OKLAHOMA CITY – Saxum Public Relations, an integrated public relations, strategic marketing and creative firm, today announced it has hired Christina Oden as an account supervisor for its Tulsa office. She will begin work at Saxum in April.
In February, Saxum’s CEO and President C. Renzi Stone announced the agency will open a Tulsa office during the second quarter. Saxum is currently in the process of selecting the office location.
“We are excited to welcome Chris to our team,” said Chris Payne, Saxum vice president and general manager of the Tulsa office. “With deep roots in the business community from her years as executive director of the chamber’s TYPros program, Chris brings extensive public relations and event experience to Saxum. She will play a valuable role in servicing our Tulsa clients and helping grow our business.”
As an account supervisor, Oden will be responsible for managing communications and public relations services for multiple client accounts.
“I am really looking forward to joining Saxum and playing a role in building upon its already impressive client base in Tulsa,” Oden said.
Oden comes to Saxum with more than 10 years experience in public relations, marketing, advertising and community relations. Before joining Saxum, she served as executive director of the Tulsa Metro Chamber’s Tulsa’s Young Professionals group. Oden also served in marketing positions for the St. John Health System, Wyandotte Advertising and Kuhn & Witternborn Advertising in Kansas City, Missouri. She also has served as board member for Oklahoma State University’s School of Journalism and Broadcasting and the Association for Women in Communications and is a graduate of Leadership Tulsa. She has a bachelor of arts in advertising from OSU.
With a local, regional and national client base covering a variety of industries, the Saxum team focuses on creating lifelong client relationships through proactive communications that are customized, multi-dimensional, strategic, team-focused and results-driven.
Saxum offers a variety of public relations services to its clients, including strategic counsel, corporate communications, crisis communications, media relations, social media and training workshops. Saxum’s wholly owned creative company, Maxus Creative, offers a host of creative services, including print and brand identity, Web and interactive design and video and motion graphics production.
The company is a member of IPREX, one of the world’s largest international public relations networks. Saxum has been recognized three years in a row as one of the fastest-growing companies in the greater Oklahoma City area, and Stone has been named one of Oklahoma’s and the industry’s top leaders under the age of 40 by multiple organizations.
For more information on Saxum Public Relations and Maxus Creative, visit www.saxumpr.com and www.maxuscreative.com.
My professional life has recently come full circle. Saxum Public Relations, a creative public relations firm that I started in Oklahoma City nearly seven years ago, announced this week that we have hired veteran Tulsa public relations professional Chris Payne, APR, from Dollar Thrifty Auto Group as vice president and general manager to run an office we are opening in Tulsa soon.
This business decision had a lot of personal investment and thought. For starters, I’m a Tulsa native. Following a terrific experience as a student in the Jenks Public School System, I attended the University of Oklahoma, where I was privileged to play basketball for the Sooners. Four NCAA tournaments later, I graduated with honors and began looking for a job. I chose Oklahoma City as my home because I was offered a job there. Then, I married an Oklahoma City girl and the love of my life, Lee Anne.
Ten years later, I find myself a native Tulsan living in Oklahoma City. There are not many of us. As someone who always thought I’d spread my wings and fly somewhere far away, Oklahoma City and Tulsa offer unique and rewarding experiences without having to leave a state where we’ve put down solid roots.
Read the full story »
OKLAHOMA CITY – Saxum Public Relations, an integrated public relations, strategic marketing and creative firm, today announced it is opening an office in Tulsa and has hired Christopher Payne, APR, to serve as vice president and general manager of the Tulsa office.
“As a Tulsa native, I am excited to announce that we will be opening an office in my hometown,” said Saxum President and CEO Renzi Stone. “We already have an existing client base in the area, and we see tremendous potential for growth.”
Payne comes to Saxum with more than 20 years of public relations and strategic communications experience. He previously served as senior manager of corporate communications for Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group, Inc., a global corporation and one of Saxum’s newest clients. Payne worked at the company for nearly 17 years, having started as a manager of corporate communications for the Thrifty Car Rental brand. Prior to joining Thrifty, he spent four years working for public relations and political consulting agencies in the Dallas area, leading a number of regional and national accounts.
Read the full story »
OKLAHOMA CITY – Saxum Public Relations, a full-service public relations, public affairs and strategic marketing firm, today announced the hiring of Chad Backus as account supervisor and Rachel Leonard as junior account executive. Maxus Creative, Saxum’s wholly owned, in-house creative and conceptual firm, announced the hiring of Ruben Cabrera as a designer.
Chad Backus serves as account supervisor and brings more than 10 years of agency, corporate and nonprofit experience to Saxum. Prior to joining Saxum, he served as account supervisor at Michael A. Burns & Associates in Dallas, communications director for Mental Health America of Greater Dallas, communications specialist with AARP’s southwest regional office in Dallas and public relations specialist at MarCom Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations in Oklahoma City. He is a graduate of Oklahoma State University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and broadcasting with an emphasis in public relations.
Rachel Leonard serves as a junior account executive at Saxum. Leonard’s previous experience includes serving as an account executive at New Jersey-based Beckerman Public Relations and as an account coordinator for Stern + Associates in New Jersey. She served as an intern with Health For Friends in Norman, OU Medical Center, SouthCrest Hospital in Tulsa and KFOR-TV. She graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a bachelor’s degree in journalism with an emphasis in public relations.
