| Why Middleberg?

 

Reasons we are distinctly qualified to partner with you

 

(1) Our blue chip reputation among journalists. 

We treat media like clients, with an unrivaled understanding of journalists’ needs – what,

how, why and when they need to report.  More than just serving those needs, we anticipate them, always in a straightforward way.  In short, we treat them how we’d expect to be treated.

 

While we generate great coverage every day (and lots of it), we take a long-term approach

with reporters – one that values relationships over transactions.   To us, PR is best practiced as a series of regular conversations with reporters.  It’s about pitching, to be sure, but it’s also about that call that sparks collaboration or that seeds something much bigger three calls down the road.

 

It’s one thing to work with media. We work inside and alongside media. The Middleberg/Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) study is the nation’s largest, recurring survey of its kind on journalists’ use of the Internet and social media.  Agency Principal Don Middleberg regularly speaks at many of the nation’s leading schools of journalism and communications.   Managing Director and Agency Principal Jim Dowd and his team work side-by-side with (and represent) producers like reality TV leader Mark Burnett. They work, too, with the likes of The History Channel and NBC, and have seats at the table at client Meredith Publishing’s editorial meetings. It all adds up to our unparalleled contacts—broad and deep, national and local—across print, broadcast and online channels. Contacts who not only expect and take our calls, but who call us, too.

 

(2) Our broad, deep and relevant client experience serves your mission.

We are deeply experienced and engaged in the issues, trends, people, products and technologies that impact our lives, every day.  

 

Our current and past work for clients in leadership positions spans how we live today –

from Weight Watchers to Red Lobster, from Tommy Hilfiger to Levi’s, from Jim Beam’s

Bourbon brands to Coca-Cola’s alternative beverages, from MTV to Meredith Publishing, and

from Yahoo! to Shustir.com, a brand new web community for small business.

 

The work we do for those clients is single-minded, in the best way: geared to motivate

consumer action. 

 

(3) Our deep understanding, use and evangelism of new media and its tools.

Don Middleberg wrote the book – literally – on effective use of electronic media in the

practice of public relations.  Winning PR in the Wired World (McGraw Hill, 2001) achieved

bestseller status, was published in multiple languages and remains required reading at

major schools of journalism and communications.

 

We adopted early and never looked back.  It’s how and why we seamlessly combine the

best of traditional and online-centric public relations practices.   Don continues to play a

leading role in new media, from both research and evangelism sides, and strongly motivates

his staff to do the same through regular attendance at industry conferences and

speaking engagements of their own.

 

Our entire staff lives online (not just the 20-somethings), so social media isn’t something

“we have to get good at.”We know it, use it, and our recommendations for

leveraging it to the benefit of our clients are real-world and immediately actionable.

 

(4) We are a young firm with old-fashioned values and unmatched experience.

Hungry and aggressive—hallmarks of up-and-coming agencies—don’t have to be at odds with straightforward, professional and buttoned up.

 

They all go hand-in-hand at our agency, where the experience of some of the industry’s

best thinkers, operators and managers meets daily with the passion of practitioners who

love what they do and are elegantly fearless doing it. 

 

We have built and sold firms to—and worked under—big agency holding companies.  From these experiences, we gained the discipline and resources required to manage big accounts. But, we love being independent more—free to do what’s best for our clients (and frankly, ourselves) with no one looking over our shoulders or fretting over arbitrary financial targets set by people working in some other country.  Freedom enables the best work to get done: with passion, originality and good, old-fashioned elbow grease.