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Year: 2014

Feeling “InSpired”

Feeling “InSpired”

May 12, 2014January 31, 2023 Sarah HattmanAwards, Blog, Professional Development, The Clairemont TeamClairemont Communications, InSpire Awards, NCPRSA, PR Awards, teamwork

Each year in May the North Carolina Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (NCPRSA) hosts the InSpire Awards, which brings together the top PR pros in the Triangle to celebrate the “best of the best” in public relations. I am pleased and honored to say that Clairemont Communications won 10 awards at this year’s event, including two best in category awards, six awards of excellence and two honorable mentions. This means that since Clairemont opened its doors in 2010, the team has won 85 industry awards.

I wish I could take credit for the awards, but the truth is that I have been a member of the Clairemont team for only a little over a month, and the award-winning work was done many months ahead of my arrival. Based on the smile that was plastered on my face each of the 10 times that the evening’s emcee, WRAL’s Debra Morgan, read Clairemont’s name, you might think I single-handedly crafted and executed the campaigns and tactics. However, I was simply in awe of my new teammates and excited to know that I joined such an extremely creative and wildly successful team.

I attribute the success to an outstanding team. In my short time with the agency, I have learned that Clairemont takes the word “team” to a whole new level and gives validation to the old saying, “There’s no ‘i” in team.” I know it seems rather cliche, but it really is the truth when it comes to Clairemont. Whether it’s a brainstorming session, working through a challenge or simply going through the daily routine, everyone is working together, supporting each other and having fun.

This is why I wasn’t surprised to learn that each year Clairemont develops a “team theme” for the InSpire Awards. In previous years, team members arrived at the banquet wearing all yellow or waved Facebook “Like” flags as a team member accepted an award for a social media campaign. This year we discussed several options, ranging from straw hats or scarves to an animal print of some sort. After several conversations and much consideration, (Could we find a hat shop? Did we all have animal print clothing? What was within everyone’s comfort zone?) we opted to wear black and/or white with orange accessories.

I liked the idea; it was classy and had a feel of understated elegance. But I couldn’t help but wonder if people would actually look at me and think, “She has on a black dress, a white blazer, an orange necklace and orange earrings. Oh, she must be with Clairemont!” After all, it was an awards banquet at The State Club. I expected many attendees would be dressed in black and white with a splash of color.

Well, it turns out that not only did they did notice, several of them commented saying it was a “fun idea” or a “nice touch.” I admit it was pretty obvious that our color scheme was intentional as I looked around our table and saw everyone dressed according to our “team theme.” That’s when it hit me. Our colored-coordinated attire was a true testimony of the Clairemont culture. We all had the same goal of presenting ourselves as a united team by wearing the same colors, but each of our outfits was different and represented the fact that we each bring our own sense of style and personality to the table in everything thing we do.

I look forward to the days, weeks and months ahead at Clairemont, and who knows, maybe next year will be the year that Clairemont wins its 100th industry award.

 

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Internships (Part 2): One or Many?

Internships (Part 2): One or Many?

May 6, 2014January 31, 2023 Cherith AndesBlog, Professional Development, Public RelationsInternships, PR Agency, pr job, preparing for jobs, Raleigh PR internshis

Internship Hopping: should interns pursue one long internship or several shorter gigs?
Part two of a two-part blog on internships from Clairemont’s own fantastic intern, Carly Griffin.

It’s clear: one of the most important benefits of an internship outside the classroom is the opportunity to develop a long-term relationship with a company.

But what is more important: interning for one agency for an extended period of time or dipping into a variety of agencies throughout multiple internships?

Revisit the Reason

In a world where students have taken up sports, joined clubs and racked up volunteer hours solely for the purpose of building up their resumes, we have forgotten the reasons behind the actions. Sports weren’t created to be a point on a resume; they are created for exercise and learning teamwork. Volunteerism isn’t for cushioning a cover letter; it’s for nurturing and giving back to a community.

Concurrently, don’t approach an internship as just another item on your graduation checklist. It’s not worth it.

What are you investing?

