UPRAISE Marketing and Public Relations
10 reviews
UPRAISE Marketing and Public Relations
10 reviews
REPUTATION MANAGEMENT
CONTENT MARKETING
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
GRAPHIC DESIGN
GROWTH STRATEGIES
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
EMAIL MARKETING
PUBLIC RELATIONS
COPYWRITING
Save to favorites
Dec 12, 2022
5 Ways Marketers Can Drive More Value in 2023
As we begin the new year, marketers need to consider fresh strategies to drive growth for their businesses as technology and customer behavior evolve. Here are five strategies to help your company improve marketing efforts, boost sales and provide more value in 2023 and beyond. Utilize Social Media Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and […]
Read moreNov 28, 2022
CES 2023: Are You Ready?
CES is the world’s biggest, most influential tech conference, taking place in Las Vegas from January 5-8. This year, CES has taken a new approach and announced that they’re focusing on sustainability and how technology can improve people’s lives worldwide. Colloquially referred to as the “Global Stage for Innovation,” we’re excited to see what companies […]
Read moreOct 17, 2022
Is a Recession Coming? What It Means for Marketers…
No one knows if the U.S. economy is going to enter a recession in the near term. Goldman Sachs wrote in November, “The U.S. will probably stick a soft landing next year: the world’s largest economy is forecast to narrowly avoid a recession.” As a Forbes contributor, one economist wrote, “A recession might be avoided, […]
Read moreSep 6, 2022
How to Get More Views on YouTube
YouTube, one of the top video-sharing platforms in the world, can be an important part of your marketing strategy. With over one billion hours of content watched by users daily, it’s no surprise that growing your YouTube channel is an effective way to amplify your business growth. Yet, a continuously shifting algorithm and the challenge […]
Read moreAug 22, 2022
Social Media Lessons: Be More Like Crumbl Cookies
Today, there isn’t a consumer-facing brand that wouldn’t consider social media an essential marketing strategy. Some brands are certainly better at capturing an audience’s attention than others. One of the leaders in social media marketing is Crumbl Cookies, a five-year-old store chain that offers freshly baked and home-delivered cookies at the click of a button. […]
Read moreAug 8, 2022
How to Get More Leads from Your Website
Lead generation is a top priority if you want your business to grow. And for businesses hoping to see an uptick in lead generation, UPRAISE has a question for you: when’s the last time you’ve refreshed your website? Optimizing your website is essential to getting high quality leads. Here are some strategies to get your […]
Read moreJul 25, 2022
Leverage Social Listening to Stay Competitive
In 2020, businesses experienced one of the worst possible scenarios as the COVID-19 pandemic ripped its way across the globe, shutting down in-person operations for almost everyone. As brands scrambled to adapt, it was critical to understand just how successful they were at creating a smooth transition for their consumers, but when in-person communication is […]
Read moreJul 25, 2022
Victoria Guimarin
With more than a decade of experience, Victoria has a track record of success in consumer and business press execution, thought leadership, account management, social media and business relationship development. In her role as Vice President, Victoria oversees B2B and B2C client accounts in industries ranging from big data and telecommunications to banking and nonprofits. Some of Victoria’s current and former clients include, Information Resources Inc, The Color Run, Mesofilter, Coupa, Humane Society Silicon Valley, Rented.com and FoldiMate. Prior to joining UPRAISE, Victoria was the Public Relations Specialist at Ustream. In her role, Victoria executed public relations strategies surrounding Ustream’s expansion from a content and media focused website, to a SaaS and cloud-based enterprise solution. Victoria worked directly with Ustream customers