Vice President Kim Ratcliff was recently interviewed by ONN’s Mike Kallmeyer on the topic of social media. She set the “View from the Top,” highlighting Werth’s counsel to clients to guide their social media marketing investment.
See the clip here, by clicking on “Paul Werth” in the video viewer.
Paul Werth Associates is bringing its senior-level consulting and integrated marketing communications services to the “Second City” — Chicago.
Senior Vice President and Chicago insider David O’Dowd heads up the new office, located in the world’s largest commercial building and Chicago landmark, 222 Merchandise Mart Plaza.
“We are very excited about our continued growth and the addition of our Chicago office,” says Sandra Harbrecht, President and CEO. “We are seeing strong demand for our results-oriented communications in this vibrant market and plan to build on our strong ties and relationships within the business community to further expand our services and client roster.” Harbrecht plans to make monthly visits to the new office to meet with clients and prospects.
In Chicago as in Columbus, Werth provides a full range of communications services to drive client success:
Public relations, including strategic planning, thought leadership, crisis communications, reputation management, change management, media relations, social media programs, blogger outreach, spokesperson training, message development, trade show support and community relations.
Public Affairs, including government relations, lobbying, grassroots communications and engagement, ballot issue campaign management and research.
Advertising, including creative strategy, brand strategy, corporate identity, advertising campaigns, video production, marketing collateral, direct marketing and word of mouth and viral marketing.
Interactive Marketing, including analytics-based digital strategy, website/intranet development, microsites, e-commerce solutions, e-mail marketing, SEO, SEM, social media integration, online reputation audits, viral marketing, digital content creation and usability studies.
Research, including needs assessments, strategy development, creative custom research design, communications audits, market potential/opportunity studies, brand positioning/image studies, advertising and communications testing, customer satisfaction studies, executive interviews and public opinion polling.
We welcome visitors to our new office! Call or e-mail David O’Dowd at dodowd@paulwerth.com or 312-297-1416 or Sandy Harbrecht swh@paulwerth.com or 614-224-8114.
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a great logo can be worth thousands … or even millions … of dollars as the visual embodiment and “face” of a brand. Classic examples are the Nike swooshes, the swirling red font of Coca-Cola and the stalwart blue initials of IBM.
Werth’s logos not only help clients stand out in a cluttered communications landscape, but they’ve also been recognized for industry excellence. Three logos Werth designed will be published in the LogoLounge Master Library Series, Volume 3, Shapes & Symbols, which features exemplary logo design work from around the world.
This volume of the LogoLounge Master Library won’t be available until 2011, but we’re happy to give you a sneak peek, along with our analysis of why these logos stand out.
Infosaic
Best Light Video
Capital City Radio
An elegant logo design may appear deceptively simple. However, effective design requires a multi-layered discovery and development process involving several prototype designs and refinements. At every stage, logos are evaluated for their ability to meet several goals:
1. Clearly identify the company and express its vision
2. Appeal to the target market
3. Differentiate the company from competitors
4. Be aesthetically appealing
5. Be memorable and stand the test of time
These three logos were developed for Columbus-based technology companies that needed new identities to help them stand out from their competitors. These are all combination marks with icons and type treatments that are clean and scalable for the Web. The icons are interesting shapes that can stand alone, while the integrated text is clean and contemporary.
Infosaic Technologies is a full-scale Windows Web hosting and applications development company. Initially developed in a single dimension, the logo evolved into a three-dimensional design that delivers greater impact. The type and color choices push the contemporary feeling.
Best Light Video is a video production house that helps brands develop their online video presence. This more abstract mark takes its influence from the visible light spectrum. From Web to print to video, this logo needed to be adaptable to multiple platforms and has been translated into several variations.
Capital City Radio is an online radio station streaming out an eclectic mix of news, music and original programming. Through the discovery process, we learned the station wanted to focus heavily its Ohio location. As a result, we developed a representational mark, playfully using sound equalization levels to create the state of Ohio. The accompanying text is concise and provides supplemental clarity.
Contact Chief Creative Officer Ken Waldron at 614-224-8114 or kwaldron@paulwerth.com for a consultation about effective logo design for your organization.
This month the National Safe Boating Council kicked off a unique campaign to promote life jacket awareness. The ‘80’s hit song “Safety Dance” was used in a video featuring a young man and woman who appear to be dancing. This “dance” is a metaphor for what they would look like if they were under water without a life jacket struggling to survive. In the end our subjects don a safety jacket and float safely to the surface and off the screen.
The campaign was just recognized by the United States Coast Guard and the United States Department of Homeland Security for outstanding work in the area of Marine Safety.
The promotion, conceived by the Werth Creative team, uses the popular Facebook Connect application. Once you log in and allow access to your Facebook photos, they will fade up behind our subjects as a reminder of the friends you’d leave behind if you choose not to wear a safety jacket this boating season.
