by Natalie Stavale

The summer has gone by incredibly quickly for the Detroit-based public relations agency Marx Layne & Company.

WDIV interview at St. Mary’s Polish Fair.

We kicked off our special events summer season during Memorial Weekend with the St. Mary’s Polish Country Fair, an annual fundraiser for St. Mary’s Preparatory held on its 120-acre, picturesque campus. Our role consisted of securing media sponsorships, creating and publishing content on the Fair’s social media sites, not to mention extensive media relations activities. This included facilitating more than two dozen live and in-studio broadcast interviews and feature segments in advance of and during the four-day fair.

Next, we are the agency of record for the Bell’s Beer Bayview Mackinac Race. This event has an incredible, rich tradition that showcases the beauty of our state’s Great Lakes through events in Port Huron and all along the eastern coast until finally reaching Mackinac Island for the finish. The annual race requires our team of special events and media relations practitioners to coordinate press conferences in Detroit and Port Huron, and through our efforts, generate significant and meaningful high profile coverage in print, broadcast and online media outlets. This year, the weather was just right, the media coverage was great and the buzz we generated for our client was even better.

Charlie Langton from Fox 2 joins in Zumba fun before Ford Arts, Beats and Eats.

We had a few weeks to catch our breath before it was time to gear up for the region’s largest Labor Day Weekend festival, Ford Arts, Beats & Eats. This special event requires a large team of communicators with media relations, social media and event planning skills, as well as the vitality to deliver outstanding results—on very little sleep—for organizers of this annual four-day festival held in Royal Oak. From coordinating several press conferences and drafting and distributing media materials to conducting media relations pre- and post-event, when it was all said and done, the team coordinated countless feature articles in leading daily and community print and online publications, as well as radio interviews. The team was on-site at the festival all four days before the sun came up to facilitate a multitude of live TV interview and feature segments on all four Detroit TV stations.

Ben Bailey from WDIV interviews at Art & Apples.

Overlapping Ford Arts, Beats & Eats was the annual Art & Apples Festival presented by the Paint Creek Center for the Arts (PCCA), held the weekend after Labor Day at the beautiful Rochester Municipal Park in downtown Rochester. In addition to coordinating media partnerships, our special events team worked to elevate awareness of the festival and its impact on the community and region through significant print and broadcast media coverage. Multiple in-studio and live onsite TV segments were secured and coordinated by our team, which included features on the artists, food vendors and entertainers, as well as interviews with the PCCA executive director, board members and other beneficiaries of the festival.

Concluding the season was the River Raisin National Battlefield Foundation’s Rally on the River event to commemorate POW/MIA Remembrance Day. Taking place at the River Raisin National Battlefield Park in Monroe—the only National Battlefield Park dedicated to telling the story of the War of 1812—is one of the nation’s most historically significant battle sites, yet it’s largely unfamiliar to most Michigan residents.  Through the diligent media outreach conducted by Marx Layne’s team of professionals, we have successfully raised awareness and buzz through several earned media placements.

At Marx Layne, we believe that having an in-house team of experienced communicators with deep knowledge of media relations, social media and special events is important. We will gladly will meet a TV crew at 4:30 a.m. or burn the midnight oil on behalf of our clients. These are just some of the many reasons that make Marx Layne the premier agency to retain for any special event.

Our complete list of skills necessary to skillfully manage special events include:

• In-house manpower to staff an event
• The capability to handle media credentialing
• Coordinating on-site/in-station interviews
• Facilitating multiple-location presentations within a single event
• Skillful print, broadcast and online media relations
• Social media expertise
• Crisis communications experience
• Coordinating contractual arrangements with caterers, tenting providers, audio/visual companies, photographers, entertainers and security services
• Knowledge of both web and print design
• A track record of identifying and securing sponsorship opportunities

We encourage you to contact us to discuss your festival or special event needs so we can develop a comprehensive communications strategy to raise awareness, excitement and attendance.