Loic and Geraldine brought in some magical, multicultural dancing talent for this year’s LeWebhttp://www.typepad.com/site/blogs/6a00d83451c79e69e200d8341c665653ef/post/compose#’s speaker dinner. I could have watched all night.

(Parts I and II)

The Mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoe and Jean-Louis Missikia, Deputy Mayor responsible for Innovation, research and universities hosted LeWeb attendees for an evening of champagne and decadent walls, ceilings and floors.

As we entered, the city set up cameras to interview people on their opinion about dotParis. Should there be a dotParis and why? Should there be dotCityX?

Below, a few of us were interviewed and below that, a short video I took inside City Hall, talking to some of LeWeb attendees, speakers, Traveling Geeks and random folks who made it into my zoom. (the best part of the video of course are the gorgeous ceilings)

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Campaign
VoiP B2B solution launch, targeting SMB market, including specific verticals. Branding and PR campaign included viral communications activities on and offline as well as a heavy national media blitz before, during and after the rollout.

Teleo, a VoIP solution (acquired by Microsoft) was the primary contender to compete head-on with the then industry leader, Skype. Their feature set and unique portability made them a perfect choice for mobile business professionals.

Together with Revell-Pechar, Inc., we launched Teleo into the marketplace through a series of viral marketing and communications activities over a several month period.

We mapped all of our efforts to an integrated roll-out strategy that combined unique message development with a brand awareness and thought leadership campaign through speaking panels and blogs, and massive influencer outreach.

Out-of-the-gate, Teleo ended up in a full page spread in Newsweek, the result of a 60+ day effort leading up to the event, which included ‘dog-and-pony’ meetings at CES the previous month.

On-the-ground in Vegas, we created a “Limo Demo,” where we held meetings and social events, which included the opportunity to evangelize and educate the market about Teleo to the mobile market.

Stage one was to create the right environment in which to build ‘the brand,’ and set a precedent for what was to come in the months ahead, leading up to and post launch.

Our first challenge was to have at least one thousand people download the free trial product the first week it was announced.

The Result: media coverage was extensive starting with the splash in Newsweek, with hundreds of articles following in the mainstream and business press, broadcast TV, trade rags and the blogosphere. Scoble referenced the solution as “the Skype Killer,” and downloads went through the roof.

As a result of widespread visibility from our relentless team, we reached 10,000 downloads in the first two days.

In addition to generating speaking engagements following launch and pitching reviews across the board of still a beta-product, Ann and team managed a marketing partnership with Avis rental cars to distribute copies of the software along with VoIP headsets to all Elite-level customers.

We developed and executed several events, including press receptions, that kept the Teleo name alive and in front of several unique audiences. Teleo was soon thereafter acquired by Microsoft.

Media Buzz is a Sample, not an Exhaustive List

[/column] [column width=”24%” padding=”0″] “Blodgett is one of the most well-connected people I’ve ever met. She is tapped into the blogging and social media community and was instrumental in Teleo’s success – I plan to use them in my next company.”
– Peter Sisson, CEO and Founder, Toktumi, former CEO, Teleo (acquired by Microsoft)

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Campaign
Full Scale Global Communications Campaign for Consumer, Vertical & Corporate Markets

A successful worldwide launch of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the world’s first continuous speech recognition product, led to a Software Marketing Excellence Award for Best Marketing Strategy and countless other awards worldwide. It also resulted in Dragon’s move to the 7th largest software publisher in the U.S.

Press coverage increased by over 380% in the first year of its launch, which was instrumental in Dragon’s aggressive move into the retail space against major competitor IBM. Experience on-the-ground also resulted in managing two delayed IPOs, and an acquisition to Lernout & Hauspie, which was acquired by ScanSoft, now Nuance.

In addition to a global media effort on an ongoing basis after launch, hiring international agencies to handle foreign language launches and working with strategic partners, such as Corel and others, a vertical market strategy was put into place to drive sales for Dragon’s corporate solutions.

This included a PR and marketing strategy for their VAR Channel, user groups, and the following verticals: legal, medical/healthcare, government, disabilities and education.

Dragon received acclaim from worldwide TV and radio stations as well as the top business magazines in England, France, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Spain, Italy, Scotland and Belgium and others.

Media Buzz is a Sample, not an Exhaustive List

[/column] [column width=”24%” padding=”0″] “Blodgett and Magic Sauce Media^TM have a rare gift for building bridges between technologists and the media.”
– Sean True, former VP, Technology, Dragon (prior to acquisition)

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Campaign
Education, Marketing, Positioning, Thought Leadership & Branding

We launched NewsGator into the marketplace from one founder and an idea to a recognizable brand in its category. In the early days, NewsGator focused on the consumer market and was the most well known RSS aggregator in the industry, far before anyone outside geek circles knew what RSS was or what its impact would be in the years to come.

