PKPR News
Canstruction NYC Makes National Headlines
November 22, 2011
For the second year in a row, PKPR handled publicity for Canstruction, the annual design competition which helps feed hungry New Yorkers during the Thanksgiving season.
26 of New York City’s leading architecture firms designed larger-than-life sculptures out of more than 100,000 unopened cans of food, all of which were then donated to City Harvest. Highlights of this year’s competition included sculptures of Angry Birds, a Converse sneaker, and Alexander McQueen’s high heels made famous by Lady Gaga.
Highlights of this year’s coverage included features in the Wall Street Journal and MTV.com, a segment on WNYC, a Best Bets pick in New York Magazine, a shout out from Perez Hilton, and photo galleries in Time Out New York and Gothamist
Other national coverage ranged from ELLE Decor, WWD, and This Old House’s Bob Vila to Scholastic, TreeHugger, and Curbed.
Slavery Footprint Hits One Million Milestone
November 18, 2011
We are thrilled to announce that more than one million people have calculated their Slavery Footprint. The site’s creators estimated they would reach this major milestone by the end of the year, but extensive media coverage and social media buzz accelerated the site’s momentum.
PKPR continues to secure major coverage for Slavery Footprint. Recent highlights include The Washington Post, TechCrunch TV (Check out clip below), Oprah.com, The Consumerist, MSNBC.com, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, The Guardian, Treehugger, UTNE, Food Republic, Bust Magazine, The Hairpin, and The Social Times.
SpaFinder on The Doctors
October 28, 2011
PKPR secured a major national television placement for SpaFinder today when editor Diana Wright appeared on The Doctors to demonstrate do-it-yourself spa and beauty treatments using Halloween-friendly items like pumpkin and chocolate. Check the video clip out here.
STELLAService on NY1
October 28, 2011
Asa Asks STELLAService on NY1 from The STELLA Team on Vimeo.
NY1 profiles STELLAService.
Slavery Footprint Creators Profiled in Adweek
October 24, 2011
Slavery Footprint gets the full-page treatment in this week’s issue of Adweek. The website’s creators, Justin Dillon of Slavery Footprint and John Matejczyk of MUHTAYZIK | HOFFER, were photographed for the magazine’s weekly Portraits page, which spotlights groundbreaking marketing campaigns. PKPR developed the concept for the photo, which features the creators holding scores representing the number of slaves working for them as calculated by the Slavery Footprint site.
STELLAService in Real Simple
October 13, 2011
PKPR secured a perfect placement for STELLAService in the November issue of Real Simple (circulation 1.9 million). For a seven-page feature on Shopping Smart, Real Simple created the special graphic above to illustrate STELLAService’s research on the retailers with the fastest phone support.
zozi.com in Cosmopolitan
October 03, 2011
PKPR placed a great item on zozi in the October issue of Cosmopolitan (circulation: 3 million), which highlighted the site as “a Groupon for adrenaline junkies.”
Lee, Rideau Win 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize
September 28, 2011
The Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation this week announced that The Surrendered by Chang-Rae Lee and In The Place Of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance by Wilbert Rideau are the winners of the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for fiction and nonfiction, respectively. Organizers also announced this year’s runners-up: Beneath the Lion’s Gaze by Maaza Mengiste and The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson.
PKPR announced the winners in an exclusive in The New York Times and placed an AP story which was published in dozens of outlets including ABCNews.com, Yahoo! News, and Washington Post
Other coverage highlights included USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Mediabistro, and Poets & Writers.
Slavery Footprint Launches at Clinton Global Initiative
September 23, 2011
If you are reading this on a smartphone or laptop, you have at least three slaves working for you, according to Slavery Footprint.
Aiming to personalize the complex issue of modern slavery, the provocative website and app provide consumers with an eye-opening assessment of how much their lifestyle depends on forced labor, as well as the tools to take action in the marketplace to begin creating a free world.
PKPR is proud to be representing this groundbreaking initiative, which was developed by Slavery Footprint, a non-profit dedicated to ending modern-day slavery, in collaboration with the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.
PKPR developed and implemented a comprehensive strategy for the launch of the initiative, which was unveiled on the 149th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City this week. We placed major launch day stories in outlets such as CNN Money (shared more than 2000 times on Facebook and Twitter), Fast Company, and Voice of America. Other launch coverage highlights included The New York Times, Huffington Post, Wired, GOOD, and Mother Nature News.
The Moth Gets Hungry
September 16, 2011
The Moth kicked off its fall season with a stellar night of celebrated foodies sharing tales of gastronomic adventures. Top Chef’s Padma Lakshmi hosted the evening which featured a star-studded line-up of storytellers including Top Chef judge Gail Simmons and acclaimed chef David Chang of Momofuku.
Coverage included an interview with Laskshmi in New York Magazine, The Atlantic, Huffington Post, Gothamist, The Village Voice, The New York Times, Grub Street, Eater, The Dish, and Joonbug.
FashionPlaytes in Parents Magazine
September 16, 2011
FashionPlaytes is showcased as a “must have” in the October 2011 issue Parents Magazine (circulation 2.2. million)
Xu Bing Exhibit in Wall Street Journal
September 12, 2011
To mark the tenth anniversary of September 11th, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council presented the U.S. premiere of “Where Does the Dust Itself Collect?” by artist Xu Bing.
Utilizing dust that Xu Bing collected from the streets of Lower Manhattan in the aftermath of 9/11, the installation recreates a 25-by-20-foot field of dust across the gallery floor that is punctuated by the outline of a Chan Buddhist poem, revealed as if the letters have been removed from under the dust. The powerful piece was featured in outlets from the Wall Street Journal to NY1.
