The Hoffman Agency is a global public relations firm. It employs more than 150 people across nine offices in Europe, Asia Pacific and the United States. The company's customers range from Google to Axis Communications to the City of Fremont.
The company offers specialty services including media training, storytelling workshops, corporate blogging workshops, business press, web 2.0, social media and broadcast media.
Video The Hoffman Agency
History
The Hoffman Agency was founded in December 1987 with Meridian Data, a company specializing in CD-ROM publishing systems. In 1988 the company successfully publicized HP's new concept of a CD-ROM and later won the business of HP services. HP's name brought credibility to the small operation, which helped the agency increase its client base across the technology industry.
In 1993 the firm won the Silver Anvil award for its work launching HP's miniature disk drive, Kitty Hawk. In 1994 The Hoffman Agency initiated its first global campaign in launching Hyundai's (now known as Hynix) MPEG-2 chip in Europe and Asia Pacific.
Global expansion followed the work for Hyundai with the firm opening offices throughout Asia, including Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Seoul, Singapore and Tokyo between 1996 and 2000. The opening of the company's Beijing office in 2000 marked a milestone for The Hoffman Agency as it became the first Silicon Valley technology PR firm to enter mainland China. The Hoffman Agency expanded to Europe in 2001 with the opening of an office in London.
The company has received more than 100 industry awards including the Crystal Award of Excellence (Communicator Awards) and the Platinum Award (Marcom Creative Awards). In 2007 the agency won the Bronze Anvil award for a B-Roll project called "Delivering Explosive Results for the Latest Anti-terror Technology" for Sony and a thought leadership campaign called "From Blogs to BusinessWeek" for ThinkFree.
In July 2012, the company ranked the fifth place in Sociagility's "Top Global PR Agencies in Social Media".
In October 2012, the company partnered with Twitter to present their service in Korea. In the same month, the Hoffman agency added a government client, City of Fremont.
As of January 2013, 50 percent of the firm's revenue comes from Asia, according to New York Times and CNN. In July 2013, the company's Singapore office was recognized with silver awards for "Excellence in HR Social Media" and "Excellence in Employee Engagement" by the HR Excellence 2013 Awards.
Maps The Hoffman Agency
Notable Campaigns
Fenwick & West
The Hoffman Agency won a 2008 Gold Bulldog Award for its work with Silicon Valley-based law firm, Fenwick & West. The Hoffman Agency extended the firm's reach to the business press, ultimately building equity in the brand through high-profile pieces in Associated Press, BusinessWeek, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal. The Hoffman Agency also landed a speaking opportunity for a Fenwick & West attorney at the Silicon Valley Churchill Club.
HP - HPServerNews
When HP launched a new type of computer blade server in 2002, it was clear that a detailed web site would have to be an integral part of the campaign. The Hoffman Agency helped HP run an educational Web campaign via HPServerNews.com. Following the campaign, "the site drew more than 28,000 unique visitors and more than 34,000 total visits during the four-week campaign and resulted in more than 33,000 content downloads and 72,000 downloads of multimedia items."
Plantronics Hands-free Campaign
The Hoffman Agency won the PRSA Bronze Anvil Award of Commendation in 2009 for its work with Plantronics on a campaign called "Driving Thought Leadership Surrounding Hands-free Laws." The campaign educated more than 27 million drivers in California and Washington about legislation that banned drivers from talking on cell phones behind the wheel after research showed that more than 70% of drivers in these states were unaware of the stipulations of the new laws.
Zediva
Online movie start-up, Zediva.com, aimed to differentiate itself from competitors such as Netflix by streaming popular movies the day they came out on DVD for an extremely low price. The Hoffman Agency's launch of the company included counseling a redesign of its website and allowing journalists to "preview" the service ahead of the launch. The media coverage that resulted from the launch caused a flood of consumer traffic to Zediva's website, causing the site to be overwhelmed and taken offline for maintenance.
