Newsweek turned to our Founder & CEO, Christine Perkett, for her professional analysis of Jason Sudeikis and Olivia Wilde’s nanny drama and public statement.
Jason Sudeikis and Olivia Wilde‘s nanny drama could positively affect their careers, a brand strategist tells Newsweek.
Read the full story here.
Our CEO, Christine Perkett, was interviewed by PRWeek about whether or not Reuters News’ decision to convert Reuters.com to a subscription-based product will deter PR pitches.
Christine Perkett, the CEO of Mindfull Marketing + PR told PRWeek that a paywall may mean less overall eyeballs but could also lead to higher quality in views. She emphasized that even in today’s age of focusing on the numbers of followers and social media “likes,” there’s a premium on having the right followers and engaged readers.
Read the full story here.
It’s that time of year again when we share our tips for avoiding creepy PR (aka bad media relations). Heed these warnings to avoid ghoulish mistakes and frightening outcomes in your public relations media campaigns.
New brand name, look and feel reflect the award-winning agency’s expanded integrated marketing services
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – BOSTON – October 17, 2018 – PerkettPR, an award-winning provider of results-based public relations and strategic marketing communications, today announced that on its twentieth anniversary, it has rebranded to Mindfull Marketing + PR. The agency unveiled a new logo, name and website that further demonstrate the scope of integrated marketing services that it provides to clients around the world in technology, business, healthcare, consumer and higher education. Christine Perkett remains CEO.
Founded in 1998 by Perkett, Mindfull Marketing + PR provides exclusively senior-level strategic counsel and preeminent execution of public relations and marketing programs that clearly and consistently deliver return on investment. Its selective client roster has spanned the globe – from Australia to Norway, London to San Francisco and more. Clients have included WebEx, Constant Contact, Juniper Networks, St. Louis Children’s Hospital, Clavis Insight, Northeastern University, Octo Telematics, Life is Good, Quiet Revolution and many more.
“Brands need a team that understands that the way to engage their consumer is constantly evolving,” said Rebecca Tarantino, marketer and two-time former client of PerkettPR. “Christine and her team shine in the most complex go to market environments, having the unique ability to devise marketing strategies that cut through the clutter to engage and convert at every level. I think the move to rebrand to Mindfull Marketing + PR is another example of this insight – demonstrating the agency’s integrated capabilities across the marketing ecosystem.”
The agency has been recognized with numerous industry awards including multiple Bell Ringers from the Publicity Club of New England including Best TV Placement, National Commentary, Response to Breaking News, Consumer Campaign and more, a “Golden Image” nod from Forrester Research, “Best PR Executive” from the American Business Awards, Best of the Best” PR firm by PR Sourcecode, and was a finalist in the prestigious Techcrunch Crunchie’s the only year it honored tech PR firms. Mindfull Marketing’s full scope of services include branding services, content marketing, digital media and advertising, SEO, writing services, PR, sales support, social media, training, events and fractional CMO services.
“When I founded the company, our focus was almost exclusively on tech PR but quickly expanded as our solid reputation grew and the market needs changed,” said Christine Perkett, CEO of Mindfull Marketing + PR. “Over the last 10 years, our talented team has been delivering a wider scope of action-oriented content and integrated campaigns that companies require in today’s digital world. The rebrand better communicates our ability to grab the attention of highly distracted and divided audiences – helping businesses and institutions to thrive in a competitive market and delivering a marketing blueprint for success.”
For more information on the thought behind the name change, read Christine’s blog about the announcement.
Boston-based Atomik Design worked with Mindfull Marketing + PR on the logo and website.
About Mindfull Marketing + PR
Mindfull Marketing + PR is an award-winning integrated marketing and PR agency that manages brand reputations and promotes and grows businesses. Offering superior service from a team of senior-level professionals that execute both strategy and tactics, we apply expertise across a wide range of marketing and communications disciplines to deliver efficient, consistent and ground breaking marketing communications campaigns.
