Four score and several years ago, a law firm opened. 

At that time, it was not unusual to lack a dedicated internal communications team. As the decades rolled on, McDermott Will & Emery realized that its siloed approach to employee messaging was disjointed.

In 2018, the firm queried its employees—numbering more than 2,000 in 20 offices worldwide—to strategize and realize a new vision for delivering information and interacting.

For that effort, and for swiftly developing a vibrant network, the communicators at McDermott Will & Emery are recognized as a Ragan and PR Daily Internal Communications Team of the Year (1-9 People).

The success has manifested in a monthly brand education campaign, a centralized editorial calendar, managing partner cross-office meetings, consistency in on-site partner meetings, channel diversification and improved internal newsletter content.

Congratulations to team members Donavan Thomas and Evan Martinez.

Savvy organizations bank on their communicators. In KeyCorp’s case, that’s meant literally.

For KeyBank’s parent company, 2019 was a busy year. Consider these milestones: Neighbors Make the Difference Day; the launching of new consumer products; 60-plus messages in two months about the companywide restructuring; its morning news digest, including top headlines, for execs; multiple public-facing reports; successful leadership nominations for awards in American Banker; and messaging about the transition to a new CEO.

Those specific endeavors contributed mightily to KeyCorp’s recognition as a Ragan and PR Daily Communications Team of the Year (10-24 people).

The hardworking communications squad took on other responsibilities, both internally and externally: enhancing KeyBank’s reputation, informing its nearly 17,000 employees from coast to coast, providing media coaching to top execs, crafting multimedia content, and securing news coverage for the organization and its people.

Congratulations to team members Susan Donlan, Melissa Ward, Jack Sparks, Matt Pitts, Laura Suter, Michael Conlin, Karen Crane, Alison Altre-Kerber, Kitrick McCoy, Dawn Pyne, Andy Rigo, Tracy Pesho, Megan Wolk, Allyssa Dalpiaz, Beth Strauss, Laura Mimura, Kim Kowalski, Brooke Emmel, John Walsh, Amy Kilbane, Lisa LoParo, Jeff Kew, Andrea Cheatwood and Michele Scanzuso.

Marketing keys on one overriding tenet: Know your audience.

A corollary: Meet your audience on their turf.

JBL focuses on the intersection of music, sports and culture, partnering with high-profile organizations and influencers to attract young consumers.

Highlights include the three-day JBL Fest, mingling consumers with sports and entertainment stars; NBA All-Star Weekend, an opportunity for a digital-first campaign promoting JBL; Sounds of the City, which partnered NBA players and top music producers; and its 26-event Dare to Listen Tour, with a mobile lab that attracted 700,000-plus attendees.

JBL’s newest brand ambassador, DJ Diesel (a.k.a. Shaquille O’Neal) anchored three major Miami Music Week events to propel JBL LIVE into the cultural conversation.

Congratulations to team members Chris Epple, Kheri Tillman, Katie Raymond, Amanda Wormald, Denise Daly, Jennifer Liang, Andrea Seib, Connie Tsang, Lisa Mathew, Tara Mills, Bianca Hopkins, Michael Craig and Angelica Corona.

With work spanning the hard streets of Atlanta to the dirt roads of Central America, one PR firm stands as a beacon of benevolence.

For its promotion of altruistic causes, Hope-Beckham most deservedly is Ragan and PR Daily’s Public Relations Team of the Year (10-24 People).

Hope-Beckham works with HOI, a nonprofit that raises money and organizes mission trips to rural Honduras and Nicaragua, to help build housing and schools, provide clean water and education, and improve quality of life. President and co-founder Bob Hope goes on mission trips every spring, and the PR team publicizes other HOI fundraising events.

Working with Covenant House Georgia, Hope-Beckham discovered that more than 3,300 teenagers sleep in the Atlanta streets each night. Its annual Executive Sleep Out raises hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. Hope-Beckham helps to raise money and promote the event—all pro bono.

Congratulations to team members Paul Beckham, Bob Hope, Ann Nelson, Holly Brochmann, Wendy Hsiao, Chelsea Rosen, Victoria Croft, Sierra Martin, Kelsey Neely and Riley Carney.

Successful teams thrive on fun, flexibility and experience, as well as cohesion.

The Florida Realtors® Communications Team has distinguished itself for its mobile-friendly member website, Celebrating the Realtor Heart photo project, Florida Realtors® Media Center website, Take 5 educational video series, expansive social media connections and engagements, and the widely read Florida Realtors® News.

Toss in a world record recognized by the folks at Guinness, and it’s clear that the Florida Realtors® Communications Team has earned its designation as Ragan and PR Daily’s Communications Team of the Year (10-24 people).

Its 14 staffers count 200-plus years at Florida Realtors®, including team leader Jeff Zipper, who has been aboard 35 years. Seven others have 20-plus years on staff each.