Joyent
Cloud computing start-up, Joyent, wanted to win mindshare in a cloud market dominated by Amazon EC2. The Hoffman Agency highlighted Joyent's strength of innovation and penchant for controversy by directly challenging Amazon. The resulting coverage in GigaOm, PCWorld and The Register underpinned Joyent as a credible contender in the cloud arena. The Hoffman Agency also supported Joyent in Asia Pacific with one example being the announcement of international expansion in Malaysia.
Recent Campaigns
Alcatel-Lucent
Bell Labs is the research and development subsidiary of Alcatel-Lucent founded by Alexander Graham Bell in 1925. The Hoffman Agency created a campaign around the Big Bang Bash, an event honoring the 50th anniversary of the research providing the first tangible evidence of "cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation" -- proving the Big Bang. The event was hosted by Bell Labs, whose researchers played an important role in confirming the scientific theory. The campaign resulted in over 220 million online impressions and was covered in publications such as the Huffington Post, NPR and Scientific American. As a result, The Hoffman Agency won the 2014 Holmes Report In2 SABRE Award in the Most Innovative Print and Digital Media category for this campaign.
City of Fremont
Since 2012, The Hoffman Agency has helped The City of Fremont, CA advance its economic development efforts and brand image. The Hoffman Agency won a 2014 In2 SABRE Award for its work with the City after launching the Think Silicon Valley website as the anchor to its overall communications campaign. The website has helped the City build relationships with local businesses and media, and established itself as a hub for advanced manufacturing, clean tech and life sciences. In addition, The Hoffman Agency has helped extend the City's reach beyond local press through media coverage in The Associated Press, The Washington Post, Bloomberg and CNET. As a result, The Hoffman Agency was shortlisted as a finalist in the 2015 SABRE Awards North America for its continued work with Fremont.
Endicia
Since 2013, The Hoffman Agency has worked to increase brand awareness for Endicia, a shipping software provider in the Silicon Valley, by securing Endicia features in top-tier publications such as Reuters, Forbes, The San Jose Mercury News, and PCWorld. Hoffman also instituted a thought leadership program for Endicia's executives, establishing them as regular contributors to Entrepreneur and the ecommerce publication Multichannel Merchant. In addition, The Hoffman Agency re-launched Endicia's blog in 2014, providing a new design and fresh content maximized for SEO. These efforts were recognized with a 2015 In2 SABRE award for SEO/Content Distribution, and the Endicia program (PR and blog) was named a 2015 SABRE finalist by The Holmes Report.
Nautilus
Global fitness products company Nautilus, Inc. aimed to drive sales and bolster the company's brand as a home fitness innovator for the debut of the Bowflex Max Trainer® cardio machine. The Hoffman Agency created a launch campaign, which resulted in media coverage from publications including TechCrunch, LA Times, Men's Fitness and USA Today. As a result, the agency submitted the product for recognition and gained two international design awards. To add to the Bowflex brand momentum, Hoffman created and launched the Bowflex Insider blog, which was named the best fitness blog by USAHomeGym and won an award from the Holmes Report as an innovative home media property.
Storytelling in Communications
The firm uses storytelling techniques in many types of communications, and conducts storytelling workshops for internal communicators, executives and employees. An agency blog focused on storytelling in business communications was recognized by PR Daily and was listed as one of the top 30 most influential blogs by CyberAlert.
Further reading
- Ishmael's Corner
- Startup lessons learned from Warren Buffett, VentureBeat
- The Promise of Cloud Computing, Inc.
- Chui Sui Central: Communication Revolution, The Pitch HK
External links
- The Hoffman Agency's official site
- The Hoffman Agency's Facebook page
- The Hoffman Agency's SlideShare page
- Daily Brew The Hoffman Agency's Twitter profile
- The Hoffman Agency's LinkedIn page
- The Hoffman Agency's Pinterest page
References
- Andrews, Chris (1988). The Education of a CD-ROM Publisher. Information Today, Inc. p. 43. ISBN 0-9664586-1-3.
- Brackman, Levi (2008). Jewish Wisdom for Business Success. AMACOM. pp. 188-191. ISBN 0-8144-1274-2.
Source of article : Wikipedia
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