The Bateman/Recyclebank team took the Gold in the Green Category and the Bronze in the Best General Consumer Campaign category. We’re thrilled beyond belief to be recognized by Bulldog Media once again — we also won a Gold in the category for Best Technology Campaign – Consumer for our work with Panda Security for the Cloud Antivirus Launch in 2010. The Bulldog Awards are the only public relations industry awards judged by working journalists and bloggers, so a good reason to be especially proud.

These prestigious awards add to the campaign’s earlier recognition this year as a finalist in the Social Good category of the PR News’ CSR Awards, which recognize outstanding companies that understand the power of corporate social responsibility in public relations. The campaign also received an award in November 2011 from the Society for New Communications Research for demonstrating excellence in Corporate External Communications and Communities.

The Bateman Group/Recyclebank team is also an esteemed finalist for the 2012 Gold SABRE awards in the Consumer Marketing (New Product) category. Winners will be announced this week on Wednesday, May 8^th at Cipriani’s in New York City. Our own lovely and talented Elissa Erhlich, a director on the Recyclebank team in our Brooklyn office, will be attending the event to represent the firm.  We’ve been a SABRE finalist four times now, so lest we become the Susan Lucci of the PR industry, please keep your fingers crossed that we take home our first Gold SABRE award this year.

Congratulations to the Bateman/Recyclebank team on all these amazing industry awards wins!

Yesterday, I took a quick trip to D.C. to attend the PR News CSR Awards Luncheon as we were nominated for the work we did with Recyclebank during Earth Month last year. Our submission, “Gamification Goes Green: Recyclebank’s Green Your Home Challenge Sparks Eco-friendly Actions” was one of the finalists in the Social Good category.

I know everyone always says this (and usually they are lying), but it really was amazing to have even been nominated. In our category alone there were some powerful campaigns up for consideration, like SAP’s project to empower farmers in Ghana with mobile technology; Donna Karen’s Urban Zen Foundation and its work to rebuild Haiti; and the Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company‘s efforts to support our nation’s firefighters. I sat with the CSR team from JetBlue, who won for their work with Company 20 on the “Soar with Reading” literacy campaign.

Although we didn’t end up winning, we were honestly thrilled to come away with an honorable mention for our efforts. Here is the full list of winners and honorable mentions.

As part of the awards ceremony, each recipient was asked to share lessons learned from their efforts. This got me thinking about what we have learned from our work communicating messages about sustainability.

My answer? Keep it simple.

Recyclebank has a complex story, but in the simplest form, it’s about motivating people to change how they consume and dispose of things. The goal is to realize a world without waste, using a constantly evolving definition of waste. We try to simplify this message with the media as much as possible, making the consumer and environmental benefits of Recyclebank’s program shine through. Inherent in communicating this vision; however, is connecting with consumers in a meaningful way so they understand the impact their individual actions can have on the planet (and their wallets!). The message needs to be clear and the “ask” needs to be easy to understand…and a little fun always helps! Recyclebank has used different gaming techniques — quizzes, challenges, prizes — to engage people online and offline.  This helps get people’s attention, which is half the battle when you are trying to communicate in a noisy world.

So although we didn’t win the grand prize, I’m still really proud of the Recyclebank team – Jeff Harse, our delightful in-house leader at Recyclebank, and the Bateman team of Elissa Ehrlich, Laura Moen, Anna Vaverka and our fearless intern Ling Tran — has done to date. I’m also super proud that thanks to my thoughtful seat selection, I won the Harry and David candy tower at our table. My son thought I was the hottest ticket in town when I brought those beautiful boxes home, so that was enough for me.

We’ve got the SABRE awards coming up in May. Our work with Recyclebank is nominated for a Gold Sabre award in the Consumer Marketing (new product) category, so wish us luck!

Panel participants discuss industry issues at packed event

Last Thursday we were excited to welcome over 70 public relations professionals to the penthouse suite of our building at 1550 Bryant Street for a panel discussion and some networking. 

