Scope of Services

Strategic Planning
There’s a Zen saying: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” Building a strategic plan with specific goals, detailed budgets, action plans, and timelines is, quite simply, the best way to get you to the destination that you want to reach. We offer an efficient assessment process and a level of detail to our marketing plans that will leave no doubt in your mind as to what we think you should do, how much it would cost, and how long it would take.

Branding/Messaging
To implement effective branding, you have to assess the brand in its current state, map it into the context of what the competition’s doing, and then develop recommendations for branding shifts – PLUS build the action plans, programs, and initiatives that give substance to the new brand. If you do all this, you’ll end up with a truly strategic brand and clean, clear messaging that people remember and understand.

Creative Director for Graphic Identity Projects
A great design doesn’t serve your company unless it supports your brand and desired messaging goals. Creative direction involves selecting and working with a graphic designer to develop corporate identities and marketing pieces that look great, support brand objectives, and appeal to your target audiences.

Presentation Training
93% of a presentation’s impact is based on the delivery of the presentation, and only 7% is based on content. So it’s crucial for sales teams to not only convey clear messages, but deliver the presentation with power and impact. Our presentation training is based on a unique “Hollywood” approach, and we teach sales teams how to use performance techniques employed by actors, singers, and dancers – to add excitement, energy, and increased impact to their business presentations. Of note, companies that have invested in this training have gone on to sign up large pieces of business that they otherwise might not have closed. (Courtney DeWinter is able to teach this approach in presentation training because she is has trained for close to 10 years under a national champion ballroom dancer, and also has conducted extensive research on performance techniques.)

Media Training
What do you do when a “60 Minutes” reporter is at your door? Panic? Or prepare to speak with the reporter effectively and in a way that best presents your company’s position? This seminar addresses how news happens, and how to provide the quotes and information that a reporter needs to write an accurate story. This training covers beginning and advanced interviewing techniques, and generally how to prepare for print and broadcast interviews through lecture, question-and-answer, and mock interviews which can be videotaped. (Courtney DeWinter is particularly effective at this training because she has worked as a reporter and editor, and is able to provide advice based on real-world experience as a journalist.)

Business Writing and Editing
There’s a real art to writing clear, understandable business plans, press releases, white papers, and more. And sometimes, it takes an outsider to come in, and seek out and eliminate the jargon and anything else that’s diluting your messages. Unless otherwise specified by clients, all our materials are written to Associated Press editorial style guidelines (the industry standard).

Media Relations
It takes a former reporter to know how to effectively work with reporters and editors. Actual experience as a journalist (which we have) goes a long way to creating the type of media relations programs and materials that get results. And by the way, media relations includes everything from managing press conferences to development of the types of campaigns and positions that can get your company in the news.

Media Tours/Virtual Media Tours
These days, it’s rare for a traditional East Coast/West Coast media tour to be feasible, simply because the editors and reporters now are located all over the country. (Thank you, Internet.) So it’s important to have experience producing traditional media tours, and even more crucial to understand how to stage a virtual media tour.

Trade Show Media Relations
While everyone else is bustling around setting up the booth, you really do need a professional who can handle all aspects of media relations at trade shows. This includes pre-event media relations to get into the trade show daily publications, setting interviews with media who plan to converge on the event, and general public relations tasks such as stocking the press room with press kits.

Industry Analyst Relations
When you need to educate audiences about the validity of your product, service, or business model, there’s nothing better than a trusted, third-party influencer to shout from the mountaintops on your behalf. We have worked with all the major industry analyst firms, and know how to obtain analyst briefings, commission reports, and more. We also know how to find the types of “influencers” (such as authors and researchers) who can speak on your behalf, and develop mutually beneficial relationships with them.

Special Events
Sometimes, the best way to reach a target audience is to stage a special event at a time when your target group will be in one place. While special events take a lot of time and money, they sometimes prove to be the most efficient strategy in terms of cost per lead. We do everything from brainstorming the event concept to invitations, entertainment coordination, and organizing catering – for everything from speaker’s forums, seminars, and annual meetings for shareholders to media events and grand openings. (In the food department, it helps that Courtney DeWinter worked for years as a restaurant critic; she knows good food, how to work with chefs and caterers, and how to make a memorable event.)

Special Promotions
Special promotions can be used to drive business during seasonal downturns in business volume. In these cases, we develop themes for promotions (or implement themes developed by our clients), and promote the promotional offering through publicity, special events, and direct mail.

Direct Mail
Despite all the hot, new e-marketing options, simple postcard mailings are still one of the most cost-effective ways to stay in touch with your customers and prospects. We excel at developing tight, clean messaging and working with designers to develop catchy direct mail pieces that people actually feel compelled to read.

Market Research/General Research
Research is one of the most under-used functions in the marketing mix. Yet, done correctly, it can be both affordable and provide business intelligence that’s vital to your company’s success. In this area, we do everything from employee, customer, and prospect surveys to managing and leading focus groups to very specific research needed to develop a white paper or justify a new business venture to investors.

Sales Support
Let’s put it this way: the type of personality it takes to do sales every day is not always the person who can build a sales plan, manage it over time, and stick to it! So we offer a wide variety of sales support activities, including development of easy-to-read, easy-to-understand sales collateral, packaging strategies for business proposals, sales campaigns, and prospecting action plans that involve the wooing of specific prospects or target audiences.

Employee Communications
Employee communications really should be handled by an in-house person. But sometimes, it takes an outsider to help set up the program and lead certain parts of it. We have done everything from company newsletters to management-to-employee meetings, employee surveys, and more.

Photography Coordination
When you’ve got to work with a photographer, or direct a photo shoot, it certainly helps to have a solid knowledge of photography, set styling, and composition. Courtney DeWinter has been a photographer for more than 30 years, and has experience processing her own images in a darkroom, or via digital technology. That type of knowledge allows us to speak the photographer's language and obtain desired results for clients.

Crisis Communications
When a crisis occurs, it’s a little late to be building a plan to deal with it, particularly when media are pounding on the door and the phone’s ringing off the wall. We specialize in helping you think through all potential disasters and develop messaging in advance – along with a set of protocols that will be implemented by your pre-designated crisis team if the “you-know-what” hits the fan.

Web Site Development
These days, everybody needs a Web site. And that Web site needs to contain fresh, up-to-date content that will bring your customers and prospects back again and again. We develop Web site content recommendations, write Web-style copy, set schedules for updating the site with new information, and generally make sure the Web site actually helps drive business rather than sitting there like a lump on the (Internet) log.

E-marketing
E-marketing campaigns can be remarkably effective and affordable. But to be effective and to make sure people don’t hit the “opt out” key, you’ve got to carefully set the timing of distribution, build content that keeps people interested and use the emails to drive visitors back to your Web site whenever possible. When dovetailed with good Web site content and easy Web site navigation, an e-marketing campaign is an asset to a marketing campaign.