With the foresight to rapidly adapt and stay ahead of an ever-evolving market, we help clients achieve their business goals. Formerly PerkettPR, Mindfull Marketing + PR has been nationally recognized for exceptional client results, business leadership and innovative human resources initiatives for over 20 years. For more information, visit www.mindfullmarketing.com
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We continue our “Influencers Who Inspire” series with Jessica Bartlett, Health Care Reporter for Boston Business Journal. Jessica shares what types of stories she is on the lookout for, her favorite book and more.
Tell us a little bit about your role at BBJ?
I’m the health care reporter at the Boston Business Journal, which has me covering everything from hospitals to digital health companies to promising research to policy makers to insurers to startups to the occasional biotech and pharmaceutical story. We have digital newsletters we put out throughout the weekday and a weekly print product as well, so my time is split writing content for these products.
You are very passionate about writing and publishing. What is your favorite book or author?
My favorite book is East of Eden by John Steinbeck. The writing is beautiful, and the character development is unlike anything else I’ve ever read. It is a talent to write characters a reader can hate but still understand.
As a child, what did you envision yourself doing? Favorite subject in school?
As a child, I wanted to be on broadway! It was a career I had in my mind through high school, with decades of dance lessons and dozens of plays under my belt. But I wanted a job that would give me health insurance (irony, now that I cover health care), and the reality of always looking for work seemed overly stressful. I’ve always loved to write, and English was always my favorite subject in school. I decided journalism was the best way to do something artistic while still making a living, and came out of picking classes during orientation at the University of Vermont and declared to my mother that I’d be a journalist.
How did your education prepare you for your role today as a journalist?
My preparation for journalism truly happened outside the classroom — I worked for the school newspaper at the University of Vermont and learned how to write for a newspaper there. During an internship at the Patriot Ledger, I learned what professional newspaper writing should look like and be. I don’t have a degree in journalism (I majored in English and Studio Art with a focus in photography), but my education offered me a love of writing and reading, and a general curiosity about a variety of subjects — perhaps the most helpful part of my education. As a journalist, you never know what you’ll be covering, and curiosity and a desire to learn has always been my biggest asset.
As managing editor of your collegiate newspaper, what was the most interesting part of your role? Most challenging?
The most interesting part of being managing editor was being able to have a broader view of what we were doing as a paper, and all the people who worked within it. I read every article before it went to print, had meetings with editors to come up with ways they could better manage their writing staff — it afforded me a great view of a paper’s entire operations, and allowed me to have a more meaningful impact. Most challenging was perhaps running a newspaper filled with my peers, none of whom were paid to be there. But I learned a lot about leadership and people, that you have to manage personalities, hold people to high standards, but appreciate that they showed up.
As a reporter covering healthcare, what types of stories are you always on the look out for?
I’m looking for health stories that haven’t already been covered, and are things people will want to read — whether it’s why Medicaid insurers are losing millions, a breakthrough diabetes treatment or the new app that could change how people interact with their health. Because of our readership, I’m also looking for news that has a direct tie to Massachusetts and has a tie to business, even if it’s that the discovery could one day lead to an industry partnership or drug.
Do you feel PR folks are helpful and if so, in what way?
A helpful PR person is like a waiter, in that he or she is friendly, brings me what I ask for in a timely manner, recommends things I might truly like and is cognizant of my time. An unhelpful PR person is like a bouncer, in that he or she stands between me and what I’m looking for, bars me access to exciting things, and makes me jump through lengthy and exhausting hoops to gain entry. I have many valuable relationships with PR people that I talk to frequently, I also receive many pitches from others who seem to be pushing me content from a client, rather than thinking through news I might be interested in receiving. It truly is a mix.
What is next for you for the remainder of 2015?
The Boston Business Journal has some exciting events to look forward to, including our 40 Under 40 event and Power 50. I’m also working on a number of exciting stories that I’m eager to share with readers. On a more personal note, I’m getting married in September!
