Raleigh | Fried Logic

Krispy Kreme Success: 6 Doughnuts

Feb82010

This past weekend was the Krispy Kreme Challenge, which I mentioned a few weeks back when I registered. The challenge is to run 2 miles, eat a dozen doughnuts, run 2 miles – all in under an hour. I did not sign up as a “challenger” but instead as a “casual” runner, with a goal of 5 doughnuts and no reversals.

Things got crazy – I ate 6. There were a few close calls, but no reversals. Right as my friends were telling me they thought I was going to lose it, the guy behind me did exactly that. He lost all of his doughnuts, inches from where we were standing. At that point, everyone who was trying to eat one more immediately stopped and we began the trek back.

There’s more strategy than you think in doughnut eating. I simply eat one a time, as quickly as possible. One friend smushes them together in what we call a “doughnut sandwich” – he is convinced it’s easier to eat this way. I also saw someone dipping them in water, which is just gross.

Who’s with me next year? Goal…maybe 7? Until then, no doughnuts for me.

TAGS: Doughnuts, Krispy Cream Challenge, Raleigh Comment (1)

Mauldin Joins the PR Department

Feb22010

Stephanie Styons

A warm welcome to Melea Mauldin! She joins the agency as an Account Executive in the Public Relations department.

Melea comes to us from Jackson Marketing Group, a full-service agency in Greenville, SC. In the past, she has provided PR support to BMW, BF Goodrich, Food Lion, and Bloom. With Melea’s solid media relations and event planning experience, we look forward to her helping the Howard, Merrell & Partners team raise visibility for our clients.

We are glad to have Melea, a UNC-Chapel Hill graduate, back in the Tarheel state.

TAGS: HM&P, Howard Merrell and Partners, PR department, Public Relations, Raleigh, tarheel, UNC Comments (8)

Howard, Merrell & Partners Wins 8 Raleigh Public Relations Society Awards

Jun172009

Kipp Bodnar

Last night the Raleigh Public Relations Society held its annual Sir Walter Raleigh Awards dinner and celebrates the organization’s 50th anniversary. The Sir Walter Raleigh Awards honor outstanding public relations work in the Triangle area. The competition recognizes firms of all sizes for excellence in the field. Last night the Howard, Merrell & Partners public relations team took home many top honors!

Howard, Merrell & Partners earned the following awards:

Total Communications/Community Relations Campaign
Organizational Identity/Promotion:
Project Gecko Presented by Zilla – GOLD
Miscellaneous Special Events:
CORDURA® Brand Scavenger Hunt – SILVER

Special Event:
Butterball Grand Opening – HONORABLE MENTION

Public Relations Writing
Opinion/Feature Writing:
Butterball Op-Ed – HONORABLE MENTION
News Release:
Humanities Center ASC Conference – SILVER and BEST IN DIVISION

Publications
Open Category:
Project Gecko Presented by Zilla – GOLD and BEST IN DIVISON

The HM&P PR team would also like to thank Peter Shankman for an inspiring and thoughtful speech at last night’s dinner. It was a great event thank you to everyone who helped to make it possible!

TAGS: awards, Public Relations, Raleigh, RPRS Leave A Comment

Journalist Tweets The Gateway To Reporter Updates On Twitter

May192009

Kipp Bodnar

At the intersection of social media and public relations you will find Journalist Tweets, a new service from Cision, a company that specializes in media intelligence. Journalist Tweets categorizes journalists who use twitter to allow public relations professionals to easily follow their updates. For example you can follow all of the health journalist tweets. The service isn’t perfect is does not auto refresh the page and it doesn’t let you further filter the journalists Twitter streams down to a certain topic. However, it does serve as a good tool for public relations professionals to use especially those that don’t yet use Twitter.

Beyond being a good tool for PR people, Journalist Tweets is also a great example of aggregation marketing. Cision’s customers are public relations agencies and professionals. By creating a free service that helps provide actionable information for the public relations industry Cision has created a branding and lead generation tool that is sticky. It is a tool that PR pros need to come back to everyday giving Cision a valuable community of supporters.

Will you use Journalist Tweets?

