A successful brand experience is designed to create unique, specific interactions between brands and/or products and services, and the people that they want to reach. If a brand experience is done well, your company will enjoy a better connection and enhanced brand affinity with the people that matter most. A failed brand experience will have the opposite effect, and the innovative team at Impact PR always deliver success.

Experiential or activations are designed to engage consumers with your brand in a fun and interactive way, bringing the brand to life through an experience, and creating a relationship between consumer and brand. Activations are a popular and effective system of brand management, generating consumer interest by allowing consumers to use a product or experience a service. By doing so, the brand’s value is ‘activated’ by the consumer, creating a long-lasting impression.

Similarly, experiential activities allow a brand to access current and potential consumers to engage with their products. This form of brand exposure is focused primarily on the ‘experience,’ attracting customers and providing them with more information through a memorable activity or experience.

Many agencies will advertise their ability to create brand experiences, so it is important to remember that while some types of experiences require significant and specific expertise to conceive and execute, others require a lot less. The Impact PR team take your audience to another level, with experiential marketing and activations that engage, inspire and influence. Successful, effective brand experiences can create valuable relationships with – and an affinity for – a brand.

Having a working understanding of these strategies, along with how and when they should be used, and which areas of the public are best to engage with for a given brand experience, will be key choices to make – and the difference between a successful campaign or a fail, so for more information on PR agencies, PR companies Auckland and Auckland PR agencies please go to http://www.impactpr.co.nz .

Goulter & Associates is a unique communications and PR firm that creates and implements strategies for a broad range of clients needing to achieve specific outcomes in their business, career, or personal life, and they are very proud to announce that one of their clients has been recognised in University awards.

Goulter & Associates have been created in response to the increasing demand for individuals who can bring together solutions for clients seeking a results-driven and outside the box approach to strategies and problem-solving. They are connectors and implementers - working with you to make a plan and then executing it in the most effective way possible to get a desired result.

Maru Nihoniho, the designer of video games to help youth combat depression is the winner of the Māori Entrepreneurial Leader Award 2018. Maru Nihoniho (Ngāti Porou, Whānau ā Apanui, Ngāi Tahu) harnesses the power of gaming for education and mental health. She is behind Metia Interactive, an award-winning game development studio in Tāmaki Makaurau with the tagline “making serious fun”.

Maru Nihoniho’s focus is on creating meaningful entertaining games incorporating Māori themes including te reo. “The goal is to encourage rangatahi into technology-based study at tertiary level. “They are growing up using these technologies and they should understand or know how to make content for them in the least. At best, they will be the future content creators and technologists.”

If you are looking for something slightly different, the team at Goulter & Associates can help you, so for more information on PR companies Auckland, PR consulting and managing bad PR please visit the website at http://www.goulterandassociates.com/ .

Crisis is the one thing nobody wants to talk about until it’s too late, so it is Impact PR’s job to help you keep calm and carry on when the worst happens. They

know that successful PR requires an in-depth understanding of your business stakeholders and their interests and concerns, and it is their job to address these concerns effectively.

The way in which your organisation deals with an unexpected or disruptive event defines it, and any event which has the potential to harm your organisation, its stakeholders and the general public must be taken seriously. This is why you need Impact PR for all your crisis management issues. Effective crisis management is considered to be the most important process in public relations, and can be the difference between a PR win or a PR disaster.

So what exactly defines a crisis? This is hard for you and your organisation to decide, as you are right in the middle of it all. You, more than anyone, will be aware of the threat to the organisation and how quickly it occurred, giving you very little time to manage it. However, Impact PR point out that the most important defining quality is, the need for change. Being capable of making a change is vital in this situation.

They also say that a crisis response plan is a necessity rather than a luxury, so their advice is to give their clients an audit of potential risks and current responses and to create a crisis plan. Another way they respond is to help the client identify spokespeople, media train them in being prepared for any crisis that may arise.

Impact PR’s crisis management plan involves dealing with a threat, even before it has happened, and their plan will identify, assess, understand and cope with a serious situation, so for more information on PR agencies, Auckland PR agencies and PR agencies please go to http://www.impactpr.co.nz .

A dedicated New Zealand communications, marketing and public relations company with an enviable number of strings to their bow, Impact PR’s team of creative superstars will influence, inspire and engage your audience. They have a brand new website and many exciting new services; however, being a public relations company, public relations is what they do best.

