Press Releases

What makes a good press release? A great story. That’s how we write press releases about our clients’ new books and events, interesting projects, new services, and original ideas. Using our experience as journalists, we pull out the information we know will appeal to other reporters — then pick the important details and write up the press release as we would an article. It’s not a magic formula. It’s simply an authentic, newsworthy approach.

Press Release: Leaders of Swagelok / North Carolina take a Transformational Journey from Gettysburg

Gettysburg, PA, November 18, 2008CEO Steve Smith and his team of executives graduated last month from the three-day Transformational Journey from Gettysburg, a leadership training program designed by nationally-renown motivational speaker Steven B. Wiley, president of the Lincoln Leadership Institute at Gettysburg.

“Part of being a good leader is listening and learning from other Leaders,” realizes Smith, who has participated in Wiley’s Transformational Journey three times in the last several years. “My company, Charlotte Valve and Fitting Company, is a distributor of Swagelok, and we are always learning from the experience of the leaders at Swagelok. They challenged us to improve our leadership skills and management skills to become an industry leading employer, and Steve Wiley’s program fits in perfectly with our goals.”

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Press Release: Inkandescent PR Website Goes Live

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Washington DC, November 8, 2008 — Inkandescent Public Relations, a new Northern Virginia PR / publications / media relations / marketing firm that helps small businesses get the visibility they need, launched it’s new website today: www.inkandescentpr.com.

Journalist Hope Katz Gibbs founded the company in 2008, and is excited to get the word out about her growing agency.

“Like the company’s name suggests, our goal is to make our clients shine,,” says Hope, whose clients to date include authors and chefs, national speakers, leadership and HR experts, health care professionals, and school districts, among others. “We accomplish that with the help of our ur award-winning team — including award-winnng illustrator and designer Michael Gibbs, photographer Steve Barrett, web developer Max Kukoy, videographer Zach Starr, and book editor Kristin Nauth.”

Hope says her ideal client is an entrepreneur who is an expert is their field that is looking for bold, exciting ways to get the word out about his or her company, and isn’t afraid of being in the limelight. “We then wrap our creative ideas around their goals, and help them get to where they want to go in terms of media outreach , the speaker’s circuit, books, events, and more.”

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Press Release: Coming Soon, La Strada on the Avenue

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New family-friendly, family-owned Italian restaurant opening in Del Ray

Alexandria, VA, April 1, 2008 — If you love Northern Italian cuisine, get your taste buds primed for La Strada, a new restaurant opening this month in the heart of Del Ray.

The executive chef is Stephen Scott, the former maestro of the kitchen at such D.C. area dining icons as Zola, Argia’s, Primi Piati, Galileo, and I Matti. His parents Stephen and Diana, and sisters Courtney and Kristen, will be managing the restaurant.

Stephen’s grandmother, Argia Balboni, knew early in Stephen’s life that he was destined to become a chef. As a little boy, he would sit in her kitchen every Sunday and watch her fix the traditional weekend brunch: a roast of beef, braised chicken, Italian meatballs and handmade tortellini.

Also special was Argia herself, who emigrated to the U.S. from Italy in 1917. Putting family and good food first was always her priority. In fact, most of the ingredients for the family feast came from her garden — a giant yard in suburban Boston.

“Argia taught me the essence of Italian cooking, and it makes me proud to carry on her traditions in my restaurants,” Stephen says today, noting that La Strada is certainly about “la familia” —but not just because it’s family owned.

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Press Release: The Essential HR Handbook

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Washington DC, September 8, 2008 — In 14th-century England, masons, carpenters, leather workers, and other skilled craftsmen organized themselves into guildsAithe first unions that were used to improve their work conditions. With the Industrial Revolution came divisions of labor, negotiable wages and hours, and challenging work conditions, and the owner was replaced by a new character, the boss, who was solely focused on getting the job done fast and right.

Conflict ensued and so the human resources industry was born to help set things straight, explain authors Sharon Armstrong and Barbara Mitchell in the introduction to their new book, The Essential HR Handbook: A Quick and Handy Resource for Any Manager or HR Professional.

This 250-page reference guide, published in the fall of 2008 by Career Press, is a must-have for everyone who deals with employees on a daily basis, believe Mitchell and Armstrong. They wrote the book because, as human resource professionals with decades of experience, they wanted to shed light on the issues that keep managers up at night.

