Surely if God had meant us to do yoga, he would have put our heads behind our knees. – Rod Stewart

MWW, one of the top five global independent public relations firms, has announced that Sanuk, a division of Deckers Outdoor Corporation, has named MWW as public relations agency of record. Best known for its comfortable Sidewalk Surfers, with patented sandal construction and Yoga Mat and Beer Cozy sandals, Sanuk has charged MWW to build and launch a national brand communications campaign, cementing the popular lifestyle brand in markets across the U.S.

“Sanuk has created one of the most unique and relatable brands for consumers – injecting a sense of fun and irreverence into everyday life,” said JP Schuerman, executive vice president and general manager of MWW’s western region. “With this communications program, we are capturing this sense of ‘fun and funk’ of Sanuk and bringing it in an experiential form to active lifestyle consumers across the nation.”

This multi-layered communications campaign reaches consumers through a broad array of traditional and unconventional means. From spontaneous concerts and lo-fi guerilla marketing to social engagement and local market media takeovers, MWW and Sanuk will bring the humor and playful nature of the brand to consumers nationwide.

“You’re only as good as your haircut.” – Fran Liebowitz

Engauge, a full-service marketing agency, has formally announced that they have been named Social Media Agency of Record for Supercuts.

“We wanted to partner with an agency whose knowledge of social media stretched far beyond standard channels,” said Robin Beddor of Supercuts, whose Minneapolis, MN-based organization boasts 2,200 locations across the United States. “Engauge has precisely that kind of knowledge, and is uniquely positioned to expand our social presence — one that is particularly relevant to our customers — in innovative ways.” Read more

I wish love was like volleyball, you call “mine” and everyone backs off. – The Internet

M&C Saatchi PR is excited to announce another addition to its roster of Sports & Entertainment clients. The Association of Volleyball Professionals (AVP) has chosen M&C Saatchi PR as national AOR, effective immediately. The team, led by SVP Sandra Carreon-John and VP of Sports Richard Barker, will oversee strategy and outreach for the brand, focusing on sports, consumer, entertainment, and health & fitness media.

In its 30th year, the AVP is a leading lifestyle sports and entertainment company that produces, markets and distributes professional beach volleyball events worldwide. Organized in 1983, it has operated the industry’s most prominent national touring series, the AVP Pro Beach Volleyball Tour, featuring the top American men and women competitors in the sport.

The 2013 AVP season gets underway in August, beginning in Salt Lake City, UT, August 16th. Other tour stops include Cincinnati, OH, St. Petersburg, FL, Santa Barbara and Huntington Beach, CA.

With a number of well-known sports and entertainment clients in its roster, M&C Saatchi PR continues to solidify its place in this sector. The firm’s other sports accounts include the United States Olympic Committee, Reebok, CCM and Street Soccer USA. Read more

We’re all rooting for America’s cities these days.  They’re coming back. Maybe it’s the sports, the aversion to lengthy car commutes or the nightlife, or a stubborn pride dating back to the classic 1970s the classic Daily News headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead.”

After bouncing around several other American cities, Aaron Perlut settled in St. Louis with his family, and along with partners Brian Cross and Andy Barnett, headquartered their agency Elasticity there.

Perlut in particular believes wholeheartedly that the city doesn’t suck. The need to plant deep roots in the community to grow the firm and the fondness for his region spurred a Forbes.com column to fight against the notion of suckitude. With 158,000 views and counting, “St. Louis Doesn’t Suck” became  jumping off point for a not-for-profit crowdsourced and crowdfunded platform Rally Saint Louis to address the city’s reputation issues. The column begins as a rant and ends as an outline for an integrated marketing plan, complete with SEO kicker.

Read more

It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe. – Muhammad Ali

SKORA, Inc, the innovative maker of premium, lightweight performance running footwear has announced a partnership with Portland-based Frank’s Garage, a creative marketing, design, and branding house specializing in the athletic, action sports, outdoor, and LOHAS markets. Together, they will build a results-driven strategy for SKORA’s brand platform, strategically aligning the brand with target consumers and retailers, creating multiple engagement opportunities and establishing the brand personality.

“We are very excited about this new collaboration,” said David Sypniewski, Founder and CEO of SKORA. “Frank is a footwear marketing firm with tremendous experience in the categories that SKORA lives in. We’ve always wanted a partner who shares our passion for the running category, but who can leverage our potential through traditional and new media marketing concepts. We’ve found that in Frank.”

Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles. – George Jean Nathan

Rubenstein Public Relations (RPR) is pleased to announce it is now representing The Mark Company, the firm’s president Richard Rubenstein announced today.

The Mark Company (TMC) is one of the nation’s premier real estate sales and marketing firms. Headquartered in San Francisco, the company represents high profile residential projects in leading markets throughout the Western United States. Founded in 1997 by President Alan P. Mark, TMC delivers a proven approach to the strategic planning, marketing and sales of new developments, ranging from luxury buildings in urban locations to mixed use properties in suburban settings.

The firm is a trusted partner to leading residential developers and financial institutions such as Tishman Speyer, iStar Financial and Bosa Development. Since 1997, TMC has closed more than 6,700 units and generated over $4 billion in sales volume for some of the nation’s most notable and successful developments including One Hawthorne and the St. Regis Residences in San Francisco, Spire in Denver, Bayside at the Embarcadero in San Diego, Barker Block and Evo South in Los Angeles, and The Martin in Las Vegas.

