Bridge Global Strategies is a boutique PR firm based in New York City that specializes in helping startups and foreign companies raise their visibility, awareness, and sales in the US through communications strategies and programs. The firm differentiates itself through its senior-level experience and hands-on approach, and can leverage its global network for clients through its membership in Public Relations Boutiques International. Bridge has experience across many industries and capabilities that include communications strategy, media relations, social media marketing, and crisis management.
2. What Is Bridge Global Strategies?
• A New York City-headquartered boutique PR firm
• Specializes in helping start-ups and foreign
companies in the U.S. to raise corporate and
product visibility, awareness & sales
• We are entrepreneurs; a lot of our work is for
other entrepreneurs
3. Our Key Services
• Communications to launch or re-position
organizations and their services and products
• Programs to build and manage organizations’
reputations
• Strategies and programs to build brand visibility
and/or increase sales of products/services
• A full arsenal of communications tools to carry
out these strategies and programs
– From media relations to events to marketing
materials
4. What Differentiates Us
• Big agency know-how and experience; small agency
service, creativity and results
– Clients and employees are our most important
consideration, not shareholders or quarterly results
– Experienced staff working on the account, not just selling
or showing up for meetings; five key staff members have
an average of 18 years of experience
5. What Differentiates Us
• Senior professionals actually work on your account –
not just show up for meetings
• Amazing client retention demonstrates the quality of
our service
22 years 15 years 19 years
6. Small and Hands-on, But
With a North American & Global Network
• Best of large and small agencies: senior level service, with
a North American-wide and a global network (something
usually found only with big multinational agencies)
– Bridge was a founder of Public Relations Boutiques
International (PRBI); Lucy Siegel, CEO of Bridge, was
founding president
– This network provides Bridge with “arms and legs” on
the ground where we need them to help us help you,
from Minneapolis to Moscow, San Francisco to São Paulo
– For more information on PRBI, visit
www.prboutiques.com
7. Boston
New York (2 firms)
Roseland, N.J.
Philadelphia, Penn.
Washington, D.C.
Kansas City, Kan.
Pittsburgh Grabs, Switzerland
Chicago Brighton, England
Minneapolis Moira, Northern Ireland
Houston Munich, Germany
Phoenix (2 firms) Moscow, Russia
Aspen, Colo. Sao Paulo, Brazil
Los Angeles Buenos Aires, Argentina
San Francisco Dubai, U.A.E.
Portland, Ore. Johannesburg, South Africa
Seattle Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Toronto Seoul, Republic of Korea
Vancouver
8. Industry Experience
• Academic Institutions • Industrial/Manufacturing
• Appliances and Housewares • Non-Profit Organizations
• Broadcast Media • Office Equipment
• Consumer Electronics • Consumer Packaged Goods
• Financial Services • Consumer Services
• Food • Professional Services Firms
• Games • Scientific Instruments
• Governmental Organizations • Software
• Healthcare • Telecommunications
• Information Services • Trade & Professional
• Insurance Associations
• Internet retailers • Travel and Hospitality
• Internet technology solutions • Travel technology
9. How We Work with Our Clients
• Consult on marketing positioning
• Develop strategies for corporate PR (reputation
building/managing) & marketing public relations
(promotion of products or services)
• Execute those strategies:
– Make companies/products visible to key constituents to
build reputations and visibility and enhance image
– Put clients in front of the gatekeepers they rely on to
distribute products and/or services to their end
customers -- buyers, wholesalers, agents, partners
– Use media relations, public speaking and other PR tools
to carry out strategies
10. How We Work with Our Clients
• Help position the company or its key
products/services as innovators, challenging the
marketplace status quo
• Help senior executives get credit for being
thought leaders
– Helpful to sales force and in building long-term
reputation
• Sometimes able to help introduce senior
executives to new funding sources
11. Social Media Marketing &
Reputation Management Experience
• All of our client work now involves social media relations
– At times incidental – monitoring social media, interacting with bloggers
– But sometimes the core of the work – using blogger relations and social media
to spread the buzz on a new product or service, or advising a client on
negative online buzz
• Examples:
– Created a social media program for pharma industry association New York
Pharma Forum that included Twitter and development of a LinkedIn group to
build the organization’s visibility; monitor online discussion of NYPF
– Wrote company social media manual for executives of B2B tech company as a
“how to” for executives; monitored online discussion of company; helped
company create its own social media groups
– Launched new green consumer product via blogger relations strategy
– Handled an online crisis for a consumer beauty products company
12. Social Media Marketing & Reputation Skill Set
• Online reputation management via social media is an
extension of traditional PR but requires savvy, sensitivity,
mature judgment and ability to act quickly and decisively
• If an organization doesn’t take control of its brand and
reputation, others will
– This is true online, communicating directly with customers and
potential customers, as it has always been with traditional media
– New companies that “specialize in social media” usually are not as
well-equipped to deal with corporate reputation or marketing
communications as general PR firms: they don’t have overall
perspective on issues management, strategic communications
planning and positioning
13. Case Studies
In addition to the following case
studies, additional ones are
available on our website,
www.bridgeny.com
14. ecobee: Green $$$ Made Easy?