to promote their content, including Discovery Channel, NASA JPL, PBS Newshour, Sony and many more. Victoria received her bachelor’s degree in journalism with a focus in public relations from California State University, Chico. Here, Victoria shares a few highlights and lowlights. Q: What was the most out-of-the-box product launch you've worked on? A: While at Ustream, the engineers decided to develop a new app called Broadcast for Friends (BFF). The product was similar to Facebook Live, including filters and streaming live to your friends on Facebook, but came out four years before FB Live launched. For the launch, we decided to play off the camera filters, which had been named after Hollywood landmarks, by throwing a Hollywood themed party at Ustream’s San Francisco office. Around 200 clients, partners and media attended. We hired celebrity impersonators including Marilyn Monroe, had a red carpet filled with paparazzi, and capped off the evening with a live demo of the app. The launch was a raging success and resulting in articles in TechCrunch, Mashable, AdWeek, plus many more. Q: What was the most successful product you've worked on? A: I’ve been involved in a number of highly successful product launches, but one that sticks out the most was a launch we did with FoldiMate, a laundry folding robot. The CEO gave us two goals: make FoldiMate go viral and hit 100,000 pre-registrations in two months. The virality would create consumer interest while FoldiMate finished the product, and the pre-registrations were especially important to demonstrate to investors market demand. Before we started, FoldiMate had no following, just 20 Facebook followers for example; as well as 58 pre-registrations. After securing a story in The Wall Street Journal, The Next Web wrote on FoldiMate and shared it on Facebook, where in less than 24 hours it earned 1.6 million views, more than 3,800 comments and almost 30,000 shares. Thanks to all the social and media coverage, UPRAISE surpassed FoldiMate’s initial goal of reaching 100,000 registrations. Within one month the company’s registrations had already hit the 100,000 mark and by the end of the engagement they were at 125,000. Q: What is one of the highlights of your career? A: One of my favorite clients at Ustream was NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). One of NASA JPL’s most intense and exciting streams was that of the Curiosity Rover landing or crashing on Mars. The event featured a live stream of the NASA JPL team in mission control (this lead to Bobak Ferdowski gaining internet fame as ‘Mohawk Guy’) as they anxiously waited to learn if the car-sized rover had successfully landed after a heart pounding 14-minute feed delay. Needless to say, the multi-billion dollar Curiosity Rover stuck its landing and NASA JPL as well as the 3.2 million people watching (including myself) via live stream exploded in jubilation. From the PR side, NASA JPL gained massive exposure as a being in touch with modern communications tools and Ustream landed some impressive media coverage from TechCrunch, National Geographic, CNET and many more. Q: Have you caused other clients to viral? A: The Humane Society Silicon Valley (HSSV) came to UPRAISE with a challenge: create significant media buzz that would lead to finding a forever home for an “unadoptable” Chihuahua named Teddy. The campaign began by rebranding Teddy to “Eddie the Terrible” – a dog who isn’t afraid to hide his terribleness. HSSV created satirical content to be shared across public channels such as their blog, social media profiles and website. UPRAISE then inundated S.F. Bay Area and national media outlets with hilarious stories about Eddie’s terrible behavior. Within two days of Eddie being featured on the Huffington Post Good News homepage, his article received more than 32,000 likes, 6,300 shares, and 200 comments. Eddie’s story reached more than 5 million viewers when he was featured on Good Morning America and Inside Edition. He was also featured in People Magazine, USA Today, Daily Mail, and numerous television newscasts throughout the country.