Public relations is by its definition, the actions of an organisation to promote goodwill between itself and the public. As a leading PR agency in Auckland,  the team at Impact PR are skilled in the art of promoting this goodwill.

PR is an honest account of how others see your brand, and essentially, it’s their opinion of you, your products or services. In today’s world where the lines of editorial content and advertising are blurred, the increase in the amount of ‘native advertising’, ‘fake news’ and the growth of influencers and bloggers, makes it problematic for consumers to decipher what is real and true about what you have to offer.

An effective PR campaign will deliver greater brand awareness about you, what you stand for or what your products or services deliver, and positive third party endorsement. It is a PR firm’s job to get other people talking about you in a positive way, and in contrast, advertising is the paid message that you want consumers to hear about you.

Impact PR’s experience as business owners has given them insight to just how far the marketing dollar needs to stretch, which is why they treat each of their clients’ businesses as if they were their own. While the line between public relations and advertising continues to blur, they strongly believe that the fundamental difference remains – advertising is paid media, PR provides free editorial exposure.

Impact PR are responsible for establishing and maintaining relationships with your target audience, relevant media and key influencers. On any given day they could be drafting news releases and additional content for news, working with the media, arranging interviews for brand spokespeople, designing communications campaigns, speechwriting, speaking to media on behalf of your business, preparing clients for press conferences, media interviews and speeches, creating content for social media and websites, managing crisis and issues, overseeing internal communications, or organising events and activations!

Keep Impact PR in mind when you are looking for information on PR, PR agencies Auckland and PR agencies please go to http://www.impactpr.co.nz .

A strategic PR campaign designed by Impact PR will build awareness of your organisation or brand, at the same time mitigating any negative response to your products or services. However, you need to be able to measure the success of this campaign.

As Impact PR say, a successful campaign will see your brand receive positive media coverage, as well as sales within your key target audiences. For those with a business, which is likely to receive negative media coverage, Impact PR are well-versed in managing and containing negative press, which is what they are all about.

Impact PR can also help to re-position and alter the perceptions of your brand, resulting in a desirable public image. As PR creates valued exposure in credible third-party outlets, it offers a legitimacy that other marketing tools such as advertising do not have.

Impact PR helps you get your story out, and there are ways they can help you grow your business. The first is to build brand recognition and drive sales. Secondly, you need to leverage media and other influencer relationships and promote positive sentiment by discussing great things your company is doing.

Thirdly, you can use proven strategies to engage the right audience to perform a particular action, and build credibility through positioning you as opinion leader/leaders. Whether conducted on its own, or as part of a holistic marketing campaign, public relations can provide a sense of your brand being everywhere, through the use of a range of communications tools and channels.

With Impact PR, your target market will be exposed to more persuasive information about your brand than ever before and a strong return on investment is guaranteed. Their agency offers clients public relations insights, which are derived from decades of experience as journalists. That experience is used to bridge the gap between client and editor ensuring the needs of both are met in a way that effectively fulfills the objectives of all, so to find out more about PR NZ, PR agencies and PR agencies Auckland please go to http://www.impactpr.co.nz .

Effective copywriting ensures you will get the results you are looking for, and with a blend of powerful, interesting and persuasive words, your brand or company’s message will grab the attention of both the media and your target audience.

For Impact PR, copywriting is a service they offer to clients looking for a copywriting firm that understands the destination and intention of the prose designed for them. Whether you need press release copywriting, website copywriting, brochure copywriting or even a Wikipedia page written about yourself (like the page on Weta Workshop’s New Zealand sculptor and designer Greg Broadmore, who chose copywriters at Impact PR to research and craft his profile page).

The relationship between good PR copywriting and results is obvious but often underestimated, yet fresh, interesting and well written copy has the ability to reach the audience with your brand’s unique selling point – delivering results that speak for themselves.

Ultimately the best copywriting firms are ones that have the ability to think as their audience does, and the Impact PR copywriting team is adept at writing to fit a target audience. Each copywriter has their own style of writing but they know that the finished product must appeal to the target consumer to be considered effective.

With a team of skilled former journalists, Impact PR offers a complete range of effective, professional copywriting services including press releases copywriting, articles, Wikipedia pages, editorials, and web copywriting. To get your brand into the public eye, it’s vital your message is delivered as clear and succinctly as possible.

Impact PR’s team of copywriters (Auckland, New Zealand) work almost around the clock to meet deadlines, and they often work for Northern Hemisphere clients as well, which means the copywriting may be down by the time you wake up in the morning!

