ITEN Newsletter-March 2010

Brian Posnanski is an ITEN mentor and the founder and principal of Traffic PRM, an interactive PR agency. A veteran public relations consultant with more than 15 years of experience working for brands large and small, Mr. Posnanski is well-versed in strategic communications planning, marketing public relations and reputation management.

Mr. Posnanski's experience extends across several industries, including automotive, retail, digital media, direct marketing and telecommunications. Among the key programs he has had the privilege to work on are Motor Trend's Car of the Year awards, the launch of the pioneering digital music service SpiralFrog, the launch of Southwestern Bell's dial-up and high-speed Internet services, and the re-introduction of Cessna's single-engine aircraft. He also has worked for an array of private and emerging companies, including St. Louis-based Jerome Group, which he helped position as a leading 1to1 marketing and digital printing specialist prior to the company's acquisition by Fiserv Corp.

Mr. Posnanski founded Traffic PRM to help clients benefit from the emerging integration of social media and SEO with traditional public relations. Mr. Posnanski also serves as senior vice president of Gravitas Communications, a strategic communications firm based in New York City. At Gravitas, he has helped build a technology and media practice that serves major technology companies and media properties, including Source Interlink Media.

Mr. Posnanski began his career at the St. Louis headquarters of Fleishman-Hillard and worked for many of the firm's flagship clients, including SBC Communications (now AT&T), Dell, Caterpillar, Boatmen's Bancshares (now Bank of America) and Textron. From 1997 to 1999, Mr. Posnanski served as a spokesperson at SBC's corporate headquarters in San Antonio, helping to manage media relations for corporate announcements, mergers and acquisitions, regulatory affairs and product marketing.

ITEN teamed up with a new organization called the Missouri Association for Technology Advancement www.matatech.org to put on the first ever St. Louis Innovation Camp February 26-28.  The event was held at UMSL's JC Penny Conference Center with close to 100 attendees learning about all aspects of starting a successful technology company.   Many of ITEN's mentors along with other knowledgeable professionals from the community gave presentations and led workshops all aimed at educating the emerging entrepreneur.  The Camp was organized into five differently focused education tracks, with attendees able to choose each hour which of five different presentations to attend.  Brian Blanchard, founder of MATATech, acted as the MC of the three-day event.  There was a lot of energy and excitement during the 3-day Camp and all feedback from participants has been extremely positive. "The Innovation Camp has exceeded expectations in almost every respect, and everyone seems pumped up, not wanting to wait until the next one," said Blanchard.

The final day of the Camp was devoted to specialized workshops followed by a business plan competition.   During one of the workshops focused on legal issues involved in company formation, a number of new tech start-ups were incorporated on the spot.   The business plan competition on the final day was won by Twaitter, recently renamed Gremln.  Gremln was judged by the audience to exceed all other entries in the three areas of evaluation:  innovation, likelihood of being viral, and chances for a significant exit.   The other finalists, including Olin Cup winner Quartzy were honored for their plans and welcomed into ITEN.

We intend to begin planning the next Innovation Camp very soon and hope to produce one at least once a year if not more often.   Check the Events page at the ITEN website (www.itenstl.org/events) for dates and location of the next Innovation Camp, as well as other ITEN events.

LockerDome is a networking platform for amateur sports.  Founded a couple years ago by Gabe Lozano and Yomi Toba here in St. Louis, their vision is to become the standard platform for the distribution of amateur sports information.

In 2010 LockerDome has burst onto the national baseball scene by landing many of the top talent-laden baseball programs in the country, over 20 of which are considered national powerhouses.  LockerDome's largest customer, ABD Academy, consists of 42 teams with over 650 players ranging from the ages of 8 to 18.  Recognized as one of the top couple programs in the country, ABD Academy has had over 75 players drafted in the Major League Baseball Draft during the past 5 years.

LockerDome's platform is made up of 2 layers, a bottom layer and a top layer. 

The bottom layer contains networking websites where players, coaches, and parents create profiles, manage their teams, and interact through social media.  Athletic programs pay for their own private networks on this layer.  There are additionally public networks that anyone can join for free.  The top layer aggregates the data that users created in their networks and centrally publishes it through ESPN-like media portals.  The ESPN-like media portals will be launching within a few months.

After raising its first outside capital in 2008, LockerDome closed on an additional small financing round earlier this year.  Throughout 2010 they are looking to add new members to both their business and technical teams, as they prepare for expansion into other sports, such as football and soccer.

5 PR Rules for a Changing Media Landscape

Brian Posnanski

Principal, TrafficPRM

Following are five PR rules designed to help emerging companies take advantage of this new media landscape:

Focus on niche media, not mass media.

The balance of power is shifting away from media conglomerates to just about anyone. All you need is a PC and the blogging platform of your choice to publish whatever you want. In the technology realm, professional macroblogs like TechCrunch, Mashable and PaidContent have quickly risen to challenge old guard media such as CNET, Wired and others. For every traditional trade journal, there is a blog, news site or forum gunning for their audience. What you need to know is this: whatever your industry, there is someone out there covering it online. Your job is to find them. The PR mistake many companies make is to focus on prestige over effectiveness. workdigital, a UK-based job search site was surprised to find that a story in The New York Times generated a few dozen visitors to their site, while a story in TechCrunch generated more than 10,000. 

Contegix was co-founded by Matthew Porter, who maintains active involvement in all major efforts in the company from technology choices to continuously driving the values of Contegix, especially its passionate support.  In 2007, Porter was distinguished as a "30 Under 30" for the Saint Louis area. He serves as a board member for EO (Entrepreneurs Organization) Saint Louis where he coaches and mentors early-stage entrepreneurs. In addition, Porter currently sits on the Advisory Board for a select number of startups.