LMCC Commemorates September 11th
September 09, 2011
To commemorate the ten-year anniversary of September 11th, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), a former World Trade Center tenant, launched InSite: Art + Commemoration, a series of free public arts events and a special multimedia website that reflect on a decade of recovery, visioning and change in Downtown New York.
Founded shortly after the World Trade Center’s opening in 1972, LMCC has brought art and culture to Downtown New York for nearly 40 years. On September 11, 2001, when the towers were destroyed, LMCC lost one of its artists-in-residence, Michael Richards, along with its offices, residency spaces, and cultural archives. Since then, LMCC has spearheaded efforts to rebuild the neighborhood through ambitious arts projects, including a $5 million Downtown Cultural Grants initiative, the River To River Festival, now in its tenth season, and the transformation of more than 300,000 square feet of vacant real estate into artist studios and exhibition spaces.
PKPR implemented a comprehensive strategy that included securing an in-depth feature on the history of LMCC’s work in the Wall Street Journal - “Arts Continue to Blossom in Post 9/11 Manhattan”—a segment on WNYC’s Leonard Lopate Show, and features in Newsday and The New York Daily News. LMCC’s initiative was also prominently included in round-ups of anniversary arts events, such as Associated Press, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, WNYC, WNET, Metropolis Magazine, Art in America, and ArtNet.
A Floating Poem on Governors Island
September 02, 2011
Hundreds of balloons featuring hand-written lines of poetry contributed by visitors created a floating poem at LMCC’s Building 110 on Governors Island. Created by The Cause Collective, the installation was covered by numerous outlets including WNYC, Tribeca Citizen, Village Voice, New York Observer, Bloomberg.com, ArtSlant, Gothamist, and NY Art Beat.
FashionPlaytes Back-To-School Campaign
August 26, 2011
With back-to-school the second biggest shopping season of the year, PKPR developed a comprehensive campaign positioning FashionPlaytes as a way for girls to ease the back-to-school jitters and gain confidence by designing their own outfit for the all-important first day of school.
PKPR’s strategy involved outreach to key national media, including securing a rave review from Parenting.com that hailed the site as “better back to school shopping for girls.” Another fun placement included a shout out on HerSay with Soleil Moon Frye.
We also placed articles in local outlets across the country featuring interviews with local moms and daughters - from Long Island Newsday and the Staten Island Advance to Boston Parent, Lowcountry Parent, and Arizona Family.
Finally, PKPR coordinated in-studio fashion shows with local customers in markets across the country, including Miami, Dallas, Columbus, San Diego, and Seattle. You can watch some of the local segments below.
Fox (Dallas)
NBC (Miami)
Retailers Ditching Automated Phone Menus?
August 25, 2011
A new study released today brings good news for consumers fed up with being forced into the abyss of automated phone menus.
According to the STELLAService study, 21 of the Internet’s top 100 retailers, including Amazon.com, Blue Nile, LL Bean, Nordstrom, and Neiman Marcus, connect callers directly to live representatives, enabling them to avoid the endless maze of music, machines, and menu prompts used by most retailers.
The study also reveals that consumers can count on these 21 retailers for significantly shorter hold times. Overall, retailers that force customers into automated phone menus or IVRs (Interactive Voice Response) keep shoppers on hold for an average of 1 minute and 51 seconds, a 117 percent increase over the average hold time (51 seconds) for retailers that do not use automated phone menus.
Coverage of the study ranged from Yahoo! Finance (garnering more than 1200 comments and 600 Facebook recommendations to date) and Internet Retailer to Time.com and The Consumerist.
Kingsolver Wins First Richard Holbrooke Literary Prize
August 05, 2011
Author Barbara Kingsolver will receive the first-ever Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award from the Dayton Literary Peace Prize at a gala ceremony in Dayton on November 13th.
The award, which was formerly known as the Lifetime Achievement Award, was renamed in honor of the late Richard C. Holbrooke, the celebrated U.S. diplomat who played an instrumental role in negotiating the historic 1995 Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the war in Bosnia.The award will be presented to Kingsolver by journalist Kati Marton, Holbrooke�s widow. Holbrooke had been serving as special advisor on Afghanistan and Pakistan under President Obama when he passed away in December 2010.
For the announcement, PKPR placed an exclusive with the Associated Press, including both a news story and Q&A with Kingsolver, which were published by more than 250 outlets around the world. Other coverage included USA Today, Los Angeles Times, CBC, MediaBistro, and Poets & Writers.
FashionPlaytes.com on The Today Show
August 02, 2011
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
FashionPlaytes.com was highlighted as one of “five fun, affordable buys for kids” on The Today Show this morning, resulting in the largest traffic spike to the site in the company’s three-year history. Watch the segment above (FashionPlaytes starts at about 1:15).
River To River Festival Splashed Across NY Times
July 16, 2011
Wow. That’s all we can say.
The entire top half of today’s New York Times arts section features a beautiful photo of STREB performing at the River To River Festival.
On Land and Sea, Henry V Draws Crowds
July 15, 2011
In a summer filled with Shakespeare productions in New York City, PKPR helped New York Classical Theatre’s production of Henry V stand out from the crowd. It didn’t hurt that the production, part of The River To River Festival, was performed on both land and sea, with the audience and actors alike taking a ferry to Governors Island for the play’s famous battle scenes.
Highlights included a glowing review and photo gallery in the New York Times, two segments on WNYC, and features in the Wall Street Journal, New York Observer, New York Magazine, New York Post, and the New York Daily News.