That dedication shows: Florida Realtors®’ members consistently rank products and services under the team’s purview among the highest for satisfaction.

Congratulations to team members Jeff Zipper, Lisa Walker, Marla Martin, Sev Scaglia, Chris Des Marais, Kerry Smith, Kim Hays, Jessica Cherinka, James Savino, Kevin Ireland, Jeff Felbab, Tracey Flanagan, Sean Kiem and Gina Wittenhagen.

Online engagement isn’t just for external marketing and customer service.

Attracting top talent is a key function of an organization’s social media feeds, and one would be hard-pressed to find better examples than those from Cisco, winner of Ragan and PR Daily’s Social Media Team of the Year (1-9 people).

The team’s mission is to present candidates an authentic view of Cisco’s culture and its reputation as a great place to work through employee-generated content, under the motto “Be You With Us,” and aside the hashtag #WeAreCisco.

With Facebook Live and employee takeovers of its Snapchat account already under its belt, Cisco rolled out its LinkedIn Live Beta, which brought Cisco’s own brand of spontaneous and authentic engagement to the business-focused platform’s videocasting feature.

Cisco had no problem letting employees run the feed. Anything can happen live, Cisco maintains, and if something goes wonky, that’s simply testament to its authenticity—crucial in today’s distrustful world.

Congratulations to team members Macy Andrews, Carmen Collins, Jennifer Burns, Ray Leung, Casie Shimansky, Ileana Cates, Madison Setness, Kimberly DuFresne and Lauren Grimaldo.

Happy occasion? There’s a gift card for that—thanks to Blackhawk Network.

Happy Cards afford consumers flexibility, combining multiple brands on one card for various “happy” occasions. The innovative approach has earned Blackhawk recognition as a Ragan and PR Daily Public Relations Team of the Year (1-9 people).

Blackhawk, a global branded payments provider, partners with Fletcher Group to serve B2B and consumer-facing brands. 

In the span of a year, the PR team also managed and developed all content for Blackhawk’s three-day long partner and client conference; used company research and sales card data for yearlong PR campaigns and news stories; maintained a monthly cadence of research-based press releases and announcements; and secured byline placements and interview opportunities.

The Blackhawk team’s tactics include hard news, proprietary research, bylines, infographics, video, brand integrations, media tours, media networking, awards and speaking opportunities.

Congratulations to team members Daphne Borromeo, Amanda Fiech, Erin Dolin, Ashley Jackson, Courtney Brunkow, Geoff Renstrom, Robin Zimmerman, Ellie Malone and Dayna Davis.

Internal communication on a global scale calls for big-picture thinking—especially when multiple languages are involved.

Communicators at American Express took on the immense challenge of reaching a far-flung workforce with little time for emails, and it successfully transformed essential messaging processes—and with that effort garnered recognition as a Ragan and PR Daily Internal Communications Team of the Year (1–9 people).

Starting with a survey translated into six languages, the team highlighted four objectives: a user-friendly intranet, streamlined communications, dialogue opportunities, and messaging targeted by audience and language.

The intranet is a particular victory, with a year-over-year spike of unique visitors and active use of the hub.

In addition to bringing those to fruition, they employed live blogs of internal events and created weekly newsletters in six languages. There also are monthly metrics dashboards for senior leaders.

Congratulations to team members Carolyn Dando, Tausha Cowan, Ana Palacios, Hope Reynolds, Jayne Harvey, Kaoru Hayakawa, Rachel Elliott and Serageldean (Serge) Abdelkader.

Some PR pros’ achievements are difficult to summarize.

Such is the case Jeff Zipper, Ragan and PR Daily’s PR Team Leader of the Year.

Zipper, who is SVP of communications and marketing for the Florida Realtors®—and has served that group with distinction for 35 years—imbues colleagues with a can-do spirit.

A team member writes: “He fosters a creative, collaborative and friendly environment for his team, is supportive of staff and quick to say thank you or offer well-earned praise for a great job. He encourages us to work together on projects or problems, because collaboration and cooperation as a team are important to him. … He offers a great deal of freedom and personal responsibility for projects. Jeff seeks suggestions and recommendations from his staff, encouraging us to try new challenges.”

Of note: Since 2001, Florida Realtor magazine has won 116 Florida Magazine Association awards—roughly one every two months.

Media relations relies heavily on storytelling.

In 2019 Brooks Wallace, West Coast lead for the Hollywood Agency, applied her knack for finding compelling stories to develop successful campaigns for Vesper, a maker of microphones, and for e-scooter manufacturer Superpedestrian.

Targeting The Boston Globe Magazine’s Cutting Edge column, Wallace secured coverage of Vesper technology used in Simplehuman’s voice-activated trash cans, allowing for more sanitary disposal of waste.

