AGENCY BACKGROUND

Blumenfeld and Associates is a boutique marketing public relations agency in the New York area founded in February 1980. Agency services concentrate on Public Relations and Publicity, Special Event Planning and Implementation, and Sponsorship Evaluation and Management.

The agency's specialties include active outdoor recreation, sports and special event sponsorship, adventure marketing, fashion, liquor and beverage marketing, consumer product publicity, and travel industry promotion.

While small by design, we have been fortunate to have worked for some of the country's largest corporations, generating strong, highly visible publicity, and planning and implementing special events that attract thousands of spectators and generate millions of media impressions.

Clients served include 3M Insulation Products, American MENSA, Burlington Industries, CIGNA, The Coleman Company, Du Pont, Eveready Battery, Konica USA (film and cameras), Iceland Tourist Board, Lands' End, Life Magazine, Lucent Technologies, Milliken, The Orvis Company, Ralston Purina, Raymarine, Russell Corp., Timberland, Timex, Virgin Atlantic, and W.L. Gore & Associates.

Highly visible consumer product publicity is a major element of the results we achieve for clients. Outdoor recreational gear - ski poles, athletic footwear, and running apparel to name a few - is constantly flowing out of our offices on loan to leading consumer publications. For instance, in one year alone, Mares America scuba gear was covered in Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, and Wired magazines. In fact, through our efforts, the Mares H.U.B. buoyancy compensator was selected by Popular Science as one of the top 100 innovations of the year. Men's Journal would later call it one of "95 Perfect Things."

Strong Media Outreach

On-going, proactive media relations is what we're known for. While we generate hundreds of stories annually for clients in small city media, it's exposure in major, mass circulation newspapers, magazines, and radio/TV/cable media that gets our juices flowing. These include:

	Animal Planet - Worldwide exposure was generated about the puffin rescue on a small, remote island off the coast of Iceland, on behalf of the Iceland Tourist Board (icelandtouristboard.com).
	Business Week - Exposure for new insect repellent clothing from Orvis (Orvis.com).
	CBS Early Show - Live coverage of the Outdoor Retailer Trade Show (outdoorretailer.com).
	CNBC - Multiple stories were generated on behalf of Mares America (dive gear), CW-X Performance Conditioning Wear (CW-X.com), Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort (Jiminypeak.com), Iceland Tourism, the American Hardware Manufacturers Association (ahma.org), and others.
	Good Morning America - Live remote from a Catskill trade stream - two years in a row - for the fly-fishing association (affta.com).
	Late Show with David Letterman - Appearance by a fly-tying nun (aka "The Tying Nun") for the American Fly Fishing Trade Association (affta.com).
	Martha Stewart Show - Appearance by champion pizza dough twirlers to promote the New York Pizza Show.
	NBC Today Show - Appearance with Katie Couric for Earbags ear warmers during Olympic Winter Games.
	USA Today - Orvis "Buzz Off" apparel, plus another story mentioning travel trends at Premier Resorts (premier-resorts.com), our property management client representing Deer Valley Lodging, Sun Valley Lodging, Hotel Telluride, and other luxury Western resorts. Also, publicity was generated for Earbags, an Olympic licensee (earbagsus.com).
	Wall Street Journal - Stories on Nordic Walking for LEKI USA (leki.com), Earbags at the Olympic Winter Games (earbagsus.com), and Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort (jiminypeak.com).

Planning and Implementing Special Events

An effective public relations program is much more than blasting out press releases. Sometimes you have to go out and "bite a dog" - create news and other strong visuals. The events we're proudest of, the ones we brag about at public relations conventions, include:

•	Jiminy Peak Wind Turbine - Working with Jiminy Peak's ad agency, Mascola Group (mascola.com), we generated dozens of TV stories in local media, in the Wall Street Journal and on CNBC for North America's first ski area wind turbine - a 1.5 megawatt monster called the "Zephyr."
•	1,000th Anniversary of the Discovery of America - One project for the Iceland Tourist Board (www.icelandtouristboard.com) was promotion of a replica Viking ship that set sail from Reykjavik, Iceland, to commemorate the 1,000th anniversary of the discovery of North America by Leif Eiriksson. Publicity appeared in the Connecticut Post, AP, CNN, WABC-TV, and the New York Times.
•	New York Pizza Show - Promotion of this trade show event represents one of the agency's greatest public relation successes since our founding. From market no. 1 New York, to market no. 208 Alpena, Tex., show organizers received coverage, lots of coverage. Over 275 hits in 122-plus markets, including segments on Good Morning America, CBS Early Show, The Tonight Show, Univision, CNN Headline News (at least 7 times), ESPN Cold Pizza, ESPN Sportscenter, and the Martha Stewart Show.
•	Orvis Store Openings - When the time came for Orvis to open a new $7 million flagship store in Manchester, Vermont, and relocate their New York City store, they turned to Blumenfeld and Associates. To grab attention, we walked a 5-ft. game fish down a midtown Manhattan street, and hosted a demonstration of trick fly-casting - two media stunts that appeared on TV as a result of our work. For the new flagship store, a fireworks show we planned drew thousands.
•	Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association "Taste of the Outdoors" - On behalf of the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association (SGMA), for seven consecutive years we organized a Congressional reception on Capitol Hill for 600 Members of Congress and their aides.

Adventure Marketing Expertise

As experts in the field of adventure marketing, we advise companies on how to create awareness by demonstrating product performance in dire conditions. We managed public relations campaigns for The Coleman Company when it sent to gear to Mt. Everest and Death Valley. We also helped Du Pont demonstrate the value of its sleeping bag insulations and fibers on Mt. Everest and during North Pole and Antarctica expeditions.

Blumenfeld and Associates publishes a newsletter called EXPEDITION NEWS (www.expeditionnews.com) that covers significant expeditions and research projects worldwide. Sent via Internet and excerpted in the Explorers Club Journal, it has an international following and has been mentioned in the New York Times, Men's Journal, Snow Country, Time, Time International, and USA Today.

(For more information: Jeff Blumenfeld, 203 655 1600, jeff@blumenfeldpr.com).