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Press Release: Delaware Market House Chosen to Cater Clinton Fundraiser

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Gladwyne PA, April 15, 2008 — Delaware Market House was chosen from a list of a dozen Main Line catering companies to prepare a feast for the Hillary Clinton fundraiser held April 11 in Penn Valley.

Chef Kim Alvarez got the call a few weeks ago from Marjie Katz, co-chairman of the fundraiser.

“We picked the Delaware Market House to cater this important event because of its excellent reputation for serving delicious food, and also for being an incredibly easy and enjoyable company to work with,” says Katz, who worked with Chefs Kim and Edgar Alvarez to choose the menu.

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Press Release: City Schools Close-Up Newsletter Wins Top NSPRA Award for Second Time

OR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

City of Fairfax, VA, July 2007 —School Board Chairman Janice Miller got the good news on June 18 that, for the second time, the City Schools Close-Up newsletter has won an Award of Excellence from the National Schools Public Relations Association (www.NSPRA.org).

There were 1121 entries in this year’s contest, and only 125 publications from school districts around the country received this prestigious honor, Miller explains.
The issues submitted for consideration included the May-June 2006 cover story featuring Fairfax High’s graduation speaker Colin Powell, as well as four cover stories that were part of a series entitled “Building Blocks: Insights Into Education K-12.”

“We knew we had a great story to tell when General Powell spoke at graduation last year, but I believe the reason we on this award is due to the Building Blocks series that we published from November 2006 to June 2007,” Miller explains. “Our editor, Hope Gibbs, interviewed more than a dozen teachers, and in the articles they explained to our readers exactly what kids need to know by the end of each grade.”

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Press Release: Spike TV on The Future of American Men

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Washington DC, July 2, 2008 — What are guys’ lives like today? What is important to them and how can we better relate to them? That was what Spike TV asked the Washington DC-based futurist research and consulting firm Social Technologies to help the network find out.

As the home of everything “men,” Spike TV commissioned the study to gain a deeper understanding of the many facets of men, according to Kimberly Maxwell, senior director of brand and consumer research.

“We wanted to check the pulse of American guys to be better able to understand their lifestyles, their daily habits, and values,” she says, noting that the research builds upon Spike’s 2004 “Guy’s State of the Union,” which delivered a wide-ranging overview of guy’s lives.

Maxwell worked with Social Technologies’ senior analyst Chris Carbone (pictured above) to investigate how men aged 18 to 49 feel about fatherhood and family, politics, relationships and women, role models, work and stress, technology, and more.

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Press Release: The Future of the Obesity Pill [Social Technologies]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Washington DC, June 28, 2008 — Consumers have long hoped that medical and pharmacological research would lead to a so-called “fat pill,” an easy-to-use pharmaceutical answer to the growing scourge of obesity.

Social Technologies’ analyst Christopher Kent recently considered this possibility as part of our series on discontinuities (those sudden, sharp breaks that can strike consumers, business sectors, nations, or the world with disruptive force).

“The ideal solution would allow consumers to continue their regular eating and lifestyle behaviors without gaining weight,” Kent explains, noting two drugs in development, Rimonabant and Alli, offer some benefits of an anti-obesity pill, but neither is 100% effective–and both may have serious side effects.

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Press Release: Alice Waagen to speak at Women Entrepreneurs’ Expo

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Herndon VA, October 1, 2008 — Leadership development expert Alice Waagen, PhD, will be a featured speaker at the Women Entrepreneurs’ Expo in Springfield, VA on Oct. 24, and will present a workshop on “Managing Growth: Knowing when and how to hire help.”

“Like many business owners, I’ve been faced with the challenge of wanting to increase revenue—but not knowing exactly how I’d pay for the additional help needed to grow my company,” explains Waagen, owner of Workforce Learning, LLC. “Rather than pull anyone on as an employee, I have contracted with nearly a dozen professionals who help me with sales and development, PR and marketing, tech support, and finance and legal issues. Their work has freed me to up to do what I do best — conduct intensive workshops that provide managers and C-level executives with the skills and knowledge they need to build a more productive work environment.”

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Press Release: Andy Hines' "Thinking about the Future"

March 15, 2007, Washington, DC — “There has perhaps never been a time in human history when strategic foresight is more needed,” says futurist Andy Hines in the introduction to his new book, Thinking about the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight (Social Technologies, February 2007).

Precious little guidance is available for executives, analysts, and educators seeking the best way to plan and prepare for the future. That is why Hines and co-editor Peter Bishop put together the 231-page paperback, which distills the expertise of 36 world-renowned futurists into an easily scannable guidebook.
What is strategic foresight?

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