With the new funding coming into Digium, Digium had been advised to put up their public relations firm for review. Their current PR firm, MRB Public Relations will be replaced with Schwartz Communications as of March 1st. I spoke with Janine Savarese, Vice President of MRB Public Relations and she told me that Schwartz Communications has done work with Digium's VC firm (Matrix Partners) as well as JBoss, that like Asterisk, is also a Linux-based open-source solution. Schwartz Communication is also a very large global PR firm where as MRB PR is a smaller firm. I've worked with both PR firms and they're both great organizations.Janine Savarese said that she has a great relationship with Digium's Mark Spencer and that they left things on good terms. MRB Pubic Relations still represents great VoIP companies such as SIPBox and Snom, so I'm happy that I will be continuing to work with MRB Public Relations. It's always a catch-22 for companies when choosing a reputable PR firm - they can choose a well-established and large PR firm with global resources, or they can choose a smaller PR firm, which often dedicate more time and energy on their limited clientele, with much more hand-holding. It will be interesting to see if Schwartz Communications, who I also have a great relatioship with, can help Digium expand further on the international scene.
Of course, Digium is already exploding with more free good PR and news from the media than you can shake a stick at!
Maybe Digium should just skip the whole PR firm thing , save their money, and put it back into their R&D budget. If you take my cost-saving suggestion Digium that'll cost you my $50,000 consulting fee.
Just kidding on both counts. A company that fails to spend money on marketing & PR is a company doomed to fail.
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"A company that fails to spend money on marketing & PR is a company doomed to fail. "
Marketing and PR are very broad terms.
Providing your customers with excellent service is the best form of marketing,
tried and tested.
Also enabling your customers achieve more is the best form of PR.
Asterisk need both: on global scale.
What do you think?