After creating brand recognition and building up momentum with early adopters and consumers, we designed a new campaign to re-define their brand as we expanded into the enterprise market, a core target for them today. We developed both B2C and B2B communications campaigns, which included a thought leadership effort to promote the founder in strategic Web 2.0, RSS and social media circle nationwide.

We focused our attention on speaking engagements, media interviews, and engaging the community which included developers, the “geek” and open source community as well as the publishing industry, content providers, advertisers, bloggers, trade and business press.

Following a venture capital financing and a CEO change, we shifted strategies again and implemented an education campaign that moved beyond the value of RSS to consumers and into “why RSS is a great idea for corporations and media players.”

We worked closely with early adopters and Web 2.0 influencers in the blogosphere to communicate these messages virally as well as through internal and external blogs.

We also lined up an interview with the founder on CNN together with a Fortune 500 CEO and also generated buzz internationally, including Time Magazine Europe Edition. NewsGator today is a recognizable, respected and established leader in its category.

Media Buzz is a Sample, not an Exhaustive List

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Campaign
A Soup-to-Nuts International Marketing & Media Campaign that Targeted Multiple Audiences: Consumers, Retailers, Manufacturers and Partners, such as Sony

We worked with Australian-based Xitel to launch their flagship product HiFi-Link, an economically-priced hardware device that once connected to a TV, it produces a surround sound-like audio experience for consumers. Sold online and through retail outlets, the early campaign centered on driving traffic to stores and to specific websites to encourage consumers to buy.

Since part of Xitel’s strategy was also to secure partnerships, we developed an OEM PR campaign that included working with Sony some joint efforts. Over a four year period, we launched a series of new consumer hardware products into the marketplace.

International media buzz was extensive and positive and was as far-reaching as Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. We also garnered buzz on all the important hardware and gadget blogs and community sites, consumer and lifestyle magazines and worldwide newspapers. We hit a significant number of national and regional TV and radio shows and managed all the product reviews online, in their respective trades, as well as vertical market and business press.

We participated in countless media events, won industry awards and praise at CES and lined up three national tours that resulted in interest from Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Forbes, Fortune, Time Magazine, Newsweek, New York Times and countless others.

Traditional media and online conversations with bloggers and vertical market sites were extensive and included a number of categories, such as digital audio, hardware devices and gadgets, music, women, men, lifestyle, youth and pop culture.

A chief goal was to reach as many consumer-facing press, gadget and hardware blogs and online youth sites as possible as well as all the music and audio media and blog influencers.

Media Buzz is a Sample, not an Exhaustive List

[/column] [column width=”24%” padding=”0″] “Blodgett’s enthusiasm is only surpassed by her ability to deliver outstanding results time after time. Blodgett is a consummate professional whose fastidious attention to detail comes from strong convictions and a passion for making her clients succeed. If you want a winning PR team, you need Magic Sauce Media on your side.”
– Barrie Davis, CEO of Xitel

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Campaign
Full Launch & Ongoing Push/Pull Media Campaign

We started with Sharpcast prior to their private alpha launch of a free service for consumers that was primarily focused on digital photo sharing. In a crowded market, we had to position Sharpcast as not only a leading player in this space with unique capabilities, but prime them for their future, which was in a market well beyond online photography.

Their synching capability was a key selling proposition, allowing consumers to have a Blackberry exchange like experience from their desktop or mobile device and also automatically and seamlessly recover and migrate all of their media.

The campaign focused on both B2C and B2B efforts, the goal of the latter was to help drive their OEM strategy, partnerships with carriers and mobile device and PC manufacturers.

We proactively engaged the blogger community early on and worked with strategic partners following the launch, such as Handspring, Corel and others. Through concerted PR efforts, Sharpcast won close to ten awards in a year, including CNET 5 Star Rating, Laptop Editors Choice, Frost & Sullivan, Digital Life Best of Show Award, Red Herring 100. They were also chosen to present at the Web 2.0 Launchpad, and Under the Radar Line at the Mobile Under the Radar event in Silicon Valley.

We pitched and landed opportunities for them to present at Web 2.0 Launchpad as well as the Wall Street Journal’s D Conference, an event that attracts Fortune 100 CEOs, media and top-tier venture capitalists.

We lined up well over fifty national press, analyst and blogger in-person and phone briefings, which included radio and TV interviews as well as one-on-ones with influencers in the advertising, digital photography, mobile & wireless, social media and Web 2.0 space.

Broadcast buzz was extensive including NBC News, CBS, Marketwatch, WUSA 9, KTLA, MSNBC, WKYT 27 News First, KCBS, Computer America, Dr. Science, KSFO-AM and others.