Read moreJul 25, 2022
Tim Johnson
For more than 30 years, Tim has helped companies ranging from startups to the Fortune 500 in industries as diverse as agriculture, consumer electronics, financial services, many shades of tech and more. Prior to starting UPRAISE, Tim was the managing director of Golin, Inc.’s San Francisco office and director of its worldwide tech practice. Clients of the practice included giants such as Amazon, Cisco, HP, Oracle, Texas Instruments and many more. The team included more than 200 professionals worldwide. Before Golin, Tim was a senior vice president at Ruder Finn’s Chicago office, where he helped expand the office from pure public relations to integrated communications, and for many organizations, wrote and designed their first websites. Prior, he was an account executive at Rubenstein, Wolfson & Co., in New York, serving financial services clients such as Barclay’s Bank, GE Financial, and Unum. Here, Tim shares a few highlights and lowlights. Q: Who was your favorite CEO to work with? A: It was probably Lou Gerstner when he led IBM. The company had fallen behind competitors and become very slow moving and bureaucratic. He was brought it to revive it. And revive it he did! As far as communications were concerned, he was very clear in what messages he wanted disseminated and also made it clear if he was unhappy with your progress. To his credit, he also was very complimentary when he was happy with our work. I got to sit on his stool once when presenting at the IBM auditorium in Armonk. He was short and his stool had taller legs than the others. Q: What was it like working with Steve Jobs at Pixar? A: When we pitched Pixar, their process was to vet all our ideas with their marketing group prior to pitching Steve. The Golin team came up with some great creative and we were ready. After pitching our hearts out, Steve looked up from his omnipresent yellow pad and said, “these are the stupidest ideas I’ve ever heard,” and left. He apparently forgot he said that, because in our six-month review, we’d beaten all metrics agreed upon and even he was happy. Q: How about Jeff Bezos? A: I have never met a person so laser focused on building a business centered around customer service. Even when the analysts were beating up Amazon stock early on, Jeff stuck to this focus. But Amazon was a tough and demanding client. Their attitude was, “We’re Amazon, of course we’re supposed to get 150 articles for every release we put out!” Q: Who served as your mentors? A: There were many mentors and role models that helped me. One that stood out was Joyce Hergenhan. Joyce was head of communications at GE when they acquired my client at the time, broker/dealer Kidder, Peabody. She reported to Jack Welch, who was transforming GE into the behemoth it became. He was a feisty character, but had a noticeable stutter when he spoke in front of large audiences. We worked out a solution: we wrote three openings for all of Jack’s speeches that were each about two minutes in length. He memorized these over time and it gave him time to get comfortable with the podium, the room and the audience. It worked great. I still use this approach, even with CEOs that don’t stutter. Q: What was your most embarrassing moment? A: Well, there’s a lot to choose from. High on the list is the new business pitch for HP’s printer business in Boise, about $100,000 per month in revenue. We spent weeks preparing and the team met at Oakland Airport for the flight. We arrived in Boise and realized I’d left the bag with all the hard copies of the presentation in the boarding area. Many snarky looks from my team. Luckily, the HP guys were very gracious and we won anyway. Q: Startups often have little budget for marketing, why do you like working with them? A: Because we make a difference. I love working with big companies like Amazon, Bank of America, GE, HP and others, but with a startup, we often take the role of CMO and if we fail, the startup fails. Crafting the positioning, getting the marketing engine organized, building their media, analyst, and social presence, are all essential to their success. I like being in the thick of it. Q: Why do you like being a mentor at Plug and Play? A: I rub elbows with some of the most creative, innovative people in the world. These are people most of us have never heard of, but who are doing amazing things with hundreds of different technologies. Many of these startups are from overseas, so not only are they risking it all starting a new company, they are doing it in the U.S. where they are often unfamiliar with the language, IP law, accounting standards and more. I admire these people a ton! Q: What is the craziest startup pitch you heard? A: It was two Korean women who I think were still in university and were very soft spoken, it was hard to hear them pitch. They had invented a phone skin that was also a taser!! Push a button on one end and out the other end came two prongs and 10,000 volts! I don’t think it made it to market. Luckily, they did not bring a demo to the pitch. Q: What was your most difficult decision? A: During the dotcom bust, we’d had to lay off many people as startup after startup folded. Keeping the remaining clients was critical. The marketing director at one client, who accounted for about 20 percent of our revenues, started to make verbal advances to one of our female SAEs. Luckily, they were located in Denver so we didn’t see them in person often. But the advances got stronger and more inappropriate over time. Talking to the marketing director and CEO did nothing. Finally, he crossed a line and I resigned the business. It made a bad year worse, but it was the right thing to do.
