Alexander and Associates Inc.

Thanks to the Idaho Statesman Business Insider for a great story on social media use and business. Reporter Harrison Berry interviewed several local businesses and experts, including Martin Johncox, a Boise public relations consultant.

Since 2009, I’ve been doing voiceovers for Boise State Public Radio sponsors. I’ve listened to public radio for some 25 years and I it’s really an honor to volunteer my time to helping. I’ve never had any professional voice training; I was attending a public meeting with some BSPR people and they said they liked my voice and invited me to volunteer for them.

As a shameless plug for myself and BSPR, here are some recent voiceovers.
UW Thank You- Western Capital Bank
UW Thank you – Givens Pursley, PFCU, INL
University of Idaho – Idaho Shakespeare Festival 2011
The Cat Doctor 2011-Ira Glass Sponsor Message
Thank You – FBI, JAC, ULH
Taco Bell Arena Trans-Siberian Orchestra November 2011
St. Luke’s Heart November 2011 Cut 2 Five Alive
Solar Concepts – Solar Star Attic Fan
Opera Idaho Pirates of Penzance October 2011
Northwest Nazarene University Cut 2
New Website Promos-Cut 3
Morrison Center – MOMIX Botanica January 2012 CUT 1
Meuleman Mollerup-Generic April 2011
Magic Valley Symphony-October 2011
Lee’s Candies Easter 2011
Intermountain Medical Imaging 2011 Cut 1
Idaho Shakespeare Festival Early Bird 2012 Cut 3
Pledge Drive Thank You – Locavore
Idaho Rangeland Resource Commission Stories from the Hitching Post
Idaho Preferred Cut 1
Idaho Humanities Council Distinguished Humanities Lecture Calvin Trillin 2011
Idaho Humane Society See Spot Walk 2011 Cut 1
Idaho Forest Products Commission – April 2011
Idaho Dept Commerce
Idaho Botanical Garden Fall Harvest Festival 2011
Ernest Hemingway Symposium 2011 Cut 1
Eat, Drink and Be Healthy
CSI-Mark Edwards Cut 2
City Club of Boise Cecil Andrus November 2011 Martin
Boise Baroque Orchestra Gonzalo Ruiz February 2012
BCT- Off The Record April 2012
Bank of the Cascades
Ballet Idaho -The Nutcracker 2011
Atkins Mediation Services

There’s a lot of emphasis on automating the public relations process and there’s almost daily a new program platform, trick or app with a funny name that guarantees more followers or better notoriety for clients. But there are some time-honored principles for cultivating your brand, whether your use hieroglyphics or Twitter to communicate: Do good deeds, find allies, use what you have an discreetly toot your horn. Because there’s no way to automate relevance.

We have a track record of delivering news media coverage for our clients and it’s worthwhile to examine how it happens with a good case study.

There are no secrets to getting news media coverage and several good principles include: Make yourself relevant, do something good for the community, make it easy for journalists to do their job and stand back and let them work.

In September, we hooked up Clothesline with Dress For Success Treasure Valley, which collects professional clothing for disadvantaged women and was holding a clothing drive in conjunction with Office Team. In addition to collecting many women’s suits, several people donated men’s suits and Clothesline Owner Gary McCracken wanted to give them to a worthy cause.

A and A looked for another charity and found Boise Rescue Mission Ministries, which has a program to help homeless and other disadvantaged men enter the workforce, and this program often needs good quality professional clothing. After some work with the Mission’s media staff, we arranged to have clothesline collect men’s clothing for the month of November and we drafted news releases to publicize it. With the cooperation of the Mission, we got some coverage in the Idaho Statesman and KTRV 12 at the kick off and during the clothing drive. We set up an event for Dec. 1 to hand the clothing over to the Mission and requested Mission representatives and a Mission resident attend to answer media questions (so often, news conferences and events have officials and leaders, but no one from the group that’s actually the recipient of the assistance).

With some judicious and persistent follow-up, we were able to persuade KTRV and KTVB – Idaho’s largest news source – to attend the handover, with KTVB devoting more than two and a half minutes to its broadcast. We finally collected about 750 items of clothing, providing a great backdrop at Clothesline’s Boise shop.

We started a parallel social media campaign in November, while Clothesline used its emailing list of several thousand customers to help get the word out. Clothesline also brought in Steve Reeder of the local Tom James haberdashery to publicize the drive to his clients. The Mission distributed to the release and assisted with getting publicity. Each party had some kind of publicity assets and put them to work.

