Year: 2018

Who Wore It Best?

Cherith AndesBlog, Raleigh PR Agency, The Clairemont Team, , , , ,

We’re not shy. As a team that transforms PR campaigns from “blah to voila,” we love things with pizzazz.

… including cooky, crazy costumes.

For Clairemont’s 8th anniversary extravaganza, we invited our friends from the Lil Photo Bus to capture the hoopla in their photo booth (which, incidentally, is housed in a vintage VW bus). From boas and top hats to flashy flamingo frames, partygoers had their pick of props from a decked-out costume closet.

The best part? We have these festooned festivities on file.

Check out the snapshots from our 8th anniversary, and tell us: who wore it best?

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Clairemont CEO Named PRSA’s Counselors Academy Chair

Tracy LathanBlog, Counselors Academy, Raleigh PR Agency, , , ,

Dana Phelps Hughens Named Chair of PRSA’s Counselors Academy

Fanelli, Finley and McCormick named as new members on 2018 executive committee

NEW YORK  — The members of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) Counselors Academy have elected Dana Phelps Hughens, CEO of Clairemont Communications in Raleigh, N.C., as its 2018 chair. In addition, Filomena Fanelli of Impact PR & Communications and Kate Finley of Belle Communications have joined the Counselors Academy executive committee for three-year terms, and Gary McCormick of GMc Communications as an ex-officio member for a one-year term.

Counselors Academy is the national professional interest section of PRSA that focuses on the business of agency PR. Its entrepreneurial members are owners or senior managers of leading independent firms in the U.S. and Canada. Counselors Academy’s programs foster networking, mentoring and learning, and the executive committee consists of 15 senior-level public relations professionals from across the country.

As CEO of Clairemont Communications, Hughens leads the agency to devise public relations and marketing strategies that have been recognized with 175 industry awards since opening in 2010. She is a Silver Anvil award winner and has been honored by the Triangle Business Journal with Women in Business and Forty Under Forty awards. Previously, Hughens was Senior Vice President and Global Consumer Practice Group Co-Chair of Fleishman-Hillard.

“As the owner of an independent agency, one of my first decisions was to join PRSA Counselors Academy,” said Hughens. “It is an essential resource in building and managing a business and has allowed me to build close relationships with other public relations professionals who I know I can trust.”

Hughens added, “As a long-term member of Counselors Academy, I’m really passionate about being this year’s chair. We’re focused on growing and engaging our membership while we continue to make our annual conference the premier professional development event for public relations agency owners and senior leaders.”

The section’s marquee event is the PRSA Counselors Academy 2018 Spring Conference, which will be held May 6-8, 2018, in Toronto. Known for its robust networking and learning opportunities, the Spring Conference enables collaborative peer relationships in which meaningful business counsel, operational best practices and industry trends are shared and gained.

Continue reading “Clairemont CEO Named PRSA’s Counselors Academy Chair”

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Clairemont Foodie Takes Charleston

Cherith AndesBlog, Restaurant PR + Hospitality PR, Travel, , , , ,

The landing page of the 2018 Charleston Wine and Food Festival captures it all.

Fueled by a contagious passion for the people and places that make Charleston worth celebrating, the annual festival infuses homegrown flavor with top chefs, winemakers, authors, storytellers, artisans, and food enthusiasts from around the globe for a five-day event that spans the first full weekend each March. 

That’s it exactly. The love of food, the talent and passion behind it is contagious … which is one of the reasons we love working the restaurant and hospitality industry.

This year, Clairemont CEO Dana Phelps Hughens will be one of our local ambassadors to the Charleston Wine and Food Festival (CWFF) on February 28 – March 4, 2018! She’ll be sampling flavors and fare, and meeting new friends and old at the festival’s five-day packed schedule. In addition to our favorite Charleston buddies like the Cocktail Bandits, we’re excited to support the stunning Triangle talent featured this year!

We’ll share all the behind-the-scenes goodies we can find! Check them out on our Facebook page!  

 

 

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What Does a PR Agency Do? Hoedown Showdown

Clairemont InternAwards, Blog, Case Studies, , , ,

Newland Communities, the country’s most prominent privately held residential developer, turned to Clairemont Communications to increase awareness of Wendell Falls, a new-home community situated in a relatively undeveloped section of Wake County. As part of a comprehensive communications strategy, Clairemont worked with Wendell Falls to plan a celebration with a barn-raising theme to commemorate the community’s first anniversary and bring prospective buyers on-site.

Strategy

Clairemont was tasked with securing local media and influencer attendance to help combat the perception that Wendell Falls is in a remote location far from downtown Raleigh. Our one main objective was to get key contacts to attend the Wendell Falls Barn Raising 2016 in order to introduce them to the location and atmosphere of the community, and serve as a building block for future stories.

