Vantage Communications of San Francisco, California won a Stevie Award for Best Communications or PR Campaign in The 2008 American Business Awards. Here's how they got their message across to tens of millions of people during the 2007 NCAA basketball tournament.

While the staff at Vantage Communications (formerly PR@Vantage) may not be basketball experts, the company claims a thorough understanding of the marketplace for the increasingly competitive high-technology industry.
 
The Challenge
When the company was asked to create buzz for Annapolis-based client eTelemetry with a budget of less than $10K, Vantage Communications rose to the challenge.

The Strategy
In early 2007, eTelemetry launched a bandwidth management tool, Metron, that measured network bandwidth usage by employee and was positioned as a useful network management product. Vantage Communications dug deeper and found that the tool had a very important feature—it could measure the Internet usage of employees, including sites visited, and time spent surfing. Vantage repositioned the product to focus on the employee monitoring aspect.

CBS Sports was streaming the 2007 NCAA tournament basketball games live over the web during business hours—an annual event known in the U.S. as "March Madness."  This provided a unique opportunity for eTelemetry since its new product had the ability to report on which employees in an organization were watching the tournament on the Internet during the workday.

Monitoring employee Internet usage is a controversial topic, so Vantage positioned the product as a tool to discover who was abusing company networks. It was made clear that the NCAA Tournament was only an example of what companies deal with all the time. This was important because both Vantage and the journalists it contacted knew that potential customers would not buy the product solely for the NCAA results.  It was therefore in the agency's interest to frame the tournament as just one piece of a bigger picture.

The Results
A story by Todd Stone, “The Business of March Madness,” in Inc.com on March 14, 2007 was picked up by thirty television station websites.  The total circulation for all coverage was over 24 million unique visitors and readers.  Print articles that covered the story included “Technology is Watching the Watchers” in The Washington Post (circulation 635,087) on March 16, 2007; “Firms Watching Game Watchers,” in The Baltimore Sun (circulation 232,749) on March 15, 2007; and “Back Off Big Brother” in The San Jose Mercury News (circulation 228,537) on March 17, 2007. ABC News (8,500,000 viewers) covered the story in a national television broadcast, “Evil Empire Tracks you Online,” on March 22, 2007.

The Washington Post article was significant in that it not only reached the paper’s print  readers as well as nearly 8 million online edition readers, it also led to eTelemetry’s ABC News feature.  After reading The Washington Post article, a local ABC News producer contacted eTelemetry to arrange an interview with its CEO and CTO for a business feature on the company and its employee Internet monitoring device.  The two-minute television clip, “Evil Empire Tracks You Online,” appeared on the ABC evening news. The Washington Post article was also picked up through syndication in numerous newspapers and websites including The Arizona Sun and The Oregonian (Portland).

In addition, forty-one online publications posted articles, not merely press release reprints.  eTelemetry’s web hits jumped 69% from the news features and interviews that stemmed from the March Madness press release.

The result:  a PR slam dunk for Vantage Communications and client eTelemetry.

About Vantage Communications
With offices in San Francisco, New York, and Orlando, Vantage Communications is an award-winning public relations agency specializing in high technology, including semiconductors, VoIP, web 2.0, green-tech, security, wireless, broadband, video, Internet, software, networking, financial, venture capital, and optics. The firm was formed in 1990, and changed its name from PR@vantage in 2008. For more information go to www.pr-vantage.com.

About eTelemetry 
eTelemetry is the leader in extracting real-time business information from network activity. eTelemetry's innovative products tell you everything about the people on your network, answering the who, what, where, when, and how much. By applying its proprietary technology, eTelemetry's award-winning products provide information leading to increased productivity, risk identification, reduced costs, greater E911 compliance, improved network efficiencies, and insights into how people collaborate. Since 2004, eTelemetry has been Turning Network Traffic into Business Intelligence™. For more information, call +1-888-266-6513 or visit www.etelemetry.com. 

