Maximizing your PR: Champagne results on a beer budget

Ciaran Staunton is not your run-of-the-gin-mill Irish barkeep. He’s the personable, promotion-savvy proprietor of O’Neill’s in midtown Manhattan.

The pub’s hard-to-miss cobalt-blue façade is a good clue to Ciaran’s mindset: That to succeed you have to stand out. Yet trust a man from County Mayo to know you can do it by not spending a lot of green.

Hence his hiring of BCA last Fall. The brief? Focus on the pub grub and tout O’Neill’s 10 oz. hamburger as the best in midtown (sorry PJ Clarke’s, you’re cooked!).

After a couple of ‘trying’ work sessions getting our heads – and mouths -- around the assignment, the BCA team led by Lyla Naseem, PR Dir., and Sarah Woodruff, A/E, proposed a “Burger of the Month” publicity campaign.

The program’s centerpiece was a calendar line-up of  quirky theme burgers and matching beers for every month. For instance, in March there was the “St. Patrick’s Day Madness” burger backed with a pint of Harp lager.

It helped that the price was right. A burger and brew for less than a tenner. Plus, the promo was packaged as a holiday gift idea, with cards featuring multiple months for even juicier savings.

BCA’s simple strategy was PR outreach to local Big Apple media, supported by in-pub point of sale and neighborhood direct mail. Since foodies are so prevalent online, BCA also targeted a number of food weblogs and web sites such as Strongbuzz.com, ahamburgertoday.com, and others.

Results after just three months? All the major NYC media outlets – on air, on the street, and online -- ate up the idea (see complete list in sidebar), running everything from promo mentions and blurbs to lengthy features and interviews with Ciaran.

Business is booming and Ciaran’s a happy man – and BCA client. “I am thrilled with the media coverage BCA has secured for us. Things just keep getting better and better.”

Want to know more re BCA’s PR services? Contact Lyla at lyla@bcany.com. The burger’s on her.

An Agency As Irish As Paddy’s Pig, And Dim Sum
 
While BCA has had a presence on the corner of Lexington and 41st for close to 20 years,
you may or may not know the agency’s roots originate from the ol’ sod.
 
The agency was founded in Dublin in the sixties by Brian Cronin. With accounts such as Toyota, Bass Ale, Irish Tourist Board and other brands, BCA in Dublin grew to become one of Ireland’s top agencies. With ambitions to grow further, a New York outpost was set up in the mid-1980s.
 
With Brian’s passing, the Irish agency was subsequently sold, leaving New York in the hands of his son, Jim Cronin. With its focus on hospitality and travel, BCA in the Big Apple has weathered through times both good and, as their wont to say in Dublin, shite. But survive and prosper BCA does. In fact, Jim states, “’05 was the agency’s best year ever.”
 
Today, even with names of key personnel like Galli, Meikson, Naseem, and Poster, BCA still enjoys its connections to home. Present and past ‘Irish’ accounts worked on in New York include Fitzpatrick Hotel Group, Jurys Doyle Hotel Group, Allied Irish Bank, Bank of Ireland, Enterprise Ireland (Irish govt. org.), Dromoland and Ashford Castles, McCann’s Oatmeal, a few saloons (see O’Neill’s article), and others long forgotten – but not the project from the Irish guy in New Jersey who sold outrageously expensive, high-tech Menorahs!

Price transparency. Increased consumer expectations. Greater accountability. All while marketing budgets are getting tighter and tighter.

BCA are specialists in this changing world and we're pleased to announce NewsTravels, an e-mail program designed to share our latest knowledge and insights with you. To learn more, visit us at www.bca.travel.

New tools evolve everyday in this industry but make sure to look before you leap into new technologies. Some new media ideas are just plain wrong for travel marketers.

RSS, for example, has been marketed as the ultimate way to stay in touch with consumers, but it's really nothing more than a newsfeed. Pop-up ads, complex surveys, and unneccessary animation do nothing but annoy consumers. And highly sophisticated websites with extensive use of Flash are simply too expensive to update regularly.

That being said, here are a few new media ideas that provide a great balance of impact, cost and feasibility:

Electronic outdoor and transit advertising. Media companies are quickly rising to the challenge of making this static, yet oft-mobile, medium much more interactive and engaging. Digital taxi top advertising (see above) will soon be rolling out in more cities in the U.S. Interestingly, Europe is more advanced in this regard, as this award-winning poster in London from The Economist illustrates.

JCDecaux, an outdoor powerhouse, has a division, Innovate, that creates bespoke solutions to create excitement and add value for both clients and consumers. Depending on the market, the possibilities are limitless, e.g., billboards that change at the command of a cellphone or bus shelters that have audiovisual features.

Promotional e-mail blasts and e-newsletters are relatively simple, trackable and inexpensive to produce. (Proof? You're looking at one.) Such a tactic plays very well in the hospitality field. To drum up business post the holidays, BCA sent out a number of e-missives to various markets for client, Half Moon in Jamaica. And for niche cruise line, Swan Hellenic, BCA recently deployed "e-travel asap" from Virtuoso that lets you reach the country's top agents with last-minute offers. Click here for examples.

In your Public Relations efforts, it may make sense to add a strategy that appeals to bloggers, in order to, hopefully, generate positive "word of mouth.” Despite being an irritating anagram, the impact of WOM can not be denied.

In a subsequent issue of NewsTravels, we'll show you how to accomplish this, getting champagne results on a beer budget. Literally!

New biz blooms in Guam

Targeted emails work! When BCA blasted out its 2005 holiday card via email, back came a new client: the Royal Orchid Hotel, a 4-star independent property in Guam. The first creative and media tasks include a targeted GDS campaign to mainland agents and a Valentine's promotion directed to local residents.