AHA

Going the distance with your PR campaigns

Posted by Paul Holman of AHA Creative Strategies on January 27th, 2012

In today’s AHA Fast Take Friday, Ruth uses her training for the Vancouver Sun Run as an analogy for a communications outreach.

What Jimmy Buffett taught me about corporate storytelling

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on January 26th, 2012

Years ago, as a journalist for a national magazine, I had the opportunity to interview music legend Jimmy Buffett. Now, I happen to be a Jimmy Buffett fan (we are affectionately known as Parrot Heads), so this was a pretty special interview for me!

Jimmy Buffett has an incredible business mind and a true entrepreneurial spirit. (There are unsubstantiated rumours that he is related to Warren Buffett, so the business part of his brain kind of makes sense.) He was one of the first in the music business to embrace digital technology; he recognized the coming shift in the music…

Telling your organization’s story

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on January 24th, 2012

Once you understand what the story currently being told about your organization focuses on (see last week’s post on “The art and science of telling a great corporate story”), the next step is to identify the storyline that you want to tell. There are many story structures that you can use to tell the story in a way that engages your audience. While, at first glance, some of these approaches may seem a little “Hollywood” – keep in mind that show business is a very successful industry that is based on telling stories.

There are some standard approaches…

Crisis communications – the prequel

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on January 17th, 2012

This blog post isn’t about what to do should your organization be faced with an issue or a crisis. It is about what you can do today, proactively, even if there isn’t the slightest evidence that there might be a challenge in your future. (A word of warning: A small mistake by someone in your organization could get a lot of interest online and turn into a huge crisis. Don’t think a crisis would never happen to you. It can. And at some point, it likely will.)

Back to today’s post…

We are often asked to develop issues and crisis…

In the news: Shaw Media

Posted by Paul Holman of AHA Creative Strategies on January 12th, 2012

The Vancouver Sun is reporting today that Shaw Media will launch an all-news channel for British Columbia in the summer of 2012. Global BC will be responsible for the content. Fingers are crossed at AHA that this also means that Global will have more television cameras available to record the news going on in the Lower Mainland.

Click here for a link to the story.

Great PR is about educating and informing

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on January 10th, 2012

January is an interesting month. People are setting goals in both their personal and professional lives. It’s a time of new beginnings, of focusing (or refocusing), of excitement and hope. We’re no different here at AHA. We took some time over the holiday season to set our goals and to outline what we want to achieve, experience and create in 2012.

One of my professional goals is to work with more clients who realize that great PR is about building relationships, about educating and informing, and about engaging with your target market or stakeholder group. Social media has made a…

AHA Special Fast Take

Posted by Paul Holman of AHA Creative Strategies on January 03rd, 2012

I am not going to spoil the fun of today’s AHA Special Fast Take. All I will say is watch Ruth take the “plunge” into 2012. (And my apologies for the sound – it was very windy!)

Looking to 2012 from the AHA Creativity Studio

Posted by Paul Holman of AHA Creative Strategies on December 30th, 2011

In today’s video, Ruth is in the AHA Creativity Studio (A.K.A. The Naked Cowboy) talking about setting goals for 2012.

Great media pitches

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on December 29th, 2011

We take media pitching seriously. We do our homework and our research. We review the work of the journalist or blogger in context to what we want to pitch. We spend the time to get it right and that shows in our results. At AHA, we have generated some exceptional media and blog coverage for clients.

It was refreshing to read this article on pitching on Ragan.com. New York Times Tech Journalist David Pogue talks about the pitches that grabbed his attention. (Just for the record, we are big fans of Pogue!) It’s worth a read. And if…

Blogging for business – part 2

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on December 05th, 2011

On Wednesday, I wrote about the CEO/President’s blog. Today we’ll have a look at the organization blog, the employee blog and the blend.

The Organization Blog

This blog is a little less about the person writing it than it is about the organization as a whole. Often there will be several writers who cover a range of topics and areas regarding the organization. It might be that different departments or division heads each write one blog post a week about news, events and interesting points relevant to their area.

In this style, it is more like local news…