Tag: CAPRSA

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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Fake News

Dana PhelpsBlog, Counselors Academy, Public Relations, , , , , ,

Fake news. Early this year, gathered in a conference room with PR agency owners from across North America who make up the executive committee of PRSA’s Counselors Academy, we debated how long that trending term would remain trending. While some of us thought that #fakenews would have faded by now, it is holding strong.

My fellow executive committee member, Brenda Jones Barwick, penned an article for the March issue of PRSA Tactics called Combating Fake News: How to Protect our Profession, Our Clients and Companies. It remains as relevant now as it was at the time of publishing.

As a member of PRSA‘s Counselors Academy executive committee and now chair-elect, I have collaborated with Tactics editor John Elsasser since 2015 as a liaison of sorts to secure monthly thought-leadership pieces contributed by Counselors Academy members and experts in the field of  public relations. Want to know more about Counselors Academy and its members? Read our previous posts here.

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Authenticity Matters

Dana PhelpsBlog, Counselors Academy, , , , , ,

Earlier this summer, my friends and fellow public relations professionals, Sydney Ayers and Lisa Cutter, wrote a column for PRSA’s Tactics about how social media has given anyone with a voice an always-on platform to be heard and how that affects authenticity. A snippet of this piece is below, and I encourage you to read it in full: Why Authenticity Matters.

“This change in how information is shared and at the speed it can be shared increasingly means that organizations can not afford to be disingenuous in any way. Communicating authentically is a critical component of a successful business equation.”

As a member of PRSA‘s Counselors Academy executive committee, I’ve been collaborating with Tactics editor John Elsasser for several months as a liaison of sorts to secure contributors for the publication’s monthly column called “Changing Times.” It was started by Michael Herman, APR, Fellow PRSA, friend and mentor to many. There was no one better than Mike to write about changes in the public relations industry, and his only published column appeared in January 2015, the same month he unexpectedly left this world. Since then, members of PRSA’s Counselors Academy have been contributing their thoughts on the evolution of our profession.

Want to know more about Counselors Academy and its members? Read our previous posts here.

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Encouraging Creativity

Dana PhelpsBlog, Counselors Academy, Raleigh PR Agency, , , , ,

This article originally appeared in the April 2016 issue of PRSA’s Tactics. You can read it online here.

Changing It Up to Encourage Creativity

Dana Phelps Hughens

“The definition of insanity is repeating the same behaviors and expecting a different outcome.” – Albert Einstein

For the past several months, this column has been focused on the changes our industry is facing. This month we are changing it up to highlight ways to do things differently in order to achieve greater results.

Last year, I shared a photograph of four women that was taken in the early 1900s with our team at Clairemont Communications. Each team member was asked to write a story about the photo, and the stories were shared on our blog as part of a contest. The author of the story that had the most votes won a prize.

This was Clairemont’s first Creative Challenge. Part professional development and part team building, this exercise tapped into our imaginations with a creative writing exercise far different than that of say, writing a client news release. However, the brainstorming and story mapping were a similar process to many things we do for our clients. Additionally, social media influence was put to the test as team members solicited their professional and personal networks for votes – another task related to we do for clients daily.

Earlier this year we challenged ourselves to step out of our comfort zones when we decided to take a non-traditional approach to thanking our clients by producing what we called our gratitude video. In addition to our team singing the words to Andy Grammer’s “Good to Be Alive,” our clients danced along with us to celebrate our accomplishments together. Check it out on our Facebook page!

Not only do our clients embrace our creative and sometimes wacky ways, they rely on us for fresh ideas for pitches, promotional campaigns and special events. Otherwise, it would prove difficult to produce results month after month and year after year.

We recently met with a prospect seeking to change agencies after an engagement that had spanned nearly two decades. He didn’t seem particularly dissatisfied with the existing PR firm and yet not fully satisfied either. Upon further discussion, it was revealed that the only real issue with the incumbent was that it had been around long enough to learn all the things that didn’t work.

Wow. I never want to be that agency leader who says, “We already tried that” or “Just do it the same way, and it will be good enough.” We all know it is easy to get stuck in a rut. We’ve all been there, and help is on the way.

This year we are opening the Counselors Academy conference with “Think Differently: The Biggest Barrier to Innovation Is Our Own Expertise,” an interactive keynote with Duncan Wardle, vice president of Disney’s Creative Inc.

Duncan works with his team across all Disney corporate divisions as creative ideation consultants. They design engaging, collaborative ideation forums that capture unlikely connections and lead to new thinking and revolutionary ideas. During his Counselors Academy session, he will explore the myths around creativity and innovation, provide tangible innovation tools and help us get out of our own “Rivers of Expertise” to think differently.

To be part of this session and exchange ideas on creativity with other PR agency leaders, join us May 1 to 3, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. More information can be found at caprsa.com and on Facebook in The Official Counselors Academy Facebook Group.

Dana Phelps Hughens is CEO of Clairemont Communications based in Raleigh, N.C. She serves as an assembly delegate for the North Carolina chapter of PRSA and on the board of Counselors Academy. Dana is known as @blah2voila on Instagram and Twitter.

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PR Trendspotting

Dana PhelpsBlog, Counselors Academy, Public Relations, , , ,

In a few days, we’ll be halfway through 2016. Yes, wow! Think about that for a minute. As such, I wanted to revisit this December Tactics column penned by fellow Counselors Academy member, Deborah Weinstein of Tornoto PR firm Strategic Objectives, called The Changes in Store for 2016: Trendspotting for the New Year.

Deb predicted that our profession of public relations, with its power to make news, spark conversation and engage in real time, will continue to take a prominent role at the business strategy table. She included predictions from other Counselors Academy members that support that thought such as the following:

“Search and content merge together to create the fabric of how we generate awareness and influence action. It’s an opportunity for PR professionals to broaden our skill sets into data collection and analysis, audience segmentation and automated technologies to provide targeted and relevant communications that move audiences through the sales funnel. In the process, we become invaluable to the organizations we serve.” — Lisa Gerber, founder, Big Leap Creative

“I’m going to pay even more attention to what Google calls micro-moments: all those times during the day when we reflexively turn to our smartphones to satisfy those incessant ‘I want to know/go/do/buy’ impulses. For me, that’s a rallying cry for public relations on two fronts. First, we must understand what motivates our audiences and the type of content they’re searching for in the moment. Second, we need to get untethered from our desktops, put on our walking shoes, and then create and distribute short, visual, meaningful stories that stand out and help people when they’re on the go.” — Martin Waxman, president, Martin Waxman Communications

“The erosion of traditional news sources by social and digital media will continue to provide opportunities for the PR and communications profession. Content generation and thought leadership will remain key components for success in our profession.” — Tom Garrity, president, The Garrity Group Public Relations

Do you think these predictions are on the mark for where we are halfway through 2016? What predictions are you willing to make for the next six months and 2017? You can read Deb’s full column here.

As a member of PRSA‘s Counselors Academy executive committee, I’ve been collaborating with Tactics editor John Elsasser for several months as a liaison of sorts to secure contributors for the publication’s monthly column called “Changing Times.” It was started by Michael Herman, APR, Fellow PRSA, friend and mentor to many. There was no one better than Mike to write about changes in the public relations industry, and his only published column appeared in January 2015, the same month he unexpectedly left this world. Since then, members of PRSA’s Counselors Academy have been contributing their thoughts on the evolution of our profession.

Want to know more about Counselors Academy and its members? Read our previous posts here.

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