TAGS: Aggregation, Cision, Howard Merrell and Partners, Journalist Tweets, Marketing, North Carolina, Public Relations, Raleigh, social media, twitter Comments (3)

Howard, Merrell & Partners Brings Food To Life For Dixie®

May132009

Nicole Curtis

coffee-on-dixie-c2ae-insulair-c2ae-on-flickr-photo-sharing

Menu favorites speak their mind through the new integrated Dixie brand campaign launched by Georgia-Pacific Professional Food Services Solutions. Created by HM&P, Food & Drinks on Dixie® features popular food items as characters who share what they love about the innovative line of Dixie® foodservice products. Through the campaign’s three main characters – affectionately referred to as Hamburger, Coffee and Ice Cream – customers get a first-hand look at what it is like “going out on Dixie®.”

The campaign has been very well received in the media. Through the outreach of HM&P’s public relations team the campaign landed on AdWeek’s blog this morning.

To see more videos created for the campaign, visit DIXIE’s YouTube channel.

TAGS: ad agency, advertising, Dixie, Dixie Foodservice, Georgia Pacific Professionall, GP, North Carolina, Public Relations, public relations firm, Raleigh Comment (1)

Griffin’s FAIL Maker Shows Corporations How iPhone Apps Should Be Done

May102009

Kipp Bodnar

New platforms bring new opportunities for marketers. The iPhone is one of the platforms currently most talked about in marketing brainstorms around the world. Apple with its application store has made it easy for individuals and companies to develop and distribute mobile applications. Over 1 billion applications have already been downloaded on iPhones and iPod touch devices.

As with any other platform that begins to reach critical mass, companies are trying to determine what type of mobile application will help their customers or help them market and reach potential customers. Let’s look at an example of a company who has recently done this successfully.

Griffin’s FAIL Maker

griffin fail maker

At first glance many people probably thought Griffin was crazy for developing this “silly” application. These are the same people who don’t read the FAIL Blog. The FAIL Blog is a successful Internet meme that showcases funny picture with brief captions that include the word “FAIL” with the intent to make the image even funner. As one of the blogs long at the top of my must read list the FAIL blog offers a great get away with some really funny images. Being a FAIL blog fan I instantly downloaded the FAIL Maker app and had no clue it was developed by Griffin.

The application lets you ad caption to photos taken with or stored on your iPhone and then easily submit them to FAIL Blog. It is a simple app that works well and supports an existing community of users. FAIL Maker has quickly become one of the most popular iPhone applications.

Why did Griffin’s app succeed when so many other applications go unnoticed?

It already had a community of users before it was developed (ie. FAIL blog readers)
It was free
It is simple to use and gives users the power over their images
It is funny
It encouraged people to share with each other thus promoting the application in the process

What does Griffin get for developing Fail Maker?

In application ads that promote Griffin’s other iPhone applications (some of them paid) resulting in direct ROI from paid app downloads
Griffin makes iPhone and ipod accessories so FAIL Maker builds its brand with potential customers
Because of the platform users are already potential customers for Griffin products and can learn about them through in app ads

Developing on Apple’s mobile platform isn’t right for everyone, but Griffin shows that it can be successful and deliver ROI if your plan and application serves your customer community.

TAGS: apple, FAIL Blog, FAIL Maker, griffin, Howard Merrell and Partners, iPhone, North Carolina, Raleigh, social media marketing Comment (1)

New Metrics For Facebook Brand Pages

May72009

Kipp Bodnar

When the term “social media marketing” is mentioned many minds go directly to Facebook. With more than 200 million members Facebook is the iconic social networking brand and thus the focus of many advertising and marketing efforts. Recently they announced changes to their user dashboard, which displays stats for owners of Facebook brand/fan pages.

Some of these new features include:

Graphs showing different types of fan interactions with the Page over time.
Count of active fans this week, with full age/sex/location breakdown.
A new count of total interactions this week, broken down by type.
Post quality rating, from 1 to 5 stars.
Graphs for Interactions, Interactions per Post, Post Quality, Stream CTR, Posts, Page views, Media Consumption, Review

All of these improvements provide valuable information for brand marketers, however the feature with the most potential value is post quality ratings. Facebook is about effective content marketing and community building for brands. To make improvements to content a company must know if the content is strong or weak. This type of reporting helps to show trends for the type of information your community/customers are most interested in which can help determine the future direction of both online and offline marketing efforts.

