Year: 2015

The Beauty of Raleigh PR: Day 26 – Valentine’s Day

Jasmin SessomsBlog, Entry-Level PR Job, The Clairemont Team,

Valentine’s Day is a celebration of love. Whether you and your partner are keen on the holiday or not, it’s a good excuse to celebrate love. If you don’t have any ideas for this weekend don’t worry! The Clairemont team brainstormed a few inventive ideas that might make your life a little bit easier. Let us help you navigate through the pressure with a little creativity.

Valentine’s Day survival guide from Clairemont:

1) Focus on the food. Fondue is a romantic, hands-on dish that you and your sweetheart can prepare together.

2) Create the movie theater ambiance at home. Don’t feel like being bothered? Grab your favorite pillows and snuggle with your honey on the couch.

3) Get the card now. The selection of Valentine’s day cards has drastically declined already. Don’t be the person that has to cross out “Grandma” for “Wife.” Paper Buzz is a great place to start, and it’s local.

4) Give them a sweet treat. Our clients are offering sweet deals across the Triangle. PDQ is offering a free cookie with a purchase of lunch. What a great end to any meal. If lunch isn’t what you have in mind, pop into one of three Triangle DQ locations and pick up a super sweet custom “Cupid Cake.”

5) Make a custom CD or playlist. Music is a great way to remind your significant other of how much they are loved.

Editor’s Note: Clairemont enthusiastically welcomes Jasmin Sessoms to our team! Follow this former beauty queen’s journey as she documents her first 30 days in a Raleigh PR agency.

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The Beauty of Raleigh PR: Day 25 – Creativity

Jasmin SessomsBlog, Entry-Level PR Job, The Clairemont Team, ,

Its 4 p.m. in the office, you have been working for seven hours and the dreaded afternoon slump hits. When you are lacking a little inspiration at work, what do you do? Whether we are planning an event, pitching media or writing a client strategy, we have all experienced creative blocks.

At Clairemont, we have a few tricks we would love to share with you to stimulate your creativity.

5 Sources of Clairemont-spiration

  1. News: Reading the paper, watching a few minutes of TV news, flipping through a magazine and checking out updates on social media are wonderful ways to get ideas. Sometimes you get the best ideas from the most unexpected places.
  2. Fresh Air: Need a change of scenery? Clairemont is located in the heart of downtown Raleigh. We love pausing our tasks to take a quick, refreshing walk. In general, changing your environment — whether it is sitting at a different desk or walking across town — it helps to change up your thinking.
  3. Billy: Dogs in the work place help to reduce stress and tension. Billy, our CMO (Chief Motivational Officer), is a regular fixture around the office, always on the lookout for a neck scratch, a walk or a little playtime. The point is, sometimes, your brain just needs a break.
  4. Treats: Let’s face it; for those who partake, caffeine simply puts a little pep in our steps. The morning brew helps me start my day (and afternoon and evening). Sometimes we have a sweet tooth and other times we crave salty snacks. For team brainstorm sessions, we find having our favorite treats make it feel more like a party than work. And THAT makes the creativity flow!
  5. The Craziest (or Worst) Idea Ever: Sometimes you just have to go to extremes. When you can’t seem to nail the best idea ever, see what you can come up with as the craziest idea ever…or give yourself permission to think up the worst idea ever. In the process, you just might find a notion that will lead you to be wildly successful.

When these things don’t work, we dance it out until inspiration hits! What do you do to get your brain functioning after being stuck in a rut?

Editor’s Note: Clairemont enthusiastically welcomes Jasmin Sessoms to our team! Follow this former beauty queen’s journey as she documents her first 30 days in a Raleigh PR agency.

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The Beauty of Raleigh PR: Day 24 – Smart TV

Jasmin SessomsBlog, Entry-Level PR Job, Public Relations, , ,

Meet the Coopers. An average American family. Meet dad, a widower and a father. The Coopers win a “house of the future” with a cyber housemaid named PAT (“Personal Applied Technology”). But the house goes haywire, and it’s up to the family to defeat the system. In 1999, Smart House was released by Disney. In 2015, our world is getting closer and closer to this technologically advanced experience that Walt Disney portrayed some 16 years ago. Computers are taking a leading role in our lives.

From the Jetsons‘ flying cars and moving walkways, today’s technology has evolved to reflect some of these early animations. These developments, however, have fostered an overarching concern in the minds of many Americans: Big Brother is watching you. First, be careful what you say on your land line. Then, don’t write anything incriminating via email or text. All of these things could possibly be taken be a third party and used against you. Next thing you know, you’re a “person of interest” on a governmental watch list–or so the story goes.

While watching the news this morning, I got a slightly more frightening Big Brother update. Samsung TVs, just like the one I was watching in the privacy of my bedroom, could possibly be collecting my conversations and sending them to a third party. Samsung is warning its customers about discussing personal information in front of the television set. The policy states that the TV will be listening to your every word, waiting for a command.

With media pitching as one of our areas of expertise at Clairemont, I wonder if we will soon live in a world where people begin to abandon the TV in fear. Will technology bring more bad than good in our society, causing us to adopt older methods of communication? Or will I soon be flying into work? Those are just a few tidbits to think about before sitting down in front of the television and airing your dirty laundry.

Editor’s Note: Clairemont enthusiastically welcomes Jasmin Sessoms to our team! Follow this former beauty queen’s journey as she documents her first 30 days in a Raleigh PR agency.

