Blaze PR

Are you ready for success? It seems like an obvious question; after all, isn't that your ultimate goal? But most companies are not ready for the next level. Our unique approach to public relations will prepare you and help get you there. But not the way you think. The following three chapters take you through client interviews, media channel examples and results, and a list of questions we like to ask our clients. Let us walk you through our 360 approach-it's different. You'll see.

1. Make you special
You're good at what you do. But not everyone knows that. We have the tools to make your individual strengths more visible. Sometimes it's the right media at the right time. But it always comes down to the essence of who you are that makes you unique.

Meet a few of our clients who we made very special.

MAKE YOU SPECIAL Six Client Interviews

Debra Matsumoto, Director of Sales and Marketing, Le Merigot, A JW Marriot Beach Hotel & Spa

They afford me opportunities that I would never have. And we traded a sales manager to have BLAZE come back into our lives. And that's huge. That to me is what BLAZE is all about. It's an emotion. There's a friendship there. And I wouldn't want to live without BLAZE. BLAZE understands our business because they ask us about our business. There isn't a phone call or a conversation that doesn't start with how is business and what's new at the hotel.

Sheila Cluff, owner/founder The Oaks at Ojai

I think BLAZE truly has made an incredible effort to understand the true essence of the oaks at ojai. To me a relationship with a public relations firm is almost like a marriage. I mean you have perhaps your ups n downs, you have perhaps disagreements, but we've always been able to to get the result that we both wanted. There are many fine pr firms, but I wouldn't change from blaze.

Troy Adams President Troy Adams Design

And I worked with other pr firms in the past and ever since I started working with Blaze, you know they bring a new professionalism that I wasn't used to. They're continually meeting with me on a regular basis, they're continually brainstorming and coming up with ideas, they go way beyond what I think a pr firm should do. They touch into the realm of marketing, they help us with our strategic business, they take a look at our website, they come up with all of these incredible ways to encompass the entire Troy Adams design brand and really think of it as as as one big picture, rather than it being a small segment of my business. It's been all encompassing, I can�t even imagine our business right now without a PR firm, without BLAZE.

Cathy Cluff Director of Marketing The Oaks at Ojai

In the kind of world of pr, people are often surprised when we say we've been with ourpr firm blaze for almost 18 years and they're like, that's crazy how can they come up with new and fresh ideas, and my feeling is is that when they stop, we would probably stop. But they haven't. They continue to bring us fresh new ideas. I'd say probably the biggest compliment that I've heard for us and for blaze is our competitors coming to me and saying you guys must be doing something right, because we wrote about you in our spa's newsletter. How does that happen?

Daniel Garcelon Sales & Merchandising Director Southwest Division 7-Eleven Inc.

7-E has a very unique go to market strategy. It's different than every other convenience retail store and different than most of the big box retailers. And we really struggle with vendors we work with to get them to understand how diff it is. And blaze. I don't know where they got it, I don�t know who they've talked to, I don't know who's trained them. But they have through A-knowledge of our go to market strategy as any company we work with.

2. Respect the Channel
When you respect the channel, it has a tendency to reward you for it. Whether it�s the web, newspapers, magazines, podcasts, blogs or TV, we choose the medium that gives you the best advantage in capturing the right audience. We do not try to change the parameters of technology. Rather, we push them to give you the lead.

View our examples of how we learned to respect the channel

3. Re-define Success Often it;s just a matter of perspective. And sometimes it's more. Either way, the path to success is not always apparent. We will help you understand it, which may mean understanding your vision a little better, too.

A few questions that help you define what success looks like

Do you know who your customers are?
You would be surprised how many businesses don't know who their customer really is. When Apple launched, they spent months conducting exhaustive research, yet somehow missed the fact that their core audience was the creative type. Instead of focusing on their core consumers, these users were the least-marketed-to segment during the roll-out of the Apple computer. After a profound failure to competitor IBM, Apple went after its creative fan base and the rest is history.

Know your customer or someone else will. Let the loud minority build your brand for you.

How do consumers find out about your product?
It is a common marketing practice to create a diverse plan of attck in order to reach your target consumer - the problem is that seeing isn't the same as believing.

Microsoft launched the original Windows platform with a diverse multi-million dollar marketing plan to reach everyone, everwhere. Unfortunately, people weren't buying. The Microsoft marketing team found that consumers preferred to get their information from software reviewers at several computer magazines. They changed the plan in order to focus on reaching these few reviewers. Sales roared. A guy named Bill became famous. Could you be the next Bill?

When marketing, remember to show and tell. Seeing isn't enough most of the time. We make decisions after listening to others.

Do you link your PR strategies with your business goals? There was a very famous company that used to judge its PR success on the actual weight of its media clips. The more clips they had, the better PR they must have had. They went bankrupt.

Coverage doesn't matter unless it leads to a definable business goal. PR works best when given a goal.