Living Organism

We did something a little unconventional, but very much in the spirit of Vitamin’s corporate culture. Just over a week ago, we surprised our employees with Apple iPhones.

Needless to say, they were thrilled to find iPhones hidden away in their filing cabinet doors. They really deserved the reward as a result of their stellar performance during the first two quarters of this year.

Our action was a rewarding employee bonus, and it turned out to be a tremendous PR prize for our design and marketing firm. While Vitamin is well-known in Maryland (our headquarters is in Baltimore) and we work with clients nationally, the iPhone news was the most far reaching and buzz worthy we have experienced to date. We garnered more than 10 million media impressions – and that’s a conservative estimate. 

Wanna know how? Read on…

Shortly after surprising our team, we released the iPhone news to the press. We were delighted to secure an interview with InformationWeek within the first 27 hours of our PR blitz. For those who don’t know, InformationWeek is the technology authority, which boasts 440,000 print readers every week, 1,400,000 unique site visitors every month, and 300,000 weekly newsletter subscribers.

W. David Garner, networking and telecom news writer for InformationWeek, wrote the story, “Apple’s iPhone Gets Early Business Buyers, Users.” The article begins, “Two “firsts” may have been recorded for the iPhone on Tuesday as a Baltimore firm [Vitamin] reported it is in the vanguard of enterprise purchases of the handset….”

When the article went live at InformationWeek.com and in the pub’s weekly newsletter, Vitamin instantly broke new ground. The article spread across the internet like wildfire and set the online advocates and critics into a whirlwind. We generated unparalleled buzz in the U.S. and across the world. Our story was covered in English, French, and Portuguese. And, a day later, another InformationWeek writer, Elena Malykhina, interviewed our president/CEO about the iPhone. The story, “Early Signs of iPhone Adoption in Business,” is published online and in print.

Aside from the InformationWeek article, our internal PR team unleashed an aggressive media relations campaign to garner unprecedented exposure for Vitamin. We are still seeing the fruits of the exposure, and that conservative guestimate of 10 million media impressions is literally growing by the minute. In fact, as I’m writing this blog entry, I just received another request for a media interview.

A few of our favorite articles, aside from those published by InformationWeek, include:  “iPhones for all” (Insanely Great Mac), “Phoning in a bonus“ (Baltimore Business Journal), and “iPhone pushing the competition” (The Baltimore Examiner).

As a testament to how powerful and cost effective a good public relations program is, the “iPhones for all” article on Insanely Great Mac underscores the value of PR through ancillary reader comments. One reader says, “Agree to buy your employees iPhones, issue press release, watch news spread around the web. Much more effective in getting your company’s name out rather than…traditional advertising.”

Why was this push so successful? Bar none — our team and our assertiveness. Our team’s performance was stellar in the first two quarters of the year, and we believe in rewarding them for excellence. Without the team’s collective talent, expertise, dedication, and business ethics, those iPhones would still be sitting on the shelf. Furthermore, without our ability to identify the newsworthiness of this story, and without our concerted press push, those 10 million (plus) media impressions would be zero.

At the end of the day, our iPhone story made Vitamin history. The power of PR is more than just getting a story placement. It’s about building brand. In this past week, we received more resumes and requests for employment than we have with many of our rigorous recruitment campaigns. Furthermore, the sheer name awareness from this press is immeasurable. 

Next time a business owner questions PR or asks me, “Why should I implement a PR program?” I will direct them to this story. It clearly speaks for itself.

Note to business owner/decision-maker: If you think PR value happens in one shot, think again. Read this article: PR: Some Get It, Others Don’t