A Week in the Life, Lumbergh Style

Ahh, Bill Lumbergh. We all know him from somewhere, hopefully a company that's listed in the past on your resume.  My "Lumbergh" came fairly early in my wine marketing career, just after Office Space, the cult classic by Mike Judge was released.  The movie was an important part of my survival skill set under his direction, and since I've enjoyed more sessions with this movie than I'd care to admit -- always with a glass of something delicious and usually after a tough work day.

One of my favorite scenes is when The Bobs, Lumbergh's management consultants interview an employee who clearly has no clear role or purpose within the company.  He can't answer any of their questions clearly -- lots of circular references to "taking specs to customers," and ends up going on a fabulous tirade about his fantastic people skills.  

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In my experience, since there are relatively few wineries in the Pacific NW that employ marketing communications professionals, there's a lot of "What would you say you do here?" surrounding PR.  In my last post, I wrote about the true essence of PR for wineries, so for this post I'm going to stick to concrete examples -- those which I believe The Bobs were looking for in their interviews.

It's early Friday, so looking back over the last four days, here's what our team of three has been up to:
* Successfully pitched a KATU television segment for Willamette Valley Vineyards
* Coordinated interviews for KOIN and KGW for Stoller Family Estate
* Achieved 32 instances of press coverage for our clients including tv, articles and blogs
* Corresponded with 28 members of the media with whom we have working relationships
* Connected with 10 people serving the industry
* Communicated with 7 new media
* Hosted 6 client meetings
* Tracked 6 benchmark competitors' press for our clients 
* Created 5 top press hit files
* Removed 5 members of the media from our CRM since we found them to be inactive 
* Coordinated and prepared for 4 media meetings
* Sought feedback from 3 media and industry connections regarding an event we helped host last week
* Spoke with 2 potential clients
* Met internally 2 times to go through pitch lists to ensure that our media communications do not overlap 
* Spoke with 2 social media experts on how we can optimize our journalist interactions
* Provided 1 recommendation to a client regarding his thought leadership goal

We've also worked with a designer to envision an improved client reporting tool, sent 40 press files to our local printer to complete our press books and project to literally surround ourselves by framed press.  And finally, we have sadly paid tribute to friend and wine journalist, Cole Danehower, who passed away.

It's been a productive, exciting and sad week... and it's not over.