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When it rains, it pours.

blast! has been exploding and new clients are marching in at a regular pace. My fiancé and I are preparing our house for our post-wedding move to suburbia so the dogs have more room to run and I can have a garden, chickens and, one day, a goat or two. We have some family members that need special attention right now. Oh, and did you catch that I’m getting married in about a month?

As someone that has always loved to sleep in on weekends and curl up with a good book before settling into a minimum of eight hours of sleep, to say that my sleeping habits are being knocked off-track would be an understatement. Between the long hours and late nights, the wedding plans and family responsibilities, I’m tired.

I like to get a relatively early start to my day as a way to dedicate time to a special project or to check in with east coast clients before the west coast clients are up and at it or, even, to tick some to-do’s off the wedding task list. Now, when I say relatively early, I don’t mean I’m ready for calls to start rolling in on my cell phone while I’m grinding our morning coffee or before I’ve had the chance to brush my teeth. I simply mean, I’m here, I’m moving in the general direction of my desk and I’ll be right with you.

Regardless of how my day starts or ends, but fully dependent on when they do, at some point during the day, I start to lose my edge. I hit the proverbial “wall” and find myself wanting nothing more than to curl up on the sofa and rest. Let’s face it, I rarely make it through my day without muttering, “Ugh, I need a nap. “

Remember naptime? Your teacher would hand you a carton of milk or, if it’s a particularly good day, chocolate milk and you drink it while listening to a story. Slowly, you begin to yawn and slump down on your naptime mat to slowly drift into la la land. I remember being warm and comfortable and waking up refreshed, ready to tackle the next coloring project or heading off to music class.

I wonder, if we were to listen to our bodies and curl up on mats under our desks when your mind begins to drift toward warm blankets and down pillows, would we get more done during the day? Would we actually see a counterintuitive result of increased productivity? The idea isn’t unique. Siestas, naptime, forty winks, nodding off or, my grandfather’s favorite, resting your eyes, snoozing in the middle of your day has been around since the dawn of time. Even George Costanza agrees with the concept of daytime napping.

But, regardless of what you want to call it, I need one. So, what time is the milk being delivered today? And may I please borrow your blanket?

The news of the poor lad who had a few too many drinks then unwittingly left his upcoming iPhone prototype on a bar stool in Silicon Valley has spread like wildfire across both social and traditional media channels over the last day. The hoopla has of course caused a majority of the current event chats around the office to center around the topic. Once the debate over whether the device is the real deal (which it seems to be given the information that has spread) it quickly turns from technical to promotional: did Apple stage this stunt to intentionally “leak” the product?

Although I’m never surprised by the PR prowess of Apple, I find it quite hard to believe that they would drop a bomb like this so far in advance of the traditional iPhone update launch in June. If we were a few weeks out, it might make sense to get the PR machine rolling with a “leak”, but even then sheerly not of this magnitude. Apple is a master at throttling information to build an image exactly the way they want to: in a controlled manner. This latest seems to be anything but controlled.

So I say to those who see this as Apple’s latest stab at PR brilliance, not even the most controlling organizations are always in control. Which in an of itself, could be PR brilliance.

Let’s face it, we all love free stuff. And with three of us engaged and in the throes of wedding planning here at blast! PR, we’ve joined the other thousands of brides-to-be interested in getting our hands on free loot!

So often we’re on the other side of contests, charged with planning and orchestrating the details, which means it wouldn’t exactly be fair if we were to participate and, by some stroke of luck, win the very contest we were running. What fun it is to finally be on the other side! Just last week, Crystal won a piece of jewelry from Bailey’s Jewelry here in Raleigh. I’ve won professional help with home décor and our wedding registry from “The Bride and Bloom” magazine. (Trust me, we need it. I nearly had a fit trying to register for China.) And Carla has a renewed faith that she, too, can win something!