Whether you intern at one place for an extended period of time or hop from one internship to another, it’s vital that you fully commit yourself to that experience. You get out of it what you put in. One quality internship can be just as beneficial as a resume stacked with a multitude of positions. If you are getting great experience and learning a lot at one place, there is no need to stress about finding a litany of internships just to fill your resume.

However, there is something to be said for interning at a variety of companies. According to Statista.com, twenty-nine percent of college graduates wish they had interned more during their college careers. If you are still unsure of the kind of job you want, quantity can help. Like sampling ice cream flavors (and with the same gusto, of course), it can be beneficial to intern at several companies that provide a different environment and experience. You don’t want to end up signing a work contract and then having the job equivalent of buyer’s remorse.

The Final Word

So, after my internal debate that fateful night at the dinner table with my dad, I am happy to say that I have gained so much more than just PR experience from my internships. I’ve gained insight into a professional world, I’ve learned the importance of building professional relationships, and I’ve discovered what interests me and what does not. I believe that the time I have spent interning (not the number of internships I have had) will help me compete with other, more experienced, professionals when I enter the job market after graduation.

Sound off: what advice do you have for college interns? Invest in one internship or pursue several?

 

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Listen to Your Mother Wisdom

Listen to Your Mother Wisdom

May 2, 2014January 31, 2023 Dana PhelpsBlog, Free Advice, In Our CommunityListen to Your Mother, LTYM, Mothers Day

If you agree with the expression “mother knows best,” you’ll want to go to the Raleigh-Durham Listen to Your Mother show on May 6 or 8. It is being held at 7:30 p.m. in Kenan Auditorium at William Peace University, and the proceeds benefit SafeChild. With 14 incredibly personal stories about motherhood, I guarantee that you’ll be inspired, entertained and so moved that you’ll find yourself thinking about the stories for days or even weeks to come.

For me, it was months. I sat in the audience last year as Listen to Your Mother made its Raleigh-Durham debut. I laughed. I cried. And eight months later, I found myself still thinking about the show. I Googled to find the deadline for submitting an essay — THAT DAY! I sat down at my desk and banged out a story. I hadn’t known for eight months that it was the one I wanted to tell, but when type filled the page, I hit send.

I am honored to have made it through the audition and to be part of a cast that consists of amazingly strong women. Walking into a room of strangers to share a personal story for our first read-through was down right intimidating. Then, something magical happened. One by one, standing in Liisa Ogburn‘s living room, each woman let down her guard and put it all out there. Instant admiration! Instant trust! Instant bonding!

While we’ve only been together a few times and haven’t even done our performance yet, I’ve learned so much from this group and experience. I think many of these lessons apply not only to life in general, but also to professional development, so I’m sharing them here.

  1. Get out of your comfort zone. Do something that scares you. Take a risk. You’ll be glad that you did.
  2. Enjoy the journey. Or don’t. This is actually a quote from Lisa Bull’s story. Accentuate the positive!
  3. Listen to your mother. And anyone else willing to tell you her story. I love what Katy Schafer said when we were being interviewed by the N&O about how our social media society really only allows for snippets. To sit down and hear an entire story and really have the opportunity to listen to it in these hectic times is a real gift.
  4. We’re all okay. Who doesn’t have insecurities? Whether it as at home or work, nobody is perfect. The good news is, we don’t have to be alone with whatever might be bothering us. Reach out and ask for help. Take a deep breathe. Phone a friend. Call your mom! Or take advice from Stephanie Lormand and turn your challenges into strengths.
  5. Tell the truth and say what you mean. Let’s face it, telling the truth is hard. You think owning up to a mistake in the office is difficult? Try telling your young daughters where your breasts went, just as Alicia Altmueller had to do after having a mastectomy.
  6. An old dog can learn new tricks. I heard a 30-someting CEO call social media crap this week and say that he’d never been on Facebook. If we don’t embrace new technologies as professionals, we’ll be left behind. And miss out on some fun! If Rebecca Lanning‘s mom can become a techie, so can you.
  7. To get what you want, you might have to get up at 4:50 a.m. Yes, that’s early. A friend once posted on Facebook, “What are you willing to do to succeed?” My favorite response was, “The better question is what am I not willing to do!” If you need motivation to reach your goals, you need to hear Betsy Martin’s story.
  8. There are many things we can’t control. Gosh, this is hard to accept.
  9. Beware of a snake in the grass…or under the sofa as Agnes Stevens will tell you. What do you do when life throws you a surprise? You deal with it. You have a problem, you figure it out or at least grab a fire poker and give it a good jab.
  10. Life is short, so don’t take it for granted. What would you do with your kids today if you were terminally ill? How will you spend your last moments with your mother? When will you get around to showing more appreciation, complaining less and enjoying each moment more. How about now?

