engage PR has twice been named a
"Best Place
to Work in the Bay Area."
Since its launch last fall, the blog has received
consistent traffic from search engines like Google and Yahoo!, as well as
directly from the EPR company website. Response from readers has been
positive. After a post about how tech companies can best work with industry
analysts, a respected analyst in the wireless space wrote to tell the
author she hit the nail on the head.
We'd love to hear your thoughts on the Engage PR blog
as well. Check it out here.
New
Engage PR Web Site
Engage
PR has just gone live with a new website that highlights the agency's five
key strengths:
• Our ability to develop client strategies based on our
strong understanding of technology markets
• Our creativity and our proactive approach to PR
• Our focus on the relationships—with clients, press, and analysts—that are at the heart of PR
• Accountability from smart, well-trained
staff and hands-on attention from senior executives
• Goal-based, measurable results for every client
program
Please check out our new site here,
and let us know what you think!
A
Holiday Dinner Enjoyed By All
The Perinatal
Council, headquartered in Oakland,
California, provides
compassionate, comprehensive, culturally sensitive, and accessible
pregnancy, post-partum, and pediatric health services, as well as life
skills programs that benefit low-income, at-risk children and families. In
December, Engage PR's staff coordinated a Holiday dinner at the Council, made possible by a
feast-like donation from The
Dinner Source. Engage PR volunteers, along with the staff of the Perinatal Council, hosted 17 single-mother families for
this event. After dinner, which consisted of traditional turkey along with
Thai chicken and rice, honey-baked ham, pasta, and pies, to name a few
dishes, Engage PR presented Christmas presents to all the children and gift
cards to the mothers. The Holiday dinner
was highly successful—and highly rewarding for
Engage PR staffers, who enjoy giving back to the community and appreciate
working for a socially responsible agency.
Engage PR is
hiring!
Click here for details!
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The Rewarding Side of PR
Engage PR
clients won a number of prestigious industry and business awards and press accolades
in 2006. While awards are given for the quality and innovation of products
and services, the agency also works behind the scenes to raise clients'
visibility and recognition among industry influencers and judges. Our
support ranges from writing and editing carefully crafted submissions, to
ensuring that influencers and judges know our clients' executives and
understand their products, their markets, and their technologies.
ConSentry
- Best of Show Award for
Innovation from a small company; Info Security Decisions (ISD) Show
DiVitas
- Shortlisted for Red Herring 100
North America list
- Named one of five
Wireless Network Companies to Watch; Network World
- Unstrung Top Ten Startups
Kineto
- Financial Times (FT) World Communications
Award 2006 for innovation in technology
- Wireless Emerging
Technology Award in network infrastructure category; CTIA WIRELESS
2006
- Shortlisted for 2006 award in Mobile
Innovation category; GSM Association
- Network World 10 Telecom Start-Ups to
Watch
NexTone
- Internet Telephony Product of the Year
Award
- FierceVoIP Fierce 15
- Network World Clear Choice Test Award
in first-ever enterprise session border controller test
- Deloitte Technology Fast
50 Winner for the state of Maryland
(ranked #1)
- Deloitte's 2006
Technology Fast 500 (ranked #36 of 500 companies in North
America)
- Greater Washington Smart CEO 2006 Future 50
- Maryland Technology Champions
Award
- IT Week's Top 50 Technology
Innovators of 2006
- Finalist, Leading Light
Award for Best Marketing (Private Company), Light Reading
Strix
- Fastest Growing High-Tech
Company in Los Angeles Area; Los Angeles Business Journal, San Fernando
Business Journal
- Leading Light Award for
Best Marketing (Private Company); Light Reading
- Finalist, Best New Products
and Best IPO/M&A Candidate; Light Reading
- Runner up, 2006
GLOBALCOMM™ Award of Excellence in Technology Innovation
- NetEvents 2006 Wireless Product of
the Year
- Internet Telephony
Product Excellence Award
Virtela
- 2006 Frost & Sullivan
Value Enhancement Award for outstanding performance in Enterprise
Managed Network Services
RECONNEX'S RECURRING COLUMNS KEEP THE HEADLINES COMING
Reconnex is the leader in information monitoring
and protection appliances that discover, monitor, capture, and control all
known and unknown data traversing the network, and prevent private data and
Intellectual Property (IP) from leaving the network. A primary goal of
Engage PR's ongoing program for Reconnex is to place articles in highly regarded
publications to promote its brand and reach potential customers.
