Welcome to the Office!

This week LCO welcomed a new publicist, Erika Gutierrez! Welcome to the team, Erika, we’re glad to have you.

LCO also welcomed visitor Buffy Fermino from PR Newswire earlier this week. Thank you for stopping by Buffy!

Our newest publicist, Erika.

Buffy Fermino from PR Newswire

TRIGGER Wins at MOBI

LCO extends its congratulations to Trigger!

Trigger’s app for Sony Pictures’ The Karate Kid on iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch won at this year’s MOBI Awards for Best Mobile Branded Game!

Trigger (blog.triggerla.com/) created an AP for Sony Pictures’ The Karate Kid for iPad, IPod touch, and iPhone. The AP, which is a game, allows users to go through five levels of play, each level representing a different Kung Fu ‘concept of mind” (Patience, Courage, Endurance, Perseverance, and Will). The game also includes a belt ranking system, the prestigeous black belt being reserved only for those who master all the game’s levels.

At this years MOBI Awards Trigger won the award for Best Mobile Branded Game and was considered in numerous other categories.

Growing Appreciation for P.R. On Madison Avenue

Take note of this article clipping from The New York Times (BY: Stuart Elliott) about the continued growth of the importance of Public Relations in the Business world:

“THE recently acquisitive MDC Partners is at it again, with a deal that is indicative of the growing recognition along Madison Avenue of how much more interested marketers are becoming in using public relations to reach consumers.

Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal & Partners in New York, which is owned by MDC, is acquiring a majority stake in Kwittken & Company, a public relations agency in New York with annual revenue approaching $10 million and clients like Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, McGraw-Hill and Thomson Reuters.

Lori Senecal of Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal, with Jason Schlossberg, left, and Aaron Kwittken, who opened Kwittken.

…The transaction is the third in five months for MDC involving a public relations agency; the others were Sloane & Company in New York, in April; and Allison & Partners in San Francisco, in May. And it is the sixth deal over all for MDC since last September.

None of the six agencies in which MDC has bought majority stakes specialize in traditional ad tasks like creating television commercials. Rather, their specialties, in addition to public relations, include social media, database marketing, experiential marketing and analytics.

Marketers want “to find firms that can deliver performance,” said Miles S. Nadal, chairman and chief executive at MDC, which is based in Toronto, and public relations agencies are excelling in “understanding the changing dynamics of the marketplace,” as what happens with a campaign in social media and earned media has become as important as its presence in paid media and owned media.

As a result, Mr. Nadal said, “we love the P.R. space — social, blogging, crisis management, events.”

“P.R. is taking on a higher strategic importance based on its unique role in amplifying a brand’s message in today’s digitally focused, social media world,” said Lori Senecal, president and chief executive at Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal.

Kwittken and her agency got to know each other, Ms. Senecal said, when they teamed up to work on a project for WGSN, a fashion trend forecaster in London. “It went successfully,” she recalled, “so we thought, ‘There’s something more here.’ ”