Metzger Associates announced it has added six clients: National Association of Corporate Directors, Colorado Chapter, Kapta, First Funder, Optimum Wellness Magazine, TeamSnap, and Dirty Girl Mud Run.
These clients have contracted Metzger for a variety of services, including public relations, social media management, website development and other marketing programs.
Metzger Associates has added a staff member and promoted two senior team members:
- Amy Little has been promoted to digital services manager. Her role now includes project management, search engine optimization (SEO) and website content strategy and consulting.
- Drew Stachnik has been promoted to senior web developer, and now heads up Metzger’s video and photo production, graphic design and front-end User Interface/User Experience (UI/UX) web design.
- Web designer Adam Felgar has joined the digital services team. He will support the group’s focus on developing state-of-the-art look and feel with UI/UX content organization and navigation.
Metzger Associates has picked up two new clients: the Colorado Cleantech Industry Association and Coalfire Systems. I was impressed at Metzger’s ability to simultaneously land two clients who presumably don’t like each other very much, but it turns out that Coalfire actually is an IT audit and compliance firm.
PitchEngine founder and CEO Jason Kintzler will discuss how businesses can expand beyond the traditional news release to a true Social Media Release at Metzger Associates’ next Social Media Breakfast. Kintzler is a former journalist turned PR guy who founded PitchEngine in 2008, and last year more than 100,000 pitches were shared by 30,000 organizations looking to get the word out to journalists, bloggers, consumers and other influencers. Details:
Social Media Breakfast
Friday, Feb. 25, at 7:45 a.m.
Metzger Associates
5733 Central Avenue
Boulder, CO 80301
[Map]
RSVP to Lisa Metzger at 720.833.5920 or via email.
Filed under: Metzger
Metzger is continuing its year-long 20th anniversary celebration by offering free strategic marketing and communications advice to local businesses – from solo practitioners to start-ups to established operations – via monthly open office hours at Boulder Digital Arts beginning Feb. 22. Metzger’s office hours will be held at BDA’s coworking space in east Boulder the fourth Tuesday of every month beginning Feb. 22, and Metzger office hours are open to the public.
If you visit Metzger’s office in Boulder everyone is wearing name tags, here’s why: Metzger has hired Marie Rotter and Kathleen May as account directors, Jill Thompson as a junior account executive, and Amy Little and Megan McClure as account coordinators.
- Metzger Associates has been retained by AC Golden Brewing Company, a subsidiary of MillerCoors, to help launch the company’s newest beer, Colorado Native.
- Cloud computing solutions provider LTech has selected Catapult PR-IR as its agency of record.
Filed under: Metzger
Just like Elvis 35 years ago, Metzger is expanding in Las Vegas. The Boulder-based agency has opened an office in Las Vegas and named Victoria Soares as managing director.
Filed under: Metzger
Congratulations to Doyle Albee and the team at Metzger, who are celebrating the fifth anniversary of the firm’s social media practice with a social media breakfast on Thursday, Feb. 18, from 8-11 a.m. The breakfast is free, but reservations are required and donations to the Colorado Haiti Project will be accepted. Among the presenters at the breakfast will be Albee, Filtrbox’s Ari Newman, AskDaveTaylor.com’s (and Metzger consultant) Dave Taylor, CenturyLink’s Linda O’Neill, and Metzger’s Dean Rizzuto.
Click here for details and to RSVP.
By Doyle Albee
President and New Media Practice Director
Metzger Associates
2010 will be “The Year of the Cheetah.” While I don’t think that’s really one of the animals to choose from on the Chinese calendar, I’ve chosen that headline for my 2010 predictions because I think that next year we will see substantive changes happen at light speed — or maybe I should say cheetah speed.
Why? Social media is starting to mature. We’ve already seen major shifts in leadership that few predicted, like Facebook displacing MySpace as the largest social network in the U.S. and the site’s continuing rapid growth. We’ve also seen some dramatic results and impacts to companies from social media activity — I’m thinking situations like the Motrin Moms and United Breaks Guitars — and we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg.
In 2010, The Year of the Cheetah, I think we’ll see the following fast changes:
- Continued consolidation of social media networks. In this arena, that means more networks will begin to cross-interact (updates from one community sent automatically to other communities, for example) and more communities will either fail or be acquired/merge with others.
- Many major media outlets will make bold moves — some of which will work, many of which will backfire — to generate revenue from their content in non-traditional ways. I believe this will fundamentally disrupt online news delivery and news search for the short term while everyone tries to figure out how best to make content profitable. I think we’ll see things implemented quickly and, if unsuccessful, pulled just as swiftly.
