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As we enter the time of year where the temptation to reflect overwhelms our entrepreneurial instinct to look forward, a seminal moment in our history comes to mind. Perhaps even more important than the beers we shared in a grocery store parking lot 14 years ago.

Just over a decade ago, we sat in a conference room and watched a demo of new software that empowered organizations like Greentarget to run quantitative research campaigns. Today, many of these platforms are household names. But, at the time, this was a novel idea within an emerging segment of the SAAS industry. Our reaction to the demo was along the lines of: “We can do this.” Which quickly morphed into “We have no business trying to do this.”

True to form, we jumped in head first, another leap of faith, and discovered that our professional services clients immediately understood the marketing-communications value of data-driven insights. Since that time, we’ve run countless research-based campaigns that have uncovered points of view on everything from autonomous vehicles and tax reform to global bribery and cyber risk. We’re immensely proud of how strong the thread of research-based insights runs through Greentarget.

Fast forward 10 years to last March when the Holmes Report awarded Greentarget its Diamond SABRE award for “Superior Achievement in Research and Planning.” The award, based on our work for our client, Duff & Phelps, was a proud achievement for sure but also a reminder of the responsibility we embrace at Greentarget to direct a smarter conversation.

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We believe that industry dialog benefits from the skillful participation of our best and smartest thinkers. We are forever grateful for that seminar 10 years ago; it put us firmly on the road to mastering data-driven thought leadership campaigns. It’s a key element to fulfilling our mission of directing a smarter conversation.

Speaking of data, as we close out another year of striving to cultivate a destination for the public relations industry’s top talent, here are a few statistics that make us smile:

  • Our team welcomed four new babies this year – with one more to come in early 2019.
  • An astounding 23 young professionals completed our internship program this year, including the three who graduated to full-time employment. Great things are coming from our newest junior associates: Taylor Craddock, Briana Chernak and Nathan Kamradt. It’s a privilege for us to play a small role in the careers of so many young professionals.
  • In a major expansion of our repertoire, we welcomed John Matthew (JM) Upton as Greentarget’s first Director of Digital, responsible for expanding Greentarget’s digital capabilities into a full-service offering.
  • Further deepening our bench strength, Sonja Elmquist and Megan Turchi joined to support our content and editorial capability, while Annie Keller and Sarah Bauman joined our account teams as Account Supervisor and Associate, respectively. All four can already tell you exactly what time the groceries arrive on Mondays and within an hour when there’ll be nothing left but baked rice cakes.
  • If you didn’t make it to our offices in Chicago this year, you might’ve found us at the Legal Marketing Association national conference in New Orleans. Or at GroPro, an event in New York focused on bringing professional service firms and individuals together to exchange industry best practices and ideas. We also spoke at LMA Tech Midwest, Legal & Professional Services Council, RelativityFest and facilitated a session on artificial intelligence at the PR Council’s Critical Issues Forum in Chicago.
  • Greentarget’s 7th annual State of Digital and Content Marketing report dropped this June. And for the first time, we expanded our research to include C-suite officers beyond the general counsel. The resulting reports revealed that, while CEOs, CMOs and others differ from legal executives in some respects (they consume more video, read fewer email alerts and are less obnoxious about explaining the flaws in “Law & Order” storylines), both groups of decision-makers are hungry for better, more timely and more thoughtfully curated content.

We would like to wish you and yours a joyous holiday season filled with ample opportunity to reflect and celebrate what’s most important to you. With deep gratitude for all that was and what is yet to come.

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Humanity Rising needed a hand. The nonprofit group, which gives Chicago-area students scholarships for self-directed volunteer service projects, wasn’t telling its story in ways that resonated. Debbie Ferruzzi, Humanity Rising’s founder and CEO, came to Greentarget for help.

In the course of six months, our team not only revamped Humanity Rising’s messaging but also helped Debbie and her team develop and execute on comprehensive marketing and communications plans. In all we spent nearly 200 hours, all delivered pro bono, on Humanity Rising – an investment in time that easily paid for itself in inspiration and gratitude for our team. Here’s how it happened.

Capturing Our Imagination

In 2017, Greentarget launched its first-ever GT Cares Grant to expand our pro bono reach and build a deep connection with an organization that truly aligned with our service offerings, our background and the collective passion of our team. Each member of the Greentarget staff sought nominations through personal and social media networks, casting a wide net to find organizations that would match our strengths and push us to stretch our comfort zone. Our Pro Bono and Community Investment Committee carefully winnowed the group to five candidates to take to the full staff for a vote. While each of the candidates was deserving, and each would have been an exciting challenge, one in particular captured our imaginations.

