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Image from ETC-USC used under CC license.

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. But not when it comes to CES, the largest launch party of the year for consumer electronics. Some of the biggest innovations of the year are unveiled at the show – technology that can easily impact every aspect of our lives. CES officially kicked off on Wednesday, but the onslaught of news came Monday and didn’t wane until late Thursday afternoon.

“This piece of cardboard will take you halfway around the world,” according to The New York Times.

Last week, New York Times’ subscribers received Google Cardboard with their Saturday paper. The gift was promoting the launch of their new virtual reality app, NYT VR. 

As the media landscape continues to shift and innovate, is virtual reality the next big thing in storytelling?

As we celebrate our 20^th anniversary at PAN this year, I am proud to write these blog posts every month that take a look back at where we have come from and where we are going. Over the past three months, I decided it would be fun to focus each post on one of the three pillars of a PR firm: talent, new business and clients.

I like to think that I saved the best for last with this three-part blog series. Not to say that clients outweigh my appreciation for the other two pillars discussed in my previous two posts: talent and new business. But, the conversation around clients is an interesting one. Clients are one area that really demonstrates just how much PAN has grown over the years.

Clients are what keep us in business, keep us motivated and keep us fresh. Over the years, our clients, past, present and future, have played and will continue to play a role in shaping PAN. For me, something that sets PAN apart when it comes to clients, and has attributed to an average client tenure of three-and-a-half years, is our VPs’ level of involvement. From the minute Mark or Tim identifies a prospect, we assign a VP; that VP has a vested interest in winning the business and stays on the account adding value throughout its tenure in the firm. That VP knows every aspect of the client’s business!

While most consumer goods professionals have been thinking about gift guides for the holidays (is it really going to get cold again?!), consumer tech folk have another looming winter date on their mind: CES. 

After months of hard work and creative brainstorming with marketing executives and our internal marketing team, we are very excited to announce and unveil a new look to our website today. Understanding that we are in the business of evaluating our client’s brands and position on a daily basis, we decided to stop the train and take a look at how WE tell the PAN story and market all of the important facets of what makes our firm stand out. So we came to a very simple conclusion - we just weren’t speaking enough to and with our target audience – the marketer. Websites have become one of the most powerful mediums to control the owned element of the marketing puzzle and we hear more and more that companies and marketers make their choices based on the content they gather (along with WOM and referrals), and not necessarily by reaching out to ask specific agency questions during their evaluation process. We narrowed the positioning and messaging down to some important questions all marketers should be asking as they look to their next agency partner. Here are some highlights from the website regarding what today’s C-level marketers are thinking as they shared key pain points with our firm: