After a dozen days in the UK, I’m back in NYC and trying to avoid jet lag by making up for lost time with a much missed Starbucks. Though I did enjoy my tea and biscuits while in London—so much so I brought some back for the DGC team—it’s good to be home and with an absurdly large cup of iced coffee in hand. My time in London was definitely well spent, a perfect mix of work and play (something we value here at DGC). The Eulogy! team did a great job of making sure I met everyone, especially those from various divisions: social media (aka Onlinefire), marketing services, professional services, in addition to the B2B and consumer PR teams.
The Eulogy! team was also careful to make sure I didn’t work TOO hard, so they sent me up on the London Eye (on a thankfully sunny night)…
…and hosted a lovely pizza party on my last day. One thing that is consistent across countries and cultures is the effect that copious free pizza has on an office: it’s mayhem, wherever you are.
Overall, it was an amazing trip and I’m so grateful to both DGC & Eulogy! for making it happen. I hope my first “real” trip to London isn’t my last.
Ever chased a journalist? How many sell ins have you done this week? Chances are, the answers are yes and many, but that’s not how you would say it. A “sell in” is a pitch, and to “chase” means to follow up. While the general approaches and goals of PR are the same on both sides of the pond, the terminology is quite different. When scheduling a “sit down” (meeting) with someone, be sure to check your “diary” (calendar) first. What we call “hits” or “clips” are the more formal “pieces of coverage” in the Queen’s English, and a byline is known as a “comment piece.” A company’s revenue is referred to as “turnover” and where we’d call financials simply “numbers,” here they are “figures.” Though these phrases aren’t what I’m used to hearing, they’re all pretty logical terms (unlike when I learned that a “plaster” is actually a Band-Aid…) and it’s helpful to be able to talk to the talk across various countries—even other English speaking ones!
Beyond the vocab, there are a few other differences when it comes to PR and media relations in the UK and the US. England has a large variety of national papers (approximately 13) where the US of A has mainly regional papers, with a few national exceptions that are particularly competitive. It’s more of result of geography than anything else: compared to the UK, the United States is absolutely massive and there aren’t many national outlets, but there are loads of regional ones. To put it in perspective, the entire UK (including all of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) is roughly the size of the state of Oregon. The number of outlets aside, there is also some variation in what the media is interested in. There aren’t as many talk shows in Britain as there are in the US, and they are less likely to cover something purely consumer-facing with no strong news angle. While a hard news hook helps with securing coverage no matter where you are, it’s even more important to get in with the UK media. For this reason, surveys and research are used regularly—with some clients as often as 2 or 3 times a week.
Of course, everyone at Eulogy! has been very helpful in explaining all this to me and has been kind enough to not laugh directly at me when I ask what a particular word means. For the record, “jelly” refers to jell-o, a “biscuit” is actually a cookie, “chips” in the UK are French fries, and I still can’t figure out why Band-Aids are “plasters.”
Welcome to London, where the traffic is on the left, the subway is called the “tube” and the outlets—and the outlets—are different. Referring to both the pubs and plugs, aside from a few glaring cultural differences (tea is preferred to coffee, and Starbucks is slightly frowned upon) life at Eulogy!, an independent PR agency in London, isn’t too different from being at home at DGC. The office has a similar look and feel, and is filled with a bright team of Brits trying to get the best possible coverage for both B2B and consumer clients.
A few years ago, Eulogy! teamed up with Onlinefire to enhance their social media and digital offerings. One excellent feature of the partnership is the use of video, which Eulogy! employs frequently to tell their story and get messages across concisely and creatively. Check out Eulogy’s Dave Macnamara, Senior Creative Account Executive, above with more on using video.
Digital communication is a way of life for the PR industry. It’s second nature to share our news, views and communiqués in 140 characters, and a huge time-saver to Skype with non-New York-based clients. But even as life as we once knew it – with physical in-boxes and impromptu, non-scheduled phone calls – has long evaded our culture, our fearless leader Sam DiGennaro still believes in the power of face-time.
