NEW YORK — May 12, 2011 — LANE PR, an independently owned, national public relations agency, has won a 2010 Bronze Bulldog Award for Best New Product Launch through its work with digital consultancy Roundarch, and the company’s creation and launch of the touch-screen Command Center at New Meadowlands Stadium in New York.

As the new, technologically advanced, $1.7 billion New Meadowlands Stadium opened for the first time last summer, LANE PR developed a strategy to gain attention for one of the smallest yet most business-critical components of this massive, state-of-the-art sports venue: a revolutionary touch-screen application built by Roundarch for NY Jets chairman and CEO Woody Johnson. LANE PR was able to pull Roundarch’s behind-the-scenes innovation for the team owner to the forefront of media coverage, garnering compelling placements about Roundarch’s Command Center in print, broadcast and online media. The Roundarch story was picked up by a range of technology, sports and business media including the Wall St. Journal, Fast Company, Tech News Daily, The Star-Ledger and the SD Times.

“Winning a Bulldog Award is unlike any other award in public relations because we are judged by those who we pitch stories to everyday – the media,” said Amber Roberts, managing director of LANE PR’s New York office, “The launch of the Command Center was a tremendous opportunity to bring a wide range of media together to experience a first-ever technology solution that will revolutionize the way fans experience high-profile sporting events.”

About Bulldog Awards
The Bulldog Awards are sponsored each year by The Bulldog Reporter, a national media relations publication. The awards honor both strategic business thinking and quantity and quality of media results. The competition is judged exclusively by top journalists from some of the leading media outlets in the country, including the New York Times, Fox News, Fast Company and Washington Post. There are more than 20 categories and hundreds of institutions and agencies – including the largest ones in the world – apply each year. Campaigns were judged by dozens of working journalists, who assessed them on the basis of their ability to achieve extraordinary visibility and influence opinion, as well as on their creativity, command of media and technology, and tenacity.  Winning entries will be covered in the 2011 Bulldog Awards “Hall of Fame” magazine.

About LANE PR  
LANE PR is a national, independent firm specializing in public relations-driven marketing strategies with offices in New York and Portland, Ore.  Founded in 1990, LANE PR provides integrated marketing communications and public relations for a host of industries, including consumer, food and beverage, technology and financial services.  The agency has won several awards during its 20 years, including the 2009 PR Week Young PR Professional of the Year, 2008 PRSA Bronze Anvil Award for outstanding public relations tactics, the 2008 Gold Bulldog Award for excellence in media relations and the 2010 Bronze Bulldog Award for Best New Product Launch. For more information about LANE PR, visit www.lanepr.com.

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SALT LAKE CITY - Accessory maker ZAGG Inc.’s stock rose more than 6 percent in premarket trading Wednesday, a day after it said its first-quarter net income more than quadrupled as its revenue tripled, thanks in part to Oprah Winfrey.

THE SPARK: ZAGG said late Tuesday that online sales rose of its tablet computer case and keyboard for Apple Inc.’s popular iPad after the case was featured on an episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

M.C. Hammer, known mostly as a rapper but also as a collaborator with technology companies, discussed the case, called ZAGGmate, when he appeared on an episode of Winfrey’s show in February. An appearance on the show can be a ticket to success for promoters of items featured among Winfrey’s “Favorite Things” and for authors whose work she highlights.

Click here to read the full article.

On a recent Saturday night in a loft space in Philadelphia, almost one hundred people showed up for a gallery show.  The colors were vibrant, the paintings were signed.  But this wasn’t just any gallery exhibit.  All of the stunning artwork was creatively and painstakingly crafted on treated bark paper… by students from Awegys Comprehensive Secondary School in Kigo, Uganda.

Organized by the Mtaala Foundation, a grassroots non-profit that creates and supports educational communities for vulnerable children and at-risk youth, the art exhibition featured a charity art auction to support the construction of a health clinic at the school.  The clinic will not only serve the school, but also provide medical care to the village where no other such care exists. 

Mtaala’s art auction raised money to begin the clinics’ construction while allowing the students at Awegys to truly participate in supporting their own education.  True to Mtaala’s mission, the event reinforced the ideal of empowering youth through learning and giving back to their community. 

I personally got involved with Mtaala after my family spent a summer in Uganda to work with students and the country’s child “night walkers.”  Overwhelmed by the need and thirst for education that these children had, my parents (a middle school teacher and a construction executive) created Mtaala to attempt to fulfill this need. 

For more information on the Mtaala Foundation or how you can support our work, please visit www.mtaala.org.

I recently attended a PRSA-NY event where the topic of discussion was how public relations and investor relations professionals have historically left each other alone, rarely bridging the gap for collaboration.  However, recent technological advances, i.e. blogs, Facebook, Twitter, have intertwined the audiences for PR and IR; the general consumer can be thought of as an investor, financial analysts are becoming bloggers, and corporate responsibility is important for all audiences.

Companies are finding that their IR and PR departments must collaborate to present a succinct corporate message to all audiences.  How to disseminate the corporate message has created differences in opinion between these two practices. While public relations officers have embraced the changing media landscape, investor relations officers are hesitant, largely because of their compliance department and financial regulations. Federal regulations are vague when referencing social media forcing compliance departments to create their own set of internal rules depending on their interpretation.

More and more we are finding ourselves assisting our clients’ IR departments in developing quarterly earnings releases, mergers & acquisitions, as well as responding to financial media inquiries. With the ever expanding media platforms, it is essential for PR and IR professionals to work together to create a clear succinct voice for our clients’ companies.