Results tagged "the halo group" from The Halo Group - News

Expanding Strategic Marketing Offerings for Today’s CMO

The Halo Group, a New York branding and marketing communications agency, today announced the promotions of two key executives. Chris Barredo has been promoted to the newly created position of VP/Brand Strategy and Jim Stotz has been promoted to Chief Financial Officer. These new positions have been made in response to the agency's rapid growth and to help support future expansion.

"Chris and Jim are two dynamic leaders who have the vision and the passion to help drive our company into the future," said Linda Passante, CEO/Co-founder of The Halo Group. “I look forward to working with them in their new roles as we continue to present superior results and best practices for our clients."

Since joining Halo eight years ago, Barredo has helped to significantly expand the agency’s brand experience and performance strategy group, to better guide clients across today’s demanding consumer landscape.  At the core of Halo’s marketing services offerings, Barredo manages all phases of strategy development pertaining to client’s business goals, brand audits, research and strategic direction.

“Chris has played a key role in elevating The Halo Group’s brand planning offerings to our clients and his continued advancement is a reflection of his dedication to Halo,” said Passante.

Formerly Vice President/Finance and Operations at Halo, Stotz is responsible for overseeing Halo’s accounting, human resources and office management functions. With over 18 years of experience in corporate finance, Jim has managed financial operational business performance for global organizations.

“Jim has made significant contributions to the growth and success of the agency,” said Passante.  “He brings a host of best business practices including strong quality assurance and financial excellence to his new role, ensuring the success of Halo’s financial goals.”

 

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About The Halo Group

The Halo Group is a marketing communications and branding agency that brings experts in business, branding, advertising and public relations together to work as a single team. Halo helps companies with every experience that a customer has with their brand. The Halo team works alongside a select group of international, national and regional clients who understand the value of talent and professionalism. Halo’s work has been honored with some of the industry’s top awards; Telly, Webby, and Internet Advertising Competition Awards but, more important, these campaigns are building relationships around the globe. The Halo Group was founded in 1994 and is a member of AAAA, PRSA, NAWBO, and WBNY.

 

The Halo Group, a New York-based branding and marketing communications agency, announced today that Michael Gambino has joined the agency as Executive Creative Director.

Michael brings more than 17 years of multifaceted large and small agency experience. During his career he has created campaigns for many of the world’s greatest brands including Coca-Cola, FedEx, McDonald’s, Mars and Verizon. Michael started his career as an Art Director on the launch of MasterCard’s renowned “Priceless” campaign, and the “Make It a Bud Light” campaign. Michael also created many memorable ads for Visa’s “It’s everywhere you want to be” campaign and its many sponsorship campaigns for the Olympics, the NFL, the TONY Awards, the Triple Crown, and NASCAR.

“Mike is the ideal leader to take the helm of Halo’s creative team,” said Linda Passante, CEO of The Halo Group. “There are a lot of acclaimed ECD’s out there but he has all of the impressive big-brand experience while maintaining the small-agency management style needed for Halo, which places a crucial emphasis on an agency-wide inclusionary, creative work-style.”

“Halo’s culture is what initially piqued my interests,” explains Michael. “Many agencies preach the idea of collaboration but it was quickly apparent that Halo lives by this philosophy. Halo’s truly a culture of collaborators and there’s a refreshing creative freedom and diverse talent found in every department from brand strategy and PR, to social media and digital,” Michael explains.  

Recently, Michael was Group Creative Director on Verizon FiOS, co-creating the popular Cable Guy character. Michael also wrote the film, Space Cadet, which is currently in post-production. Michael’s work has been featured in Adweek, AOL Fuel the Future, and more than one hundred blog sites internationally. He has also exhibited his paintings and sculptures at galleries nationwide. Winning virtually every award, including the Gold Cannes Lion, Gold One Show Pencils and a few Effies, he has even been nominated for an EMMY Award. A native New Yorker, Michael holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Advertising Design from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.

About The Halo Group

The Halo Group is a marketing communications and branding agency that brings experts in business, branding, advertising and public relations together to work as a single team. Halo helps companies with every experience that a customer has with their brand. The Halo team works alongside a select group of international, national and regional clients who understand the value of talent and professionalism. Halo’s work has been honored with some of the industry’s top awards; Telly, Webby, and Internet Advertising Competition Awards but, more important, these campaigns are building relationships around the globe. The Halo Group was founded in 1994 and is a member of AAAA, PRSA, NAWBO, and WBNY.

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Branding and marketing communications agency, The Halo Group has been chosen by Virginia-based Infinit Software Solutions, Inc, to launch Linguizz, the first visually-driven vocabulary and English learning system that accelerates students’ word retention and comprehension.