Execution

In order to attract media and influencers to the location, Clairemont conceptualized the Wendell Falls Hoedown Showdown. We invited TV, print and online personalities to bow to their partners, allemande left and do-si-do for a little dough to donate. This celebrity square-dancing competition was part of the Wendell Falls Barn Raising and offered the winner $1,000 to donate to a charity of his or her choice.

Clairemont ditched standard pitch for a more playful angle that would snag the busy reporter’s attention and put them in a dancing mood. Media received invitations that included a “wanted” poster and a cowboy hat, which one TV reporter even sported on her station’s morning show! The event was planned to be similar to the popular show “Dancing with the Stars;” it was active and engaging yet required minimal time from the participants outside of the actual event day. The influencers who danced at the event didn’t have to practice; rather, they learned via a fun crash course on the morning of the Hoedown.

Results

Clairemont designed and implemented this creative tactic to engage the participating media person and his/her audiences, draw media on-site and engage the nonprofit for which he/she was dancing. This allowed us to exceed our stated objective with the following results:

  1. We recruited media and influencers to participate as either Hoedown Showdown dancers or judges, securing prominent media stories and/or mentions.
  2. Influencers shared the Barn Raising to approximately 52,000 followers on Twitter alone, helping to draw more than 1,000 attendees to this afternoon bash. Additionally, we used the (then) new Facebook Live feature for the first time for the community to broadcast the Hoedown Showdown to 503 viewers.

The work Clairemont Communications conducted in partnership with Wendell Falls earned Best in Show for Creative Tactics and Best in Category for Creative Tactics from the North Carolina Public Relations Society of America. It also received a Silver Award in Media Events from the Raleigh Public Relations Society. We are proud that this campaign represents two of the 175 awards we’ve received since starting Clairemont in 2010.

To read more about the work we do with clients, please visit the case study section of our blog.

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Quality Over Quantity: Why I Stuck with Clairemont

Clairemont InternBlog, Raleigh PR Agency, The Clairemont Team, , , , ,

It wasn’t long before I knew I really liked working at Clairemont. Within the first week, I dove head-first into follow-up calls, blog posts and coverage reports – the building blocks of PR that I’d practiced in classes and previous internships.

James Huff, chef at Babalu Tapas & Tacos, teaches WRAL’s Kathy Hanrahan how to make its delicious guacamole in the week before the restaurant’s opening.

What captured me most about Clairemont, however, was the opportunities it provided me to interact directly with clients. On my second day, I met a Clairemont team member at Babalu Tapas & Tacos, a Chapel Hill restaurant for which Clairemont planned a grand opening. I witnessed media interviews, listened to Clairemont strategize with the Babalu marketing team and talked with the owner about his journey to Chapel Hill.

In essence, I quickly learned that Clairemont was a good fit for me.

Throughout the fall semester, I gained on-site experience with various clients and strengthened my writing, pitching and researching skills. I felt challenged and excited by the work; I felt proud of what I produced and eager to learn from the Clairemont team. Clairemont’s welcoming and intimate environment allowed me to feel not only part of the team but also at home.

So, naturally, I didn’t want my time with Clairemont to end when the fall semester did. I decided to extend my internship through the spring semester, a decision that marks the purpose of this post. Aside from simply enjoying the workplace, there are valuable reasons to lengthen an internship, especially one with a PR agency.

Why Stay?

Students pose with Andy Valkanoff, owner of Triangle Dairy Queen, who launched their award-winning Blizzard contraption at the DQ Upside-Down or Free Competition.

Improve the quality of your work: Products you create are stronger and completed more quickly when you know what your clients need and what your supervisors expect. You learn these things with time, so the longer you stay with an internship, the faster you’ll be able to churn out work that satisfies those needs.

Deepen the nature of your work: Fully understanding your clients and their PR needs can take months. With that sound familiarity under your belt, you can deepen your involvement with them by taking on bigger projects and greater responsibilities. You may even play a larger hand at strategizing campaigns for clients, which furthers your experience as a PR pro.

Strengthen connections: It’s no secret that relationships also develop with time. Lengthening your internship experience allows you to cultivate client relationships that are built on communication, understanding and trust. You’ll also strengthen connections with your coworkers and supervisors, who serve as mentors on the job and key resources for career guidance.

The Clairemont team showcases its hard work recognized at the 2017 Sir Walter Raleigh Awards for Excellence in Communication.

Moreover, deciding to stay with an internship signals that you’re in tune with yourself. As you move through different work experiences, you discover which elements create your dream workplace. Especially in the PR world, no two agencies operate identically; each has its own culture, clients, specialties, employees … you get the picture. Embrace the variety, and recognize when an internship aces your checklist.

I’m thankful for Clairemont’s significant role in my blossoming PR career. It’s great to be back.

Written by Clairemont intern Elizabeth Comtois, a senior at UNC-Chapel Hill.

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