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Revitalizing A Landmark District

Thursday, July 21st, 2011 by Missy

Bayview Public Relations is part of a team recently awarded a long-term contract to drive business and tourism to Ybor City, a National Landmark Historic District. Bayview will help create and implement a comprehensive marketing and public relations plan to communicate what Ybor has to offer to its neighbors in the Tampa Bay region.

Chosen after an extensive bidding process overseen by the City of Tampa, the winning team for Ybor City Development Corp. (YCDC) was assembled by Bill McQueen, of Mercury Productions. McQueen will serve as the primary liaison for the account and fulfill video production needs. John Walkinshaw of Mercury will assist with marketing strategy and community relations. Kim Thomason, of Thomason Creative, and Jane English, of Jane English Creative Design, will provide brand strategy and creative design. Missy MacFarlane, APR, of Bayview, will serve in public relations and community relations capacities. Media Focus will outline media strategy and conduct media buying.

Ybor City's 7th Avenue, then and now (courtesy of Ybor City Development Corp.)

A division of the City of Tampa’s Economic & Urban Development Department, YCDC facilitates the development, economic revitalization and improvement of Ybor City’s Historic District and the surrounding community.

YCDC also provides staff support to the nonprofit Ybor City Development Corporation, Inc., a community advisory group to the City and the Community Redevelopment Agency on issues affecting the development and improvement of Ybor City. The elected Board is comprised of major stakeholder groups – residential, retail, restaurant/bar, professional/office, hotel, entertainment/events – and ex-officio members representing neighborhood and community organizations in Ybor City. Our team will work closely with their marketing committee, led by Veronica Swiatek.

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Growing a diverse mix of clients

Thursday, June 2nd, 2011 by Leah

Journalists are often thrown stories on topics they know little about, and many thrive on the unpredictability and opportunity to learn something new (and do it quickly).

Succeeding in public relations often requires a similar mentality. Many times we need to rapidly soak up information and understand a business quickly, so that we can help a client craft a message that’s both compelling and easy to understand.

This has been a key in our growth at Bayview PR as we build a diverse mix of clients. As two examples, that mix now includes Connelly, Carlisle, Fields & Nichols (CCF&N), one of Florida’s top insurance agencies, and Sterling Payment Technologies, one of the fastest-growing card processors in the electronic payments industry.

For CCF&N, we have secured placements in the St. Petersburg Times (a Q&A with John Connelly), and Tampa Bay Business Journal (commentary by Charles Chunn on the outlook for insurance rates heading into hurricane season). We are also working to make CCF&N top-of-mind with industry trade publications and websites.

For Sterling, we are forming relationships with trade media as well. In business-to-business PR work, trade media can offer a good way to reach a highly targeted audience of decision-makers. A key is putting out information that people in the industry will find useful. Showing our clients as experts is our goal – and that will get them more attention, credibility, and in turn, more business.

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Quick results for Colliers International

Friday, March 18th, 2011 by Leah

Bayview is proud to announce its newest client: Colliers International, an international commercial real estate firm with offices in Tampa Bay, Central Florida and Southwest Florida.

Colliers International began with Bayview last week and brought much excitement with it for the Bayview team. The Tampa Bay office was recently retained to list Baywalk, the 74,500-square-foot shopping complex in the center of downtown St. Petersburg, for $8 million.

Click to see news segment

Bayview controlled the media outreach for the announcement and was able to garner interviews for Michael Milano of Colliers, who is handling the sale, with Channel 8, Fox 13, 10 News and Bay News 9. Although Baywalk has had its share of problems, people interviewed in the news segments saw the possibility of a sale as a good first step towards a hoped-for turnaround.

Colliers’ announcement was also featured in GlobeSt.com, The Tampa Tribune, St. Petersburg Times, Tampa Bay Business Journal, and Florida Trend.

Bayview is very excited to be working with Colliers, and is looking forward to the future of Baywalk. Considering the Bayview office is a block from Baywalk, we have a few ideas on new stores and restaurants we’d like to see fill up the place. What are your suggestions for new stores in Baywalk?

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Social media results

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011 by Missy

Bayview Public Relations was retained last year to generate interest in The Reproductive Medical Group’s second annual “New Beginnings” fertility conference at the Marriott Waterside Hotel in April 2010.

Bayview’s objectives were to increase registrations for “New Beginnings” by 50 percent and increase the ratio of prospective patients to current patients attending the fertility conference. In addition to leveraging existing relationships with key reporters and editors, Bayview set up a Facebook fan page for the Reproductive Medicine Group, and counseled the RMG on effective social media engagement.

The Reproductive Medicine Group’s Facebook page was started in February 2010 and quickly has grown into an online community for past patients to share their success, support current patients and provide hope to prospective patients. It has become a clearinghouse for patient testimonials and includes images of children conceived with the Reproductive Medicine Group’s help.

Bayview initially set up the Facebook page and spent six months assisting in the management. The Reproductive Medicine Group has managed the Facebook page on its own since November 2010, and its community continues to thrive. Throughout the 2010 campaign, Bayview worked closely with the Reproductive Medicine Group’s marketing/advertising agency of record, Schifino Lee, to leverage the event-specific landing page, an online media buy on GoMamma! section of TampaBay.com and text-to-register capabilities.

Overall, the 2010 campaign surrounding the “New Beginnings” fertility conference exceeded the goals set. Conference registrations doubled as compared to 2009 (200 in 2010 versus 100 in 2009) and a majority of 2010 attendees were prospective patients, whereas 2009 attendees were mostly current patients of the Reproductive Medicine Group. Bayview attributes the campaign’s success to a powerful marketing mix: significant coverage in the Tampa Tribune and TBO.com, targeted online ads and inclusion in the Working Women of Tampa Bay Facebook news feed (3,700 “fans” at the time).