Please come see the show to hear more about these and other beautiful stories. I might not be your mother, but this mama says to buy your tickets and go! In the meantime, what’s the best advice your mother ever gave you? Please leave your answer in the comments section.

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How PR is Changing the World

How PR is Changing the World

May 1, 2014January 31, 2023 Dana PhelpsBlog, Counselors Academy, Public RelationsCAPRSA, Counselors Academy, Counselors Academy Conference, global PR, PRSA

As an attendee of PRSA‘s Counselors Academy conference for several years running now, I get to meet a lot of really wonderful PR people from around the country and some special Canadians. 🙂  Daniel Tisch, president of Argyle Communications, is certainly one of my favorites. I think it was Dan’s first Counselors Academy conference that he fell in with the bad kids and ended up crashing the prom. That’s really another story, but I’m including the photo as proof. You can ask Ken Jacobs, Martin Waxman or Tom Garrity for the details later.

Now, back to today’s story. Because Dan is quite the globe trotter and in high demand to speak internationally, it is a real treat that attendees of this year’s conference will get to hear his presentation, “How PR is Changing the World: What Your Agency Needs to Know.” Eager to learn more about his global perspective on the evolution of our industry, I conducted the following pre-conference Q&A with Dan:

Without giving too much away, how is PR changing the world?
The first decade of the twenty-first century has rewritten the rules for our clients, because we’ve seen a simultaneous concentration of economic power in corporations and a diffusion of communication power to individuals and stakeholders. Since audiences have never had more power, organizations have never had less control – and that means the most powerful organizations will be those who excel at earning attention, engagement, loyalty and trust through public relations.

Knowing that you’ve conducted and studied global research, what countries are leading the changes in our industry, and why do you think that is the case?
Thirty countries were involved in the Global Alliance’s research, and I’ve been part of events in at least 25 countries in the last four years. The global PR community is a story of amazing diversity – and yet surprising unity of purpose. My greatest takeaway is that while public relations is being practiced in so many different countries, cultures and contexts, the core challenges of professionals and agencies are amazingly similar.

I see different countries showing leadership in different fields. For example, while North Americans were the pioneers in social media, Asia now has more than four times as many social media users as we do, and the most rapid growth forecasts are from the Middle East and Africa. On corporate social investment and sustainability, I find professionals in Latin American and African countries speaking a very sophisticated language, perhaps because the social role of the corporation is different. Scandinavian countries have an exceptional level of professionalism – with Sweden and Norway having among the world’s largest professional PR associations despite small populations.

As PR agency managers, what should we be doing to prep our teams to be change agents?
The good news is the need for PR has never been greater; the bad news is that we’re entering an era of unprecedented competition from non-traditional competitors – such as ad agencies and management consultants. We need to “skill up” in many areas: for example, to enhance our employees’ business literacy; to get better at the visual and emotional side of brand-building; to avoid being stuck in the media relations “box”; to get clients to see social media as intrinsic to PR; to know more about behavioral science; and to start measuring results in ways that are more meaningful to business.

Is change synonymous with success in this day and age?
Change can bring both risk and opportunity. Success means embracing both – managing the former, and positioning ourselves to seize the latter.

Why is this an important topic to the senior practitioners attending the conference in Key West?
In North America, we can get a bit insular! I find looking at how the broader global community is conceiving of our profession’s challenges – and enunciating the role of value of public relations in the twenty-first century – is invaluable. I hope my peers will come out of it with a few new ideas on how to make the case for what we do, and a bit of a road map on the skills we need to develop in our people. Finally, I hope that as independent agencies thinking globally – while maintaining our unbeatable local expertise — we can gain an even greater edge on our multinational competitors!