• ecobee hired Bridge in September, 2008 to help
make its corporate and product debut
• We worked with ecobee on a PR strategy for the
company and its ecobee Smart Thermostat. We
divided the PR campaign into phases:
– Announcement phase with pre-orders
– “Product available” announcement
– Trade shows to get to know trade media
– Consumer media/reviewers
– Business media and analysts last
• Set goals for measuring success
• Produced press materials
Helped launch ecobee’s third
• In consumer PR phase, arranged product product, new Smart Si Thermostat in
reviews, reaching out to traditional consumer 2012
media
• Launched second product in early 2010
• Launched third product in early 2012
15. ecobee: Early Media Results (First 6 Months)
• U.S. articles written on/in:
• 107 North American blogs
• 12 Overseas blogs
• 18 newspapers & magazines
• 3 TV shows
• Audience impressions: over 140,000,000
• U.S. coverage included:
• Engadget • Technorati
• Gizmodo • Ubergizmo CEO Stuart Lombard with ecobee’s original
• CNet • Josh Spear Smart Thermostat
• Treehugger • NBC TV Chicago
• Good Clean Tech • Business Week TV
(PC Magazine blog) • New York Post
• Crunchgear • London Times
• CPM = 28 cents
• At least 3 X this number of media impressions achieved after 18 months!
16. Helping Top Asian B-Schools Earn A+
In American Communications
• Challenge: Four top Asian business schools (China Europe
International Business School, Shanghai; HKUST Business School, Hong
Kong; Nanyang Business School, Singapore; Indian School of Business,
Hyderabad) wanted to increase applicants from North America despite
being relatively unknown here
• Solution: Hired Bridge for public relations/media relations project
prior to a four–school North American recruiting trip: planning,
positioning (Asia’s Ivy League), news releases, media contacting,
interviews with deans, students and faculty
• Results: Long and positive feature articles in Bloomberg,
BusinessWeek, Wall Street Journal, Crain’s New York Business and
Canada’s National Post, which were then widely discussed and linked
to by online news outlets and B-School blogs. Excellent attendance at
the four school’s North American recruiting events.
17. Launched New Mutual Fund at Start of
“The Great Recession”
• Startup investment firm Structured Investment Management’s
innovative mutual fund was approved by SEC just as Lehman Bros. fell
• With market in chaos, journalists ignored news of new mutual funds
• We paused PR to conserve budget, waiting for media to return to
routine coverage; but crisis worsened and spread worldwide
• Worked with company to start building thought leadership; used time
to achieve greater visibility for company and fund
• Arranged several opportunities for CEO to comment on the financial
crisis on Fox Business News and CNBC. He was able talk about the new
fund on air
• As the media slowly returned to covering routine news, we were able
to arrange interviews with trade media, BusinessWeek TV, Smart
Money, Kiplinger’s, Louis Rukeyser’s Mutual Fund Report and Money
Magazine
18. Admiral Road’s Cause Marketing Program
• Bridge helped Admiral Road, a Canadian manufacturer of
children’s fleece products, to enter the U.S. market
• We suggested a cause marketing program as a way to inject
some news value into announcement of a few new products
• The new products were personalized fleece blankets for
babies and kids decorated with monkeys, zebras and giraffes
• Bridge positioned the new products as a new line, and named
it the Admiral Road “Baby Safari” line
• Bridge arranged a cause marketing sponsorship for Admiral
Road with the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF)
• Announced the new “Baby Safari” line to the media; stressed
donation of a percent of sales to AWF
• Admiral Road was included on the AWF web site as a sponsor
(a million unique visitors/month), with a link to the AR site
• This strategy provided a news hook for media coverage and
attracted new animal-loving customers
• Cause marketing relationship lasted for more than five years
19. Crisis Management Experience
Our staff has helped to save companies large and small from crises
ranging from boycotts to bankruptcies:
•Korean economic crisis
– Provided issues management and media relations counseling to bolster a top Korean
conglomerate’s financial viability and U.S. image during collapsed economy in Korea
• False rumors
– Developed internal and external communications strategies to stop rumors of foreign
company’s U.S. market withdrawal and sale; media trained senior executives and
conducted aggressive media outreach
• Greenmailing
– Counseled corporate management on media relations involving a greenmailer who tried
to use the media to manipulate the company’s board of directors; conducted aggressive
media outreach to discredit the greenmailer
•HIV-Contaminated Plasma
– When a drug company’s HIV-tainted blood products caused a massive crisis, we
developed a crisis management and communications strategy, provided counsel to the
CEO, and set the direction for media relations and internal communications. As a result,
we were able to help the company wind down media attention and stabilize its business
environment
20. Lucy Siegel
President & CEO
Lucy’s experience spans almost every area of PR: communications positioning, issues and
crises, corporate media relations, executive speeches, internal communications, merger
communications and a wide range of other matters related to corporate reputation. She
is also proficient as a marketing public relations counselor, helping clients position and
sell their products and services, both in consumer and B2B industries.
She started her career in journalism and then moved to PR at Equitable Life, where she
directed communications for the group health and pension asset management businesses
She then moved to Tokyo where she worked for Cosmo Public Relations, which appointed
her its first non-Japanese board member.
After returning to New York, she launched and headed a subsidiary for Cosmo before
opening her own firm, which she ran for seven years until it was acquired. It is now part
of Publicis in New York.
Prior to founding Bridge Global Strategies LLC, Lucy spent seven years at Publicis, where
she co-directed public relations in the agency’s New York headquarters, managing the PR
staff and overseeing all PR clients.
Lucy has served in many industry leadership roles, including as an officer of the Public
Relations Society of America’s New York Chapter, Women Executives in Communications
and the organization she helped found, PR Boutiques International. She is a graduate of
Connecticut College in New London, Ct., with a major in government.
21. Thank you for taking time to
learn about us!
Lucy Siegel
President & CEO
Bridge Global Strategies LLC
16 West 36th Street, 10th Fl.
New York, NY 10018
Tel: 212-583-1043
www.bridgeny.com