But social media has done so much more for me and planning our wedding, like helping me tackle the big question: where can I find a traditional gluten-free wedding cake? And this power is not something that has gone unnoticed. In addition to the leagues of wedding sites providing guidance on how to use social media in planning your wedding, Josh Catone, editor of Mashable.com, wrote “HOW TO: Plan a DIY Wedding Using Social Media” in September of 2009. And every day I see more and more people Tweeting under handles that immediately declare they’re status as “Engaged” or “Bride-to-Be.”

According to Wikipedia, the wedding industry has grown to an empire of 40 billion dollars per year and the average American wedding reception in 2008 was $21,810, which dwindles when compared to 2007 weddings, which ran $28,730 on average. Looking at these numbers, it’s no wonder social media outlets are saturated with wedding vendors and bloggers eager to share their offerings and abilities with brides trying to decide how to spend their slices of that $40 billion industry pie.

My fiancé and I have already made most of the large decisions going into our wedding. We’ve been very diligent and thoughtful in deciding how we’re going to spend our slice (albeit a very small slice) of that wedding industry pie. But even still, whenever I feel I can’t find exactly what I’m looking for, like my most recent challenge of finding the perfect invitations, I turn to Twitter and Facebook. It still shocks me to see that within minutes, I have names of people in the Raleigh, NC area that can give me what I was looking for along side a glowing recommendation. And, if I happen to win a Mojuba Wedding Kit from @my_mojuba while I’m searching for information relevant to me or *gasp* doing client work, then that’s fantastic. But if not, I’m probably going to buy one myself just because of how abundantly clear the need for the kit has been made on Twitter.

When a company approaches our team for PR services, they have one goal in mind – to generate higher revenue. How they look to achieve this universal business goal varies case by case. Some private companies are dreaming of going public, while some are looking to be acquired by the industry bigwigs. Others are simply striving to create a name for themselves in the industry and, though they may not have the objective in the beginning, sometimes continue on to accomplish the aforementioned.

With the recent news of Google’s acquisition of blast! PR client Teracent, it seems only fitting that we highlight the significance of public relations as it relates to achieving business objectives.

At blast! PR, we strive to build out external corporate profiles for our clients that will exhibit executive thought leadership and showcase innovation in the industry. Sometimes starting with a company possessing zero exposure amongst key media and analysts, our team develops a strategic PR plan, key messages and associated tactics to get our client on the radar of these industry influencers. We then work to increase brand awareness and lead generation through a strategic public relations program consisting of press releases, speaking engagements, industry awards and contributed articles in key publications.

For example, SKYLIST turned to blast! PR in 2004 to increase company awareness in the increasingly crowded email marketing space. Through our PR efforts, SKYLIST grew from a once unknown ESP into a wildly sought after quality provider, whose technology paved the way for its peers/competitors to achieve common cross-industry goals. By the time the company was acquired by Datran Media in 2006, SKYLIST was a major player in the ESP space and CEO Joshua Baer had become the de facto email industry expert on issues including deliverability, authentication and anti-spam, among many others.

BlueLithium began as the vision of Gurbaksh Chahal, a young entrepreneur aimed to create an ad network for the new generation of online advertisers. When the company approached blast! PR in 2006, BlueLithium was a privately held company looking to step into the spotlight and gain marketshare from the legacy players. In 2007, when the explosion of behavioral and other advanced targeting technologies placed a spotlight on ad networks, we revved up the PR strategy to position BlueLithium as a frontrunner of ad network innovators. By September 2007, Yahoo! announced plans to acquire BlueLithium, which were carried out by the year’s closing.

In March 2009, Teracent approached blast! PR with the primary goal of gaining exposure for the company, its executives and offerings in the online advertising industry. We ensured that Teracent was consistently featured in top online advertising trade publications as a leader and industry innovator, and secured for strategic speaking engagements and column placements to be part of and spearheading industry discussions on the importance of data-driven online display advertising. Just this week, Teracent signed an agreement to be acquired by Google.

“blast! PR implemented a strategy that quickly and efficiently got us in front of top tier media and industry influencers and helped us establish a credible, trusted, expert reputation in the space,” said Chip Hall, SVP of Sales and Marketing at Teracent. “blast! PR worked hand in hand with our sales and marketing teams to make sure our PR goals were aligned with overall business goals and that we were working toward metrics-driven results. Getting acquired by Google was the ultimate success metric.”

