Category: Event Planning
The Mulrain family arrives in style.
A homecoming parade came to Chesapeake on Saturday, March 30, 2019 but not the kind you might expect.
That’s because members of the Porsche Club of America – First Settlers Region drove 20 Porsche sport cars up and down Marcus Street in the Crestwood area of Chesapeake to celebrate the Mulrain family as new homeowners through Habitat for Humanity of South Hampton Roads.
Once the Rubin Communications Group team learned about the Porsche Club’s involvement, we knew we had a golden media opportunity. We put out the word to our contacts at the TV news stations and newspapers and the response was immediate.
We landed coverage from the local newspaper and received mentions seven times on local TV news:
- The Virginian-Pilot
- WTKR NewsChannel 3 (CBS affiliate) and its sister station WGNT
- WVEC Channel 13 (ABC affiliate)
For the past four years, Rubin Communications has been the PR arm for the greatest annual educational event in Hampton Roads: ACCESS College Foundation’s “College Commitment Day.” The entire RCG staff worked the event!
CCD gathers Southside and Northampton County high school seniors (more than 2,000!) to celebrate their college acceptances in a BIG way. Z104’s Shaggy emcees the event and Access Staff and sponsors award surprise scholarships to deserving students. The 2019 scholarship total was $30,000!
Held on April 30 at the Ted Constant Convocation Center, the seniors wore matching lime green shirts and danced and cheered through the entire hour-long ceremony. It made for great pictures and video for reporters and Creative Director Jessica Davenport couldn’t have asked for better coverage.
“From Bonnie’s live interview with Coast Live before the event began to the cover story and photo in the Suffolk News Herald the next day, I am so pleased with media interest this year,” says Davenport. “CCD never disappoints!”
The event was covered on WVEC, WAVY, WTKR, The Virginian-Pilot and Suffolk News Herald!
OUTLET: Coast Live
We had fun this morning tagging along with our client, The Zeiders American Dream Theater, as two team theater members appeared on Coast Live on WTKR Newschannel 3.
This weekend (October 5-7) is THE weekend for “The Z” — the grand opening of the theater and the inaugural Proteus Festival, a three-day celebration of music, arts and film.
Check out the jam-packed Proteus schedule and buy tickets here –> https://thez.org/proteusfestival/
We helped Fairlead Integrated, a Portsmouth-based ship repair company, stage a groundbreaking on a new facility in Newport News.
We worked closely with a reporter from The Daily Press and the story landed on the front page. See below and view the story online.
It is probably counter intuitive that a city as large as Virginia Beach (over 450,000 in population) would still rely on volunteers, a fairly rural tradition, to provide emergency medical services.
But if you’re injured or sick in the resort city, the odds are an ambulance manned by regular citizens, well trained to administer life saving care, will arrive at the scene. Today more than a thousand men and women, ages 18 and up, answer the call, many “running” a weekly 12-hour shift that they incorporate into their otherwise busy work or family schedules.
Shouldn’t someone thank them for this sacrifice of their time and energy?
Our plan? A major one-day event called Rock the Squads! at Mount Trashmore where we invite all the volunteers and their families for a free catered lunch, a souvenir t-shirt, a customized challenge coin, a concert featuring a popular local band and an opportunity to be in a mass picture shot from a drone hovering over the crowd.
The result? Mayor Will Sessoms, who spoke on a megaphone to the crowd gathered on the mountain, was thrilled, encouraging us to do this again next year. The volunteers were equally enthusiastic, thanking us profusely for putting the event together. We were particularly proud, watching the paramedics with their parents, grandparents, spouses and children (and grandchildren) frolicking in the park, dancing to The Deloreans in their yellow Rock the Squads! t-shirts and wolfing down the chicken and barbecue. “It made us all feel like a big family,” said one volunteer. This day, all of us at RCG felt like part of that family too.
When the new Constitution Drive extension opened, Ripley Heatwole turned to RCG for a creative idea. Since pedestrians, bicyclists and cars would use the 400-foot bridge, we arranged for students of The Art Institute of Virginia Beach and local bicyclists to be the first to cross it. Instead of making the event solely about a photo op with a ribbon, we turned it into a media opportunity with real footage and excitement.
For the 15th anniversary of the Mission of Mercy (MOM), which has donated millions of dollars in free dental care, RCG came up with the idea of a celebratory (and tooth friendly!) “milk toast” to kick-off each MOM project throughout Virginia. The City of Suffolk, including Mayor Linda Johnson, was a partner in the inaugural event, along with representatives of the school system, police department, Obici Health Care Foundation, Virginia Health Care Foundation, Suffolk Partnership for a Healthy Community and local physicians. Each toast, from Tidewater to Northern Virginia, has generated its own local media attention and provided excellent social media and newsletter content.