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What Does a PR Agency Do? T.MAC Restaurant Opening

Sarah HattmanBlog, Case Studies, Public Relations, Restaurant PR + Hospitality PR, , ,

Client: T.MAC

Situational Analysis: The original T.MAC was founded in Atlanta, Georgia in 1979. More than 30 years later the company has grown to include 30 restaurants – 25 of which are in Georgia. With the majority of its restaurants located in its home state, it is no surprise that T.MAC is well known there. However, T.MAC executives realized the company’s brand recognition wasn’t as strong outside of Georgia.

Until 2014, T.MAC was known as Taco Mac. In the restaurant’s early days, the founders had enough money to revamp the kitchen or change the sign outside the building that was once home to a taco stand. Ultimately, the kitchen remodel won and Taco Mac was born. The problem is that Taco Mac is known for its signature wings, not tacos. In fact, there is only one taco on its menu. T.MAC dropped the “aco” before it opened its first Triangle restaurant in Cary, but its team of executives knew they needed to do more to establish brand recognition in the months leading up to its opening, and they hired Clairemont Communications.

Planning: Based on extensive primary and secondary research, Clairemont established the objectives as follows:

  1. Develop local community relationships with T.MAC ahead of the opening, engaging at least 40 community influencers.
  2. Introduce media to T.MAC, securing at least 10 local print news stories and 25 blog and social media posts.
  3. Arrange meetings with local high schools and facilitate at least two sponsorships.
  4. Select two local non-profit organizations and donate a portion of opening week proceeds to those organizations.

Execution: In order to effectively meet the primary objectives, Clairemont focused its efforts on the following areas:

  • Local High School Sponsorships: By building relationships with local schools,  T.MAC was able to introduce itself to Cary families as part of the community and position itself as a place to hang out with teammates, friends and family. With a fall opening of the restaurant, high school football sponsorships provided opportunities to show T.MAC’s community involvement and give Cary families a reason to check out the restaurant.
  • Clairemont Social: Clairemont hosted a T.MAC social at The Clairemont House. The purpose was to give our network of contacts and influencers the opportunity to learn more about T.MAC, sample food from the menu and taste its local beer offerings and meet the T.MAC team. We hosted approximately 60 guests including media and local personalities, local business owners, hospitality professionals, leaders in the community, bloggers and foodies.
  • Media Preview Lunch: We invited targeted media to a special preview lunch at the restaurant two days prior to the opening. This allowed media to preview the restaurant and meet on-one-one with key members of the T.MAC team.
  • VIP Preview: Clairemont compiled a list of city officials, dignitaries, local media and local university administration for T.MAC to invite to special VIP dinner the evening before T.MAC opened to the public. T.MAC hosted 125 VIP’s who were able to sample the menu and beer selection for the complete T.MAC “experience.”
  • Check Presentation Event: Before T.MAC’s opening, Clairemont arranged and recommended two local non-profit organizations for T.MAC to support with money raised during the restaurant’s opening week. Less than a month after its opening, T.MAC donated $2,000 to both Life Experiences and JDFR each of the organizations. Clairemont arranged at check presentation ceremony and invited media to attend the event highlighting T.MAC as business that supports the community it serves.

Evaluation: The creative, tiered campaign exceeded expectations by engaging more than 75 target community influencers at the social at The Clairemont House, friends and family night and the VIP preview. We exceeded our goal media coverage and secured 10 traditional media placements 38 social media and blog posts, introducing T.MAC to the area. We also exceeded our goal and secured sponsorships with three local high schools. Clairemont met its goal and arranged for T.MAC to donate money to two local non-profit organizations that support the community.

We anticipate that we’ll continue to work on our goal of trying all of the beers that T.MAC has on tap for at least a few more months! In the meantime, we hope you enjoyed this Tasty Tuesday post, and stay tuned for more restaurant PR case studies that showcase the work Clairemont is doing with a variety of types of food service organizations.

Pilsner Glass

 

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The Beauty of Raleigh PR: Day 23 – DQ Cakes

Jasmin SessomsBlog, Entry-Level PR Job, Raleigh PR Agency, Wonderfully Random, ,

Sprinkles and icing and cakes! Oh my! Yesterday, the Clairemont team hosted a Frozen-themed Valentine’s Day event for one of our beloved clients,  Triangle Dairy Queen. After much planning and preparing, the day had finally approached us. Dairy Queen is famed for its ice cream cakes, and we wanted to give them an official introduction to our friends at Clairemont.

This event turned into a bona fide cake-decorating, finger-licking, Queen-Elsa-spotting party. Kids of all ages flocked from near and far to decorate a sweet treat for their moms and dads. With a little inspiration from the Dairy Queen team, cake beautifying began.

I think that the most gratifying moment of this event was to see the children’s faces brighten when they spotted their favorite Disney character, Queen Elsa, walk up to aid with their designs. What makes DQ cakes so special? All of the cakes at the Triangle Dairy Queen locations are made fresh in-house and are fully customizable for every occasion.

For more than 70 years, DQ has been crafting delicious treats for the entire family. The key to Dairy Queen’s success is simple: a combination of hard-working staff and great-tasting food. With three Triangle locations under our client’s belt, he and his staff are strongly embedded in the local culture and enjoy giving back to the community.

Although much has changed in the world since Dairy Queen’s inception, one constant has remained: DQ restaurants are still the place to find friends celebrating a birthday, stopping by after a date or simply enjoying a sweet treat. If you can’t think of a gift for Valentine’s Day, pop into Dairy Queen and request a custom-made ice cream cake for your sweetie. Dairy Queen’s scrumptious flavors combined with the staff’s boundless design expertise will provide the perfect treat to “heat up” your holiday.

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