Martha Vetter named finalist for Stevie Award

Congratulations to our exceptional leader, Martha Vetter, for being named a finalist for a Stevie Award for Women in Business in the Lifetime Achievement category! The Stevie Awards were created to honor and generate public recognition of the achievements and positive contributions of organizations and business women worldwide. And, who better than Martha to represent today’s business women. Of course, we know she’s great, but here are a few things that make her stand out from the crowd.

Since co-founding R/P in 1993, she has strategically developed the agency from just three employees to a successful enterprise of more than 35 professionals, most of whom are women. During the past 17 years, more than 75 women have started their careers or worked at R/P.

Martha’s leadership has enabled R/P to offer strategic, reality-based counsel to its clients, and has taught a core of professional men and women that making the right recommendations for the right reasons is always valuable to the client and company.

Martha and her team have applied strategy-based marketing planning and implementation to an entire industry with the establishment of Transcend Hospice Marketing Group, a division of the agency. Transcend, now the leading hospice marketing organization in the country, is focused exclusively on improving hospices’ ability to communicate with their communities and educate people about end-of-life care options.

Martha’s personal belief is that, “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” Reflecting her generous spirit, she founded Chicks for Charity in 2006, a local grassroots philanthropic organization intended to harness the power of women to make a difference for under-resourced charities in Toledo-area communities. In nearly six years, it has grown to 1,800 member “Chicks” of all ages and backgrounds who have collectively raised more than $360,000 for local organizations.

The Stevie Award winners will be announced at a reception in New York City on Friday, November 11. Good luck, Martha! We’ve got your back.

My Experiences as “The Intern”

By Kate Ryan, PR Intern

Agency experience is a must have for every beginning PR practitioner. After being at R/P only a short time, I have come to the conclusion that agency experience is an important component to understanding a variety of aspects of PR. Never in a million years did I think I would have to educate myself on the healthcare industry or understand the ins and outs of building products. Working in an agency requires you to become familiar with an array of industries while working with a wide variety of clients.

R/P is a great environment for the enthusiast. Agency work requires a lot of energy as well as optimism. Anything could happen with a client at any given point in the day. You walk into work in the morning to work on a media list for one client and could end the day implementing a social media plan for another. This aspect of the job sure keeps you on your toes!

Agencies are an excellent way to apply your PR knowledge to a wide variety of industries. I am looking forward to learning more and continuing to gain valuable insights from my internship here at R/P!

Crafting a Great Local Story

R/P team members Jackie Zureich, Kelley Yoder and Laura Waltz successfully lend PR support to Chicks for Charity and its philanthropy, the International Boxing Club. Just recently, Jackie crafted a great story for the local media, connecting the dots between emotional appeal and engaging personalities with facts that make a compelling case for community support of the organization's educational, vocational and leadership programs. Watch 13ABC's story, "Toledo Club Gives Teen a Fighting Chance," featuring R/P CEO and Chicks for Charity founder Martha Vetter.

What Makes a Good R/P Day

By Martha Vetter, CEO

Today we made a difference, but didn’t make a dime. The beauty of our business is not that we “are” the solution, but that we can “find” the solution. As PR professionals, we communicate messages to those who are best suited to hear – and react – to them.

Just over a year ago, 16-year-old Bri lost her leg in a tragic train accident that claimed the life of her best friend, Cody. Her family had been on the financial edge prior to the accident, and things had only gotten worse. Now, Bri was confined to a wheelchair because her family was unable to connect to the resources that would help her get some of her independence back.

In no way are we qualified to get Bri a leg. However, we do know healthcare and we do know how to develop and “pitch” key messages. In true PR fashion, we felt compelled to drive positive results through communication. So, since the beginning of the year, our team and many others have spent hours and hours trying to connect the dots between healthcare providers, experts in prosthetic devices, school systems, business people and wonderful philanthropists ... all in an effort to help Bri get back on her feet. (In this case, both literally and figuratively.)

Give PR professionals a puzzle that’s a tangled mess and they will find a way to solve it. Usually it’s for paying clients with business problems; but sometimes, we get to help those truly in need and the payment is watching a young girl taking her first steps on a new leg. It’s knowing she is one step closer to regaining the part of her life where she can again play basketball and march in the band at Friday night football games.

Today was a good R/P day.

Number Crunching

So here we are, at the end of March – and the first quarter is over. Now it begins in earnest. I’m talking about the regular “adjustment” of housing starts forecasts…where every month, we see a revised – downward – assessment from economists backing off their bold predictions for the year. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t want that job. But the number-crunching hasn’t been adding up because the market’s just not behaving as we expect it to.