“Less Than 10% Of Companies Are Using Marketing Automation, Here’s Why”, authored by Forbes contributor, Mike Templeman, discusses the important topic of marketing automation. This technology has been around for half a decade, but companies aren’t utilizing it due to an upfront time consuming implementation process.
Entrepreneur contributor, Rocco Baldassarre, reports on 5 online marketing tips for entrepreneurs. These tips include social media, testing new advertising channels, upselling and more. The article called “5 Online Marketing Basics Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know” also recommends utilizing tools such as Google Analytics and Facebook advertising.
Burson-Marsteller tops the list of PR firms in PRNewser’s “PR Agency Report Card (Part 1)”. This annual ranking of PR firms highlights the champions of communications in the PR world.
We are excited to resume our “Influencers Who Inspire” interview series, where we highlight industry influencers and leaders in business. Today, we talk with Rebecca Strong of BostInno. She shares her thoughts on the local tech startup scene in Boston and what she loves about her role at BostInno.
Strong is currently a staff writer at BostInno, where she’s been covering local tech and startup news since November 2014. Previously, she was a writer and video blog producer for the content marketing agency, Brafton. Since graduating from Emerson College in 2010, she has contributed to a variety of local and national publications, including The Huffington Post, U.S. News University Directory and Elite Daily.
Please tell us a little bit about your beat at BostInno.
I’m in charge of covering anything relating to tech and start ups in and around Boston. That could mean anything from a funding announcement, merger, or acquisition to a profile on an entrepreneur, a first look at an upcoming local app or information about a brand new accelerator, incubator or coworking space. And sometimes I’ll dive into the aspects of startup culture—from style to office beer taps.
With Boston being populated with so many tech startups, how do you personally keep up with all the latest developments and introductions to the market?
It’s next to impossible to stay on top of everything and I’m fortunate in that people are constantly reaching out to me about their newly established startups or other announcements. But personally, I’m always scouring AngelList for interesting early stage companies, keeping an eye on industry folks on Twitter, and continually checking college/university news (MIT, Northeastern, etc). Going to networking events, panels, etc. is also a great way to get a scoop on a startup I might not otherwise have known about.
What do you love about your role at BostInno?
Knowing that I’m shaping the way people understand and view emerging companies so early on in their development. It’s extremely rewarding, too, to see the impact that positive press can have on startups. I’ve gotten emails from founders saying that after my article was published about their company, they were contacted by an interested investor. Or, from accelerators saying that a local expert offered to be a mentor for their program after they read my piece. There’s so much going on in Boston tech that it’s easy to get lost in the shuffle. But I like to think that my shining a spotlight on some of these startups that are still getting their footing, and building up some hype around them, can actually make a difference—even a small one—in their being able to generate traction.
What types of companies do you like to cover and why?
It sounds obvious, but my favorites are the ones solving a problem that, to my knowledge, hasn’t yet been addressed. The startup world is saturated, and there are so many people making very similar apps based on basically the same idea. When I come across a company that’s going after an unresolved issue, or innovating in a space that still operates in an archaic way, that’s what excites me. Because in my mind, they’re the startups that have the most potential to turn heads, and to be responsible for significant change.
What has been your most interesting interview thus far?
That’s a tie. Arianna Huffington, and T.J. Miller from the HBO series “Silicon Valley.” Very, very different interviews but both fascinating individuals.
Do PR people help or hinder your storytelling?
I wouldn’t say PR people have ever hindered my storytelling. But not all are as helpful as they could be. The ones I really appreciate are those who get BostInno, who make a point to get me information as quickly as possible—often in advance of any embargo time—and who offer to connect me with the people who matter in any particular story.
If you had to guess, what percent of stories come from ideas a PR person sent to you?
I’d say about 17-18 percent. There are many cases in which a PR person will pitch me something, and I may not take that exact idea, but I’ll pull some other tidbit that I find interesting about the CEO, or the company, and run with that. And in those cases, that PR person still played a crucial role in making the story happen because they originally facilitated it.
