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#amplifycastle
A special Spirit Week shout out from the entire Castle team!
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Welcome Philip
Philip Hauserman has joined Castle as public relations vice president and will help drive our growing education and crisis communications practices. Philip, who is based in Atlanta, has more than 11 years of experience leading communications programs and critical events for major corporations, educational institutions and professional services firms across the United States. Prior to joining The Castle Group, he was vice president at The Ledlie Group in Atlanta.
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Thank You Leylanah
We're proud to have supported the Boston Private Industry Council's 2016 Summer Jobs campaign. Boston Latin student Leylanah Mitchell joined Castle as a social media intern, learning how to curate content and develop social media calendars with the Castle public relations team. Thank you, Leylanah, for all your hard work!
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Raising Awareness for Childhood Cancer
In honor of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, we've teamed up with longtime partner and client Family Reach Foundation to support families impacted by cancer. During the month of September, we will match the first donation made by NEW members of Family Reach's Key Holder program. To learn more about the Key Holder program, please visit their website!
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Cision Goes Behind the Headlines with
Sandy Lish
No matter how many new platforms and technologies emerge, the core PR foundation stays the same.
Sandy Lish, principal and founder of The Castle Group, says sending the right message in the right way should be at the heart of your PR strategy.
In this interview, Sandy discusses how technology has transformed communication, the importance of developing a comprehensive communication program and why you should be persistent for stories you believe in.
What drew you to the field of PR?
My love of writing, interest in people and curiosity about the world drew me to PR. I was a journalism major in college, but that was really more about the writing than about being a reporter.
My junior year, I ended up with a PR internship--it was my first awareness of PR as a profession and I was hooked. I loved the opportunity to blend my writing, verbal communication and persuasion skills, and the fast pace was a no-brainer as I get bored easily. I became single-minded in my pursuit of new PR challenges in every position since then.
To read the rest of Sandy's interview with Cision, visit their website.
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Instagram Stories: Snapchat Copy,
But Better
Last month, when Instagram launched its new Stories feature, the internet was awash with articles and comments calling it a blatant rip-off of the increasingly popular Snapchat app. Surprisingly, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom admitted to Tech Crunch in a recent interview that Stories was inspired by Snapchat and that they "deserve all the credit."
Stories may be inspired by Snapchat, but it's become clear that Stories is the better option, and here's why:
Instagram's interface is much more intuitive than Snapchat and avoids the confusing swipe navigation used by Snapchat.
It's much easier to find and add friends on Instagram because of its well-developed search option.
From an advertising standpoint, most brands prefer Instagram to Snaphat because they have more options and more users. Snapchat is popular, but its 150 million daily users can't touch Instagram's 300 million.
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Castle Welcomes New Clients
We're proud to be working with Davis, Pickren, Seydel & Sneed, an Atlanta-based law firm
, and Sphere Luxury Apartments
, the first new development along the MBTA Green Line extension in Medford.
We have also been re-engaged by three New England independent schools and retained by a Florida-based law firm to assist a client in online gaming and Massachusetts nonprofit agency for crisis communications.
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Castle Turns 20
As we reflect on 20 years in business, we feel enormously grateful for everything that Castle has given us: fantastic clients and partners, dedicated and talented employees, stimulating professional challenges and successes, the opportunity to serve our community, lasting friendships and so much more. Thank you to everyone who has helped make the last 20 years so special and rewarding. Here's to 20 more!
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Celebrating Our 20th Anniversary with Castle Spirit Week
To commemorate Castle's 20th anniversary on August 1, 2016, the Castle Culture Team created Spirit Week: a program blending fun, learning and bonding to recognize and reward the people who make our agency great every day: our team. Spirit Week focused on our agency's corporate initiatives around wellness, team spirit, community service and celebration!
Monday | Wellness Day: The morning started with freshly squeezed juices from Stacy's Juice Bar; a toast to our "Wonder Women" Sandy Lish and Wendy Spivak, and a "Pursuit of Happier" talk with Nataly Kogan, CEO of Happier. We continued the day's focus on wellness with an out-of-the-box lunch of healthy and hearty protein-packed quinoa bowls from Bailey & Sage; a mid-afternoon break with organic snack guru Bruce Namenson from Organic Living Superfoods; and rejuvenating chair massages by Alicia Green, LMT from Balanced Being Melrose Massage. For more behind the scenes scoop on Wellness Day, check out blog posts from Kendall Bauer, Elizabeth DiVito and Maria Bauder.
Tuesday | Spirit Day: One of Castle's longstanding holiday traditions is our annual "Thing" contest. A few weeks before our holiday party each year, employees receive an abstract object to use as inspiration to create--and present--a one-of-a-kind masterpiece. We simply couldn't celebrate Castle's Spirit Week without a 20th anniversary commemorative "Thing" contest. The "Thing" was a megaphone--chosen to reinforce our year-long anniversary campaign theme: Amplify Castle! To see the inspiration behind the megaphone's designed by Keri McIntosh and Philip Hauserman, head over to the Castle blog.