700,000 starts? I suppose it didn’t really sound that unreasonably optimistic late last year. Because all the numbers say we are heading for a housing shortage. The demographics  and household formations all point to the need for housing (but not necessarily “new” houses). Interest rates are still hovering near record lows. Inventory of new homes varies by market, of course, but is still dropping  - now just over 76,000 completed new homes are available nationwide (but many markets have plenty of “used” houses for sale). Prices are depressed, and may continue their decline, according to Case-Schiller. Fortune Magazine proclaims, “It’s time to buy again.”

So why aren’t Americans building – or even buying? Because even if they can, they aren’t sure they should. There are too many unknowns. They don’t know if they’ll have a job two or three years from now. If they get a new job, where will it be located? Will they be able to sell their house if they need to move? Will it be worth even as much as they paid for it? What if they get stuck?

Sales of new homes hit an all-time low in February. Personally, I think we’ll be lucky if we build as many new homes this year as we did last year. My prediction is it might take an entire generation – including a re-invention of the fundamentals of our economy, the future of jobs and where they’ll be located – before building a new home becomes part of the fulfillment of a dream for the next generation of homeowners, and new home construction once again begins to track with household formation.

Now, there’s talk of re-instituting the 20% minimum down payment and reducing or eliminating the home mortgage interest deduction. Who knows what impact that will have? In the meantime, developers and investors have found something to do with all that cash they’ve been accumulating: according to the National Association of Realtors, a third of existing-home sales in February were made to cash buyers. And that’s not counting foreclosure auctions. 

My guess is, those investors will be renting out those properties for quite a while before selling them, giving all those new households a low-commitment option for “housing” in major markets. And who knows what the impact on “the numbers” will be.

I'm sure all this will be fascinating to economics students of the future. In the meantime, those of us who make our living in this industry are faced with the challenges the numbers present. We have some thoughts and will be sharing them soon - but let us know what you think. What are the implications for builders and remodelers? For building products manufacturers? How is your business responding?

Owning vs. Renting - has the equation changed?

For the past couple of years, we've repeatedly heard that all the demographic data point to the need for millions of new homes in the coming decades. In my mind, there’s a whole lot of psychology to be reckoned with when it comes to those “positive demographic indicators” – read: people – out there actually making a decision whether to build or remodel a home.

Many prognosticators seem to think the return to new home construction is all tied to the return of jobs. I’d agree having a job and feeling pretty good about the security of that job makes a big difference in people’s willingness to spend. But I believe some fundamental rules governing the equation of home ownership have changed. For several generations, the story has stayed the same:
- 20-somethings get a job, get married, buy a starter home;
- 30-somethings have kids, maybe change jobs;
- 40- and 50-somethings buy a move-up home, maybe even a second home, make home improvements;
- 60-somethings retire, empty their nests, maybe buy a retirement home….

But with Gen X and Gen Y delaying marriage, having fewer kids, frequently changing jobs (and potentially, hometowns) and – importantly – not knowing/trusting that housing is a good long-term investment, the belief system that drove the “owning is superior to renting” paradigm may have fundamentally shifted.

So even when the jobs “return” or are created, the equation of owning a home – with a 30-year mortgage – that you might get stuck with – might not quite add up for the younger generations. They’ll still need a place to live, but we may see a real shift to a bigger share of multi-family housing in the future. Hey, we’re going to have to do something with all those McMansions – maybe they’ll all get converted to duplexes!

What do you think?

Ignoring the pundits of Wall Street

The pundits of Wall Street and Washington have done a great job of scaring many businesses to a stand still. Personally, I’m pretty sure the longer we stand still the longer it will take to get going again. You know it's that old theory, an object in motion stays in motion while an object at rest stays at rest. But for those of us confident in our products, services and teams, we need to keep moving forward, keep innovating, keep producing. There always will be demand for good and ethical businesses at the top of their game.

Thinking positive is an option. We don’t have to follow the countless companies, big and small, hunkered down and keeping profits stowed away in bank accounts. We can choose to grow by investing in the future.

At RP, we are putting our money where our heart is…we are investing in our team and our clients. In early 2011, we’ll complete an addition to our building that will allow us to meet the growing needs of our clients. We choose to believe in ourselves not the pundits. Positive thinking is important, especially when you're willing to take action to support it. The success of the American economy is depending on it.