What’s one thing you think PR executives could do better?
Know the journalists they’re pitching to. And no, I don’t just mean know that they write on tech, or sports, or food. I get so many irrelevant pitches – if the PR person emailing me had actually taken a glimpse at my coverage, they would know the angles aren’t relevant either to my beat or to BostInno as a whole. It’s equally important to know the publication’s audience when you’re pitching a journalist. BostInno has an edgy tone. Our readers are largely 20-somethings and 30-somethings. So if you’re trying to get me psyched about a tech company based on a super dry concept that’s difficult to comprehend, that’s going to be tough. And if you’re still sure it’s something worth covering, then make sure you do it in a way that very clearly helps me understand why it would pique our readers’ interest.
What do you love about the city of Boston?
The sense of community here. We band together like a small town would, yet we have all the awesome resources and businesses and other perks of living in a major city. The camaraderie here is particularly advantageous for startups. There’s this overall feeling that everyone supports everyone else. I don’t think you get a lot of that in other cities, where it’s more of an “every man for himself” mentality. It’s not just in the tech and startup world, either. The restaurant industry here holds so many events and meetups—everyone knows everyone else and you get the feeling that everyone gets genuinely excited for one another’s successes.
What are you passionate about outside of your journalism career?
Singing. Fitness. And, if I’m being honest, eating.
What is one goal you’d like to accomplish before the end of 2015?
In relation to my job, I’ve been asked several times to be on the judging panel at a startup pitch event and it hasn’t worked out with my schedule, so that’s something I’d like to do.
Outside of my job, my new goal is to get a basil plant, grow it, and make a mean batch of homemade pesto.
Forbes contributor, John Rampton, shares 10 SEO Tips For Marketing Your Startup in 2015. Check out his ideas on how to keep it simple and focus on target key words and upfront research. According to Rampton, the new face of the Internet requires a fresh strategy when it comes to developing SEO that works to keep your business relevant in search engine results.
Recent research by Wayin finds that real-time marketers are funneling more money toward such tactics (RTM), and they’re reaping the benefits. This emarketer article called As Real-Time Marketing ROI Increases, Spending Follows evidences that Real-time marketers are in it for the relationships, event promotion.
Rounding out the week with a little humor, PR veteran pens an opinion piece for PRWeek called In praise of the PR chaos, which pokes fun at the industry. Author Lottë Jones explains the glamorous life of PR to college students.
In keeping with the spirit of the New Year/new leaf theme for January,
we’ve been trying to harness the burst of resolution motivation to establish
habits that lead to better efficiency, productivity and effectiveness, both
personally and collectively, this year. And one source of inspiration was J.T.
O’Donnell’s article on LinkedIn about her approach to the “how do I get it
all done” conundrum.
As the time-pressed CEO of Careerealism Media, O’Donnell suggests that we limit our daily to-do list to 10 things, which includes a mix of job tasks, social chores and developmental goals. Now, before you ask – yes, she does more than these 10 items every day, but these, she says, are the 10 she chooses to do with consistency because they’ve proven the best way for her to grow her career and business over the years.
This, of course got us thinking, “What would the list look like for PR professionals?” Again, these aren’t the only things we think you should be doing each day, but rather a list of suggestions to help promote growth over the next 12 months. So see below for our ideas, and feel free to add your own two cents in the comments!
1. Scan the news. Take 10-15 minutes every morning to do this — and not only the top national news, but also the news in your company’s or clients’ industries. It’s a good way to stay on top of industry and competitive developments, not to mention it’s a necessity for identifying news jacking opportunities.
2. Make a to-do list. As every PR pro knows, ours is a reactive business, which means planned activities can get pushed aside easily. Stay organized and on track with daily task lists that keep you accountable to the proactive and maintenance items that often get overlooked in the heat of the (inevitable) times of crisis.