In a recent print and video interview with USA Today as part of a new series that aims to help business people work smarter on the road and in the office, USA Today reporter Charisse Jones talks with Sam about her 2013 new year’s resolution to spend more face-to-face time with DGC’s far-flung clients.
To accommodate DGC’s fast-growing west coast operation and clients, Midwest clients, alliance with London-based sister agency Eulogy!, industry conferences and other global prospects and partners, Sam’s first six months of 2013 alone includes business trips to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit, Chicago, Austin, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Istanbul, London and Cannes. Aside from work, she was able to work in a recent long weekend excursion to Milan, and a ski trip to Aspen.
Sam tells readers “No matter how free-spirited you are or how much wanderlust you have, it’s an entirely different experience than traveling for pleasure.”
Sam also offers her tips to make travel more efficient and fun, such as downloading mobile apps like Uber, FourSquare and Google Maps for transportation purposes, Pandora for customized music listening, Live Nation in case there’s time to take in a last-minute concert on the road, and a variety of meditation apps to de-stress on the plane, or in at the hotel.
Check out the entire piece for more travel tips including compartmentalizing clothes in shoe bags, booking wi-fi enabled flights, and taking any un-interrupted time to write handwritten notes.
Four Alumni Honored with Distinguished Achievement Awards
Sam DiGennaro, Service Award recipient with Nick Gravante and Larry Brandman, each Distinguished Achievement Recipients
Last Saturday, DGC founder/CEO Sam DiGennaro had an appointment to have her hair cut before attending her 25th class reunion. Alas, her plans changed abruptly when, the night before, a classmate informed her that she needed to arrive at Poly Prep, her alma mater, in the morning – considerably earlier than anticipated–to be recognized at an Annual Awards convocation.
DiGennaro would receive the School Service Award, given annually on “Reunion Day” to a member of the faculty, alumni, a parent or other member of the school community for distinguished service to the prep school over a period of years. We’ve been told she is the first female recipient in the history of the award.
Headmaster David B. Harman delivered opening remarks at the April 27 event and shared an impressive list of universities to which this year’s graduating students were accepted – from the Ivies to Duke to The University of Chicago, among others.
Sam DiGennaro with Jeff Ferraro, former president of The Poly Prep Board of Governors, Erika Boccio Farrell, former member of The Board; each class of ’88
A member of the class of 1988 at the Brooklyn-based independent high school, DiGennaro has spent the past 20 years on the Board of Governors and is now a Board Member Emerita. Through her work with the Board, DiGennaro was involved in mentoring, networking, fundraising and fostering deeper and lasting ties between Poly Prep and its alums. She is currently “class agent” and was reunion co-chair for the Class of ’88.
Several years ago, DiGennaro was part of a group that led the charge to establish the school’s Spirit Award and Rising Star Award. She won the latter in 1998.
“I’ve always believed in the importance of giving back,” DiGennaro said in her acceptance remarks. “To the school, to the neighborhood, to the larger community. We all have a stake in the world around us.” She encouraged all attendees—faculty, alumni and current students—to give back.
DiGennaro, who founded PR firm DiGennaro Communications in 2006, last fall, rented a yellow school bus for a full work day to take volunteers from her company’s staff to help with the clean-up after Hurricane Sandy in Rockaway Beach—where she grew up and travelled by yellow school bus to Poly Prep every day.
Lisa Della Pietra, class of ’86 and now Director of Alumni Relations at Poly Prep described DiGennaro as “tireless in giving her time, expertise and love to this school.”
Poly Prep alumni who received the school’s Distinguished Achievement Award at the April 27 program are as follows:
This post comes from Antonia Harrison, an Account Manager at our sister agency Eulogy! London. Antonia spent a week with DGC as part of our “Rising Star”exchange program. This post was originally shared on E!’s blog.
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From the age of four months, travelling and living abroad has been an integral part of my life; when I was selected to take part in Eulogy!’s first exchange programme with our strategic partner, DiGennaro Communications (DGC), I was absolutely thrilled.