Thanks to Dan for taking time to answer my questions! If you are going to the Counselors Academy conference May 4 – 6 in Key West, make sure to check out his session. I promise you’ll get a lot out of it and enjoy meeting him! If you aren’t attending, follow Dan on social media via the links in the first paragraph of this post.

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To Intern…Or Not To Intern? (Part 1)

To Intern…Or Not To Intern? (Part 1)

April 28, 2014January 31, 2023 Cherith AndesBlog, Professional Development, Public Relationsinternship, jobs in PR, PR Agency, Raleigh PR3 Comments on To Intern…Or Not To Intern? (Part 1)

With the growth of client assignments in the classroom, are internships outdated?
Part one of a two-part blog on internships from Clairemont’s own fantastic intern, Carly Griffin.

Imagine sitting at the dinner table over Christmas break during your sophomore year of college, and your dad asks you, “So, do you have an internship lined up for the summer yet?” 

Internship…? INTERNSHIP? You JUST decided on a major. Two months ago. And only after flirting with every other major your school offers. Does he really expect you to have an internship lined up already?

So, you mumble a response, such as, “I’ve been looking into it.”

Then, the panic sets in. How do you find an internship? Hello, Google! What kind of internship should you apply to? Oh yeah, my major. Where can you apply? I guess living at home would be cool. Are you even qualified for an internship? Probably, not. Are internships even necessary? Hmm…

In every intern interview I’ve done, one question always seems to come up: why do you want this internship? And my response is the same each time: the classroom is a great place to learn theories, but it’s vital to gain the real world experience a college setting cannot provide.

But in a day when college courses now assign you to work for a client, did my answer still ring true?

In my PR Writing class, we were given a semester-long assignment with a non-profit, Theater Delta, where we applied classroom learning to an actual company. And while this was a great opportunity, it lacked the real-life professionalism of an internship that I had to secure on my own.

In addition, the assignment ended after a semester with no opportunity to continue working for the company.  And that, my friends, is key. The relationship that you develop during a traditional internship paves the way for career mobility, forward momentum and—simply put—job offers.

The work I did for Theater Delta, while instructive and educational, did not have the same future opportunities as a “real” internship. For this reason, I’m thankful for that night at the dinner table. It made me examine my options and inspired me to start working towards a professional internship that would be pack the most punch as I built my career.

Weigh in: do you think a classroom internship provides the same benefits as a opportunity outside the college setting?

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Visit our blog to see the @trianglebizjrnl coverage and read the full feature in the TBJ to learn more about Parkside.
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For example, a statewide resource for small businesses recently hired Clairemont to devise an executive visibility campaign to help position the organization and its director as the leading small business resource in North Carolina.
 
Head to our blog to read what exactly an executive visibility campaign entails and to learn more about our services!
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Our client @wendellfallsnc, one of the largest mas Our client @wendellfallsnc, one of the largest master-planned communities in the Triangle, closed on its first age-eligible rental community plan, Arden at Wendell Falls, that will offer 140 open-concept units and exclusive onsite amenities!
 
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It’s National Volunteer Month, and volunteers ar It’s National Volunteer Month, and volunteers are needed more than ever! Many organizations with scarce resources rely on volunteers and would not exist without them. Visit our recent blog post to read about the organizations Clairemont has supported and how you can make a difference in your community!
Authenticity is trending, and research shows that Authenticity is trending, and research shows that consumers are 2.4 times more likely to view user-generated content as authentic. Read our recent blog post to learn about UGC, how it can benefit your brand and how to use it in your marketing strategy.
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We are so excited to share that Clairemont earned We are so excited to share that Clairemont earned eight awards, five gold🥇and three silver🥈, at this year's Sir Walter Raleigh Awards hosted by the Raleigh Public Relations Society!🎉 We are beyond grateful to work with so many amazing partners, clients and industry friends!
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