I just returned from a very fulfilling and successful California trip – Spent time with clients, visited my employees and office in LA, hosted a successful 5WPR event…. And we organized and produced the 1st ever Pre-BET Awards dinner for the CEO of BET, Debra Lee.

Monday evening we organized in LA, an amazing event horoning the CEO of Black Entertainment Television (BET) the night before the awards…. Attendees included TI, Nelly, LL Cool J, NAS, Chamillionaire, Alicia Keys, Nick Cannon, Robin Thicke and a slew of others. Really a wonderful evening for BET.  We were honored to work for them and organize the event.

Tuesday night attended the BET Awards which was a great time…

And Wednesday we hosted an amazing event at our client “Eat” on Sunset. Clients mingled with journalists and friends of the agency.

An all around great time… but I am happy to be back on the East Coast and back at my NYC PR agency. Time to work (when I travel its all work all the time… but work at my desk and work on the road are two different things)…

Ronn Torossian
5WPR

As a self made entrepreneur, one of the biggest concerns I always have (and when I started the business) was how do I find business – How do I interact with people who can help me grow and learn. The key I believe is to put yourself in situations in which you can “win” – Places you can feel comfortable and meet people…

Yesterday for me was a workday which began at 7:30 AM and ended at 3:00AMish… And I saw in small intimate settings 2 billionaires within a 5 hour period.

In between the actual work day and meetings, I went to a private club (to shower and change) and encountered Mark Cuban on a cellphone/Internet at 7ish PM. Later in the evening, went to a private party and saw Ron Burkle. While I admittedly didn’t speak to either (hate cold handshake/introductions), placing yourself in the line of fire is half of the key to winning…

Surrounding yourself with positive environments allows you more of an opportunity to succeed.

I remember a few years ago a reporter from a trade magazine asked me if there were enough clients like our “types” to hire us and I answered “OF COURSE – We can become a $100 Million PR firm with entrepreneurial, aggressive clients.”

Both Cuban and Burkle struck me as very real guys (both were alone/without staff)….and they are both embodiments of the new American business person – Uber successful, don’t play by the rules… real people and hard working individuals.

This boy from the Bronx amazingly came across both in the course of a few hours – Put yourself in the eye of the storm.

Will end with a great quote:

PROFILE: ROGER AILES – AMERICA’S BEST LEADERS
U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT

Ailes: “If you run into people who are negative and always telling you that the cat got run over, and you couldn’t get the car started, and you’ve got a cold, the suits are idiots and life isn’t fair, you know, you need to get away from those people because they will suck you under and hold you down and drown you.”

Ronn Torossian

5W PR

Last night, I attended Kanye West’s birthday party at the Louis Vuitton flagship store on the corner of 57th Street & 5th Avenue and was really one of those 2 or 3 times a year I attend an event and say as a marketer “Wow.” (The last one I can recall, other than our own Sundance events, was the Nike Air Force One Party last year I blogged about. – I attend literally hundreds of events a year.)

Thousands of people standing around outside watching and waiting, paparazzi everywhere. The room everywhere you turned you were bumping into a celebrity – Jay Z, Sean Combs’, Jermaine Dupri, Mariah Carey – A List celebrities who are trendsetters.

The amazing thing for me was the audience – A high-brow luxury store celebrating a rapper in a room filled with today’s urban youth – Filled with the who’s who of trend setting brands, and predominately minorities on the corner on 57th Street & 5th Avenue, the party was a few hundred attendees, tightly packed, with the Louis Vuitton brand present, but not too over produced. For a brand that a decade ago would have seen itself as a strictly “white” entity, last night showcased the flexibility and vitality of one of the world’s biggest brands. It’s clearly a new world and a new America – This couldn’t, and wouldn’t have happened even 5 years ago for a luxury brand. While some would see a disconnect between the audience and the brand, for those of us in the marketing and branding businesses last night was a celebration of where American pop culture has moved over the last decade.

Louis Vuitton didn’t intend to necessarily be embraced by this audience but it has happened and for a high brow European brand to not only accept but celebrate its crossover appeal is significant. Clearly Louis Vuitton is a brand which is in complete contrast to Cristal who made the idiotic comments about not wanting rappers drinking their product (You would have been better off ignoring rather than offending?).

Last night was really an event which reinforced my belief that urban culture and youth culture are one and the same (watch MTV – How much rock & roll do you see? – Walk in Times Square – What do the ads look like?)

Hats off to Louis Vuitton for celebrating diversity and recognizing that the world has changed…. It’s a new world and people spend, behave and act different than they ever have. Really as a brand today for a relatively minimal cost (in-store event) they have thousands of trend setters buzzing, and I am sure the event will get great press in the media for days and weeks to come.

Ronn Torossian

5W PR

Spoke this week over lunch to our new crop of 15 summer interns and really enjoyed it – Students from all over the country and I welcomed them and gave them a few pieces of advice:

Absorb everything and understand as much as you can. Ask questions and apply yourself, or you are wasting your time.

Make your mark and realize people are a brand. Stand for something and build relationships with your team.

Try to do different things while here and don’t assume because you enjoy one think that’s the only thing you’ll enjoy.

As I explained, my 1st job after college for nearly a year was delivering pizza because I really didn’t know what I wanted to do… and it took me a while to figure it out… intern programs are a great way to gain real on the job understanding. I also said they should expect to learn more about PR in a week at 5W than they do in a college in a classroom.

We hire many interns who are part of our internship program and strongly encourage young people to work hard and push and always strive for more and to learn. I always strive to do and learn more.

Ronn Torossian

5W PR

In the office on this hot Saturday afternoon (he who works the most hours often wins)… and spent some time earlier today and last night catching up on reading and wanted to comment on a great article I read by Marc Brownstein in the “Small Agency Diary” of Advertising Age.

Headline: “If you want to keep clients, do more than pay for golf.”

A few quotes:
“There is a rare breed of client out there in 2007: The one that commits to an agency through thick and thin.”

“Agency-client relationships are shortening, averaging two years now.”

“We now operate at the speed of the internet, with fast, impersonal transactions. It’s a give it to me now or I am going elsewhere to get it world. That mentality has seeped into our industry. You can take a client out for a round of golf to build the relationship. But if he doesn’t get results on the promotion next week he’ll thank you for the 18 holes and take his business elsewhere. Nothing personal.”

“Don’t waste your time on the golf course. Save that for your family and friends.”

While I think much of this may be an over exaggeration as we have tremendously loyal clients and great relationships, the bottom line is clients want results – Not golf, not talking. Results. Press. Answers.

I don’t golf and wouldn’t… I would tell a client I’d rather spend 3 hours working on their business than on the golf course, and I often do, and encourage our staff to do the same. RESULTS RESULTS AND RESULTS.

Ronn Torossian

5W PR