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Solar model recognized as world’s first

Friday, January 21st, 2011 by Jesse

Bayview client, Regenesis Solar Power, is featured in this month’s edition of Sun & Wind Energy magazine, a leading international trade publication about trends and advances in renewable energy, published out of Germany.

This coverage, along with other trade and local coverage, validates our claim that the Regenesis business model, which offers consumers Solar Hot Water as a service through utility companies, is the first of its kind in the world.

Without start-up costs or maintenance worries, only a flat locked-in monthly fee, the Regenesis model represents perhaps the easiest and most economically viable way for an average household to not only adopt a form of clean and renewable energy, but to start saving money on electricity from day one.

Regenesis and Bayview are both psyched about the potential – we truly think that this model could help jumpstart widespread use of solar power in our country.

Information about the first program, in partnership with Lakeland Electric (Florida’s third largest public utility), is available at www.SolarLakeland.com. We expect to introduce the program in several other markets through 2011.

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What do you get with 40 TVs, a DJ booth, wine cellar and an $8 million home sale?

Monday, January 10th, 2011 by Leah

WFLA- Channel 8's 6.p.m news coverage of Matt Geiger selling his mansion

You get news coverage.

Sometimes PR involves finding a trend or niche for a client to tap into. And sometimes the client news is so interesting on its own, that it creates its own path and as Kyle likes to call it, gives it “legs” – meaning the story walks around on its own (with our help, of course).

Bayview PR was recently given the job of doing media outreach for Engel & Volkers’ sale of retired NBA player Matt Geiger’s 28,000-square-foot north Pinellas County mansion. And we quickly realized how many “legs” the news would have.

Since this was mainly a local story, we created a targeted list of local reporters and outlets to contact and thought, “Let’s see how much the media cares.” As we were finalizing our plans for outreach, the St. Petersburg Times’ Mark Puente broke the story of the sale on a tip. Then, after getting the news release out and doing follow-up with other outlets such as the Tampa Bay Business Journal, The Tampa Tribune and WFLA-Channel 8, our story walked all over the place.

Turns out the sale of a 6-bedroom, 8-bathroom house with a shark tank in the bathroom, 12 buffalo, and a 330,000-gallon pool with a fire pit in the middle is newsworthy, and even conversational. We started thinking it was a theme park with a 5,000-square-foot guest house attached.

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Real estate conference looks at Marketing to the New Market

Tuesday, December 28th, 2010 by Leah

For the Tampa Bay real estate industry, the Urban Land Institute’s annual Trends conference offers a look at what the coming year has in store.

As part of the 2011 conference, Bayview’s Kyle Parks will be part of a panel on “Marketing to the New Market,” where the discussion will center on how real estate marketers can succeed in this tough environment.

Also on the panel: John Rymer, president of real estate marketing research/sales training firm Rymer Strategies; Bruce Keene, who runs multifamily management at Tampa commercial real estate company Franklin Street; and Jennifer Lugar, Tampa Bay marketing coordinator for Standard Pacific Homes. The moderator will be Nancy Walker, president of Walker Brands.

The Trends conference is Thursday, Jan. 20 at the A La Carte Event Pavilion in Tampa. The keynote lunch speaker will be Dr. Sean Snaith, senior economist from the University of Central Florida, who is one of the leading experts on the state’s economy.

For more information on the event, see the ULI Tampa Bay website.

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Bayview real estate clients get attention for expertise

Wednesday, December 8th, 2010 by Leah

Two Bayview PR clients were in the news last week, reflecting their status as leaders in the real estate industry.

John Rymer of Rymer Strategies, a national-level residential real estate expert, was quoted in a St. Petersburg Times story on how higher-end home sales are improving in the Tampa Bay area, while the Tampa Bay Business Journal featured Franklin Street, a fast-growing commercial real estate services company, in a Strategies section story.

We keep close track of the real estate market, tied to our involvement with the Urban Land Institute’s Tampa Bay District Council, where Kyle is the marketing/PR chair. Our work focuses on media relations, industry involvement, speaking engagements, and for our residential real estate client, The Strand, a condo under construction in Clearwater, aggressive Realtor outreach. An example of this was a mention in Charles Rutenberg Realty’s novel “News and Notes” video update, which told the brokerage’s 2,000-plus Realtors about The Strand last week.

In residential real estate, developers and builders who were smart or fortunate enough to keep cash through the crash are well-positioned, and there are signs that 2011 may show improvement in sales beyond foreclosures and short sales.

And in commercial real estate, though the market continues to suffer, there are plenty of opportunities, particularly in multifamily housing, where prices have fallen to an attractive level for buyers who can come in and quickly improve profitability by upgrading apartment management.

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Bayview client and HSN pioneer to speak on “Life’s a Pitch”

Thursday, November 4th, 2010 by Leah

Bayview client Bob Circosta, the first on-air host at Home Shopping Network and one of the most successful salesmen in the world, has sold over $1 billion in merchandise on the air. Bob will be sharing some highlights of his sales techniques during a session called “Life’s a Pitch” on Wednesday, November 10^th.The event is being co-sponsored by Bayview Public Relations and the event host, The University of Tampa Entrepreneurship Center. Bob’s session will emphasize:

How to market anything and anywhere
What new businesses need to succeed (not money!)
The basics of pitching yourself, your company and your product
Electronic retailing and sales

Bob’s success started when he sold 112 electric can openers over the radio in 1977, which eventually led to the creation of the Home Shopping Network. He now specializes in training people how to sell anything, anywhere through his company, Bob Circosta Communications.

“Life’s a Pitch” will be held November 10^th from 7:45a.m.-9:30a.m. at the Vaughn Center on the University of Tampa campus. More information on the event, which is free and open to the public, can be found here.

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