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.
es Virginia, by the fall of 2017 there could well be a 16,000-seat arena, largest in the state, hosting major recording artists, sports tournaments, ice shows and other events that have traditionally bypassed Hampton Roads. It would be located in what is now the parking lot of the Virginia Beach Convention Center near the Oceanfront, and it would be one of the first arenas in the nation to be privately owned.
That’s one reason Beach City Council liked the plan. In fact, council members liked it so much that on December 9 they voted 10-0 to approve a term sheet with the ESG Companies to give the local developer the land, $52 million in infrastructure improvements around the site and a portion of existing tax revenues. The arena will generate other tax revenues, create business for hotels and restaurants and promote entertainment development in the vicinity of the project.
RCG’s job was originally to work with the news media, but because of our strong presence at the Beach and multiple skills, we took on much more. We have worked with city communications staff on town hall meetings, provided information to council members, written press releases as well as web and social media copy, furnished political strategy and produced videos. One video chronicles a late-October trip made by city officials and the development team to Lincoln, Nebraska to view that community’s year old and highly successful Pinnacle Bank Arena. ESG hopes Pinnacle Bank will be a prototype for the one it would build in Virginia Beach.
The Lincoln video, all or part of which was shown at key meetings, on local news and online, was instrumental in helping civic and business leaders appreciate how much an arena of that scale could benefit the City. I went along on the visit, hired a videographer in Lincoln to shoot the footage and then worked with JPixx in Virginia Beach to edit the text and interviews into a cohesive five-and-a-half minute narrated package.
There is yet another vote in early 2015 to solidify the deal between ESG and the City. All indications are that a couple years from now, Virginia Beach will have the largest arena between Washington DC and Raleigh and draw visitors and locals to the Oceanfront during the fall, winter and spring when tourists are back at home and school.
We love when clients come to us with a great idea of their own. The client this time? Beth Sholom Village.
RCG is no stranger to Beth Sholom. We’ve helped with miscellaneous marketing and public relations projects as well as designed materials for BSV for years. In fact, the entire Rubin family has longstanding ties with the facility and residents; Joel is a past president and both he and Danny lead religious services regularly.
Marcia Brodie, the director of marketing for Beth Sholom Village in Virginia Beach, reached out to us with a thought. Marcia shared she had just finished Sue Halpern’s A Dog Walks into a Nursing Home with her daughter. The book got her thinking about the many dogs that come to work each day with their owners or visit on a regular basis. The residents have always enjoyed canine companions, and the idea morphed into a 2015 calendar, “The Dogs of Beth Sholom Village.”
But the calendar had to be done on a budget. Enter photographer John Toomey. John graciously donated his time to take photos of the residents, each with a special furry friend, throughout Beth Sholom. The resulting pictures are adorable and show the special bond between man and his best friend.
With the high resolution images in hand, it didn’t take long for us to design the cover and template for the calendar. The final product was an instant hit, garnering attention from the Virginia Beach Beacon. With proceeds from calendar sales going back to the home, the publicity added to the calendar’s popularity in the facility’s gift shop.
In spring 2014, we sat down with our client, Midtown at Town Center, a Ripley Heatwole property, to discuss goals and strategies for the year. The Ripley team wanted to increase brand awareness and strengthen the relationship with Town Center businesses and patrons.
To complement the new “Midtown at Town Center” brand, RCG facilitated conversations between Midtown and Bagels and More to brainstorm new ideas and create an eventual partnership.
From there, the idea for the Midtown Muffin was born. The “taste-testing team” at Midtown sampled recipes throughout the summer and narrowed the choices to two flavors. Next, RCG planned and promoted an event at Bagels and More where Midtown residents and the Town Center community sampled both flavors and voted for their favorite.
In the end, the lemon-blueberry muffin won top honors and became a fixture on the menu, which helps to boost the “Midtown” name in Town Center. Plus, residents can enjoy the muffin seven days a week in the Midtown clubhouse.
So what’s the community relations lesson behind the Midtown Muffin?
Relationships are essential in business-to-business marketing. The muffin concept is just what Midtown needed to generate exposure, and it’s also given Bagels and More new traffic in the door. The early conversations and willingness to work together made the idea happen. Now it’s a win win — and everyone gets muffins!
For the past couple years, Joel Rubin and the team at Jpixx Video in Virginia Beach have been telling some great stories about young people who have found their callings in the shipyard trades.