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page. – St. Augustine

Susan Magrino Agency announced seven new clients in the travel, real estate, and hospitality sectors. These clients include:

• Baccarat Hotel & Residences New York, currently under construction across from the Museum of Modern Art
• Castle Hill Inn, a Relais & Chateaux vacation property in Newport, Rhode Island
• Fairmont Scottsdale Princess, a Strategic Hotels & Resorts property in Scottsdale, Arizona
• Le Méridien Hotels & Resorts, a company with more than 100 properties in 40 countries
• Paramount, a recently “re-imagined” hotel in the heart of New York City’s theater district
• The Rittenhouse Hotel, a five-diamond hotel in Philadephia’s Rittenhouse Square
• Six Senses Hotels Resorts Spas, a sustainable luxury hospitality brand

Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. — Richard P. Feynman

Rubenstein Public Relations has announced new client wins including Greencard Creative, Brian Cuban, and Contemporary Art Collection.

Read more

If Jay-Z can pretend to be a sports agent then Russell Simmons can pretend to be a marketing guru, right? Sure — just don’t refer to his new company Narrative, which offers “digital marketing, entertainment and technology” services, as an agency.

Why not? Because Simmons and partner Tricia Clarke-Stone want to help agencies, not compete with them. How does that work? Narrative‘s founders say they will use its nascent creative team to produce the “marketing solutions” and digital campaigns that said agencies will then promote. The group already has a couple of clients in Sprint‘s Boost Mobile and Simmons’s own site GlobalGrind.

Simmons and Clark-Stone aren’t exactly new to the promo game — GlobalGrind doubles as a marketing company that’s already served some big-name clients like Pepsi, Tide and Toyota. They see their new venture’s purpose as filling a “gap” in an industry ill-equipped to serve a public for which “urban culture is [now] the mainstream” regardless of race, background or geography. But how can Narrative not compete with agencies when its service description sounds so similar to those of its prospective “partners?”

Simmons has obviously done great work in the past, and we don’t doubt his promotional prowess — but this is a strange rollout, no?

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers. – Daniel J. Boorstin

Maroon PR announced the addition of two new clients to its growing roster consisting of national sports brands, nonprofit organizations, restaurants and other growing businesses. In addition, the firm is celebrating the seven year anniversary of its founding by PR vet John Maroon on April 3, 2006. The two new clients now working with Maroon PR include Hero Rush and Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. – Arthur C. Clarke

SHIFT Communications announced today the expansion of its technology business with the addition of new clients Axceler, Bigcommerce and IntelliResponse.

Axceler, an expert in governance for collaboration in the social enterprise, has chosen SHIFT as its agency of record to raise the company’s profile beyond its current Sharepoint audience and to highlight Axceler’s growing abilities around enterprise collaboration. Leading e-commerce platform Bigcommerce, which provides everything needed to create a successful online store, brought SHIFT on board as its agency of record to heighten its visibility in the North American market and related business press, as well as help to drive leads to its site.

Additionally, virtual agent technology solutions provider IntelliResponse has tapped SHIFT to help build awareness of the company in order to drive sales and increase relationships with industry influencers.

Read more

Today in No, We’re Not Tired of This Debate Yet news: Phil Johnson, CEO of PJA Advertising, wrote a story for AdWeek arguing that the whole “moving into creative” trend means that “savvy PR firms” can and should steal social media and native advertising opportunities away from their competitors in the ad and marketing fields — and that those other guys will need to imitate the PR model in order to keep up.

Johnson writes that “forward-thinking public-relations firms have been more adept than advertising agencies at grasping the strategic implications of content marketing”. In making this point he cites recent moves by Edelman and Weber Shandwick as well as Digital Influence Group, “a full-service digital marketing agency with social media at the core”, and Shift Communications, which has been bullish on social for some time.

He also thinks that PR firms have an inherent advantage because native advertising “is conceptually the same as placing press releases that look like independent journalism.” Hmm…

Read more

Imagine swimming through your day in an ocean of blue expertly matched to a series of David Hockney pool paintings.

In the latest episode of Cubes, we show you the New York offices of Morris + King public relations. Lead partner and co-principal Judith R. King takes the mediabistroTV crew on a musical journey featuring chairs from the Stella Solaris cruise ship and 1970s French jumbo jets, specially chosen chandeliers and offices painted any color you like as long as its blue.

You can view our other MediabistroTV productions on our YouTube Channel.

After the Oreo team’s big social media win dominated the post-Super Bowl buzz, a whole lot of people who had never used the phrase “real-time marketing” before started throwing it around like a hot potato.

The point is that pretty much any business whose description includes the words “firm” or “agency” now needs to claim that it has “real-time marketing capabilities” in order to win the interest of big-name clients. McCann Erickson, for example, named its new social media-only division “McCann Always On”. The “RTM” phrase doesn’t just apply to agencies that label themselves “ad” or “marketing”, either — PR wants to “own” social media too, remember?

The problem is that the whole phenomenon just isn’t that simple — and it’s not too terribly revolutionary either. Explaining that to clients, however, may be a bit of a challenge.

Read more