The Gerst House. Nov. 8, 1988. Election Day. Mike Pigott’s 34th birthday. George Bush was elected president that day. It was the day and place Mike and I sealed the deal to go into business together, therefore one of the scariest days of my life, but also one of the best days of my life. They buried my friend and partner Mike last week, and the grief and emotions have been nonstop, igniting hundreds of memories, good and bad, but mostly the wonderment about how successful Mike was, what a huge impact he had on the community, and the outpouring of …

When I arrived at MP&F four months ago, I had absolutely no idea what to expect. Would I be handling some mundane or important tasks? Would I be sitting at a desk doing research all day, or would I be driving around doing errands for clients? While I did do each of these, my internship was so much more fulfilling than I could have imagined. Instead of doing “intern” tasks, I was able to do meaningful work that I actually saw come to fruition. I saw client tweets I had drafted pop up on my Twitter feed, I saw my …

We’ve been working on a website refresh for the last few months. Google’s announcement about the mobile-friendly algorithm change scheduled for today added fuel to our fire. As Search Engine Journal reports, “mobile-friendliness will be a ranking signal throughout mobile search results.” In plain English, if your website isn’t easy to use on a smartphone, it will rank lower in search results than one that is. And mobile usage is only expected to grow. The Cisco® Visual Networking Index™ (VNI) Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast for 2014 to 2019 reports in 2014 nearly 59 percent of the global population (7.2 billion people) were …

Your handshake could potentially make or break someone’s first impression of you. When networking, a handshake can either send the message that you’re confident and sociable, or say the opposite. Check out this vlog for some do’s and don’ts to avoid the latter.

MP&F professionals share advice for college students “If you could go back to college, what would you do differently while in school?” This was one of the many questions college students asked panelists and me during the University of Tennessee’s biennial PR Day. I was thrilled to participate and be invited as an alumna. After I finished talking with the students about the lessons I had learned so far throughout my professional journey, I was curious to see how my colleagues at MP&F would respond to the same questions. Here’s how they responded to the most popular questions students asked …

Pandora? TV? Billboards? With so many advertising options available to marketers today, how do we ever decide which mix is right for our clients? For more than 25 years, MP&F has had extensive experience producing and placing digital, TV, radio, print, and outdoor advertising campaigns. Our efforts have won multiple awards, and we have placed ads in markets all across the country, from San Francisco to New York. Kelly Maslan, MP&F’s in-house media buyer, has more than 20 years of experience in media planning, national media research, and buying. She started buying media before Facebook was even a thought in …