They have produced what they call “SMART Choice” videos for the Southeast Maritime and Transportation Center, based at Tidewater Community College in Virginia Beach, which promotes apprentice programs and other educational pathways into those jobs.
Joel found two great subjects at Auxiliary Systems, a sizable marine repair operation off Church Street in Norfolk. The company, which is wiling to give any hard worker a chance, did just that with David Tong, who emigrated to the US from Vietnam in 1995. Tong was a cook at the restaurant on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel island for 14 years when he heard about an apprentice opportunity at Auxiliary Systems. He completed the program, earning multiple certifications and soon an associates degree and is today one of the company’s best electricians.
Billy Erwin took an even more complicated route to success. After two years in prison for drug distribution, Auxiliary gave him a shot in their shop. Being in the apprentice program meant working during the day and attending TCC at night. But Billy had other mouths to feed so he continued a cook’s job at a local IHOP overnight, arriving at Auxiliary many mornings with little or no rest. But Billy persevered and became a superstar. He is now longer flipping pancakes but rather a foreman and looking forward to finishing his degree and someday running the company.
The rain fell steadily and sometimes heavily at Peninsula Town Center on September 17, 2011, but nothing was going to stop the dedication of Marys Park.
It had to happen that Saturday because it was the 150th anniversary of the day that Mary Peake performed an audacious act at that time, teaching the children of escaped slaves how to read and write.
That occurred near Fort Monroe, which was held by the union during the Civil War. Peake died a year later, but her legend has lived on in Hampton, site of Fort Monroe and Peninsula Town Center. Now she is one of four women, all with the same first name, associated with a beautifully landscaped park at the Hampton town center.
Mary Passage, who died in 2003, was the first female principal of a large high school in Virginia. That was Ferguson High in Newport News. Mary Johnson was a teacher who also led the fight to preserve an historic African American chapel in Hampton. She passed away in July. And Dr. Mary Christian was a teacher who became dean of the school of education at Hampton University before becoming the first black female to represent Hampton in the Virginia House of Delegates. She served eight terms.
Born in 1924, Christian, still strong of voice, delivered a stirring tribute to educators in brief remarks at a ceremony on September 17, attended by a large crowed that included legislators, mayors and councilmembers representing Newport News and Hampton. The orchestra from Passage Middle School in Newport News played and historian John Quarstein memorialized Mary Peake and her contributions to the cause of public education.
Dr. Christian said she was “truly blessed to be the last Mary standing and to be able to embrace the spirit of the other Marys”, who she said were “speaking to us through the raindrops.” She recalled the words of Mary Johnson who told her in 2008, at the announcement of the park, that “everybody else gets all the attention but it’s the teachers who do all the work.” She praised the Peninsula Town Center for its “foresight and vision” in honoring teachers with the naming of the green space.
We were proud to hear that since it was Rubin Communications Group that conceived Marys Park. “I was afraid the rain would keep many people away,” says Joel Rubin, “but we had a very nice crowd of friends, family and admirers of Dr. Christian and the other Marys. We plan to do more events in the park focused on education. The dedication was a wonderful start.”
RCG’s yearlong 2012 “BecomeEMS.org” campaign was a success.
So says Tidewater EMS (TEMS) and Peninsula EMS (PEMS), the two agencies that hired Rubin Communications Group to design a year-long program to draw attention to the ongoing need for career and volunteer emergency medical professionals in Hampton Roads. The funding came from a state grant, and TEMS and PEMS turned to RCG for advice on how to put the money to best use.
“Rather than simply producing TV and radio spots and buying ads with a limited budget, we sought out media partners,” says Ashley Martin, account manager with RCG. “WAVY TV and Sinclair Stations viewed this as more of a ‘public service’ partnership than a straight media buy, so we were able to obtain a significant return in exposure in exchange for the financial investment.”
The collaboration led to promotional spots and even news coverage, as BecomeEMS.org reunited victims and “lifesavers” to tell stories of the role EMS providers play in near death situations. Often, these reunions were the first opportunities victims had to thank the paramedics for saving their lives.
“The success of this project is due in large part to the work of Rubin Communications,” says Bruce Nadelka of Virginia Beach EMS who led the coordination of the program on behalf of TEMS and PEMS. “They went way above and beyond to keep it on track, on budget and focused.”
