Eric Rob & Isaac

Natalie Ghidotti, director of public relations for Little Rock marketing firm Eric Rob & Isaac, has been elected to a national position with the Public Relations Society of America.

Ghidotti is serving as the chair-elect of the Independent Practitioners Alliance of PRSA for 2011 and will be chairman of the IPA in 2012. The IPA provides members with a network of other independent practitioners and the resources to share best practices and strategies and to provide support.

Ghidotti, who in 2009 served as president of the Arkansas chapter of the PRSA, said that she was “very excited” to be taking her PRSA involvement to a new level with the national position. “The IPA section is an incredible group of practitioners contributing years of experience to the PR industry.”

Ghidotti also described what is involved with her new role. “As chair-elect, I work alongside the chairman to plan programming for the IPA throughout the year,” she said. She will be responsible for managing the section budget for the IPA, recruiting new members and representing the IPA at all official PRSA functions. She will be an assembly delegate to the PRSA’s national assembly this year as well.

Arkansas Business – 2.14.11

Little Rock advertising agency Eric Rob & Isaac announced last week that it had been hired by two Arkansas health care organizations to serve as marketing partners in executing campaigns for the next year.

ERI will be working with Arkansas Children’s Hospital and Arkansas Specialty Orthopaedics.

“This is a truly exciting way to start off 2011,” Rob Bell, principal of ERI, said in a company release. “We are looking forward to executing new campaigns for each of these entities and supporting them as they grow and reach more Arkansans with their targeted messages.”

Natalie Ghidotti, director of public relations for ERI, said that the agency would be working with the companies on a variety of different projects. “For Children’s Hospital, we’ve already designed their new website, and right now, we’re running a paid media campaign to generate awareness, which includes a TV spot and some print ads. Mainly with Children’s, it’s media placement, the creative and website design.”

For Arkansas Specialty Orthopaedics, ERI will work on a more comprehensive media plan. “We are actually right now working on their strategic marketing plan for 2011,” Ghidotti said. “It will encompass all of our services.”

Arkansas Business – 1.24.11

Brooke Vines, [media director of] Little Rock marketing firm Eric Rob & Isaac, said that she was placing online advertising for clients whenever possible.

“Although here locally we aren’t spending more online than we do on other media, we are including it whenever we can,” Vines said in an e-mail to Arkansas Business. “There are some very dynamic ways to deliver your message online now.”

Vines said that online advertising had grown far beyond the traditional banner ad, which, on average, has a click-through rate of only .02 percent. By working with certain ad networks, Vines is able to place client messages on websites rated highly by comScore Inc., a marketing research company. “You don’t have to be a national advertiser to look like you are running a national campaign,” Vines said.

Internet marketing, too, can be more cost efficient. Vines said that while online marketing has the same goals as traditional advertising – to target a particular demographic – the Internet allows the clients to optimize who sees the ad much more than do mass media. “That makes every dollar spent more efficient for the client.”

Cites Facebook Success
Natalie Ghidotti, director of public relations for Eric Rob & Isaac, agreed that there were significant benefits to online advertising and said that the company was recommending much more Internet advertising to its clients. “With so many people online, it just makes sense to reach these people where they are,” she said.

Specifically, Ghidotti said that ERI had found that placing ads on social networking site Facebook had been very successful. “We did a campaign for First Security Bank and targeted students for student loans, and it was really successful in terms of numbers of clicks that we received.”

Vines agreed, adding that Facebook was “ideal for the smaller clients who don’t have the budget for television or other marketing.”

Still, media buyers warn against ignoring print and other media entirely.

“Branding on TV, print, radio and outdoor is still important,” Vines said. “Your brand is a lot more likely to get noticed online if someone has heard of it first, and traditional media is the key to that.”

Ghidotti said that while ERI was recommending Internet advertising in almost every media plan, that didn’t mean the net was replacing other mediums such as print and television. Online advertising “definitely has its place somewhere in the media plan, which means it is pulling dollars from other mediums, just not entirely replacing them,” she said.