Examples of Our Creativity

Dary Rees

A good example of our creativity is our “news conference in a box,” which won Best of Show from the Advertising Club of Westchester. We were asked to generate business coverage for Ms. Rees’ home products company in anticipation of going public. We dug around and found that she had used a little-known government program to expand overseas. We used that angle and created a “news conference in a box.” We filled it with a bottle of champagne, one of her fun champagne glasses, cheese and crackers, one of her colorful cheese spreaders and a press kit. Follow up was easy as most of the publications called us! There were over 320 entries for the Ad Club Awards. We were chosen unanimously because our “news conference in a box” was not only unique in its execution, but was successful for the client, garnering a 41% placement rate, including Fortune, Entrepreneur, Success and Executive Female.

Scotland: Tartan Day

The Scottish tourist board (VisitScotland) enlisted our services to help promote Tartan Day in the United States and the world’s largest pipe and drum parade to raise money for Marie Curie Cancer Research and Gilda’s Club Worldwide. The goal was also to increase awareness of travel to Scotland. While there were several public relations companies assisting the many supporters of the events surrounding Tartan Day, our efforts garnered a feature story on CBS Sunday Morning about the evolution of the kilt. The story highlighted scenes from Edinburgh, an interview with the best-known kilt maker in Scotland as well as an interview with Sean Connery. The piece was viewed by more than 4.4 million people. We arranged additional interviews with Travel & Leisure, Travel Agent, Bride’s and Bridal Guide all featuring travel to Scotland. Tartan Day was a huge success in the United States with nationwide media coverage including several morning shows and news broadcasts.

Scotland:  Foot & Mouth Disease

When tourism suffered because of foot and mouth disease, The Scottish Tourist Board turned to GMG for assistance. They gave us 60 days to obtain as much press as possible about positive tourism events in Scotland. Through May and June of last year we obtained more than 900 radio placements and well over 200 newspaper and magazine articles including four placements in The New York Times.

The Wartburg

This 136-year-old elder-care facility has been a client for eight years. During that time we have generated thousands of placements for them including coverage on all the major New York area news networks. For the opening of their assisted living residence we wanted to highlight their attention to detail, so we mailed green-polka-dot boxes to the media that 'begged' to be opened. Inside were a plain Idaho potato and a cover letter explaining how ‘residents will never find anything other than fresh vegetables at The Wartburg.’ That promotion garnered a coveted New York Times story along with several local media placements. We have generated a feature story in The New York Times every year for The Wartburg since we began working for them in 1997.

The Journal News, January 24, 2005

The New York Times

IMAX Action Summer

In ten days we organized an entire summer of activities to increase ticket sales at an area IMAX Theatre. We managed to secure eight summer Saturday activities for kids, including a Broadway star to teach jazz dance, a laser tag game, gymnastics and kickboxing demonstrations and a junior-challenge obstacle course. We generated attendance through a grass-roots approach of distributing flyers by hand to the public and mailing out press releases to the media. We also partnered with a party company that agreed to distribute 5,000 balsa-wood airplanes with “IMAX Action Summer” printed on the wings and coupons for IMAX tickets included in the packaging. Not only did the media cover the event, but there were great turnouts on Saturdays and an increase in ticket sales overall. To extend the coverage we recommended that IMAX donate 10 cents of every ticket purchased to Special Olympics. The summer promotion raised over $7,000 to support Special Olympics athletes in the area.

EastRidge Properties

EastRidge Properties wanted a fun idea to launch the first freestanding day care center within an office park in Westchester County. We suggested they create the longest paper-doll chain on record and use it in place of a ribbon to cut on opening day. We then carried that theme through by making invitations for the media out of paper-doll chains, and putting images of paper-doll chains on T-shirts and coloring books for the kids. We then located 100 feet of rolled paper and began carefully cutting the chain. The children finished it by drawing their images on each paperdoll. The mayor and the kids cut the paper-doll chain in front of acheering crowd on opening day. The promotion received huge press coverage and a letter of recognition from the Guinness Book of World Records.

We also assisted EastRidge with their efforts to create a “tenant cookbook” with all the proceeds going to charity. More than 100 wonderful recipes were submitted and a wire bound cookbook was created and sold throughout the Westchester community. We chose a small charity that wouldn’t normally benefit from such a large corporate effort and every dollar from book purchases was given to HeartSong generating more than $5,000 in donations in one month.

ADDITIONAL PLACEMENTS

Our clients receive hundreds of placements over the course of the year including feature articles in local and national publications, quotes in various publications, and radio and television interviews. 

Dr. Joanne Chan, a recipient of a 2003 Kimmel Scholar grant, was recently interviewed on CNN Headline News by Richard Frazier. During the 4 minute interview they discussed her work with zebrafish that will ultimately help identify drugs that will be effective in humans to fight cancerous tumors.

Our recent audio news release produced as a public service announcement for the Kimmel Foundation was aired on nearly 2,600 radio stations nationwide with an audience of nearly 50 million people. The AP story we recently generated for the Sidney Kimmel Foundation for Cancer Research has received over 200 newspaper placements nationwide in addition to numerous web placements reaching an audience of well over 8 million people.

The Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center in San Diego recently received numerous national broadcast and print placements of their cancer breakthrough including stories on ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and the WB.

On March 2, 2005 the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center in San Diego was the subject of a front page feature article in the Quest section of the San Diego Union-Tribune. See below.

The New York Times did a feature story on The Wartburg's Lohman Village Cottages in the Sunday, August 7, 2005 issue. We have garnered a New York Times story every year for The Wartburg since being hired in 1997.

Tip articles are a great way to put your business in the spotlight. This article was created for A&J Reliable and published in the Rockland Review on June 24, 2005.

In addition to being the subject of feature articles, our clients are often quoted in larger articles. Below is an example in USA Today from October 2004.

Clients Keith and Angela Burns were thrilled with their March 31, 2006 USA Weekend article which took up two full pages. USA Weekend reaches an audience of 21.8 million people.




We recently placed this article in the Orange County Register (CA) for our client Laughing Owl Music and Media. The nearly full page article would have cost over $48,000 if it had been an advertisement. The OCR is read by close to 1 million people on Sundays.

On November 25, 2006 a story written by an Associated Press journalist that included a quote from our client Clyde Otis III began appearing in newspapers across the country. In less than 24 hours MusicTalking.com received over 6,000 hits on their website and their CD began selling at the rate of one every ten minutes. Over a period of 9 days the article appeared in nearly 200 publications worldwide. A previous AP story we placed for another client generated over 150 placements in newspapers across the United States over a one month period. The first AP story was the result of a direct pitch we made regarding our client. The more recent AP story was a result of our response to a journalist query through our on-line query database.