All media coverage directed viewers and listeners to BecomeEMS.org, which provided contact information and opportunities to become involved with fire and rescue squads throughout eastern Virginia. The WAVY TV stories, most of them produced by reporter Eric Harryman, are available for viewing on that site and at www.wavy.com under Health News.
Rubin Communications Group was involved in one of the most unusual real estate projects in Hampton Roads history. When ABC’s popular Extreme Makeover Home Edition announced it was coming to Virginia Beach in February 2011, the local builder asked RCG to provide public relations services, on a pro-bono basis, again because of our agency’s well-known media relations and event planning skills.
Several weeks of preparation and then intense work on the ground produced a house for Beverly Hill and her family, and thousands of memories and experiences we will never forget. Together we did what seemed impossible at the start, tear down one house, build a much larger one in its place in five days and create a stronger community at the same time.
After the house was built for a deserving local family, the executive producer of the show wrote to Joel Rubin, telling him “we could not have done this without your firm’s involvement.”
From our office we:
In May 2012, Urban Land Institute’s Hampton Roads District Council embarked on the most ambitious effort in its history. Reality Check is a ULI-conceived program that brings 300 individuals from across the spectrum of business, government, military, environmental and other sectors together to determine guiding land use principles for the region and a vision as to how to incorporate 350,000 more citizens over the next 25 years.
This highly complex effort involved major regional players – Old Dominion University, the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission and the Hampton Roads Partnership – along with many more organizations from the seven cities. To stage Reality Check, they turned to Rubin Communications Group, figuring RCG not only had the event planning skills but also the political and civic connections to attract a high quality turnout and recruit facilitators to keep the exercise flowing. They were right.
Thanks to the dedication of our staff and volunteer committee, Reality Check, held May 17, 2012 at ODU’s Ted Constant Center, was a successful undertaking. Working around 30 tables covered with maps that included no city borders, the citizens drafted guiding land use principles and positioned LEGOs and string to represent future homes, businesses and transportation options. One of the participants, TCC economics professor Peter Shaw, said it was “a game changer for the region.” For RCG, according to Joel Rubin, it was proof that “we can take a big assignment, break it into parts, marshal the necessary resources and keep all parties, including the client, on track.”
ULI District Chair John Peterson said RCG was critical to the event’s success. “You deserve a lot of credit for navigating the, political challenges of this region and making sure we had the right people at the tables and that they had a meaningful experience. We really appreciate your efforts.”
Due to last year’s successful event, Reality Check Hampton Roads “Advancing the Vision” will be held on May 16, 2013 to hear results from Reality Check 2012 and see the developments that have taken place since that landmark event. It will also feature a live interactive presentation and Q&A with Robert Grow, the founding chairman of Envision Utah, the non-profit public partnership created nearly 20 years ago to involve the public in addressing land use, transportation and environmental challenges presented by growth.
Bill Bischoff was in a hurry. He and fellow Virginia Beach attorney Kevin Martingayle decided to leave the law firm that was their home for the past two decades and start their own. Besides office space, they needed a complete new branding package – name, logo, tagline, website, pictures, press release, newspaper ads – in a month, by July 1.
Bill called Joel Rubin. Joel contacted Jarrett Beeler of the start-up firm Sway Creative, and the producer and creator were off and running. Bischoff Martingayle would be the new name. After much haggling, A Reputation for Results, would be the theme around which copy would be drafted. Because both lawyers had UVA connections, they wanted some orange and blue; and Sway knocked out a perfect logo, that included the requested colors plus three column-looking bars (Mr. Jefferson would be proud).
Joel wrote the words for the website, ads and media advisory, Jarrett staged the photo session and then did yeoman’s work on the website, fashioning pages that captured Bill and Kevin’s fun spirit but aggressive advocacy on behalf of their business and individual clients.
Joel begged for one more week to be sure the website was right and because July 4 fell on a Wednesday, killing the week, Bill and Kevin agreed to a July 9 launch. We made it. Press releases went out, announcement cards too. And check out the website, www.bischoffmartingayle.com, and tell us you wouldn’t consider hiring one of these veteran litigators to represent you in court.
Bischoff and Martingayle were great clients. They knew we were up against the wall and made sure we received approvals in a timely manner. It was a good partnership and the “results” speak for themselves.
