Getting the Right Results

(Thoughts on the value of strategic media relations)





Customer testimonials (1)

"Where do you want to be, tomorrow?"

Strategic marketing is an investment, and it's only right to expect results. But many high-tech companies confuse P/R results with real business results.

And many P/R firms prey upon that confusion.

The quotations on the left were selected from dozens of comments received from account executives and senior management of just one ASH Technology Marketing customer throughout a four-year engagement as their full-service "extended marketing department".

We think these "real business results" are the kind that really matter-- the return you're really looking for, on your marketing investments.

To achieve these kinds of results we must share, with you, a longer-term view.

We seek to weave individual advertising, media relations, communications and promotional activities into a fabric of collective profile enhancement. Each result is leveraged to enhance the performance of subsequent marketing activities. Each incremental exposure opportunity, each new activity is inherently a business decision, with costs balanced against strategic relevance and expected results.

Some activities will deliver obvious, splashy, short-term outcomes. Others will produce subtler but equally important results, laying the foundation for tomorrow's "splashes" and weaving them into a sustained long-term presence in the marketplaces and the media that are important to you.

Maximize your news "harvest"!

Think of your P/R opportunities as a renewable resource.

Over time, there will be a stream of reportable achievements, successes, and other news items. Product and service launches. New promotional programs and materials. Some of these will be more important than others, but each has value, each has potential.

Now, think of our approach as sustained, long-term cultivation and harvesting of this renewable resource, with big-picture strategic resource management designed to maximize and optimize the harvest.

"Clear-cutting"--- the WRONG approach to P/R

Beware of those "Cherry Pickers"...

In contrast, many P/R firms take a different view. Focusing on individual tasks, they lose sight of the big picture. Activities that won't generate splashy short-term results are often neglected. Maybe it's because they don't expect to be on your team very long...

Some of them even base their fees on results... the direct, short-term P/R results of individual tasks and deliverables. This creates a strong incentive for "cherry picking" by the P/R firm. Find the few really hot angles that make for an easy story placement, a quick flash of profile. Exploit them. Collect your fee. And then go on to the next account.

You don't have to look very far to see the legacy of this "clear-cutting" approach to P/R. A company gets a splashy feature story somewhere, then it's back to oblivion.

Tragically, when your hottest news angles have been squandered in this way, you've lost the opportunity to exploit them to their full potential, (leveraging the interest they generate to enhance the results of other, less "sexy" initiatives).

Customer testimonials (2)

Win the trick? or the game?

It's like playing cards. If you play your aces in a non-strategic way, you lessen the probability that the weaker cards in your hand will also be winners. To win, you play the cards in a strategic combination, with the end result in mind. Winning a trick is good. Winning the hand is much better. Winning the game is what really matters.

We're in it, with you and on your behalf, for the whole game. Leveraging each success. Always looking for new opportunities to win, on your behalf. Never losing sight of the real objectives. There when you need us, waiting in the wings when you don't.

Perhaps that's why our average client engagement is measured in years, not weeks.






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