After experiencing a brief stint working as a journalist in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, I have always found it immensely interesting to see how the various elements of culture and environment help determine how industries function in different parts of the world. I was particularly looking forward to finding out how the DGC team works and, most importantly, how they tackle and interact with the American media.
Located in the Flatiron District in New York, DGC is positioned right in the heart of Manhattan and is swathed in a noisy, fast-paced and buzzing vibe – just like London! From the first moment I walked into DGC’s office, I felt a bit like Alice taking her first steps through the looking glass. Eulogy! prides itself on being London’s best agency to work for and DGC mirrors this enormously friendly and welcoming atmosphere to a tee. Within a couple of minutes, I was made to feel like one of the team and even handed my very own plaque to hang alongside the rest of the staff plaques on the office wall.
Aside from a handful of obvious cultural differences, such as a Starbucks obsession, a distinct lack of tea and amazing lunch breaks spent in fancy dress shops, it gradually became clear that the American team faces a whole host of challenging hurdles, which the UK industry arguably takes for granted. The significant lack of national USA papers compared to the UK’s royal flush for example, means that fighting for those much sought after national print slots becomes much, much harder. When you then take into account the size of America and the sheer number of competing PR agencies, you begin to realise just how tricky it is to make your voice the loudest and the complexity of the steps involved in ultimately securing those exceptional pieces of coverage for your client.
Despite these obstacles, the DGC team is flying high and by my second day I was already witnessing a stream of brilliant daily coverage pouring in from Bloomberg’s renowned Businessweek magazine, The New York Times and the Holy Grail of news – The Wall Street Journal.
Alongside taking part in reviews, pitch meetings and social media discussions, it was my time spent pitching ideas to a
client on how to make eating traditional American grub even more attractive to tourists, which I can truly say was the pinnacle of my all-American experience. Apparently the state has not one, not two, but four specialist barbecue sauces all designed to make your chicken wings, sticky ribs and pork chops even more tantalising! And this led to some very interesting and at times lively discussions.
Being part of a team that is more like a family than an office, cheering as DGC won yet more new business and watching as the coverage rolled in, was a unique experience and one I will never forget. Thank you once again to the whole team at DGC for these unforgettable memories.Although operationally DGC works slightly differently to Eulogy!, the same goal is still sought after and achieved – to be the best at communicating profitable messages for our clients and above all ensuring that our clients are highly visible in what are often crowded marketplaces.
Last week, DGC welcomed Antonia Harrison, Account Manager with our sister agency Eulogy!. Antonia was E!’s winner of our inter-agency Rising Star program, a contest offering the opportunity for a DGC’er and a Eulogite to spend a week across the pond at their respective sister agency. The charge was twofold – for each winner to share how PR is handled in their homeland, as well as learning the differences in PR (and culture in general) in their weeklong home away from home.
Below, Antonia shares with us some of her insights on how to “PR” in the U.K.
After spending a week at DGC, Antonia talks through her top (surprising!) learnings of how PR works in the U.S.
There were some distinct differences and many similarities but across the board PR (in the U.K. or the U.S.) is all about understanding the news, finding those great story nuggets, maintaining stellar reporter relations and proactively securing placements.
Columbia University Bachelor of Arts student, Elyse Cox, joined the DGC team during her Spring Break to learn about the dazzling world of PR/Communications as part of our company’s participation in the school’s 2013 Extern program. Here’s what Elyse had to say about her experience…
Public Relations is a dynamic industry and working at DiGennaro Communications was like being in a perpetual motion machine for me; fascinating and a little confusing. As the name would indicate, my Public Relations externship would involve relating to the “public,” as in “the media.”
As a first-year college student with limited business experience, I started my 3-day externship at DGC armed with a list of duties I envisioned for a PR firm and a separate list of “mystery terms” I had found in my research. B2B? B2C? Thought Leadership? These terms hinted at an overarching goal central to DGC’s role in communications, media, and marketing that I was somehow missing.
