News

Boise-based contemporary dance company Trey McIntyre Project is making headlines throughout the US with positive reviews of last week’s performances at Jacobs Pillow, a 10-week summer dance festival in Becket, Mass. Among those giving accolades to the company were The New York Times, The Boston Globe and Voice of Dance, just to name a few.

It's been a pleasure working with Trey and his talented staff and company of dancers. Beyond the creativity, talent, passion and expression, there is a sincere commitment to become part of the Boise community, and to help further posture Boise as a performing arts mecca. Positive national media coverage is just the beginning.

For those who haven't heard, the season premiere of Trey McIntyre Project’s ‘08-‘09 inaugural world tour will be held in Boise on Sept. 20 at the Morrison Center for Performing Arts. For more information, see http://www.treymcintyre.com/. For tickets, go to www.treymcintyre.com/tickets.

Drake Cooper is looking for a Media Specialist Extraordinaire! If you love all things Media, from negotiating rates to reconciling discrepancies, from research to analysis, from GRPs to CPPs to HUT/PUT/PUR you might be the one for us! We’d love to add a savvy guy or gal who knows all there is to know about new forms of media, dreams at night of Excel spreadsheets and gets a kick out of statistics to our progressive, fun-loving, wii-playing, peace-spreading, sagacious ad shop. Bowling trophies and/or secret bird-calling talents aren’t required, but certainly help. And please, the telephone is so 80’s. This is the 21st! Emails only! Please send your resume and cover letter to hvogt@drakecooper.com. Must possess a four-year college degree and a couple years experience in media planning and buying. All the usual benefits apply.

In support of the Olympic season the Idaho Lottery has introduced a limited time Go USA Giveaway promotion - we wanted to capture the excitement surrounding the games and tell you how you can make your own way to the podium of prizes! Play today!

Interesting article here. The article discusses how the SEC has recently officially stated that companies can meet full disclosure requirements by posting information on their web sites and blogs - something not previously allowed. PR professionals will be freed from the constraints of traditional media that had been binding them to meet legal requirements. As larger companies begin to take advantage of this new convenience, I predict we will begin to see a revolution in the traditional news release.

The article says this "opens the door for the 'Social Media Release,'" a tactic that the author points out should supplement, not replace, a traditional release. The social media release is a much richer way to offer information to the media, utilizing Web 2.0 components such as YouTube, iTunes, Flickr, etc. The Drake Cooper PR team has been studying the social media release in the past months, and we included it as a capability of ours in the dairy pitch. Read the article for a more detailed explanation of the significance of the announcement.

If you can't get your mind wrapped around what we mean by "Social Media Release," I would compare it to the way cnn.com presents the news versus how a traditional, tangible print paper presents the news. Take this article, about gorillas, for example. If you read that in the Wall Street Journal print edition, you would get the text you see there, and nothing else. That's comparable to our traditional release. Covers the basic information and tells you how to find out more. Alternatively, on cnn.com, you can click on the tabs at the top of the story for more integrated information - there's a tab for read, video, map and background. A social media release allows you to explore, interact and learn more about the subject, just like cnn.com does with their news. It goes light years beyond an e-mail full of text about a topic. Here's a screenshot of one social media release template:

One thing I personally am unsure of regarding these will be where we host them...do we get our clients to put them on their websites? Do we post them on our site? Will there become an open source site for anyone to post this type of releases to - a Wikipedia of news? Will the Statesman allow PR professionals to upload something like this a place on their site for their access? All of the above?

This social media release could work well for a number of our clients...now if we can just get them to consider posting their news this way.

Labels: Drake Cooper PR, gorillas, news release, social media release

Matt Stevens joins the interactive team as designer bringing skills in design, video production and motion graphics. Recently, Matt was the Creative Director for the Idaho Steelheads and Boise Burn and ran his own design firm; Complement Studio. Prior to that Matt worked for Action Sports Media, the creative agency for the Portland Trailblazers.

Dylan Amundson joins the Account team as a Project Manager. Dylan's recent brand experience includes working on Harley-Davidson, Subaru, and Jack's Links while working for Carmichael Lynch in Minneapolis.

Labels: interactive employees