3. Contribute to the conversation. We’re talkin’ social media here, but the key is to keep it meaningful – not mindless. Find a handful of valuable articles, blog posts, infographics, etc. that pertain to your clients and their industries, the PR profession, or even just business in general, and share with your network.
4. Learn about a new tool or technology. This means not only familiarizing yourself with your clients’ products and services, but their competitors, as well. Got an interest in a particular area? Bone up on a new site, app, tool or technique, and teach your colleague so you can all be knowledgeable about what’s out there.
5. Connect…offline. Step away from the computer. Yes, cut the digital umbilical cord, and go grab a cup of coffee with a client, invite a reporter to happy hour, attend a local conference or try out a new network event. After all, business is about relationships, and you can’t keep connections as strong behind a keyboard.
6. Write. It’s probably the task that gets pushed off to the last minute because there are emails to answer, calls to make, and just about any other task seems more appealing than staring at a blank page with a blinking cursor. But flex the writing muscle, and it WILL get stronger.
7. Get momentum with media. Keep goals focused, actionable and realistic – then chip away at them each day. Start with a short list of six to eight media outlets that are a good match for your client, research contacts, get to know them, read their content, get creative with your pitches and connect with them accordingly.
8. Engage your clients. Ask questions that will help you understand their situation better. Make time to regularly check in with them to get to know how they think and feel, and encourage them to share observations regarding the progress of the project and your performance so you can course correct before it’s too late.
9. Make it measurable. Force yourself to develop and adhere to a method for tracking metrics. Not only does it allow you to create a benchmark for progress, but it also provides a means with which you can communicate those intangible successes to your clients. Just keep the process seamless, simple and straightforward.
10. Do stuff that inspires you. It sounds fluffy, but it’s arguably the most important: Allow yourself the space to get creative, let your mind wander and explore your imagination. It feels contrary to marching toward those business objectives, but granting yourself permission to dream is really when the best work happens.
Photo/Image by David Carpenter
This week we are happy to share our latest interview with Dan Rowinski, Mobile Editor at ReadWrite. We follow Dan’s work religiously and are excited to share his thoughts on working with PR people, what he loves about Boston and what he loves about his current role.
How did you transition from covering sports to covering technology? What do you miss about it?
My transition from sports to tech had a lot to do with the advanced study of baseball statistics. In baseball nerd circles, these are called sabermetrics. You ever heard of Moneyball (first a book, then a movie starring Brad Pitt)? For a long time I studied these advanced statistics to the point that I knew them by heart. It awakened a very statistically-driven analyst in me and taught me that I could basically learn anything and break it down into simple, understandable terms for my readers.
After I left TBD.com in D.C., I was on the lookout for a steady gig in either tech, sports or investigative reporting. I like tech and have always had kind of a casual interest in how things are made and then put to use. So, I landed at Government Computer News writing about smartphones. The clincher for me in getting that job was telling one of the editors at GCN about how I had taught myself sabermetrics and how that learning process informed my world view. Hurray for baseball.
What I miss most about sports is being at the arena or ballpark and the competitive but close-knit relationship with other beat reporters. They all may work for different outlets, but it is kind of a club. What don’t I miss about it? The fact that most professional athletes are trained to say absolutely nothing of substance. Lots of, “I trust my teammates and god” (in that order), type of quotes.
As a native of the Boston area, what do you love most about our city?
You ever been the Green Dragon Tavern? It was supposed to be the headquarters of the American Revolution and guys like Sam Adams and Paul Revere met there to discuss the resistance against the British. The actual Green Dragon was torn down in 1854 and the current pub (tucked behind Bell In Hand by all those bars on Union Street) is a few blocks from where the original building was. But, it is still a part of history, of both Boston and the United States. Boston is full of those little types of places. Hell, Harvard is quite a bit older than the U.S.
I love history. I have a degree in it (next to my English degree and Master’s in Journalism). I love living in a city where major history is so casually interspersed with the everyday and modern.