- I believe a major media outlet will try some sort of micro-payment system to allow users to access only what they want if they choose not to pay for an all-access subscription — maybe a nickel for a single story, for example. Interesting, but there could be a dark side. Widespread adoption could cause the business operations of news outlets to exert influence on reporters to write what’s profitable rather than what they believe to be the most important stories on a case-by-case basis.
- Online video will continue to grow, and I believe Hulu will offer a premium, ad-free paid service as well as expand their content offerings as a result of the Comcast acquisition. Also in video, the ability to watch more kinds of programming — like news and live sporting events — with higher quality feeds online will begin to take off, putting additional pressure on traditional broadcast and cable models.
- More news stories from major outlets will appear in Twitter feeds and Facebook updates (for example) while more reporters will provide personally branded analysis of the news — as opposed to simply top stories — in private, premium, paid feeds from their news organization. As a result, we’ll see more basic headline-type feeds in more places from recognized brands for free, but details and analysis will be what we pay for, making news personalities possibly more important than ever.
- First music, then movies and in 2010 book publishing becomes a major battleground for how content will be distributed, paid for and consumed.
- AT&T will drop more of my calls than they complete until the exclusive contract ends (rumored to by Q3) and my iPhone brethren and I can flee to someone else (read: anyone else).
Finally, I’d like to extend the warmest of wishes to our community for a prosperous and successful 2010. I look forward to again working with our talented community.
Filed under: 104 West, blogs, Digital Idea Media, Metzger, Social Media, Story + Welch, Turner PR
If you are devotee of social media and its implications for public relations, check out a new social-media specific blog that features posts by 104 West’s Elaine Schoch, Metzger’s Elaine Ellis, Digital Idea Media’s (and MediaOnTwitter’s) Melissa Hourigan, Turner PR’s Ef Rodriguez and me. The blog is called Social Byte – http://socialbyte.net.
Congratulations to Metzger Associates, whose client The Denver Metropolitan Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure raised more than $2 million this past weekend at its annual Race for the Cure event.
Metzger Associates has been selected by Denver-based start-up company NextWave Performance to launch its web-based SaaS platform.
Metzger Associates has landed interactive marketing and design firm IdeaWork Studios as a client. IdeaWork Studios is based in Las Vegas, Nev., and Santa Barbara, Calif., and specializes in the nightlife, gaming and hospitality industries. Its clients include Harrah’s Casino, Hard Rock Hotel and Casino and Cirque du Soleil.
- Pivot Communication has been named agency of record for St. Louis-based healthcare management services company Peak PACE Solutions.
- Metzger Associates has been retained by Waxing the City, a Denver-based group of exclusive waxing salons devoted solely to the art of hair removal.
I assumed no one. Then I read about Dave Carroll.
Metzger’s Doyle Albee analyzes tech/business blogger Dave Taylor’s response to TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington’s rant about a New York Times profile of publicist Brooke Hammerling.
(If you feel like you need a scorecard to keep it all straight, let me see if I can help: Hammerling represents the social/flitty/vapid approach to PR that infuriates Arrington, who is a cranky purist who thinks that PR [and perhaps all marketing] interferes with the natural selection that should determine whether products succeed or fail. Meanwhile, Taylor is a realist who thinks Arrington needs to acknowledge that there is a role for PR to play, and Albee thinks we shouldn’t extrapolate too much from this Hammerling scenario because one example of ineffective PR doesn’t mean all PR is ineffective.)
- Metzger Associates picked up the Metropolitan Denver Affiliate of Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure as a client.
- Vladimir Jones landed a project with the Governor’s Energy Office (GEO) to handle marketing strategy, creative and media planning/buying to promote its Colorado ENERGY STAR New Homes Program.
Metzger’s Doyle Albee vs. HWH PR’s Lois Whitman. And if Doyle isn’t careful on May 19, Catfight II will be Doyle Albee vs. Lois Whitman’s attorney.
UPDATE: Techcrunch has picked up the catfight, and I’m glad to see that it is obvious to neutral observers who is on the right side of this catfight.
Metzger Associates has promoted Sarah Engle to Chief Financial Officer. Engle, who is a CPA, has worked for Metzger as its controller since 2004.
Metzger Associates added Melissa Vizcarra as an account coordinator. Vizcarra formerly was at Chris Christmas LLC and the Kempe Foundation.
Metzger Associates has landed ION Engineering as a client. Metzger will “develop industry positioning strategies and conduct a national public and investor relations program” for the company.
Filed under: GBSM, GroundFloor Media, Layoffs, Metzger, Pure Brand, Rocky Mountain News, Webb PR
Among those offering their thoughts on the demise of the Rocky Mountain News are Metzger’s Lisa Greim (a former Rocky business reporter who offers a touching eulogy for the paper), Webb PR’s Pete Webb, GBSM’s Steve Silvers, GroundFloor’s Ramonna Tooley and Pure’s Larry Holdren.