For more information on PR agencies, PR companies and PR Auckland please visit the website at http://www.impactpr.co.nz .

You build a good reputation with good deeds, but need only one bad one for it to be lost” - (Ben Franklin on Reputation Management).

We are all aware that for whatever reason some individuals or companies can develop a bad reputation on Google, and that all important first page in Google may show up results that they simply don’t want to see. Impact PR is an online reputation management company (practicing the evolving art of reputation management online) focusing on monitoring and managing the way in which you and or your company are represented online.

Impact PR’s online reputation management helps to generate positive PR for you and your brand, or reverse criticisms that already exist online. Material monitored for online reputation management includes user-created content and professional journalism, giving you the opportunity to see how you and your company are being perceived and also the chance to rectify or reverse claims that could be damaging to you and or your brand image.

The art of reputation management online involves using search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques in a way that ‘optimises’ other sites higher and subsequently works to push negative sites down. Online reputation management companies such as Impact PR employ a vast myriad of SEO techniques to achieve this.

Many of these reputation management online techniques involve optimising positive stories so that they migrate higher up in Google than the negative ones, and Google’s continually evolving algorithms make this a challenging process for online reputation management companies. Impact PR employs their public relations capabilities to secure coverage in media sites with high page ranks. These pages are given considerably more weight by Google as more credible.

It is this blend of public relations ability and search engine optimisation know-how that makes Impact PR one of the top online reputation management companies Auckland has to offerAs they say, “You’ve invested blood sweat and tears into your building a great brand – don’t allow detrimental claims from others halt your success!”

For more information on reputation management, PR NZ and PR agencies please go to http://www.impactpr.co.nz .

The Cambridge dictionary defines Public Relations as being “The activity of keeping good relationships between an organisation and the people outside it”,

and Mark Twain’s comment on public relations was, “The general public is the only critic whose opinion is of value at all.” Impact PR have their own definition of public relations. “Advertising is what what you say about your brand, whereas PR is what the market says about you.”

How industry professionals, Impact PR, influence key opinion leaders to say the right things about their clients defines them as a communications company. As the way we communicate continues to evolve at a rapid rate,  the days of being able to reach your audience with a simple article in a newspaper have long since passed.

Today people get their news from a variety of mediums (including posts from a friend’s Facebook page), so your PR agency needs to be able to bridge the gap between traditional media and the new emerging wave of digital and social media. As specialists in their industry, Impact PR will be able to effectively communicate with journalists, as it is often difficult for a business to create content that fits naturally into the style of news media without appearing overly commercial.

Impact PR will be able to design you a strategic PR campaign aimed at  building awareness of your organisation or brand and, at the same time mitigating any negative response to your products or services. A successful campaign will see your brand receive positive media coverage, sales within your key target audiences and be free from negative publicity.

Impact PR can also help to re-position and alter the perceptions of your brand, resulting in a desirable public image, and Impact PR helps you get that story out, using five different strategies. Firstly, they will build brand recognition and drive sales, they will leverage media and other influencer relationships, and promote positive sentiment by discussing great things your company is doing. They will use proven strategies to engage the right audience to perform a particular action, and build credibility through positioning you as opinion leader/leaders.

With Impact PR, your target market will be exposed to more persuasive information about your brand than ever before and a strong return on investment is guaranteed, so for more information on PR, PR Auckland and PR companies please go to http://www.impactpr.co.nz .

Adapt or die: a truism often ignored in the business world. As creatures of habit we enjoy sticking to what we know and what we do best. When business is booming we tend to put all of our focus into the product or service which is giving us the greatest returns. However, any change in your particular market put you at great risk of rapid failure - as all of you eggs lay in your single basket.

For small to medium sized business – diversification is key.  In 2017, clients expect more from their service providers, they prefer the “one-stop-shop”, rather than dealing with a multitude of separate suppliers.  Diversifying your product offering should be well thought out and executed with care. 

A business owner needs to be able to juggle their commitment to new ventures without neglecting their core product or service offering.

But how does one even start to decide which new areas of business to expand into?

While for the small business owner - busy is good, being constantly under the pump tends to create tunnel vision. You can’t keep a close eye on changes in the market, emerging trends, new technologies or customer attitudes when your head is buried in the sand.

A simple place to start is surveying existing clients on other products or services they are in the market for and then move to offering these services alongside your core business.