Also, the Red Sox. 😉
As a journalist, what is your biggest pet peeve about PR professionals?
Multiple emails. If I don’t answer the first time, the pitch may have gotten lost but not bloody likely. I am well on top of my email. If a PR person sends two, three, four or more follow ups, I will actually ban them to my spam folder. This is probably the worst possible outcome for a PR person trying to get my attention because it will mean that all subsequent communication from them will go to my spam. There is a good chance I wasn’t interested in the pitch the first time. I don’t have time to respond to everything, so my silence is generally my answer.
That being said, I archive just about every single email I get. It is a fairly large archive at this point. If I am looking for something on a particular topic, I search my email for products, points of reference and people to talk to. It’s a resource, just like Twitter is a resource or Google+ (yes, I use Google+).
Also, don’t ever, ever, ever cold call me if we have not communicated before. I might give you 30 seconds, if you are lucky.
Also, don’t send things to me in the mail (actual, physical mail) if I have not asked for them and am expecting them. The PR person from Mophie once sent me a lunch box before CES with one of their battery packs and some energy bars. Clever, I have to say, but really annoyed the hell out of me.
What has been the most fascinating interview you have conducted over the years?
It was actually a series of interviews in a 24-hour span. When I was still covering government tech and doing freelance sports, I talked to former NASA CIO Linda Cureton and former CTO Chris Kemp. The next day I covered both a Washington Capitals game and then a Wizards NBA game that night (one of those rare days when both teams play on the same day at the same arena and the bull gang has to change over from the ice to the parquet). So, within that day I interviewed both Cureton and Kemp as well as Capitals star Alex Ovechkin and San Antonio Spurs power forward Tim Duncan. That was pretty cool.
Of those interviews, Kemp was the most fascinating. This was when tablets were still pretty new and Kemp (who now is the CEO of a cloud company called Nebula) gave me one of my favorite lines ever; “tablets are the gateway to the cloud.” That has stuck with me as I have studied the confluence of the cloud and mobile revolutions.
What do you love about your job?
Learning. I feel like I have gotten another whole degree since becoming a tech reporter. I study everything mobile, all day just about everyday. Been doing it for years now. I’ve gotten to the point where I might be able to cobble together a book or two on subjects like mobile payments and the proliferation of the app. I like to get pretty wonky with my articles sometimes, so I will find and study source code or take a look at new integrated developer environments. Basically, my job allows me to absorb information and that makes me really happy.
Outside of work, what are you passionate about?
I am a pretty big cycler. I have a very nice Jamis racer road bike. Love to get out into the roads in Metro West and do 50 or 60 miles around Lexington and Concord.
After I stopped being a sports reporter, I have always rediscovered the pleasure of being a sports fan. I love baseball. When you are a sports reporter, it becomes a job. Even if your job is to wake up and go watch hockey for a living, there are days (everybody has them) where you just say, “I don’t want to go to work today.” You lose that exuberance that made you a fan in the first place. It took a couple of years for me to get over that but I have found that I can once again watch the Red Sox game and enjoy it without having to worry about filing a story as soon as the game ends.
What is next for you for the remainder of 2013?
Work, work, work. Absorb more knowledge. Get ready for the mobile product blitz that is the holiday shopping season. Looking forward to seeing exactly how Apple has cobbled together the new aspects of iOS 7 with the iPhone 5S. Also want to see whether the concept of the “smartwatch” becomes a popular product item. My editor-in-chief Owen Thomas is not a fan of the smartwatch, but I think it could be really cool. I want to be like Dick Tracy, damnit, and I don’t want to have to tether my smartphone to a watch to be able to do so. A couple scheduled trips to New York and San Francisco (those are the only places I seem to go these days) and then home for Christmas. Trying to take it easy on the travel because my spring travel schedule is brutal (Las Vegas, Barcelona and Austin, Texas).
Other than that, just keep on keeping on.