Filed under: Metzger
Boulder-based Metzger Associates has officially announced their relocation from the Historic Highland Building to a high-tech, modern office building in Flatiron Park. The move keeps the agency in Boulder and gives it “a lot more space to work with, plus lots of room for conferences and networking events.”
Metzger Associates has hired Lisa Greim as senior account executive. Greim formerly was a technology reporter for the Rocky Mountain News and a public relations consultant for the Fresh Ideas Group.
By Doyle Albee
President & New Media Practice Director, Metzger Associates
2009 becomes the year when “everything old is new again,” and the shake-out to the public relations industry will be significant.
PR started as a one-to-one industry: PR pros forged relationships with reporters and pitched stories to members of their network (often over a three-martini lunch, but that’s another blog post!). PR people would expand their network as necessary in order to get the right story to the right reporter, often through a personal introduction. Press releases and other more mass communications were usually more targeted simply because of the distribution effort required — who in their right mind would snail mail a release to every reporter in America?
Then two things happened: a job in the media, like most, stopped being a “job for life.” People moved every few years, making it more difficult to nurture and maintain relationships. And then technology came into the picture. Suddenly, a press release really could be sent to just about every reporter in America with the push of a button — whether it made any sense or not.
Case in point: TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington authored this piece last month. While I felt a bit sorry for Ms. Whitman, I am also irritated with her. Nothing makes my job more difficult that trying to convince someone like Arrington that not all PR people are this ignorant.
Just as the media was once local and as two-way as the technology could allow (anyone else remember calling a disk jockey and requesting a song?), the “one-to-many” model we’ve come to over-embrace in the last few years will accelerate it’s transition back to a more personalized model. While technology’s role will increase rather than diminish, the best among us will learn to use it more wisely.
Since we can now all publish our own news to mass outlets, we will need to understand that media outlets will have less interest in mass-packaged stories — the New York Times has no desire or need to compete with Google News to cover the same story in the same way. Instead, outlets like the Times must strive to provide a unique angle and insight to every story they choose to cover, and we must help with that process in a personalized way. Reporters will continue to brand themselves even as they work for branded media outlets, and the pitches that will resonate will help reporters develop those personal brands. We must learn to harness social media tools for the old school personal touch — because everything old will be new again.
With a little luck, 2009 will be the year the “Lois Whitman” approach finally goes completely away.
Boulder-based Metzger Associates promoted Lisa Metzger to vice president of agency services.
John Metzger of Metzger Associates was quoted in today’s Wall Street Journal discussing wholesale companies that are setting up online shops to target retail customers. For non-subscribers, John’s contribution was
“Wholesalers new to the e-commerce world need to make a strong investment in infrastructure that supports all aspects of customer service, technical support, product support, returns,” says John Metzger, chief executive of Metzger Associates, a Boulder, Colo., communications firm that helps companies create online business strategies.
Whereas retailers wouldn’t typically fuss over one or two broken items in a large shipment, he says, “if something is broken, the consumer expects it to be fixed right away and they want someone to help” them fix it.
Metzger Associates has picked up the commission-free, full-service real estate brokerage ReLogic as a client.
A number of changes are afoot at Metzger Associates, which has promoted Doyle Albee to president, promoted Lisa Metzger to Vice President of Agency Services, hired Bevo Beaven as Vice President of Client Services and Senior Account Executive, and hired Lauren Preston as Account Coordinator.
The Boulder Daily Camera looks at local businesses trying to “cash in” on the DNC, and mentions Metzger’s DNC After Dark blog (which inexplicably still doesn’t have a section on Denver hookers).
Elaine Ellis has joined Metzger PR’s social media practice. Ellis formerly was with Schenkein.
Metzger Associates has launched DNC After Dark, a blog intended to help “visitors maneuver and take full advantage of Denver – whether it’s dinner reservations, recommendations for the coolest music venues or event planning for intimate groups – during the DNC weekend (Aug. 25-28).” The blog coincides with the launch of Metzger’s new strategic events planning practice.
- Boulder advertising and branding agency Sterling-Rice Group has selected Metzger Associates to develop a national public relations and new-media campaign.
- GroundFloor Media named Ramonna Tooley partner.
- Barnhart Communications hired Nancy Lambert as account manager. Her experience includes a decade at Rock Bottom Restaurants.
Filed under: Metzger
Metzger, largely known as a tech shop, has added a public affairs practice. Stephen Ludwig, who landed at Metzger last fall after being on his own for a couple of years, will lead the practice.
