Bragging Rights.

Helly Hansen:

A successful public relations program is based on persistence and consistency. It can take months and years to develop but typically pays off with frequent media coverage year after year. Helly Hansen, a Norwegian performance apparel and footwear manufacturer founded in 1877, has always built quality products for winter sports, mountain sports and marine environments but the brand was humble about its accomplishments and didn’t always get the media attention it deserved. After trying and releasing several communications agencies, Helly signed on Hayter Communications in 2001 to drive its North American public relations efforts and help define the brand in the minds of consumers. The first year was a success with significant placements in dozens of active lifestyle and news media outlets such as Outside, Men’s Journal, the Globe & Mail, Canada A.M., and Self Magazine. Since then, coverage has monumentally grown year after year. Today Hayter receives multiple calls each week from leading journalists and entertainment entities requesting product for fashion, action sports and work wear reviews. Nothing is a surprise anymore. Now Helly is a popular brand seen in everything from The New York Times, and Money magazine to MTV and ABC’s “Extreme Makeover Home Edition.”

Based on the success in North America, Helly Hansen’s international office in Moss, Norway, secured Hayter Communications to develop the company’s global press releases.

K2 Sports

Sometimes if you have an established brand, media coverage isn’t the problem. Media management can be more of an issue. K2 Sports has been a staple in the global winter and mountain sports scene since the 1960s. The company and its brands are well known and media inquiries are frequent. Like several major corporations, public relations responsibilities at K2 solely fell in the laps of the marketing staff within each division. Public relations is the one marketing function that needs constant attention and a rapid response or things fall through the cracks. If you’re not always on top of it, PR becomes a headache and drops down the priority list. If you’re in marketing and trying to juggle advertising, promotions, sponsorship, catalogs and collateral, you’ve probably experienced this. K2 Sports, Ryan Hayter’s former employer, hired Hayter Communications in 2003 to serve as the nerve center for press inquiries and information dissemination, and broaden the company’s media reach. Within the first year Hayter streamlined the media process, took a huge load off of the internal marketing representatives, and helped K2 reach more than 100 million consumers through top magazines, newspapers and TV shows from InStyle to GQ and NBC’s “Today Show.” By serving as a central point of contact, the agency facilitated the lives of journalists and was able to simultaneously place multiple K2 products and products from related clients, in individual gear stories – up to six at a time – on multiple occasions.

Richlite Corp.

A well executed PR plan is a gift that keeps on giving. Such is the case of Richlite. The Tacoma, Wash.-based manufacturer has developed paper-based composite surfaces for the aerospace, marine and culinary industries for more than 50 years. In 2002 the company decided to start marketing the product as a high-end countertop surface for residential kitchens and asked Hayter to help with the cause. Paper-based countertops? Yeah, right. That’s what we thought. But it turned out to be an amazing product with a great story behind it. The material looks natural, is made with an environmentally sustainable material, can be shaped with regular woodworking tools and is nearly indestructible. Within the first few weeks of pitching the product, Hayter lined up stories in the Washington Post, Sunset, multiple Better Homes & Gardens publications, HGTV and the Discovery Channel. And the publicity machine never slowed down. In 2004 Architectural Digest and Interior Design magazines named Richlite one of the top products of the year. In 2005 Gourmet, O at Home, “The Early Show” on CBS, HOME magazine and a stack of heavy hitters lined up to showcase the product. Richlite was a funky, unknown manufacturer only a few short years ago. Today, with the support of a successful PR campaign in support of the company’s marketing programs and sales team, Richlite is one of the nation’s hottest countertop brands in architectural, building and remodeling circles.

The campaign was the first of Hayter’s contributions to Richlite’s marketing program. Beyond media relations, Hayter Communications wrote the copy for Richlite’s first-ever website, wrote the company’s first consumer and dealer catalogs, developed an architectural specification set and drafted business and sales materials for the marketing department.