positioning stories ::
position catalysts by MA Neff
Businesses — like leaders with adaptive agendas — seek to manage information creatively beginning with communications to their constituents and partners. We blend competitive, systems and business analysis to align competencies with your opportunities, audience, influencers' and key stakeholders' needs.
A well-planned positioning campaign deepens your relationship with all your stakeholders so that your employees, customers, your partners and the public turn to you as a trusted information source. As you grow, Picture the Worlds guides you in selecting services to fit the many stages of your campaigns.
Picture the Worlds acts as a catalyst to position your message right
where the competition, the influencers, analysts and the media engage.
craft ::
- competitive intelligence analysis
- positioning & branding briefs
- market & strategy roadmaps
- executive summaries
- investment prospectus
- press releases
- media relations
- speaking & press tours
- product rollout & launch
- campaign strategy / events
chatter ::
Who knows what exactly it takes to make a social media splash? In 2011, clues to solving market positioning for your business may be detectable by observing the recent upswing in PR agency hiring.
Like most industries, the PR profession responded to the real estate collapse during 2009 and 2010 by reducing recruitment. But now the hiring tide is rising. According to Ann Subervi, 2010 chair of the PRSA Counselors Academy, hiring is heating up, in part, because traditional agencies are looking to bolster their online and social media expertise.
While it’s encouraging to learn that public relations recruitment prospects look rosier, it may reflect more or less than a sign of a healing economy—depending on your point of view.
Mineapolis-based PR agency Exponent Chief Strategist Riff Yaeger says it’s a matter of separating the “performers from the pretenders”. He believes “clients are still looking to their agencies to lead them in this rapidly changing environment.” A business that hires agencies may agree, but a company that manages PR internally may come away with a different conclusion.
The point first and foremost is that the search is on for social media experts at all levels who’ve pulled off a social media coup or two. Agencies are hiring, but does that mean the economy is about to boom or does it mean others are catching up? Our contention is that increasing competitiveness in hiring social media expertise doesn’t preclude a business that elects to go it along from reaching and winning its intended (and sometimes unintended) audiences.
The key to achieving social media results is to recognize the need to have dedicated resources. Businesses need the agility to experiment, take risks and re-vision. Do you have the right people and the time to seek out and court new audiences by creating ‘intentioned’ content that you can monitor and measure?
Ask Picture the Worlds about how to plan a unique strategy step-by-step. Talk to us today about telling stories that attach you to content.
[Money Matters “Ask the Professional” Ann Subervl Sep 2010 Isue of PRSA Tactics]
areas of expertise ::
strategic communications
Picture the Worlds is an interactive consulting group. We work with both
established companies and new ventures to create and execute innovative
positioning strategies and evolving business strategies for the digital
and coming clean energy economy. Our expertise brings requirement analysis,
competitive intelligence research and project management in alignment
with your audience, influencers' and stakeholders' needs.
telling your story
The value of your company's reputation and image has always been a
subjective matter. Customers, investors and shareholders, reporters,
consumers and competitors come to your site or interact with your product
and take away their own impressions. PTW works with an organization
to maximize branding opportunities and match these to key audiences.
Ease-of-use, straightforward navigation, enhanced functionality are
objectives for websites, but organization, bright content and relevant
messaging apply beyond a company's site. When PR efforts spark attention
in online social networks, conversations spill over into in-person social
networks and vice versa. It's the way you participate in the conversation
that drives activity to your site and business to your company. Picture
the Worlds helps make sure they get the whole picture — not just
what your business offers, but your organization's story. Branding
is an evolving process. Our role is helping to plan the best way to
keep tabs on a shifting market by positioning your messaging based on
the context and perceptions of your audience. For one fitness music
software company, we mapped their brand space as they sought business
development partners. See project overview.
Pre-Launch Planning
A new community based startup faced the challenge of integrating its
gift card sales channels to healthcare providers with the larger network
of people who are on a cancer journey. To balance the needs between
those dealing with the health and lifestyle changes that a cancer diagnosis
brings and the aims of healthcare providers, the company created a medically-informed
common sense blog and carefully crafted a friendly e-commerce platform.
To reach beyond their online presence, Picture the Worlds worked with
the company to create a clear and achievable social media marketing
plan and a separate microsite where survivors could geographically link
their milestones. From these plans the young company was awarded micro-financing
which gave them yet another avenue of support to build on its growing
momentum.