In the end, you are encouraged to forward “The Life Jacket Safety Dance” link to friends for a chance to win a Flip MinoHD™ camcorder, with the ultimate goal of spreading the word to as many people as possible about the benefits of wearing a life jacket.
The contest caps off Werth’s second successful year of managing the National Safe Boating Week, Inflatable Life Jacket World Record Day and “Wear It!”campaigns for the National Safe Boating Council.
Werth began national media outreach in February, targeting local media that reach active boaters. To date, the campaign has placed 455 articles and online media hits, reaching a potential audience of more than 106 million. Highlights include:
In three words, it’s about your Total Internet Presence, or TIP. This post kicks off a series on the seven elements of Total Internet Presence, a process we apply to make your digital brand more exciting, visible, transparent, accessible and competitive.
Today’s post is about the element of measurability — the yardstick for your online presence. There are some very sophisticated tools for measuring your “worth” on the Web, and most often we refer these as Web analytics.
What are Web analytics?
The Web Analytics Association defines Web analytics as “the objective tracking, collection, measurement, reporting and analysis of quantitative Internet data to optimize websites and web marketing initiatives.”
That sounds very academic, doesn’t it? Bottom line, Web analytics provide answers to a couple of fundamental questions:
How did visitors find my website?
What do visitors do once they reach my website?
Why measure?
There’s an old saying, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Taking that a bit further, you can’t improve what you don’t measure. Some specific benefits of using Web analytics are:
Allowing you to determine if your investment in website visit drivers such as advertising, SEO and social media is paying off. For example, is the company Facebook page really driving visits to the website?
Providing historical benchmarking. For example, are visits increasing or decreasing?
What to measure?
All of the data in the world are useless if you haven’t established some specific metrics (i.e., measurements of success). Do you know if you’re winning or losing?
Some of the most common website metrics – and the data used to determine if they’re being met – are:
Increase site traffic:
Total visits
Unique visitors
Improve site visibility:
Traffic sources (i.e., search engines and other websites sending visitors to your site)
Search engine rankings
Improve Site Engagement:
Average visits per unique visitor
Average page views per visit
Site bounce rate
Return visitors
Increase Conversions:
White paper downloads
Contact forms submitted
How do you measure up?
Drop me a note here if you want to look into assessing your company or organization’s measurability. We can discuss the analytics that will best meet your unique needs.
News or noise? That’s the question facing journalists and those who need accurate reporting …which would be all of us … today. The greatest shifts in standard reporting practices since yellow journalism are accelerating, several recent surveys show.
A great surge among reporters using social media tools … blogs, videos, podcasts and Twitter … has taken place. The latest Survey of Media in the Wired World found that almost 70 percent of journalists use social media, up by 28 percentage points since 2008. Nearly 80 percent of journalists said bloggers are important opinion-shapers, and 91 percent thought social media actually enhanced journalism.
Is that just Putting on a Happy Face? Maybe. Other surveys show journalists are deeply concerned about their profession. The disappearance of gatekeepers (i.e., editors) who monitor objectivity and check facts is not such a good thing. Neither are layoffs, which are frequent among working journalists. Those who are left have much larger workloads, smaller traditional news spaces and many demands to produce content for multiple platforms. Of course, social media have opened up many new sources and given journalists a chance to actually have two-way discussions with their readers and viewers.
It’s no surprise that a recent survey showed most journalists find that public relations firms are more important than ever to their work. Public relations professionals, often former reporters themselves, can help working journalists find good ideas for stories, provide accurate relevant information, and locate experts and others who are good, solid sources. Working together, we can make sure legitimate reporting will be heard over all the noise online and in traditional media. And that’s good news.
What are your thoughts about this shift? Contact me by commenting here, or e-mail me at ktwinem@paulwerth.com.
Hello, my name is Kim, and I’m a word geek. Fair warning: I consider Scrabble to be a competitive sport. And I’m not a supporter of counting proper names as per the “new rules” of the game. Sounds like cheating to me.
In college, I willingly decided to write a thesis on Cajun French’s metamorphosis into English through gradual adoption of English words. What people do with language is fascinating to me. This natural curiosity is what led me to a career in communications, and eventually I came face to face with another kind of linguistics — the keywords leveraged in search and digital marketing.
A recent AdAge post about the future of social media got me thinking about the semantic Web — #10 on this list of 2012 trends. Instead of rankings based upon everyone’s search frequency, search results will be ranked based upon each individual’s affinity for search terms. This will be derived from social media conversations with keyword mentions.
This change is taking search to a new level. Filtering search results based upon previously expressed interests is nothing new in the retail world. Most retail clothing sites already give me handy “You may also like…” suggestions. Now, generic search will serve up the same filtering, across the Web.
What does the semantic Web mean for marketers?
Transparency will persist in importance. The relatively new FCC guidelines for blogger disclosure of sponsorship are just the beginning. Accuracy of information will become more objectively vetted, driving digital accountability.
Privacy protection will continue to be a sensitive issue. What are the implications of tracking each person’s search interests and using the information for marketing? This concern overlaps with neuromarketing fears.