TAGS: Analytics, Facebook, Facebook Marketing, Fan Page, HM&P, Howard Merrell and Partners, North Carolina, Raleigh, social media, social media marketing Comment (1)

Need something to do? Think about roller derby.

May52009

Joshua Craig

Few people know this, but roller derby is making a comeback and Raleigh is lucky enough to have one of the top leagues in the nation.

The Carolina Rollergirls came in #6 nationally in 2008 and are currently #4 in the Eastern Division according the WFTDA (World Flat Track Derby Association) standings.

Some of the older people reading this will say “Oh, I remember that.”, but this is not the hokey, fake-wrestling (don’t get offended wrestling fans) type of roller derby from the 60s and 70s. This is pure sport. It is fast, it is powerful and it is extremely fun to watch.

Below are a few photos from local bouts (I am one of the volunteer photographers for the league).

If you are interested in seeing more of my photos check out my Derby Collection on Flickr.

If you are interested in learning more about your local league check out: http://www.carolinarollergirls.com.

Next bout

Carolina All-Stars vs. Charm City All-Stars
Carolina Bootleggers vs. Female Trouble

May 16th at Dorton Arena (map)

Doors open at 5:00 p.m.

1st Game: 5:15pm | 2nd Game: 6:30pm

Tickets art $10 in advance $14 day of. Kids 6-12 are only $5.

TAGS: carolina, derby, flat, Raleigh, roller, rollergirls, track, wftda Comment (1)

NCPRSA: Two Silver InSpire Awards

May42009

Laura Gross

Howard, Merrell & Partners received two Awards of Excellence from the Silver InSpire Awards hosted by the North Carolina Public Relations Society of America (NCPRSA). Project Gecko presented by ZillaTM won in the Events and Observances category while the CORDURA® Baselayer brand t-shirt launch won in the Integrated Communications category.

The NCPRSA Silver InSpire Awards annually recognize public relations projects that have met the highest standards of performance in the profession. Entries are required to prove that a campaign addresses a contemporary issue with skill, creativity and resourcefulness. The HM&P projects, Zilla’s Project Gecko and CORDURA® Baselayer brand t-shirt launch, met these requirements – and more.

“We have great clients who allow the agency to create unique projects, and this award is proof of that. Our clients are pleased with the strategic and creative approaches we’ve taken and the results we garnered. And, we are thrilled to be acknowledged and awarded by our industry peers,” said Howard, Merrell & Partners Senior Vice President of Public Relations Stephanie Styons.

ZillaTM challenged Howard, Merrell & Partners with the task of developing a program to increase awareness about reptile keeping and the Zilla brand. Thus, Project Gecko was born – a nationwide, educational contest in which students in the 4th, 5th and 6th grades were given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to name a new species of gecko. Project Gecko involved the development of teacher activity packets containing educational tools, media outreach, public relations support and event management.
CORDURA® brand looked to Howard, Merrell & Partners to develop and execute an integrated communications launch for the CORDURA® Baselayer brand t-shirt. The shirt’s primary benefit lies in its next-to-skin performance properties when exposed to heat in flash fire situations such as improvised explosive devices – making the CORDURA® Baselayer a true innovation for today’s warfighter. The launch engaged parties such as Ranger Joe’s, a store that is a military icon in the Fort Benning community, and The Wounded Warrior Project, a program that provides services to severely injured service members between active duty and transitioning to civilian life. The integrated campaign included media relations coordination, public relations support, event management, an award-winning microsite (www.defendyourbase.com), hang tags, point-of-purchase display racks and in-store banners.

TAGS: Award, HM&P, Howard Merrell and Partners, InSpire Awards, NC, NCPRSA, Public Relations, Raleigh Leave A Comment

Krispy Kreme Success: 6 Doughnuts

Mauldin Joins the PR Department

Howard, Merrell & Partners Wins 8 Raleigh Public Relations Society Awards

Howard, Merrell & Partners Brings Food To Life For Dixie®

Need something to do? Think about roller derby.

NCPRSA: Two Silver InSpire Awards

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