Nashville – the home of country music, cowboy boots and the Grand Ole Opry. For most Nashvillians, country music becomes a part of life. If you’re a native, you can probably give personal tours of the Ryman, point out at least three friends who are extras on “Nashville,” and tell me where Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman recently had lunch. At MP&F, we love embracing all things Nashville, including our country music. Maybe it was the recent CMAs or the social media calendars I’ve been working on, but I’ve discovered country music has more to teach me than a lesson …

The Nashville Predators are entering a pivotal Game 5. Our city sits on the precipice of frozen glory. The timid need not apply, as the pressure will only continue to rise, the stakes only to get higher. We at MP&F have made no secret of our borderline creepy obsession with our Preds and have spent much of the last few weeks keeping one eye on our work and the other on Bridgestone, which we can see out our window, just a couple of blocks from our office. To help spread our excitement, we’ve combined forces to create a Preds Pump-Up …

It’s time to recognize the evolution from “blogger” to “influencer” and adjust the way we are speaking about this aspect of a digital strategy. Bloggers can be influencers, but influencers are not necessarily bloggers. This person may or may not have their own website, but they definitely have one or more of these popular social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and/or Snapchat. They use these pages to leverage their popularity to influence their followers to buy a product, introduce them to a brand, or encourage them to try, taste, use something or go somewhere they haven’t before. Why is …

It was a real honor to introduce MP&F partner Alice Chapman as a new member of the Downtown Nashville Rotary Club recently. The experience reminded me of something very special about our workplace as we celebrate the 30th anniversary of our company. People stick around. I talked about how Alice was the first, and so far only, person to start here at the entry level and become an equity partner. Alice is a true success story, landing here after graduating from the University of Tennessee in 1995. Sixteen years later, in 2011, she became a partner, and this marks her …

It’s taken me a long time to ideate this piece of snackable content. After all, I was working to craft a cutting-edge, viral blog post with perfectly synergized messages aimed at exposing pain points around the pervasive use of jargon and buzzwords in the world of communications. All right, who needs a translation? That first paragraph incorporated a number of frequently used communications buzzwords. In fact, I’ve come across nearly all of them within the last week. Many professional communicators frequently use words that most outside of our business don’t understand. I’m guilty of it at times, too. But more …

MP&F is celebrating 30 years in business, and we realize that most anniversary news is met with responses like: Oh, really? That’s nice. Yes, I got the release. No, my readers don’t care. Shoot … I forgot. I’m sorry, honey. Yes, I’ll do the dishes. No, I wasn’t watching the game. I love Gilmore Girls … will you turn up the volume? So … for one part of our yearlong celebration, we will be holding regular events to engage the community. For example, we’ve just kicked off our “View From 30 Lunch Series,” a free, quarterly lunchtime professional development series …

Social media evolves daily, and it can be a challenge to predict the next turn it will take; but I’m willing to make a few predictions based on what we saw in 2016. Here are my predictions for the state of social media in 2017. 1.) Virtual reality will expand from gaming industry into social media  After watching this Ted Talk by Chris Milk, I am convinced that VR will have the ability to humanize social media and create a whole new experience – one that will make someone far away seem quite close. In 2014, Facebook purchased the main …

An avid reader of the New York Times, I logged on to get my daily morning intake of business, environmental, science, political and world news. The first thing that grabbed my attention was a Patagonia call-to-action ad. It wasn’t imploring me to purchase any of Patagonia’s clothing; instead it was asking me to put my support behind the protection of public lands in Utah, an issue important to the company, its employees and, most likely, the vast majority of its audience (consumers). Patagonia is in the midst of an integrated communications campaign, using paid advertising, earned media and owned channels …

MP&F is a longtime member of the Public Relations Society of America’s Counselors Academy, an organization whose purpose is to enable collaborative peer relationships among senior-level public relations counselors. Counselors Academy board president Tom Garrity’s February blog post celebrated two member agencies celebrating 30 years in business and included reflections from MP&F’s Mark McNeely. Here, Mark looks back on 30 years of MP&F and the firm’s successful model of transparency and inclusion. Create a culture of inclusivity “Two things my partners and I have learned to cherish as our firm celebrates its 30th anniversary are transparency and inclusion. We’ve always …

MP&F started as a one-man consultancy in 1987. Thirty years later, we are the largest independently owned, full-service PR firm in the state, have more than 70 employees, and are the winners of numerous local and national awards. Basically, it’s worked out. Many things have changed since 1987. For instance, I “hyperlink” certain words below that, when clicked on, take you to another “page” of the “internet.” Many things haven’t changed since then, though, like our core values, our commitment to our clients and our excellent work. Outside of work, I’m an avid music collector and still DJ when I …