Each quarter, we collaborate with like-minded agencies in the Bay Area to discuss and dissect the biggest issues shaping the PR, technology and media industries.

Last week, our own Bill Bourdon, SVP at Bateman Group, moderated a panel on the state of PR featuring the following agency heads:

• Fred Bateman, CEO and Founder, Bateman Group
• Barbara Bates, Founder and CEO, Eastwick
• Heather Fitzsimmons, Principal, Mindshare PR
• Aaron Heinrich, Managing Director, San Francisco, SHIFT Communications
• Lonn Johnston, President, LEWIS Pulse
• Joanna Kulesa, Principal, Kulesa Faul

During the panel each of these experienced PR pros weighed in with their opinions on a range of hot trends and issues, including the sectors driving their recent growth, the death of the press release and evolution of content marketing, how to win new business and grow budgets in the current climate, and what skillsets to prioritize in the recruitment for new talent.

Here are the takeaways from the discussion:

Are we in another bubble, similar to the dot com era in Silicon Valley? – No, we’re not in a bubble like what we saw during the dot com era. While there are some similarities in the sense that the tech industry in Silicon Valley is healthy right now with an influx of venture capital, the companies that are getting funded have solid business models and are financially stable. Also, we’re seeing steady growth across multiple sectors including cloud, mobile, SaaS, PaaS, and social, which is different than in the dot com era. There are no Pets.com’s today!

In what sectors is tech PR seeing the biggest growth? – We’re seeing healthy growth in a variety of markets, including security, adtech, social, PaaS, cloud and virtualization, as well as big data.What markets are driving growth right now? – We’re seeing growth from EMEA, especially the U.K., France, Spain, Germany, as well as Israel and Sweden. In the U.S. we’re seeing healthy growth in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Boston, and Los Angeles.

Is content development PR’s to lose? – Today, PR is so integrated – with video, infographics, and social media content that if you aren’t an integrated shop you’re leaving money on the table. As story tellers our job is to develop great content – and for that you need to hire the right people, who can write and who think creatively. Check out Bill Bourdon’s recent blog on this topic.

How do you win new business in today’s crowded, commoditized PR environment? – It’s always about chemistry. You could have the best ideas in the world, but it comes down to the people in the room. Today, PR agencies that win are those that figure out how to be more successful than the competition – they’re working smarter, not just harder, and then they’re selling those results. PR agencies that win are also going further into the internal marketing organization for their clients, and becoming truly invaluable resources. By making those connections, you have more opportunity to increase budgets and help clients gain more value from PR.

What kinds of skillsets do you need to survive in PR today? – Client expectations have changed – today PR professionals are required to think strategically and like a business person, not just a communications person. PR people need to be more flexible, and more willing to accept change in order to re-think their client’s business. Smaller agencies are best-suited to this, as they’re more nimble and don’t have a hierarchy of approvals that can kill off ideas. Smaller agencies also typically have more senior people who are able to bring that level of strategy to the table.

What about tactics – what are clients demanding, and what’s working? – Community development and infographics are the top things we’re being asked to do. Focusing on community development through social channels and telling stories visually has been very effective for many clients. We’re also seeing clients that are willing to take risks in order to be “quick to fail.” These quick turnarounds, with the right strategy, media and influencer relationships and community support can make or break a company.

Has the press release gone the way of the Dodo? – Yes and no. We don’t write nearly as many releases as we used to, and the way they convey information has now changed – they’re shorter and have more outbound links. We’re also trying to find unique ways to put out releases – for example holding 30 customer releases to the week of a strategic event can be effective. For publicly owned companies, the press release still serves a function to the investor community and won’t be phased out for quite some time, although corporate blogs are certainly on the rise, and they can play the same role.

We hope these takeaways are helpful to you and that you’ll join us at the next PR Penthouse event. Also, check out the discussion from the panel and connect with peers and colleagues from the event series on Twitter using the hash tag #PRPenthouse.