PR Firm Spins Web for Clients

As clients spend more money on social media strategies, public relations firms are now launching divisions devoted to online campaigns and hiring staff to handle social media tasks, the Wall Street Journal reported this week.

Bedford Hills-based Harrison Edwards Public Relations & Marketing has those firms beat by at least five years.

The success of their first social media campaign in 2004, which catapulted self-published author Michael Stadther's first book, "A Treasure's Trove," to the number-two spot on the New York Times best-seller list, led the firm to integrate online strategies into every aspect of their operations.

By taking the story's plot line, which contained clues leading to real-life locations of tokens redeemable for genunine gems, and developing an online treasure hunt that went viral, the firm helped book sales jump from initial expectations of 17,000 to over 750,000, and led to the author's appearances on the Today Show and CBS Sunday morning, among others.

It's all about building community, said Harrison Edwards president and CEO Carolyn Mandelker, who founded the firm in 1987.

"Traditional public relations has been about controlling the message. With social media you can't control what others will say about you, but you can have a strategy. It's marketing directly to the consumer," she said.

Shrinking news rooms and a consumer desire for technology drive more businesses to use social media as a business tool, said her executive vice president, Bob Knight, who recently made the Mashable Media Summit's 2010 list of the top 250 tweeters in the country.

"We're content generators now. We have all of the tools—digital recorders, HD cameras—and we do everything to maintain the dialog online, he said.

"Everything" includes creating clients' blogs, Facebook and twitter pages and feeds, websites, podcasts, video series—even radio.

Harrison Edwards helped Dr. Ezriel Kornel launch his "Back Talk Live," radio show, which has attracted a few thousand live listeners, plus a post-show podcast audience, from episodes posted on the website the firm created. Now they'll be producing 20 episodes of the show and lining up sponsors.

"Our social media strategy is integrated within an overall strategy," said Mandelker. "With the millions of webpages out there, you want to be found. And we know how to cut through the clutter."

The next frontier to conquer in the wild west of social media is mobile marketing, the team agreed. Their in-house web developer, Josette Dewey, adapts client websites for mobile use, so that a restaurant menu or a train schedule can be read easily on smartphones.

"Mobile marketing is really going to pop in two years," said Knight. "We're already developing apps for clients."

Mandelker said she's proud of the growth of Harrison Edwards, named for her sons—from a one-woman shop to a 7-member "New York City firm based in Bedford Hills," with a Manhattan office and a recently opened satellite office in Memphis, TN.

She said she started with the three "T"s: a telephone, a typewriter and a thesaurus, after her volunteer PR work at Rippowam Cisqua, where her children went to school, led to her first paid client. The Katonah Museum of Art and Caramoor were among her first clients.

The firm recently took home four 2010 "Big W Awards of Excellence" from the Ad Club of Westchester for various client campaigns in 2009, and for the category of Radio Advertising, the company won two "Big W" awards.

For more information about Harrison Edwards Inc. visit their website.