Today’s post is the first in our “Meet the Team” series. We’re shining the spotlight on our newest employee, Account Manager Jennifer Hill, who comes all the way from New York City!
Tag: pr
Not every story has a deadline of today.
It’s often hard to tell clients that the media will (hopefully) get something on the air or in print eventually, particularly when bosses or board members breath down their necks. (more…)
By: Jessica Bensten
Here’s a humorous look at graphic design, and why your business should be using a professional for marketing and public relations materials.
- Just because Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Publisher allow you to design, doesn’t mean you should. Put the textbox down.
- Professional designers can help you avoid pitfalls with a printer. Ever had the most beautiful royal blue artwork come back as a purple brochure? We know what to do.
- Give your ideas to a designer, and they can morph into something even better than you imagined.
- The shelf life of a good piece makes the investment worth it.
- People can tell the difference. Get a nice brochure in the mail? You’ll stop and look at it. Drive by a catchy billboard? You’ll chuckle and remember. And when your professional, polished ad sits beside an amateur one in the newspaper, people take notice.
- Sometimes it’s hard to tell the resolution of a photo until it’s too late. That’s not the case when you work with professionals – they know what 300 dpi looks like.
- You’ll be proud of the artwork. Instead of making excuses when you lay down the business card printed at home and apologizing that you don’t have “real cards” done yet…you’ll get compliments.
- When a charity asks you to forward a vector version of your logo to put on a banner or a high res PDF of the most recent ad…you’ll actually have all those things!
- When it comes to business, most people judge the book by its cover. Make sure people judge your marketing (i.e. website, brochure, logo, ads, etc.) in favorable light.
- We’ve been doing graphic design a long time. Just trust us.
For more information on how to get started with our professional creative team, call us at 456-5212 or RCG Creative Services Director Jessica Bensten at jessica@rubincommunications.com.
Below is a recent blog post from News To Live By, the website written by RCG Vice President Danny Rubin. News To Live By highlights the career advice “hidden” in the headlines.
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“New Year, New You” is not just about eating more salads and hitting the gym. Okay, for me it is, but this “fresh start” mentality goes for big companies too. Every new year brings new opportunities for brands to re-invent themselves and increase sales. McDonald’s is no exception. The fast food chain announced a “brand transformation,” changing its philosophy on how the company reaches and communicates with customers.
Happy holidays from the RCG team!
All year, we wrote blog posts about our current projects and best practices for PR/marketing. We believe 100% in the power of content marketing and use our blog to spread our knowledge and services.
We looked back at our site traffic in 2014 to uncover our most popular blog posts. Here are the top five.
By Joel Rubin
Yes 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.
Bonus article: 50 Lunch and Learn Food Ideas from EZCater!
You lunched. You learned. And you know what? We did too.
RCG University’s fall semester will come to a close on Thursday, December 4. We decided to take a break during the winter months, but keep an eye out for spring courses.
Before we put the fall “semester” behind us, it’s important to assess our performance.
What did we do well? What needs improvement?
Here are four lessons we learned from our own “Lunch & Learn” series. Apply them at your own company!
1. Take a good idea and run with it. Our lunches weren’t meant to bring in immediate revenue. We offered them for free…remember? We created the “Lunch and Learn” series to make new contacts, reach out into the community and begin the conversation. Grade: A+
2. Choose interesting topics. When you put the RCG team in a brainstorming session, it doesn’t take long for the creative juices to flow. We chose to present on content marketing, LinkedIn, brevity, crisis communications and nonprofit marketing. We packed the room with every session so we know we chose the right themes.
Where do your customers struggle? What don’t they understand? Those are the topics you need to cover. Grade: A
3. AV equipment. Womp, Womp. It happens to the best of us. And there’s nothing quite like that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach when technology doesn’t work. When our projector screen failed us at a particular “Lunch and Learn” session, we had a plan B and recovered. Still, right after the session ended we decided to upgrade our tools to be 100% ready the next time. Grade: B-
4. Leave time for questions. Sometimes an hour goes by way too fast. In a room of business professionals with varying stages of marketing knowledge, we found the hour would end before we could take real-world questions. Like any good professor, we’re more than happy to chat outside of class. Give us a call to set up a meeting to see how we can provide our services for your company. Grade: B
Thank you for all who participated in in our inaugural “Lunch and Learn” series!
Today’s blog post is a quick writing lesson from News To Live By, the career advice blog maintained by RCG Vice President Danny Rubin.
Read the original blog post here.
Pronouns make it difficult for readers to understand your message. In many cases, you should delete the pronoun (ex: “this”) and use the actual word or phrase.
Example: “I am proud of this because…”
Better written as: “I am proud of the decision to start my own business because…”
Instructions
1. Hit CTRL+F and look for these pronouns: this, that, these and those.
2. If the pronoun represents a word or phrase, consider if you should delete and replace.
- “I wrote that to prove a point” becomes “I wrote the grammar lesson to prove a point”
- “Sally gave me this to say thanks” becomes “Sally gave me the present to say thanks”
- “The Millers need these for the vacation” becomes “The Millers need the house keys for the vacation”
- “John handed me those to be helpful” becomes “John handed me the hammer and nails to be helpful”
3. Check your edits for clarity and comprehension.
4. Voila! You made your work sharper and more professional in a few quick minutes.
Save this today’s blog post for future reference!
As a full-service public relations firm, we can plan your news conference, send a press release or pitch story ideas. But we’re often in a meeting and clients don’t realize we can do so much more!