For Superpedestrian, Wallace focused on publicizing its $20 million in funding, revamped hardware and proprietary software—all with Thanksgiving and winter weather quickly approaching. She geared up her team for a monthlong, targeted campaign including demos in two major media (and scooter) markets—New York City and San Francisco—generating a spike in visibility.

Wallace’s team secured 49 pieces of coverage, totaling 1.35 billion impressions, with most stories landing within a two-day window. Wallace herself landed 44 of the 49 stories. Feature stories from Crunchbase News, Mashable, Reuters, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Wall Street Journal and ZDNet—all secured by Wallace —reached a tech/business audience. BostInno and Boston Business Journal carried the news in Superpedestrian’s home market.

Syndication of the Reuters story that Wallace secured, “Scooter maker Superpedestrian raises $20m, promises fewer breakdowns,” was picked up by Financial Post, MSN, The New York Times, U.S. News & World Report, and other outlets. 

Editors are often asked, “Work your magic on this, please.”

Cisco’s Casie Shimansky takes that to heart, adding what she calls her “pixie dust” to every bit of text she handles.

The sorcery clearly works. As copywriter and content editor for Cisco’s talent brand team and managing editor of the Life at Cisco blog, Shimanksy has won her colleagues’ admiration—and Ragan and PR Daily’s Editor of the Year honors.

Shimansky transforms jargon-heavy copy into heartfelt stories. She turns reluctant employees into guest writers, encouraging them with: “Your words, our help.” She coaxes them to open up and share where the pearl is. Then she extracts and polishes it.

Her talents transcend her extensive work on the Life at Cisco blog. Shimansky’s excellence pervades Cisco’s careers website, in recruiting and marketing materials, targeted candidate recruitment ads and even job descriptions.

On top of that, Shimansky organizes the content calendar, develops the editorial process, publishes the content, and oversees the blog’s monthly metrics.  

The 600 Sheetz locations in six states—all open 24/7 year-round—might send many a PR pro into a frenzy.

Nick Ruffner not only meets the challenge but exceeds even lofty expectations.

For that, Ruffner has been named Ragan and PR Daily’s Corporate PR Professional of the Year.

In 2019 alone, under Ruffner’s leadership as public relations manager, Sheetz garnered a 30% increase in earned media reach with coverage in major news outlets.

That’s just the beginning.

Ruffner’s strategy for store openings spurred a 20% jump in community attendance.  He also created and executed strategies for beer product launches including a beer tour, and he collaborated across departments to develop a national hiring day.

Common thinking is that the tech sector isn’t a welcoming field for female communicators, nor women in general.

But Miranda Foster is an uncommon presence—and Ragan and PR Daily’s External Communicator of the Year.

Since joining Commvault, which makes data-protection and data-management software, Foster has ascended to the role of vice president, worldwide communications, leading its global public relations, media activities, company communications, social media, and influencer and analyst programs.

With the February 2019 arrival of CEO Sanjay Mirchandani, Foster transformed the attendant challenges into glowing opportunities to introduce the new boss to a global audience, including Commvault employees. To that end, she spearheaded a high-impact listening tour.

She also pushed the communications team to match the innovation focus that Mirchandani was driving within the organization. For instance, the team became more aggressive in pursuing media opportunities and inserting Commvault into cutting-edge topics such as ransomware.

Congratulations on these well-deserved accolades.

Government communication has special challenges—even more so when the official entity is in its infancy.

Georgia’s Macon-Bibb County consolidated as a new government in 2014, and with it came the need for proactive, engaging, direct communication with the public.

Enter Chris Floore, who has been named Ragan’s Government Communicator of the Year for his ongoing efforts in engaging the county citizenry and elevating Macon-Bibb’s profile statewide.

The array of tasks might seem daunting: media relations, community presentations, public forums, website and social media, event planning, live broadcasting of events and commission meetings, crisis communications, graphic design, video/photography services, and customer service. Floore has handled all with aplomb.

From creating and distributing the new government’s e-newsletter to designing its official seal and other graphic elements, Floore and his team have gained recognition and admiration throughout Georgia.

“Measure twice, cut once” goes the old saw.

Still, if you’re not measuring the right materials, or you’re looking from the wrong angle, you’ll get a skewed result.

SSPR’s resident measurement and data analytics expert, Amy Dardinger, has proven herself masterful at demonstrating share of voice and ROI for clients in a way that drives significant business value.

For her client-focused approach to identifying metrics that matter, Dardinger has been named Ragan and PR Daily’s Measurement Professional of the Year.

Her people skills come into play, as well. She tactfully guides clients to recognize the most valuable metrics for their particular needs. Dardinger applies a data-centric strategy, her expertise in using various measurement platforms, and the development of cohesive, integrated results to make creative yet calculated recommendations—and she has the confidence to push back, if needed.

For prioritizing clients’ needs—and pinpointing relevant data to meet them—we salute Amy Dardinger.