Albany based printing company, CMD Print note a combination of client communication and persistent research into emerging printing technology as the two keys to their diversification success.

“We found that building future success comes from building and fostering good relationships with existing clients. It is through this relationship that we began to take note of others services our clients were after”.

Based on their client experience, CMD Print looked to enhance the user experience by offering both design and distribution service – all under the one roof.  While diversifying their offering was successful, the real success came from research into emerging printing technologies and practices.

“As printing technology improved, we were able to print more intricate designs on a wider range of materials – this allowed us to offer brand new promotional material to our existing clients, and be front runners in the NZ printing market”.

The key to a successful diversification strategy is having a solid core service and then building around this.  Be attentive to your existing client bases needs and adapt to provide additional services. 

For one night only, Aucklanders will get the chance to experience life aboard the world’s largest civilian floating hospital.

On October 9th Mercy Ships will be hosting the New Zealand premiere of The Surgery Ship, an award-nominated documentary that follows the life transforming work of volunteers aboard the medical ship, Africa Mercy.

Shot on location in the West African nation of Guinea, a country where there is only one doctor for every 10,000 people, the documentary provides an unprecedented up close glimpse into the emotional and medical challenges faced by Mercy Ships volunteers and the patients they treat.

Amongst the volunteers are a team of Australasian doctors and medical staff, including Kiwi surgeon Dr Neil Thomson.

“I think about my experiences every day,” says Dr Thomson. “Once you have worked on board and been touched by these patients, you never stop thinking about it . . . you never see the world the same again.”

The volunteers treat as many patients as they can, such as Yaya, an 8-year-old boy with terribly deformed legs.  His radical surgery on board the Africa Mercy begins a process of transformation, bringing out a confident, cheeky persona and rekindling his dream of one day playing football.

Madeleine Hetherton, the film’s Australian producer/director, will be flying to Auckland as a special guest of the premiere. After the screening, Ms Hetherton will be joined by Dr Thomson for a short panel discussion on the making of the film and the on going efforts of Mercy Ships in Africa.

“The Surgery Ship is a story about the everyday heroism of both Africans and the volunteers, and the human drive to rise above circumstances, to survive, and give the best of ourselves,” says Ms Hetherton.

“There are brutal limits to what can be achieved. No matter how much they do, the line of patients at the door is unending. So this is also a story about the on-going quest to give aid and the impossibility of a quick fix in Africa.”

Around 30 New Zealanders volunteer their services on board the Africa Mercy every year, providing medical care to tens of thousands of patients in need. Due to the lack of medical services in countries such as Guinea, volunteers are often presented with conditions that are extremely rare in Western countries.

“Some of our patients have suffered enormously,” says Dr Thomson. “Not only physically, but socially and emotionally, because of the way they look; so the joy on their faces when they wake up after surgery and realise that the tumour really is gone is quite wonderful to witness.”

The documentary provides an unprecedented, up close glimpse into the emotional and medical challenges faced by Mercy Ships volunteers and the patients they treat.  Filming this intimate account was a challenging task that produced unusual obstacles for the director.

“When we were trying to get access and permission from local Guinean people to film them on the ship, we were advised of the local customs of visiting,” says Ms Hetherton.

“This amounts to arriving with about ten kilos of rice and a couple of live chickens, so many of our days started at the local market trying to source these items at a reasonable price before any other work could take place.”

Mercy Ships have been working in the world’s poorest countries for more than 36 years, helping to transform the lives of over 2.43 million people.  Surgeons, nurses and other crew all volunteer their services and pay for their own expenses.

The film, which was nominated for a 2014 Australian Directors Guild Award, has been heralded as a triumph in the Australian media, making the New Zealand Premiere an opportunity not to be missed.

Watch the movie trailer at www.mercyships.org.nz

What: The New Zealand Premiere of The Surgery Ship
When: Thursday 9th October, 7.00pm (foyer bar opens at 6.00pm)
Where: Maidment Theatre, 8 Alfred Street, Auckland
Cost: Free
RSVP: Please email event@mercyships.org to RSVP for this event
 

AUT students and Salvation Army Manukau Community Ministries team up to raise awareness, as South Auckland’s housing situation moves from crisis to collapse.

Family homelessness is spreading in South Auckland. In a bid to support the fight against this issue, and the view that many New Zealanders hold about such circumstances being a result of individual choices, AUT communication students are launching a Trade Me auction; ‘Tent for Any Tenant’.