 With a 38% jump in college enrollment in the past ten years, accompanied by a rapid triple-digit growth of English as a second language (ESL) students in U.S. schools, the increased challenges and pressures for both educators and students is on the rise.

Answering this demand for improved English language education tools, English language learning expert Michael K. Bender and software and visual designer Art Toezer, CEO and Founder of Infinit Software Solutions Inc, developed Linguizz.  Created for not only faster learning, but also longer retention and superior comprehension, the unique learning system combines visuals, word definitions and pronunciations to provide students and teachers with enhanced context to understand English vocabulary.

“Halo has an excellent understanding of the crowded educational marketplace and what it takes for our brand to successfully connect with our customers,” said Toezer.

The agency’s focus will be on creating and enhancing Linquizz’s brand identity, positioning the system as a global platform for learning English by using powerful visual imagery that translates words across borders. The New York-based agency will also provide integrated marketing communications services to build brand awareness amongst key trade and consumer education audiences including creative, advertising, packaging, trade shows and public relations.

“With our extensive knowledge and experience in global education, we immediately knew that this was a product the market had been waiting for,” said Linda Passante, CEO, The Halo Group.  "Halo’s reputation for helping brands break into highly competitive industries, makes working with Linguizz a natural fit for our team.”  

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About The Halo Group

The Halo Group is a New York based marketing communications and branding agency that brings experts in business, branding, advertising and public relations together to work as a single team. Founded in 1994,The Halo team works alongside a select group of international, national and regional clients, helping them with every experience that a customer has with their brand. Halo’s global campaigns have been honored with some of the industry’s top awards, Telly, Webby, and Internet Advertising Competition Awards. The Halo Group is also one of only three New York City partners of Pinnacle Worldwide, an international partnership of public relations firms in dozens of cities around the world. For more information, please visit www.thehalogroup.net.

 

 

NEW YORK, June 13, 2012 – New York’s branding and marketing communications agency, The Halo Group, has joined Pinnacle Worldwide, Inc., an international network of nearly 50 leading independently owned public relations firms located on four continents and dozens of cities throughout the world. The agency will be the third member based in New York.

“Pinnacle Worldwide provides a solution for independent agencies to better serve national and international clients,” said Linda Passante, CEO/Co-founder of The Halo Group. “Members with varied expertise are committed to supporting one another. This partnership adds valuable resources; an investment in our firm and its future.”

“We are very pleased to partner with The Halo Group,” said Johanna Mouton, Executive Director Pinnacle Worldwide. “Our members were impressed by their superior reputation in the industry, wealth of integrated offerings and resources for our members.  I believe Linda Passante and her team at Halo will bring a new and fresh perspective to the Pinnacle network.”

About Pinnacle Worldwide

Founded in 1976, Pinnacle Worldwide, Inc. is an international corporation of independently owned public relations firms with offices around the globe. Its members develop and implement strategic communications plans that influence audiences on both a regional and global scale. For more information on Pinnacle Worldwide, please visit www.pinnacleww.com.

About The Halo Group

The Halo Group is a New York based marketing communications and branding agency that brings experts in business, branding, advertising and public relations together to work as a single team. Founded in 1994,The Halo team works alongside a select group of international, national and regional clients, helping them with every experience that a customer has with their brand. Halo’s global campaigns have been honored with some of the industry’s top awards, Telly, Webby, and Internet Advertising Competition Awards. The Halo Group is also one of only three New York City partners of Pinnacle Worldwide, an international partnership of public relations firms in dozens of cities around the world. For more information, please visit www.thehalogroup.net.

 

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NEW YORK, May 23, 2012 – The Halo Group, a New York branding and marketing communications agency, announced today that Lara Cohn was promoted to Senior Vice President/Director of Public Relations.

Since joining Halo in 2010, Cohn has led the public relations function at the integrated communications agency, expanding the discipline into events, social media, and online content creation. “Halo’s integrated environment and the trust of our clients allow me to be creative in ways far beyond what I could do at a PR-only agency, “ said Cohn, “and that approach is apparent in the coverage we are landing for clients like Liebherr refrigeration, which was recently featured on NBC’s LX.TV’s Open House, helping raise brand awareness within the highly influential design community.”

Working with Halo CEO Linda Passante, Cohn also secured membership for the agency in Pinnacle Worldwide, a select international network of independent public relations firms.

“Lara is a great force for earned media and she has a rare ability to assess all media and how best PR tactics will work within an overall communications program,” said Passante.