Humanity Rising is a movement to create a better world through volunteer service. By enabling students to choose a cause they feel passionately about, Humanity Rising helps bring awareness to dozens of worthy causes – making it a perfect fit for our team, which has a broad range of philanthropic passions.

Throughout our six-month engagement with Humanity Rising, we assisted with messaging, media relations, event support and digital and social strategy. All of this work came together in a comprehensive PR and communications plan, which included sets of strategic messages tailored to Humanity Rising’s stakeholders: students, individual donors and corporate sponsors. It was important to define a clear message for each group, and we produced versatile messages to be molded and iterated across different types of marketing materials and external communications as Humanity Rising continues to grow. The plan also included in-depth media and influencer lists tailored to the organization’s audiences.

In addition to this plan, we provided press release and media advisory templates, content for sponsorship brochures, a social media plan, draft social posts and strategic guidance on Google Ads and website structure. We also gave support and guidance on follow-up for a conference Humanity Rising attended and developed a job description that led to the employment of a new intern to help support PR and marketing initiatives into the future.

Purpose-Driven Work – At Work

In the end, we left Humanity Rising equipped to more strategically and effectively communicate its mission. They’re poised to execute a media relations plan and develop savvy content. We’re looking forward to seeing what’s next for them.

At Greentarget, doing purpose-driven work isn’t a requirement; it’s a benefit for our team. And from an organization standpoint, we are lucky to contribute to causes we believe in while offering our colleagues unique experiences in both public relations and life. From the United Way of Metro Chicago and Heartland Alliance to the Domestic Violence Legal Clinic and the Cameron Kravitt Foundation to Culinary Care and Barrel of Monkeys, Greentarget has committed hundreds of hours to a broad spectrum of organizations that are working tirelessly to improve the lives of thousands of individuals and their families.

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New relationships underscore increasing demand in agency’s services across earned media, research, content and digital.

CHICAGO, December 13, 2018— Greentarget Global Group, a leading business-to-business public relations firm, today announced the addition of several new clients in the third quarter of 2018. Greentarget will be providing PR services ranging from research projects, thought leadership initiatives, and media relations programs.

Greentarget’s new clients include:

  • Brown Rudnick, a law firm with offices in the United States and Europe that represents clients from around the world in high-stakes litigation and business transactions.
  • Carbon Black (NASDAQ: CBLK) is a leading provider of next-generation endpoint security delivered via the cloud.
  • TransMed Systems, a leading provider of intelligence, technology, and expertise to dramatically improve the process of developing, identifying and matching eligible patients to clinical trials.

About Greentarget

Greentarget is a strategic public relations firm focused exclusively on the communications needs of highly competitive business-to-business organizations. The firm was founded in 2005 to focus on the specific communications issues facing sophisticated organizations that compete on expertise, service and reputation. Today, Greentarget delivers a unique mix of earned media, content, research, digital, analytics and special situations counsel to help clients communicate and influence through normal business cycles and in times of crisis. The agency’s success is due to carefully cultivated talent, specialized capabilities and strict adherence to a client service process called The Greentarget Way. Greentarget’s team of 60+ employees, located in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and London, offer the entrepreneurial spirit, geographic breadth and depth of experience required to serve leading business-to-business organizations. For more information, visit www.greentarget.com.

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In an ever-evolving digital world, it can be difficult to identify the newest and most effective public relations tools to keep your business relevant and your ideas fresh. Last month, Greentarget attended PRWeek’s PRDecoded conference in Chicago, which focused on how communicators can use these tools to thrive in a digital world. Marketers from technology, consumer goods, travel and hospitality brands presented alongside agency leaders to discuss the latest PR and digital trends.

What our team learned at the conference is that when it comes to navigating this fast-paced environment and staying relevant, it really comes back to one thing: cultivating relationships. To understand the newest digital platforms, what they measure and how they can impact business, it is crucial to remember that the end user of all these platforms is a person. PR professionals have a natural edge here. We talk a lot at Greentarget about how PR professionals are the “keepers of the lost art of media relations.” Public relations professionals are by definition relationship people. Here are some ways that focusing on relationships gives us an edge in the digital landscape and equips us to keep up.