Exciting times as another happy client gets acquired! Congratulation to the Teracent team and to our staff at blast! PR for helping make this possible!

Official Google Blog

Travelocity Offers Hope in Evolution of Display Advertising

Targeted Audience and Real-Time Campaign Updates Put Brand’s Efficiency Ahead of the Industry Curve

blast! PR is proud to announce that we’ve won Best Place to Work for companies under 50 employees for the second straight year! Thanks to the entire team for making this possible.

I don’t know about you, but I love Dave Grohl and LOVE Josh Homme. I could not be any more stoked about their new band trio Them Crooked Vultures with John Paul Jones. Josh Homme is probably the only person I would ever cry all over if I were lucky enough to meet him. Dave Grohl is arguably one of the most talented people in the music industry today – I was floored when I learned he recorded nearly the entire Foo Fighters’ debut album on his own. And John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin… enough said.

Little girl excitement aside, I am intrigued lately by the methods of promotion Them Crooked Vultures are employing to build buzz around their startup and super secret tour.

Once the rumors were confirmed and the band was public, they fired up their social media/viral WOM campaign and the fan frustration ensued. The guys created accounts on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and now YouTube to help keep fans informed of any updates. It was evident that the band would be performing only a select few venues in the beginning. The confusing part is how long it takes fans to figure out where they would be playing next, even with all the “updates” the band has been posting for the fans.

So far, this has been the process in no particular order:

1. Post a link to a specific set of coordinates and distance on Google Earth. – Gets people guessing.
2. Post another link to set of coordinates, but closer in distance to the target location. –Builds anticipation.
3. Post a link to a YouTube clip of 30 seconds of previously unheard music. – People want MORE!
4. More Google Earth links, but still not a specific location. – Madness ensues.
5. Post a link to a single picture from the concert. – People go crazy for more music clips.
6. Post a tweet linking to their Facebook profile, update their Facebook status with a link to their Twitter page. – People are basically sheep at this point and the band can do whatever they want.

But even with all its ambiguity, the campaign seems to be paying off for the band. They have over 21,000 Facebook fans, nearly 9,500 followers on Twitter and over 297,000 MySpace profile hits. The band’s debut performance was a recent surprise show in Chicago, which of course sold out online after only 3 minutes. They later did a show in Melkweg with box office only tickets, which were sold in groups and required a photo ID to prevent scalping. And the reason for the secret shows and poor quality live fan-made videos? Cameras are prohibited from the shows, meaning the majority of online videos are those posted by the guys themselves. MORE MORE MORE!!! The band is completely in control over what is posted online and what bones are thrown to the fans.

Crystal Archbell, Program Manager

On my way home from Seattle last week, I picked up a copy of the latest Real
Simple, my favorite way to pass the 6-hour plane ride back to the East coast. Two things in the issue caught my eye and made me laugh. Next to the header, “Newly Coined” they have the term Social Notworking: the act of playing around on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites when you should be working. Also, on another page, a reader wrote in to say that her guilty pleasure is checking and updating her Facebook status several times a day.

Although I suppose this viewpoint holds true for many people out there, it reminded me how differently blast! PR, and the majority of the online marketing/technology industry, views social networking. Not as a guilty pleasure or an escape from work, but in fact, an integral part of our work day and client strategy. If I don’t update my Twitter status, even my personal account, I get a note from my boss (via Twitter) reminding me to do so!

We have always strived to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to social media and PR 2.0, and we know that for many of our clients, establishing a Twitter presence, building and updating fan pages on Facebook and generally joining the real time conversations with their peers, prospects, clients and industry influencers social media provides is an essential piece of the brand (and credibility) building puzzle. In order to provide the best recommendations and stay on top of trends, all of us at blast! PR have been assigned the responsibility to test, know, use, love and experience first-hand the latest and greatest social outlets and applications.

So for everyone out there worried about Social Notworking, know that there are those of us who are working hard to be social every day. It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it!

Carla Vicens, Senior PR Specialist