Before Halo, Cohn’s career included various leadership roles, generating billions of impressions for global brands including Procter & Gamble, American Red Cross, Bayer, PetSmart and Macy’s. She has been honored repeatedly for her work, and is a multiple Silver Anvil award winner (the highest accolade in the world of public relations), a member of the Counselors Academy of the Public Relations Society of America, and a judge for the annual PR News’ Platinum Awards. Additionally, she is an active mentor to young PR professionals, as well as students from her alma mater, Lehigh University.  

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The Halo Group is a New York based marketing communications and branding agency that brings experts in business, branding, advertising and public relations together to work as a single team. Founded in 1994, The Halo team works alongside a select group of international, national and regional clients, helping them with every experience that a customer has with their brand. Halo is a member of Pinnacle Worldwide and their global campaigns have been honored with some of the industry’s top honors, including Telly, Webby, and Internet Advertising Competition Awards. For more information, please visit www.thehalogroup.net

The Halo Group recently launched a new blog, The Halo Group Effect.  Featuring original content, The Halo Group Effect provides expert assestments of the latest marketing, advertising and communications strategies and tactics. The blog also includes a weekly feature, 'The Five Things You Shouldn’t Have Missed This Week,' a roundup of the top stories from around industry.

The Halo Group Effect is designed to offer insightful industry analysis as well as build a community of key thought leaders. Blog posts are created by Halo staff as well as guest bloggers. 

A Brand Planning Group Designed for Today’s CMO

The Halo Group, a New York-based branding and marketing communications agency, has expanded the size and scope of its strategic brand planning group to better guide clients across today’s demanding consumer landscape. Led by Chief Strategic Officer Mark Sutter, the newly named Brand Experience and Performance Strategy Group is at the core of Halo’s marketing services offering. 

“With their expanded responsibilities, chief marketing officers are looking for confident voices engaged in the marketing conversation,” said Sutter.  “The Halo Group understands the challenges of CMOs and has the depth and breadth of expertise to be the strategic partner they can trust.” 

The restructured group looks at customer experiences across its client’s entire business, internally and externally, from operations and communications, to ensure that the agency brings creativity to every aspect of their brand, and performance from every experience. 

“Brands are under siege. Unforgiving consumers are connecting with business in new ways, for new reasons and demand perfection in every interaction,” said Sutter.Everything from your return policy to valet parking impacts your brand, and goes viral, positively or negatively, in seconds and globally.” 

The restructuring comes with the promotion of Chris Barredo, to Senior Brand Planner and the hire of Evan Walker as the Marketing and Consumer Analyst. Barredo manages all phases of strategy development pertaining the client’s business goals, brand audits, research and strategic direction for selected clients. Walker will support the group in the tracking and management of performance metrics and development of consumer insights and behavior with consumer research tools and methods.  

“To create loyalty, our clients must bring creativity to every aspect of their business,” said Linda Passante, CEO/Founding Partner of The Halo Group. “So we’ve expanded our strategic planning responsibilities to look at all customer experiences across our client’s business.”


About The Halo Group
The Halo Group is a branding and marketing communications agency. Founded in 1994, Halo brings together a team of marketing, branding, creative, traditional, digital and mobile advertising, public relations and social media experts marketing for domestic and international clients in 40 countries including St. George’s University, Mount Airy Casino Resort and Liebherr Home Appliances. For more information, please visit www.thehalogroup.net.

 

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Branding and Marketing Communications Agency Honored for Innovative Promotion Campaign 

NEW YORK, November 15, 2011 – The Halo Group, a New York-based branding and marketing communications agency, announced today that it was awarded a 2011 MarCom Award, an international competition that recognizes the creative achievements by marketing and communication professionals. The Halo Group won a Gold award in the Marketing/Promotion Campaign category for developing the ‘Marketing Innovation Reality Check’, a mobile survey sponsorship at Columbia University Business School's Center on Global Brand Leadership BRITE '11 Conference.

The Halo Group's mobile survey was accessed via a QR code and promoted by a program that included conference signage, social media and an onsite “street team.” This enabled attendees to participate in a survey, enter a drawing and understand the real internal challenges to creating, implementing and measuring innovation within their organization. Survey respondents were BRITE conference attendees ranging from CMOs from top brands to leading academics to some of the foremost marketing and branding agencies.

“It’s a privilege to be presented with this esteemed honor,” said Linda Passante, CEO/Founding Partner of The Halo Group. “We’re always striving to be recognized for our work we create for clients so it is very gratifying to win for our own marketing efforts, especially as we believe our survey gave attendees a candid look at our shared challenges and brought clarity to those that serve marketing driven organizations.”