Over the last several months, the EPR Reconnex
team worked to secure not just a single article, but high-impact, standing
columns in leading trade publications Network World and SC
Magazine. To secure these recurring columns, EPR leveraged strong
relationships with key editors, provided in-depth proposals filled with
information on timely topics, and secured relevant industry experts to
write various columns.
The goal of these columns is to educate readers, and potential customers,
about the challenges of safeguarding private data and valuable IP against
insider threats, whether malicious or accidental. Previously, there was no
dedicated discussion venue for the issues associated with the insider threat
and internal vulnerabilities—issues that span
technical, legal, HR, compliance, financial, and other business areas. Now
readers get sound advice from Reconnex and other
seasoned professionals in two top-tier publications, reinforcing Reconnex's position as a market leader.
Engage PR works with Reconnex to determine
relevant vendor-neutral topics that reflect current trends and offer
important tips about protecting the network. EPR also works with Reconnex and expert contributors to ensure columns are
prepared and submitted on time. The agency's success with recurring columns
for Reconnex translates into higher visibility
and a way to keep the client top-of-mind with pertinent editors.
ConSentry's Market Success Helps EPR Schedule Press Tour
ConSentry Networks is a leading provider of secure
LAN solutions that enable businesses to protect their corporate assets,
ensure continuity of operations, and dramatically reduce the risk of
security breaches. During the last quarter of 2006, ConSentry
announced new features for its LANShield product platforms—the LANShield 3.0 OS and InSight
Command Center.
To share the news with key analysts and members of the press, Engage PR
suggested an in-person tour for Vice President of Marketing Dan Leary. The
tour gave Dan a chance to personally meet the editors and analysts that
cover the ConSentry security beat, highlight ConSentry's traction in the marketplace, and
communicate the key issues the new LANShield 3.0
features solve for current and potential customers. Altogether Engage PR
scheduled more than 20 briefings.
The new features of LANShield 3.0 along with InSight
Command Center
were well received by both the media and analysts, resulting in 24 articles
or brief summaries on the news announcement. Two key analyst groups in particular—Current
Analysis and Burton Group—commented that the
industry is looking for product enhancements such as ConSentry's
to solve customer pain points. Other articles also commented positively on
the new customizable features for the InSight Command Center.
Engage PR and ConSentry defined the recipe for
success with this tour by maximizing opportunities such as market and
customer momentum to gain coverage with the press and analyst communities
and to increase overall market awareness for ConSentry.
Advice
to PR Professionals: Slow Down, Think Strategically
"Slow down!" Engage PR Principal Molly Miller says that's the
best advice she can give anyone in the PR arena. This advice comes at the
end of a chapter titled "A Boutique PR Perspective" that she
contributed to the book "Public Relations Leadership Strategies,"
published in October 2006. This advice may appear counter-intuitive, but
its value is clear. In a deadline-driven, sometimes frenetic field, she
notes how important it is to take the time to think strategically about the
PR process, prepare pitches well, and have a backup plan if initial tactics
fail.
After describing her vision for Engage PR—which she characterizes by the depth of its domain expertise, the
effectiveness of its creative ideas, the quality of its relationships, and
the caliber of its account teams and work environment—Molly tackles the importance of developing PR programs that suit the
client's stage of development. She provides valuable insight into how to
promote companies in emerging markets, for example, by leveraging creative
pitching and finding creative "non-news" opportunities to gain
press coverage. These same skills are adaptable to mature companies trying
to reach new levels of visibility.
Molly also emphasizes the need to develop, measure, and quantify goals for
clients, and track goals so everyone knows what they are working to
achieve. Then she looks at the important elements of good PR service—being proactive, optimizing clients' time, good communications, and
more. The PR overview wraps up with a discussion of ways of interpreting
market feedback to determine the overall success of a PR program.
Note: "Public Relations Leadership Strategies" is part of the
"Inside the Minds" series of books published by Aspatore Books.
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