Reinvention

In the conference’s opening session, “The Leading Disruptor,” Matt Maloney, founder and CEO of GrubHub, stressed the importance of being open to change, revisiting your business plans at least every six months and encouraging your team to keep up with new tools and trends. Accurately defining your company narrative and remaining aligned with your vision will give your team the room they need to push the envelope and grow with the business.

Storytelling

It’s no surprise that the words “content” and “narrative” were thrown around repeatedly across all sessions. The problem has become that there is so much content to consume and even more ways to consume it. We ourselves took aim squarely at the problem in Greentarget’s annual State of Digital and Content Survey, highlighting the issue of information overload. DeLu Jackson of Conagra challenged us to spend more time listening to, monitoring and engaging customers and clients to craft more meaningful content to answer the question “What are we solving for?” in his session titled “Producing for Your Customers.”

Attention

How do you attract someone’s attention and get them to “lean in” to your narrative?

“When content is abundant, attention is finite,” Charlie Hart of RXBar said in his session titled “The Price of Attention in a Digital Age.” Hart showed how the mechanics of the human brain discern what information is worth our attention: be clever, mysterious and seductive. Challenging your audience to think is the best way to earn, and keep, their attention.

Sandra Stahl of Jacobstahl Marketing Communications used the example of Wendy’s in her session, “Relationships Remain the Center of Digital Communications.” She offered one of the company’s most recent campaigns, creating a menu item from a fan’s tweet, to show how the company has succeeded by noticing—and monetizing—their users’ attention.

Humanity

At the core of any digital strategy is understanding and building a relationship with your target audience. While one of the biggest challenges that marketers face is keeping up with the rate of evolution and change in technology, no matter the new digital platform, people remain the constant in this changing landscape, Stahl said. People are looking for the same thing from digital marketing and communications that they want from any other interaction: a relationship.

The PRDecoded conference validated the notion that building and maintaining relationships remains the most important component of our job as communications professionals, while providing an exciting, fresh look at how PR is evolving in the digital age. Building trust across multiple platforms and adapting to change daily is no small feat. But it’s also what we do best. Being in the center of the digital age allows us even more opportunity to showcase those skills.

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Keeping a watchful eye on the changes in the media landscape is part of our jobs in the PR business. Our clients depend on it, and we can’t do our jobs well if we don’t understand what’s happening at the publications we work with. But it’s also in our DNA — most of us are news junkies at heart.

So we’re all well aware of what those publications are up against, especially in local media, where viable business models and paths to monetization have been all but impossible to come by. The results are mostly discouraging, with news deserts popping up all around the country.

But there are some rays of hope. Speaking to our staff over lunch, ProPublica Illinois investigative reporter Jodi Cohen recently told us that “the public is yearning for reporting that exposes wrongdoing.” She pointed to the creation of her organization and Block Club Chicago in the last year as positive signs.

Cohen isn’t the only one who sees hope for local journalism. We recently spoke with Douglas K. Smith, co-founder and architect of the Knight-Lenfest Newsroom Initiative. Launched in 2015 as the Knight-Temple Table Stakes project, the initiative was developed to strengthen local media in the face of disruption by accelerating the transition to audience-first and digitally skilled news enterprises, improving their practices and helping them grow audiences and audience-related revenues.

Smith, who coauthored Table Stakes: A Manual for Getting in the Game of News, told me that participating organizations have made good progress. Four major metros participated in the first year of the initiative in 2016. Since then, more than six dozen local journalism organizations have participated in what are now five different Table Stakes programs.

The initiative calls for participating journalists to share current challenges and opportunities and discuss strategies. That collaboration has revealed that most news organizations face similar challenges. They include juggling two monumental undertakings. “Journalistic efforts in today’s digitally disrupted world all work hard to put audiences first, create and monetize as many sources of value as possible,” while at the same time newsroom leaders must “retool skills, work and technology in ways that are sustainable going forward,” Smith said.

Early results are encouraging. “Participating enterprises have made significant progress toward success at the challenges selected,” Smith said. That progress includes revenue gains from a variety of sources, ranging from digital subscriptions to native advertising to local digital marketing services to fundraising to events and more.