Wednesday | Community Service Day: Castle launched our new partnership with WriteBoston and its Boston Public School students by hosting a productive and fun-filled day of writing, collaboration and exploration for 11 students, designed to help them understand how critical strong writing skills are. Our PR team taught students how to create personal elevator pitches, feature articles, press releases (in a Mad Libs-style) and shared best practices and tips on writing for social media. Students also participated in our "Good Morning, EyeOpener!" video which aired on WCVB NewsCenter 5's Wake Up Call segment. The ice cream truck that Perfect Parties sent over to help us celebrate 20 years really tipped things over the top. We love WriteBoston! To learn more about Castle's partnership with WriteBoston, check out Shayna Chapel's recent blog post.
Thursday | Castle Staff Outing:
After wrapping up a terrific week of events, Callie Cleary
reflected
on how Spirit Week has contributed to Castle's positive work environment.
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Client News
Consumer
It's been a busy summer for the team at Joe's American Bar & Grill. The Joe's Newbury Street team took home the top prize at this year's Boston Magazine Battle of the Burger event with their entry, the Smokin' Granny. The local restaurant favorite also opened Top Catch, a new seafood concept located on the second level of its waterfront location. Top Catch features traditional New England fare with a modern twist and panoramic views of Boston Harbor and Christopher Columbus Park. Congratulations, Joe's!
Boston Harbor Cruises was included in Delta Sky Magazine's recent feature on exploring Boston and Cape Cod.
Sphere Luxury Apartments celebrated its official groundbreaking at a ceremony featuring Medford Mayor Stephanie Burke. The 42-unit complex, developed by Dark Horse Capital Partners, will be a short distance from the future Ball Square Green Line stop, one of six new stations planned along the 4.7-mile MBTA Green Line extension through Somerville into Medford.
Rental Beast recently received $5 million in funding in a round led by the corporate investing arm of Boston-based New England Development, a preeminent, national real estate development and management company. Since launching in 2009, Rental Beast, headquartered in Boston, has expanded to Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Delaware, Chicago, New Jersey, Atlanta, Miami, Houston and Dallas.
Healthcare
South Shore Hospital's Dr. Paul Schubert and Dr. Jason Tracy spoke to CBS Boston reporter Bill Shields about a new Narcan application device that the hospital is supplying to first responders on the South Shore.
In support of its mission to end gender disparities, on October 18, YW Boston is hosting "Beyond Equal Pay: Achieving Equity in Boston for All Women and Girls", a community conversation with all four female Boston City Councillors. The panel event will explore what still needs to be done to ensure equal opportunities for all women and girls and what we all can do to advocate for change. For more information, please visit the YW Boston website.
Public Affairs
Castle partnered with the nonprofit
Healthy Democracy to manage PR for the first-ever
Mass. Citizens' Initiative Review. Modeled on a process established by Healthy Democracy in Oregon and sponsored locally by State Rep. Jonathan Hecht and Tufts University's Tisch College, CIR provides voters with easy-to-understand information on a complicated ballot issue. A 20-voter panel, which reflected the demographics of the state's electorate, spent four days in August
deliberating Question 4, the legalization of marijuana. To read the Citizens' Statement, the panel's findings that summarize the issue, please visit
www.CIRMASS2016.org.
Life Sciences
The Castle events team worked with one of our
Cambridge-based biotech clients for the fifth consecutive year to produce their annual Fall Block Party. Castle transformed an outdoor city block in Kendall Square into a harvest festival. Guests enjoyed fare from seven different food trucks in addition to many interactive activities. This popular event, which draws about 600 people annually, celebrates employee efforts, encourages camaraderie among team members and welcomes a new season.
Cell Signaling Technology spoke to
The Salem News about its internship program which offers young people interested in science hands-on experience in the lab or in the company's business operations. This past summer, 38 high school and college students had full-time, paid summer internships at the Danvers-based biotech company. The successful program, now in its 15 year, has mentored hundreds of North Shore high school and college students.
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Castle in the Community
Hilary Allard and Shayna Chapel shared their expertise with nonprofits at a recent public relations workshop at the Foundation for MetroWest. They presented the ever-changing media landscape, tried and true PR techniques, strategic pitch idea generation and ways to leverage coverage across social media, internal and external channels.
Deborah Spencer was a featured speaker at the Harvard Undergraduate Women in Business annual Successful Women in Marketing event. Previous speakers have included top female marketers from Goldman Sachs, Arnold Worldwide, DreamWorks Animation, Boston Consulting Group and Buzzfeed.
Sandy Lish is proud to be the emcee, as well as a panelist, at the Center for Women & Enterprise's 2016 Women Business Leaders Conference (WBLC) on Thursday, September 29. The WBLC draws women interested in learning how to start or grow a business, as well as corporate supplier diversity and purchasing professionals interested in advancing and promoting their diversity programs. For more information and to register, visit the
CWE website.
Castle is proud to continue to support March of Dimes Massachusetts and its annual gala, Black Ties for Babies. The October 29 event will feature live entertainment, dinner from Del Frisco's Double Eagle Steak House and an amazing group of auction items. To purchase tickets, please contact Vanessa Medeiros at (508) 329-2831 or [email protected].
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The Castle Group 2016 Issue 04 | Celebrating 20 Years!
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