Media Buzz is a Sample, not an Exhaustive List

[/column] [column width=”24%” padding=”0″] “Through relentless evangelism, commitment, and hard work, Blodgett took us from complete obscurity and put us on the map. She is extremely well-connected, devoted and knows how to effectively navigate in the technology industry.”
– Gibu Thomas, Co-Founder and former CEO of Sharpcast, previous Head of Carrier Sales and Business Development at Palm

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Campaign
An Israeli-Based Web 2.0 Social Networking Launch into the U.S. Market in an Existing Crowded Space After Launch of MySpace, Ning, etc.

Focused on Vertical Communities, Mainstream Users Rather than Early Adopters; User Base Grew From 150K Users to 4 Million Worldwide

eSnips is a social sharing site where like-minded members can share any digital content showcasing their talents, interests, and passions with whoever they choose from one place. eSnips imitates what people do and how they live in the ‘real world.’

When we were asked to launch them into the U.S. market, they already had some traction but faced larger more well known competitors or perceived competitors in their category, such as Ning, MySpace and others.

We worked with their team to accelerate their user base virally through community efforts and reached out to bloggers and press across multiple vertical market categories that matched their micro-communities inside eSnips. The range was broad, including digital music, art, photography, spirituality, karaoke, and more.

We offered users tools to help them better engage, make money and have more fun. We started with customized widgets that they could use to pitch their own passions, whether it was digital music they were creating themselves, art they were selling or poetry they had written.

We reached out and encouraged users and bloggers to do the same by educating them how to create a widget from any file. It was a way to virally spread their own creations, whether it was a song or photo, and drive more users back to the eSnips community.

We implemented both an education and thought leadership campaign and rather than focus on Web 2.0 influencers, we went mainstream. We also hit the advertising sector, positioning the CEO as a thought leader in a crowded market. We did an online campaign around their Social DNA Facebook application to promote downloads, usage and feedback and we tapped into social networks, the blogosphere and Twitter to push contests, embedded customized widgets, news and highlights about cool happenings from within the eSnips community.

The Result: User Base grew from 150K users to 4 million worldwide. CEO became known within industry circles, customers were highly engaged and evangelized on eSnips behalf and communities formed within communities as a result of viral growth.

Media Buzz is a Sample, not an Exhaustive List

[/column] [column width=”24%” padding=”0″] “Blodgett and team created a strategy that not only allowed us to successfully navigate our way through the social media maze and key influencers in the U.S. and Europe, but one that drove significant traffic to our site, increased brand recognition and created momentum for our communities. They also created a whirl of worldwide media and blog buzz at a time when we needed it most.”
-Yael Elish, VP, Product & Marketing, Waze, Co-Founder and former CEO, eSnips

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Campaign
Repositioning & Rebranding Campaign: the Ultimate in CE Search to the First Matchmaking Service for People and Electronics; Coincided with New Logo, UI and Website Functionality

We worked with Retrevo to re-launch their brand and site, which included new messaging, a new logo, website and group blog. We utilized the power of the press, blogosphere and associated buzz generation opportunities to raise brand awareness and increase their customer base, which served to accelerate new partnerships and increase traffic to the site.

This effort resulted in a tagline and identifier change, from a vertical market search site to a matchmaker service that connects consumers with their favorite consumer electronics and gadgets. In other words – from a geek, largely male and early adopter message to one that would have more mainstream appeal and resonate with women, seniors, baby boomers and students as well.

Retrevo used Marketing and PR to help grow website traffic and repeat usage with a goal to become the one place consumers come for all their consumer electronics needs. A second goal was to increase Retrevo’s brand awareness partly by getting Retrevo’s executives viewed as experts across industry sectors, including CE Shopping, CE Support, consumer lifecycle, online lifestyle, social shopping and vertical search.

Through a partnership with PC World, we communicated the ‘open gates publishing model’ to the advertising and new media worlds, as well as business press influencers as a way to demonstrate that Retrevo was ahead of the curve on new publishing trends. Instead of posing restrictions on where and how you view your content, including reviews, Retrevo and PC World were delivering content in a way that enriched the consumer search and buying experience online.

PR also leveraged survey and poll results, and proposed a media and blogger event around gadgets and geeks and came up with creative angles to invoke passion around consumer electronic purchases, particularly at topical times of years, i.e., sporting events, entertainment, father’s day, back-to-school and so on. We also recommended a creative mailer to build brand awareness.

The Result: increased traffic, users, brand recognition, and positive interest from advertisers and strategic partners.

Media Buzz is a Sample, not an Exhaustive List

[/column] [column width=”24%” padding=”0″] “Blodgett and her team did an outstanding job with strategy and outreach to mainstream media, niche blogs and the publishing industry. They have the passion and drive to take companies into the mainstream at the critical juncture of their evolution.”
– Vipin Jain, CEO, Retrevo

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