Relevance of search results will theoretically be enhanced. The semantic Web will provide information in the context of each individual’s innate interests. But, what if people don’t want filtered information? Fine-tuning search based upon each person’s desired settings for filters will be critical.
Limiting the World Wide Web to individual interests could defeat its very purpose. The Web puts us in a position of having the world at our very fingertips. If overly restrictive, semantic Web executions could have us all wearing blinders. And keep in mind that those blinders will be crafted based upon an interpretation of our interests — not truly our own determination. This New York Times article does a good job of explaining the problem of digital fragmentation, where we self-select the content with which we are most comfortable — instead of reviewing 360-degree viewpoints. This is a significant problem for objective and factual news reporting and assessing opinions from all sides.
Where do you see this trend going during the next three years? Are you already planning for the implications on your target audience promotions? Plan ahead now, while you have the luxury. Contact me by commenting here, or e-mail me at kratcliff@paulwerth.com.
Today’s news media are a far cry from what my mother experienced in the Walter Cronkite-era of my youth. Social media invigorate our communications, broaden our networks and make content-sharing much more immediate.
How will our communications possibilities be transformed by the mainstreaming of social media this year? Here are my thoughts:
People will continue to gravitate toward news that is shareable. We are social beings, and there’s power in using our social networks to share news in real time. On Sunday mornings, I curl up with my newsreader and share content with friends separated by time and space. Big news organizations realize this and have made the ShareIt icon ubiquitous, because news shared in context takes on greater meaning. There are more news stories out there and more in-depth discussion as a result of sharing content.
News publishing that encourages us to be the correspondent isn’t just more engaging – it has more impact for the news audience.This interactive map from The New York Times’ site is a good example. The before-after impacts of the Haiti earthquake are palpable. It’s clear that we like to share the news with our friends, and we like it even more when it’s combined with visuals that “take us to the news.”
Action-oriented news can make a difference. Recent fundraising for Haiti relief efforts and geo-targeting police abuses in Iran give us practical ways to use Twitter for human benefit. When news becomes meaningful information that people care enough to do something about, it makes a measurable difference.
Simply reading a two-dimensional paper at the kitchen table in the morning like my mother used to do is no longer enough. We must be able to experience the news through our senses, in multiple dimensions – along with friends on the other side of the world.
The kitchen table “newspaper” experience just got personal, global and substantive. And, because new media are breaking down communications barriers, even my mother is tapping into the possibilities. She recently joined Facebook.
If you are marveling at the new media mix and relishing the possibilities, drop me a line at kratcliff@paulwerth.com, or comment here. I look forward to reading your thoughts – and starting the dialogue.
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Health care organizations need to understand how the instant online spread of information factors into a developing crisis. To help, Paul Werth Associates is presenting an hour-long Webinar at 2 p.m. Nov. 17: “Health Care Rx: A Social Media Prescription to Prevent and Treat Crises.”
“Getting out the right message can literally make the difference between life and death,” said Sandra Harbrecht, Werth president and CEO. “While an organizational health care crisis can take many forms, getting the right message heard at the right time is most critical during a public health threat. We want to help health care communicators understand the social media culture and tools available to do the best job possible during a crisis.”
Werth Webinar instructors Kristin Mack Deuber and Kim Ratcliff, both vice presidents with the firm, will be joined by the internal communications and marketing director at the one of nation’s largest medical complexes, Julie Scott with The Ohio State University Medical Center.
The panel will discuss effective ways to integrate social media strategy into existing crisis plans. Webinar topics will also include tools available to detect crisis situations and what to do when one hits.
Werth’s Webinar will be hosted by online meeting service InstantPresenter. You can test your system for compatibility by clicking here. For more information about the presentation, e-mail contact@paulwerth.com.
About Paul Werth Associates
Founded in 1963, Paul Werth Associates is a full-service public relations, marketing and public affairs firm counseling clients throughout the United States. The firm has offices in Columbus, Ohio and Washington, D.C.
Paul Werth Associates has previously received nine Silver Anvils, which is the highest level of recognition in the public relations industry. The Silver Anvil Award recognizes complete programs incorporating sound research, planning, execution and evaluation. They must meet the highest standards of performance in the profession.
Thanks to those who attended the “Balancing Legal and Communication Perspectives on Social Media” workshop from Squire, Sanders & Dempsey L.L.P. and Paul Werth Associates on October 20, 2009.
We hope you enjoyed hearing perspectives from both fronts on how social media impacts our workplace and our brands.
The presenters, including myself; Susan DiMickele, a partner at Squire Sanders; Traci Martinez, an associate at Squire Sanders; and Kim Ratcliff, a vice president at Werth, sat down to provide an overview of the insights shared during this complimentary workshop.
Hello, my name is Kim, and I’m a word geek. Fair warning: I consider Scrabble to be a competitive sport. And I’m not a supporter of counting proper names as per the 