After a tour of the office to meet everyone, I stepped into a meeting to learn about social media at the firm. Thirty minutes later, I walked out with an understanding of the incredible power of social influence. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and blogs aren’t just for scrolling through in idle moments. They require strategy and incredible dexterity, all focused on building a quality base of followers who are interested in a certain topic or a company’s message. In social media, relevance is key, and the most important part of building positive relationships in the ever-expanding world of social media is distributing messages that resonate.
With this lesson still reverberating in my head, I dove into account management. My first responsibility was developing a local contact list for one of DGC’s client companies, which was hosting a major industry event in a matter of weeks. In making the list, I had to think about why certain outlets would be interested in covering the event. Another consideration I was taught to keep in mind was thinking about the media outlets that would have a genuine interest in sharing the client’s message with the people who trust them for information.
In one standout experience of my externship, I had the chance to sit in a conference room with a team of account directors and executives, including the company’s founder Samantha DiGennaro, to brainstorm on behalf of one of their clients. I knew that marketing firms change perceptions of products, but I had never thought about who handles the way marketing companies are perceived by other companies. Perhaps that’s because DGC aligns so well with their clients’ desires through brainstorming sessions like the one I witnessed. They delved deep into their client’s perspective, sending thoughts volleying across the table to develop a word, a song, or an image into an idea with incredible creativity.
Some of my most interesting experiences at DGC were speaking with its employees. They came from different careers and backgrounds; some had been journalists, others had worked at marketing firms, and others have worked in PR during their entire careers. Yet they all bring essential viewpoints to their work based on these experiences.
After three busy, exciting eye-opening days, I left DGC exponentially more enlightened about PR. In a way, I had seen the key to their work in the very first item on my agenda: “Introduction to the team.” DGC is about connection. The staff builds trust with their clients, they seek positive interactions with the media, and they collaborate with each other. So, while I had entered DGC’s offices under the impression that I was entering the PR perpetual motion machine, I emerged intact from the multifaceted, dynamic, exciting world of PR.
The Art Directors Club held its 92nd Annual Awards competition this past week in Miami Beach to honor the best work from around the world in the interactive, advertising, design, motion, photography and illustration industries.
This year’s cumulative winners, based upon awards won across all categories, are as follows:
ADC Network of the Year: BBDO
ADC Agency of the Year: McCann NY
ADC Design Firm of the Year: Dentsu Inc.
ADC Interactive Agency of the Year: Forsman & Bodenfors
ADC School of the Year: School of Visual Arts
Former ad exec and now entrepreneur Cindy Gallop was the Master of ceremonies. This year’s winners represented 23 countries, demonstrating the ADC’s dedication to finding the best creative talent across the globe. Gold, Silver and Bronze work will be sent on a worldwide tour—from New York to Sao Paolo and numerous venues in between—through the ADC International Annual Awards Exhibition.
Design-driven production company Buck won the third-annual ADC Designism Award, which honors work that drives social or political change. Buck’s work entitled “Metamorphosis” was a promotional campaign for Good Books.
To view the complete list of all ADC 92nd Annual Awards Gold, Silver, Bronze, Merit, Student and ADC Designism winners, please visit http://www.adcawards.org/92ndgalawinners/.
Judges included Naked Creative Partner Fernanda Romano (Interactive Jury Chair), Droga5 Executive Creative Director Ted Royer (Advertising Jury Chair) and Founder, Prologue Films and co-Founder Imaginary Forces, Kyle Cooper (Motion Jury Chair).
None of them could have been possible without this single word: Believe. Because in order to achieve the seemingly unfeasible, you must truly believe that big things are possible.
When the California Lottery was ready to launch Powerball, they decided they needed a different approach than anyone had ever attempted before. With only about 30% of Californians feeling positive about the Lottery brand, they needed to go beyond just showcasing Ferraris or yachts in advertising. They needed to start changing perceptions about the Lottery and its players. The Powerball campaign begins a new stage for the Lottery, giving the brand meaning beyond opulent stuff.
Like California itself, the California Lottery is a brand that stands for optimism and opportunity, and they wanted to see those values reflected in their campaign. They wanted to create something that was bigger, more inspirational and more of a mindset.
