Green kudos for McRae Agency

By on December 3rd, 2007 In Best Practices

The McRae Agency deserves major points for its recent press release campaign for C. I. Development Group. As mentioned in Biz Buzz on Saturday, the release was about a ground-breaking ceremony for a LEED Certified real estate development and the release itself was printed on environmentally-friendly seed paper that grows wildflowers. On top of that, the release was delivered in recycled plastic water bottles.

McRae LogoNow I’m not a big fan of stunts (as the great Dan Wool often says — the best PR is good product). But let’s be honest — who the heck would otherwise be interested in a mixed-use real estate development ground-breaking? Sometimes you simply need to break through the clutter and this effort did just that. Even if no media attend the ceremony, they got coverage in Biz Buzz which in and of itself is a great accomplishment given the nature of the story.

By the way, according to the release “four elementary schools have been competing to see who can collect the most water bottles for recycling will also attend the ground-breaking.” More brilliance. Seriously, this is a real estate ground-breaking folks, yet the team at McRae thought way outside the box.

This kind of creativity makes me proud to be in PR.

Comments

Beth McRae Says:
December 26th, 2007 at 5:31 pm

Thanks Len! Extra kudos to Nicole Traynor at our firm, who is a PR genius and orchestrated this campaign for c.i. Development. The Arizona Republic, as well as some hyper-local publications, did attend the groundbreaking and gave great coverage. Plus, the schoolkids (who won the recycling competition) got to dig into the dirt with kitchen utensils and gardening trowels to be part of the actual groundbreaking. We wrapped it up with a pizza party for all and rice krispy treats dyed green (they represented the porous concrete used in the LEED Certified green building). We knew we had to be creative to get the time of day from anyone, while keeping our tactics relevant. The upshot: several hundred students learned about recycling, thousands of items were recycled and the client’s objectives were met for exposure on their development. Who could really ask for more?

Add your Comment


Want Your Picture Icon? Go to gravatar.com and set a picture up to your email address for free. It also works on thousands of other websites, too!