More Information:
eTelemetry recently launched a new version of Metron for smaller businesses. To find out more, go to http://www.etelemetry.com/products/metronse.aspx.

Diversified Business Communications of Portland, Maine won the Stevie Award for Best Event Promotion Web Site in The 2008 American Business Awards.

Diversified Business Communications, a division of Diversified Communications, brings buyers and sellers together through its publications, internationally acclaimed trade shows, and online media. Headquartered in Portland, Maine, the company has more than 200 employees in offices in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the U.K.

"Look the Biz!", first published in January, 2008, is the Stevie Award-winning microsite that Diversified Business Communications developed to generate leads and attendance at the Administrative Professionals Conference (APC) Canada, Canada's #1 conference for administrative professionals. 

With catchy graphics, relevant content, and a fun, interactive game, the site is accomplishing its mission: Since its launching on January 4, 2008, the site has had more than 1,000 unique visitors.  It also contains some useful information.  Below we extract one item from the site that is particularly useful in this stressful season.

Meeting Deadlines (Without Tearing Your Hair Out!)
Seven strategies to help you avoid missing deadlines or burning the midnight oil.

We all have deadlines, and if you've never missed one—or never burned the midnight oil in order to make one—you can skip this article. There are some planning techniques that you can use to help you stay on track; we've adapted these from professional project managers. And in the end if you do miss a deadline, don't feel the need to make excuses or apologize repeatedly. Keep working, and let people know when the project will be complete.

1. Keep a master list of all deadlines. Use it to negotiate work responsibilities so that you aren’t spinning your wheels, trying to do the impossible.

2. Break large projects into action items, steps and smaller sub-tasks. To come up with a reasonable deadline, estimate how long you'll need to complete each sub-task.

3. Put the steps into order. Identify where you must coordinate with or rely on others. Set start and end dates for each sub-task.

4. If you are given a deadline, work backwards. Identify when your project must be completed, then calculate how much time you have to complete each sub-task. Set interim deadlines to keep yourself on track.

5. Take into consideration obstacles that could sidetrack you. Do you need to add extra time or eliminate or postpone other tasks?

6. If your ability to complete the project relies on others, get their commitment to the schedule upfront. Check in regularly with them.

7. Cut corners where you can without affecting the overall quality of your work. Consolidate or delegate tasks and cut extras until you can get the project done.

About Diversified Business Communications
Diversified Business Communications, based in Portland, Maine, provides information and market access through trade exhibitions, magazine publishing, and online resources on four continents. Diversified serves a number of industries including seafood, food service, natural and organic products, commercial marine, integrative health care, and business management. Diversified operates divisions in Australia, Canada and the UK. For more information, visit: www.divbusiness.com

The 2008 Stevie Awards for Women in Business were presented in New York on November 14. Among this year's honorees was Gloria Rodriguez, founder, president and CEO of Comunicad, a multicultural marketing communications company headquartered in the Washington, DC area, with a presence in Miami, New York, Los Angeles, Austin, Detroit, San Juan, Mexico, Argentina, and Spain. Gloria was recognized for Lifetime Achievement in the Advertising, Marketing, and PR industries.

We spoke with Gloria about how she got her start in business, how and why she founded Comunicad, and what multicultural marketing is all about

		Listen to the Podcast Interview ...
		Read Gloria Rodriguez's Stevie Award-winning Entry,,

Blogs, or web logs, are all the rage these days. Each month in this space we'll point you to several blogs that we think might be of interest to you.

Slacker Radio : Listen to a wide and eclectic choice of music.
CoolSavings : Holiday gift ideas, comparison shopping guide, coupons, and free stuff.
The Onion: Our Annual Year : The Onion's look back at all the things that happened in 2008.
Mo Rocca 180 : Humorous news and views from media celebrity and comedian Mo Rocker,including his own "Best Of" list for 2008.