The MarCom Awards are administered and judged by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals, an international organization consisting of several thousand creative professionals. The mission of the MarCom Awards is to honor excellence and recognize the creativity, hard work and generosity of marketing and communication professionals. There were over 6,000 entries from throughout the United States, Canada and several other countries in the 2011 competition.

The Halo Group is a branding and marketing communications agency. Founded in 1994, Halo brings together a team of marketing, branding, creative, traditional, digital and mobile advertising, public relations and social media experts marketing for domestic and international clients in 40 countries including St. George’s University, Mount Airy Casino Resort and Liebherr Home Appliances. For more information, please visit www.thehalogroup.net and follow Halo on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin.

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The Halo Group Sponsors Mobile Marketing Reality Check Survey at Realtime NY 11

The Halo Group, a New York-based branding and marketing communications agency, surveyed attendees of the RLTM NY ‘11 presented by the Realtime Report on June 6, to assess their company’s receptivity to creating, implementing and measuring realtime marketing. The “Realtime Marketing Realty Check” survey showed that while realtime marketing is evolving rapidly, marketers still face challenges implementing innovations within their own companies.

The conference highlighted discussions about today’s best realtime marketing case studies from brands including McDonald’s, Delta, Pepsi and NHL. During his presentation, ‘The Future of the Realtime Brand’, Shiv Singh of PepsiCo Beverages stated that he believed at least 50% of one’s budget should be on realtime marketing efforts.  However when asked in Halo’s survey about their current marketing budget, most attendees said their organizations allocated less than a quarter of their budget to realtime, social media or mobile marketing efforts.

“It’s no surprise that brands are increasingly utilizing emerging technology in their marketing strategies however it is interesting how organizations continue to oppose allotting a bigger budget for realtime marketing,” said Linda Passante, CEO/Co-Founder, The Halo Group. “There are certain realities that are making the adoption of new communication strategies difficult and from this survey we can assume that financial resources play a large role.”

The survey identified four key areas marketers need to focus on in order to effectively implement realtime marketing: culture, training, technology and budget. The following are the key findings for each area:

  • 1 out 4 respondents described receptivity to innovation in their company as only “baby steps permitted”
  • Only 14% of those who answered had a highly developed training program for staff that manages their brands’ presence in social media
  • Only 25% of survey-takers have a completely mobile-friendly website
  • 71% of respondents allocate less than 25% of their budget to realtime marketing efforts

“We look for ways to make Realtime conferences into a playground where we can experiment with emerging tools and platforms to share information, connect with people and build our brands,” said Tonia Ries, Founder and Host, The Realtime Report. “The Halo Group’s survey focused on realtime marketing efforts, used a realtime marketing tool and provided attendees with realtime results—a perfect example of a brand fully immersing themselves in emerging technology.”

About the “Realtime Marketing Realty Check” survey
The Halo Group designed an innovative program that used a QR code to access a mobile survey where respondents where asked 8 multiple-choice questions about realtime marketing. Survey respondents, roughly one-third of registrants, included marketers from top brands, leading entrepreneurs in social media and the industry’s best marketing communications partners. The survey was conducted and tabulated in real time using Google documents, with a sampling of the results delivered during the afternoon session of the conference. As an incentive, one lucky survey participant was chosen at random to win an Apple iPad 2.
 
About The Halo Group
Founded in 1994, The Halo Group is an independent marketing communications and branding agency, specializing in the education, consumer products, travel/tourism and financial industries.  Halo brings together a roundtable of seasoned marketing, branding, creative, traditional, digital and mobile advertising, public relations and social media experts to work with a select group of international clients. Halo has been honored with more than 250 industry awards. For more information, visit online at www.thehalogroup.net or via mobile at thehalogroup.net/mobile/.
 
About Realtime NY 11
The Realtime Report (formerly known as TWTRCON) is entirely focused on the business use of the social, mobile and realtime web. Its products include The Realtime Conference, a one-day event that features case studies and best practices from leading brands, non-profits and government agencies; and the web site and email newsletter, TheRealtimeReport.com, focused on social media business case studies, statistics and campaigns. The Realtime Report and The Realtime Conference series are produced by Modern Media, a team of people dedicated to driving innovation in the media industry.
 

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For full survey questions and results, please click here.

Linda Passante, CEO and Co-Founder of The Halo Group was featured in the Business section of The New York Post on Sunday, April 24, 2011.

The article entitled "Women get the biz...female-owned firms are thriving" highlighted Linda as part of the fastest-growing segment of businesses -- companies owned by women.  The reporter called The Halo Group a "business more than just part of a trend. It's actually a leader, an exception in New York businesses."  

To read the full article: online: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/women_get_the_biz_lebal6vOlzp8qX6kwVaEzN#ixzz1KYO1Mk7fA  

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