But standing out wasn’t their only challenge. Powerball is a national game played across the US, which means the odds, as well as the rewards, are that much greater. Which means you really have to “Believe.”
The launch has two distinct phases.
The first phase is to get people to believe in the word “Believe.” To that end, giant billboards with the single word “Believe” will appear all over California. This tease has no mention of the Lottery. The reason for this is to ensure credibility and make sure that consumers don’t feel like they are being sold to — to give them an opportunity to just savor the word. So when they eventually find out who the message is coming from they will respect them even more.
Alongside these billboards, we’ll introduce a series of iconic images of events and people that overcame huge odds because they believed: a women’s suffrage march; the fall of the Berlin Wall; the first man to walk on the moon; Bethany Hamilton, the teenage girl who lost her arm in a shark attack but believed she could keep surfing; and Robbie Knievel’s infamous jump over the Grand Canyon. None of these events would have been possible without one incredible word: Believe.
PHOTO CAPTION: The unbreakable Berlin Wall once divided an entire country – until both sides joined together and tore it down forever. Proof that anything is possible when you believe.
On August 18, 1920, women gained what was rightfully theirs: the right to vote. Proof that anything is possible when you believe. After losing her left arm in a shark attack, pro surfer Bethany Hamilton got back on her board and inspired millions. Proof that anything is possible when you believe. On May 20, 1999, Robbie Knievel had the guts to jump the Grand Canyon. Proof that anything is possible when you believe.
The second phase is the launch of the theme line, “Believe in Something Bigger.”
But “Believe in Something Bigger” isn’t just a theme line, it’s a mindset — one that inspires people to think beyond what’s possible. To be part of a movement of optimism and larger-than-life dreams, and to serve as a filter for the Lottery and the people who play.
To kick off this phase, the California Lottery is applying a multi-tiered approach starting with “RedBall California.” Working with world-famous artist Kurt Perschke, gigantic red balls will begin to appear in unexpected places all across California, with the final red ball ending up at the official Powerball launch party in Sacramento on April 10, 2013.
Then they will launch the campaign itself, starting with an epic :60 cinema/TV/viral film, shot all across California by Academy Award-winning cameraman Janusz Kaminski. The film shows millions of white balls softly falling to earth in a snow-like fashion as consumers look on in amazement. All of this is set to an inspirational choir version of the song, “California Dreamin’.” In the end, a single red ball lands in a man’s hand. As he joyously looks up, spreads his arms and smiles, a title appears and reveals the completed tagline: “Believe in Something Bigger. Powerball.”
In addition, an online contest is being held inviting Californians to create their own version of the song. The winner wins a cash prize and the chance to realize their dream by performing their version live at the April 8, 2013, launch event and gaining exposure through all the PR and social outlets.
Replacing the inspirational tease posters will be headline executions encouraging people to “Believe in Something Bigger” with Powerball. For example, on the freeways one billboard will read: “Adopt a highway. All of it.” Another, posted only in Los Angeles, will read: “L.A. doesn’t have a football team. Fix that.”
A “Believe” website will encourage Californians to post their dreams and continue the conversation of “Believing in Something Bigger.” So where did all this believing come from?
What better place to look for such a movement than an ad agency called David&Goliath — an agency built on the premise of overcoming huge odds and big challenges? The agency was founded by David Angelo, who also happens to be one of the creators behind the iconic “Hey, You Never Know” campaign for the New York State Lottery.
According to David, “Times have changed. Advertising used to give people something to buy, now it needs to give them something to believe in.”
“The Powerball launch gives the California Lottery an opportunity to shift the brand conversation from desperation to inspiration. We’re not just trying to sell Powerball tickets, we’re trying to inspire a movement — one that encourages people to believe in infinite possibilities and change the world around them. This platform will also allow us to talk about the positive impact the proceeds have on the school system in much more credible and authentic way.”
“Because when you Believe in Something Bigger, anything is possible. Anything.”