We took our own video and will put that up on Clothesline’s YouTube page. Between the last few days of November and December, our weekly Facebook page visits increased by 10 percent and wall comments increased by one-third, and we believe it is attributable to the social media and news media push.

McCracken reported that about a dozen customers that hadn’t used his services in a while called his store on Dec. 2, saying they saw TV news program that morning, or the night before, and that reminded them they needed to get some stuff cleaned.

Men’s Health Magazine has put up a ranking of the 100 top cities for social networking and Boise ranks 20th, beating out San Diego, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Chicago and New York. Also remarkable: Salt Lake City was 10th. Washington, DC was first. Boise is the smallest city in the top 20.

Interesting figures, but what’s behind the ranking?  Here’s my take as someone who has lived in Boise more than 20 years as a newpaper reporter, public relations professional and social media consultant:

1. Ingrained tech savviness. Micron Technology, the second-largest computer chip manufacturer in the world, started here.  In the early 1970s, Hewlett Packard began a major campus in Boise which developed the laser printer.

2. Suburbanization. Boise and the surrounding areas are built to automotive standards, leaving few public gathering areas; those that exist are usually in the traditional downtown areas. Yet people still crave connection, even if their environment promotes separation, and social media provide that connection.

3. Political activism. Yes, there’s a lot of that in Idaho, both from the left and the right. The Idaho Legislature is a non-stop source of, ahem, ideas that are far ahead of the times, or far beyond them, and people are bound to object to them or promote them.

4. Racial diversity. Another suprise.  Idaho is still pretty white, but quickly becoming less so, and minorities tend to use social media at higher rates than whites. According to the Pew Internet & American Life project, “Among internet users, seven in ten blacks and English-speaking Latinos use social networking sites—significantly higher than the six in ten whites who do so.” According to the US Census Bureau, the Hispanic population in Idaho increased by more than 43 percent from 2000 to 2007.

Of course, there are cities that are more political active, more racially diverse, more suburbanized and that have a more influential tradition of technology. However, the Boise area ranks relatively high in all of these and taken as a whole, I think that’s what explains Boise’s surprisingly high ranking among socially networked cities.

Alexander and Associates was pleased to work with Cirque du Soleil on their Boise production of Alegria. We assisted with general public relations duties and arranging media interviews Nov. 4-7.

These days, it seems like all PR is going to social media. Traditional media, however, still matter.

We’ve been doing it all for one of our clients, Edie Martin Stained Glass Studio in Eagle, Idaho. We set up a YouTube channel and help maintain their Facebook page. We’re also doing traditional news media, including the release pasted below. Last Sunday, the Idaho Press Tribune in Nampa published a story about Martin’s 30 years making stained glass art and we are pleased at this success. We’ll keep you posted on this blog regarding further progress on this account.

Boise artist Edie Martin blends art and faith
Stained glass creations find niches in local galleries, churches and homes

For more information,
Edie Martin, 939-9618
Martin Johncox, 658-9100
www.ediemartingstainedglass.com
www.facebook.com/ediemartinstainedglass
www.youtube.com/ediemartinstudio

Some people take artistic journeys, while others take spiritual journeys. For Boise artist Edie Martin, the past 35 years have been a lot of both.

Martin’s stained glass art – encompassing the Bible, Egyptian influences, Art Nouveau and Americana – has been found in Idaho homes, galleries and churches for decades. One of her works, “The Demise of Enmity” has this month been accepted for exhibition at the prestigious 3rd Nationwide Catholic Arts Competition and Exhibition at St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa. (one of the judges is Sister Wendy Beckett, art expert who attained some fame from PBS).

Martin liked art classes as far back as Star Elementary School and also took art at Meridian High School Eagle Junior High School and in college while studying for a degree in education.

“I have always liked to make things and have one or more projects on the table, with a few more incubating in my mind,” Martin said. “My stained glass artwork is a passion for me and the meaning is very important to me, whether it’s honoring God or making a window that someone will enjoy for a lifetime. Stained glass is a great medium for that.”

Martin got her start in stained glass while living in Kansas City in the 1970s. She moved into a home that had hideous plastic sidelights with orange and aqua bubbles around the door.

“I wanted to put in some nice stained glass and dared to think that I could learn to do it,” Martin said. “I took some stained glass classes at Maple Woods Community College and made the sidelights my first project.”