The listing will feature a tent being sold as a family home and will commence on October 1, with a closing time of 6pm on October 10, which is World Homeless Day.

Rent in Auckland is increasing 10% faster than incomes, and house evictions are on the rise, which initiates the cycle of low income families and individuals living in vehicles, tents and other unsuitable conditions.

The Salvation Army Manukau Community Ministries are finding their resources are having to be diverted from their usual services to focus on providing homes for families who are having to share accommodation in already over-crowded houses.

Director Pam Hughes says, “This issue is taking priority, and it means we can’t do the work we usually do, as desperately attempting to find accommodation for our families has now become a constant.”

The Manukau Community Ministries already work with 13,000 families each year. They supply these families with food parcels, budget advice and other social work, yet Hughes says they are struggling with what she describes as “the added pressure of the unmanageable housing collapse.”

The students’ efforts are part of the initial stages of the activities the Community Ministries have planned for October surrounding World Homeless Day, including many events in South Auckland including at their Recovery Church.

Student Owen Chambers says, “We want to use this auction as a powerful visual reminder to communicate with those who don’t realise how critical the situation in South Auckland is, and hopefully get people to feel what we have felt during our time working with the Community Ministries and their incredibly determined and emotionally-involved team.”  

The property listing will also be situated on Trade Me’s ‘Cool Auctions’ rotation and will be holding an ‘Open Home’ on October 8 at 12.30-2.30pm, in Auckland CBD.
The highest bidder will also receive two VIP tickets to the Ministries’ ‘Story of Hope’ concert, featuring Stryker, a pianist and vocalist who has conquered homelessness and risen to success in the music industry. Joining him, will be the Sistema Aotearoa Children’s Orchestra and Mama Julz at Auckland Boys Grammar School concert on October 19.

The auction gives the opportunity to donate to the Salvation Army Manukau Community Ministries by either placing the highest bid on the auction, or following a link on the listing where donors can allot a specified amount of money to the charity.

For more information on a ‘Tent for Any Tenant’ and the Salvation Army Manukau Community Ministries, visit the online listing from October 1 on www.trademe.co.nz. To purchase tickets and to find out more about the ‘Story of Hope’ concert, visit http://www.eventbrite.com/e/stryker-a-story-of-hope-tickets-12129524735

-ENDS-

For more information please contact:

Claire Blakely, Outside the Square PR

claireblakely@ymail.com

Pam Hughes, Salvation Army Manukau Community Ministries
Pam_Hughes@nzf.salvationarmy.org
 

MICRO TECH PR AGENCY LOUD IN PUBLIC, FINALIST IN 2014 DAVID AWARDS

Wellington’s Micro Tech PR Agency LOUD IN PUBLIC has been named a finalist in the 2014 David Awards: Heroes in small business.

Since 2008, The David Awards have been recognising the unsung heroes in home-based and small businesses throughout New Zealand – the Kiwi Davids taking on the Goliaths of the New Zealand business landscape.
As a start-up business, owner and sole publicist of LOUD in Public, Lou Draper understood better than anyone some of the challenges start-up and in-growth businesses face.

“Starting a business takes serious guts, determination but also a bloody good idea” says Lou Draper.  “I started this agency with the prime goal of supporting grass-roots and in-growth business – people who have those 3am ideas, but not necessarily the skills or know how to get to market, raise their profile and become a success.”

The David Awards process is unlike most other national business awards.  An easy to fill in form from a website is the only requirement, meaning small business don’t partake in hoop-jumping palaver or an onerous time investment to be considered for the awards.  Once selected as a finalist, a submission of static photographs and / or video to explain in further detail what the business does is the only ask from the judging panel.

“It’s rare for a publicist or publicity business to look for their own PR opportunities, so I was in two minds on entering the awards, but so glad I did.  I never thought I’d get so far as to be a finalist in both categories I entered – I’m so pleased”

Judges of the awards, Glenn Smith, Glenn Baker, Pam Martin, Sandra Crosby and Brian Meredith were impressed with this year’s entries, particularly, Cosby said, they “loved the geographic diversity of the entries and found it great to see some good entries in the new categories”. The judges also felt “the overall standard of entries across the majority of categories was up this year, and with a greater consistency of business performance there were some close calls to make.”

Winners of The David Awards 2014 will be announced on www.thedavidawards.co.nz at 11 a.m. on 8 October.