Read moreJul 25, 2022
Katie Jewett
Katie is a Vice President at UPRAISE Marketing + Public Relations, specializing in B2B and B2C tech. She focuses on developing and driving integrated communications plans for some of the most innovative technology brands in the Bay Area and across the globe. Katie enjoys meaningful, long-term relationships with her clients, playing an outsized role in working directly with media and client executives, and helping to shape the direction of the company. She optimizes the UPRAISE team structure by leading, developing and retaining a diverse group of team members, recognizing and leveraging their talents to inspire commitment and a collaborative, high-functioning culture. With a proven track record of implementing strategic media and social media campaigns, Katie engages with key influencers and news media to effectively communicate the missions, progress and impact of the best technology companies in the world. Her passion for storytelling and experience driving media strategies have earned her recognition from the Public Relations Society of America, which awarded her San Francisco’s “Young PR Pro of the Year” in 2019 and PR Daily, which named her a “Rising Star” in 2022. A proud University of Oregon alumna, Katie graduated from the School of Journalism and Communication with a degree in Public Relations and a minor in Business Administration from the Lundquist College of Business. Here, Katie shares a few highlights and viewpoints: Q: What is your biggest win for a client? My biggest success to date was launching Trifo’s third robotic vacuum, “Lucy,” at CES 2020. Trifo, a consumer home robotics company, was spun out of a larger company, PerceptIn, and as a result, had zero brand recognition. On top of that, the robotic vacuum market is a very crowded space and is just 10 percent of the total vacuum category. We developed a strategy to combat these challenges, implementing various tactics to garner interest and encourage media to visit the booth at the show—and it worked. We secured 20 media briefings at the Trifo booth during CES and secured featured articles in top-tier publications such as Forbes, USA Today, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Digital Trends, Gizmodo, Cheddar, Tech Hive, and more. Q: What is the one piece of advice you give clients most often? Although we have relationships with media in your space, that doesn’t guarantee they will write a story about you or your product/service. It might ensure that our email gets opened, but if there isn’t a story to tell, they’re not going to cover it. Period. When it comes to crafting your story, my advice is always to focus on what makes your company unique and—more importantly—why should people care? Providing thoughtful responses to these questions helps your PR team define your messaging and start crafting your story. When you are close to the product, it’s easy to get excited over what it does. But for everyone else, the true value lies in what problem it solves and therefore why the product exists. That’s the story. While every business has a story to tell, many fail at doing so as they lack clear, captivating and effective messaging. Keeping the company vision at the center of the PR strategy will ensure that your story is clear, defined and consistent across all channels of communication. Q: What do successful PR teams understand? It’s important to work with a PR team that understands how to make the most out of your earned media coverage. While getting a bunch of media coverage is certainly exciting, it doesn’t mean anything if your clients, prospects, investors, and other target audiences don’t see it. Successful PR teams will work seamlessly with your internal marketing team to publish articles to your website, social media, and your thought leaders’ LinkedIn pages. On top of that, they’ll repurpose that content to ensure they’re maximizing your exposure. With PR, it’s not about the TV segment, Forbes article or podcast guest spot—it’s about what you do with that coverage that makes a long-term impact. Effective PR teams will repurpose your media coverage by, for example, transcribing a podcast interview and turning it into a contributed article, blog, speaking abstract, award submission, social posts, etc. There are essentially endless ways to repurpose your content to expand its reach, and successful PR teams will execute accordingly. Q: What is one of the highlights of your career? One of the highlights of my career was being named Young PR Pro of the Year by the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) in 2019. The award was not only a significant milestone in the growth of my career but also helped demonstrate to all young professionals that our voices and our ideas are heard and valued.
Read moreDec 19, 2020
Comment on How to Create Brand Purpose in 2021 by altyazili
I really like reading through an article that can make people think. Modestia Laurent Islaen
Read moreSep 24, 2020
Comment on Why Influencer Marketing is Crucial to Media Relations Success by Brett Roberts
Good stuff Victoria! - FB
Read moreJan 1, 2020
Comment on Selecting an Agency: It’s All About Exciting Ideas by Ezra Cunningham
I am new to upraise and my comment is, What is the difference between the upraise Platform and these other sites, can upraise Really promotes my work online
Read moreHow does this agency match to your business needs? Create a free account to find out