Some of the success stories were recently detailed at Poynter.org:

  • The Houston Chronicle revamped its newsletter and expects that by the end of this year, it will have more readers coming to its subscriber website through newsletter click-throughs than through homepage visits. The morning report newsletter has grown dramatically, from 1,000 subscribers in January to 20,000 in August.
  • The Philadelphia Media Network, one year after focusing on the performance management models taught in the Table Stakes program, has more than 25,000 digital-only paid subscribers, 25 percent above the goal they had established for the newsroom.
  • The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel grew page views 20 percent year-over-year since 2017, unique visitors by 29 percent and digital-only subscriptions from 13,000 to 30,000.

Three years into the newsroom initiative, Smith hopes that all local news organizations embrace the core tables stakes needed to be in the game:

  1. Serve targeted audiences with targeted content
  2. Publish on the platforms used by your targeted audiences
  3. Produce and publish continuously to match your audiences’ lives
  4. Funnel occasional users into habitual, valuable and paying loyalists
  5. Diversify and grow the ways you earn revenue from the audiences you build
  6. Partner to expand your capacity and capabilities at lower and more flexible cost
  7. Drive audience growth and profitability from a “mini-publisher” perspective

“Healthy and sustainable local journalism is a linchpin to healthy and sustainable local democracy,” Smith said. “We cannot have one without the other. We must reverse the now decade-plus slide in the quality and sustainability of local journalism.”

Smith, who is also the author of On Value and Values, a book of moral philosophy for the 21st century, added, “When local journalism gets stripped down to the bare minimum, democracy’s light dims. Citizens, consumers, employees, families and friends all depend on local journalism shining democracy’s required light — not only by shining light on abuses of power, regardless of origin, but also on how local audiences can solve the necessities of their lives and work together to make the places where they live better.”

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If you’re lucky enough to have seen Hamilton, the Broadway megahit penned by Lin-Manuel Miranda, you’ve likely listened to the soundtrack every day since you saw it, daydreamed about the Hamilton Exhibition opening next year in Chicago and stalked Miranda’s Twitter feed incessantly. Or maybe that’s just me. Through a combination of good fortune and slight obsession, I’ve actually seen Hamilton three times this year. But beyond the romance of the theater and the beguiling Hamilton score, I found striking connections between Alexander Hamilton’s practice of public relations and the work we do at Greentarget. Here are a few lessons we can take out of Hamilton’s PR handbook: 1. Thought leadership has always been, and always will be, essential. Hamilton knew his voice carried weight. The Federalist Papers – a collection of essays written by Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison promoting the ratification of the U.S. Constitution – was the product of a content strategy created to influence the course of history. At Greentarget, we believe true thought leaders have an obligation to participate skillfully in the conversations that matter to their clients, especially as they seek to burnish their reputations, attract talent or achieve a higher purpose. Hamilton was largely driven by his pursuit of a higher purpose – but he was also ambitious, and his thought leadership elevated his personal brand, fueling his ascent to an essential role in the first presidential administration. 2. The importance of directing a smarter conversation. While Aaron Burr repeatedly advised him to “talk less, smile more,” Hamilton couldn’t help himself. He never shied away from an opportunity to “drop some knowledge,” and as a result he was often able to shape public perception of important issues. To be a true thought leader, an organization must consistently deliver insights and intelligence that inform business decisions for its key audiences. We sometimes encourage our clients to assume they’re “the smartest in the room” and capitalize on any opportunity to offer their unique perspective and elevate the conversation. 3. The significance of media. Hamilton relied heavily on newspapers and pamphlets, partly because they were among his only means of distributing his ideas. But even with the changing media landscape of the 21st century, traditional media is still a go-to source for executives and business leaders. Greentarget’s 2018 State of Digital & Content Marketing Survey shows that 54 percent of in-house counsel surveyed go to traditional media (e.g., The Wall Street Journal) each day for legal, business and industry news and information, and 45 percent find such sources very valuable – far above any other source. And Greentarget’s new survey of C-suite executives, the State of Digital & Content Marketing Survey – Professional Services, found that more than half of those executives get their content from traditional media every day, and 75 percent find it very valuable content for business and industry news and information. As PR pros work to keep up with the ever-changing media landscape, I invite you to view Hamilton through the lens of your work. Consider what he knew about shaping public perception by contributing to a smarter conversation, and remember that, though we take pride in finding new and exciting ways to distribute our clients’ messages, the tried-and-true methods still resonate. And, while it’s true that we may not be in the business of deciding “who lives or who dies,” at Greentarget we certainly believe you can tell your story.
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