Martin returned with her family to Boise in 1981and sold her first work in the early 1980s to a remodeling company that needed some door sidelights for a project. In 1988, she began selling at a shop called Homespun Gifts at the Westgate Mall and later sold in the Old Town Antique Mall in Nampa and has sold at numerous local Art In The Park and Beaux Art events. She now exhibits at the new Gaia Gallery in Eagle, Art Source Gallery in downtown Boise/Boise Airport and has always sold things directly from her Web site and studio.

In addition to creating, Martin devotes considerable time and effort to study. In 1999, she earned a second bachelor’s degree from Boise State University with a degree in visual art. She’s also taken classes at the renowned Pilchuck Glass School in Seattle and frequently travels to trade shows for more instruction. She is a member of the Stained Glass association of America, which is over 100 years old. The constant training has taught her many techniques, some obscure and some common, such as lead and foil construction, sandblasting, etching, fusing, slumping and glass painting.

“Glass art is a huge field and there’s so much to learn – geometry, chemistry, technique and tradition,” Martin said. “The constant study is rewarding and allows me to offer more to my clients.”

Faith in God is important to Martin and for many years she had a desire to create church windows, intrigued by the ancient relationship between stained glass and churches. She took some classes in glass painting, to learn to create figures, faces and other details not possible with glass alone.

“I had always wanted to do church windows and when the church I belonged to, Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran, built a new sanctuary, I volunteered to do it,” Martin said. “It took several months to design on paper and over a year to complete and install.”

Martin’s windows were part of an expansion, started in 1998, that doubled the size of the church and provided a new sanctuary. Martin donated all her work and materials and another member donated all the fine custom woodwork in the sanctuary.

The Shepherd of the Valley project, finished in 2003, consisted of 8 windows, each about 6½ feet tall by 3 ½ feet wide. The windows depict various Old and New Testament stories. In keeping with an ancient practice, the Old Testament windows are on one side of the church and the New Testament stories are on the other side.  An amber ribbon of glass moves through all the windows to represent the presence of God and the windows are called “The Spirit Moves Through Time and Space.”

“The windows create a special sense of sanctity and holiness in the space. It was an amazing gift of love to the church,” said Pastor Jim Grunow of Shepherd of the Valley.  “I’ve been a pastor for 37 years and I’ve never gathered in a worship space like this. She’s very humble about it and a gifted child of God.”

From beginning to end, the windows accurately tell a compressed story of the Bible. Once a month during chapel time, the Pastor brings the preschool children before a window, so the cycle is completed in one year.

“One of the children pointed out each window has a cross in it – the supporting metal frame – but I had overlooked that before,” Grunow said. “People see new things in the windows all the time. You don’t encounter a lot of lay people who have this level of theological sophistication.”

After the high-profile Shepherd of the Valley project, Martin began developing a name among the religious community as a glass artist. In 2006, Martin completed seven windows for the Southside United Methodist Church in Nampa. Each window was a little larger than 6’ by 2’ and they are done around a Creation theme.

Martin also made a 2½’ by 6’ window for the entryway of the Covenant Presbyterian Church in Boise, commissioned to honor an esteemed member of the church who passed away. The window depicts one of the member’s favorite passages, John 15:5, “I am the vine; you are the branches……..” One of Martin’s hanging panels is in a Methodist Church in Farmington, New Mexico, and another is at the Fra Angelico Art Foundation in Chicago, a center for Judeo-Christian spiritual art.

Martin has recently finished another religious piece, showing a woman holding a lamp and comparing the word of God to light. These days, she concentrates more on gallery pieces, and she currently has about a dozen hanging panels at the downtown Boise Art Source gallery, and several more at the airport Art Source and Gaia Galleries.

Martin’s studio is in her Eagle home, which is equipped with kilns, air compressor, grinding wheels, ventilation shafts, a sandblasting booth, hundreds of types of glass, work tables, tools, and display area. Martin also keeps herself busy with sidelights and windows for construction and remodeling projects.

While Martin is capable of doing just about anything with stained glass, “I sometimes think it would be nice to return to the home in Kansas City I used to live in and photograph that first job I did.”

“I love the moment when I lift the piece from my work table and see it with the light coming through it for the first time as an assembled art piece.  Viewing the artwork during the process of being made does not begin to compare with seeing it when the light shines through it.  I could go on and on about the metaphors about light bringing the work to life.  Suffice it to say that I want to create pieces that draw the eye and hold the eye of the viewers enough to take in the details, see the beauty, and “read” the meaning.”