Read the full story »
For years, Maxus Creative has offered Web design services that elevated the online presence of its clients. Some clients had a dated Web site that hurt their credibility, or worse, they had no Web site at all. Thankfully, we were always there to kick things off in a positive direction.
But times have changed, and so has the Web.
More and more organizations are realizing the power of inviting their target audiences to a two-way conversation. That’s what social media is all about. We realized the need, as well, so we did our research, found the best options and got to work. When we took a fresh look at the Saxum Public Relations site, we decided to integrate our social media and design objectives. Public relations and Web design are meeting in the middle. It’s called social media integration.
The previous Web site played a small role in our social media strategy. It was a one-way communication outlet. The first step in solving the problem was to identify which social media outlets to integrate into the site. That was easy. Saxum has already determined which social media channels were a good investment of our resources. With that in mind, we began to integrate those channels.
Read the full story »
The year is 2007. Oil topped $150 per barrel, only techies have heard of Twitter and Google was just a search engine beating up Yahoo. Saxum, meanwhile, preached the value of brochure Web sites to all of our small business clients. Programming is for national media, manufacturers and e-commerce, among others. “If you need that, call our partners at Phase 2 ,” we said.
“Stop printing tri-fold brochures,” we pleaded. “What you need is a comprehensive Web presence with your entire brand’s key information.” We tried to give up content management rights, but a lot of people took comfort in having us “handle that stuff.”
Ahh, the good ‘ole days. How quickly things change.
We are announcing today that Saxum launched the new and improved www.saxumpr.com – our fifth version in less than seven years. We have moved platforms to Wordpress. Watch this cool tutorial video about the platform. Also, Wordpress is functional enough to serve as the British Prime Minister’s HOME PAGE! What started as a blogging platform can now serve all our Web needs. We are encouraging clients previously using brochure sites to follow suit.
Read the full story »
PR Newser recently published public relations predictions for 2010 from several industry leaders, including Saxum Public Relations CEO Renzi Stone. The questions covered business forecasts, industry acquisitions and the biggest PR story of 2010. One standout prediction from Renzi was that a new player will emerge to challenge Facebook. The full responses to the questions are included in this post.
Q: In 2010, I expect my business to be up/down/flat, and here’s why.
A: We’ll be up – way up. Like double digits. But then again, we were up 20 percent plus in 2009.
Three reasons-
First of all, we are headquartered in the South. Population and job creation trends for this part of the country are far better than the rest of the nation. One demographic study by noted author, Dr. Wendall Cox, shows Texas and Oklahoma ranked first and eighth, respectively, in net domestic migration gains in 2009. More jobs equal more people, which equals more PR opportunities. Ask Detroit PR firms about their 2010 forecast. Not good, I’m sure.
Secondly, advertising remains broken. This week on Forrester’s Blog for Interactive Marketing Professionals, Augie Ray, a new senior analyst of social computing, correctly asserts that consumers feel there is “too much advertising.” From our perspective in our markets, it means that clients who used to spend big ad dollars are coming to us for more bang for the buck. That means more video, social platform development and CSR. Public relations as a profession has almost made the monumental leap from press release people to strategic brand and interactive communications managers.
Read the full story »
A bitter global recession. Unemployment reaching 7.1 percent at home. Wind, rain and cold conditions on election day. Opposition led by the heroic people who protect us.
Like my college basketball coach used to say, “find a way to win.”
The third edition of MAPS found a way with 54 percent of the winning vote. It was a team effort, with voter turnout topping 30 percent – a high number for a municipal election.
So why was it so important to pass MAPS?
The MAPS brand has defined the last fifteen years of progress in our community and a vote against this MAPS would have slowed down recent momentum. Critics argued that money should be used for public safety, a valid request. Unfortunately for them, MAPS has never been about catching up, it has been about leapfrogging the competition.
Show me another community investing like this? It doesn’t exist.
Read the full story »
A few thoughts about several issues:
On social media today
Be careful about talking in circles. When trying to make a point to clients about how few people they know, I ask how many contacts they have in their CRM (Outlook). They generally say, “about a thousand.” I then ask how many unknown numbers ring on their cell phone. They say, “very few.” A false sense of security can be achieved in social media circles by communicating key messages to a small, yet focused audience without other tactics. If you are going to talk in circles, however, social media is the place to do it for many reasons. Just understand it is not an all-encompassing tool – yet! This conversation could look different a year from now.
On Tulsa’s new mayor
Dewey Bartlett and Tom Adelson battled it out for the right to be mayor of Tulsa last week, along with Independent Mark Perkins. In the hotly contested election, Bartlett beat Adelson, a reverse from the state senate seat won by Adelson a few years back. We wish Mayor Bartlett the best. Tulsa has a ton going for it right now with the BOK Center drawing national acts, a strong small business and entrepreneurial community and downtown baseball (Saxum client, OneOK Field), a hallmark of great communities, just a few months away.
We knew it could happen, but hoped things would improve. State revenue projections look like they’ll be off for the rest of this fiscal year and next. The legislature should work with agencies to cut as much as possible and then tap the Rainy Day Fund for the rest. In talking with a large school superintendent friend, he shared that this year’s budget, which is concentrated with teacher salaries, is already set. More cuts threaten core services. If the gap is partially covered this year, then he can make difficult hiring decisions next school year. Kudos if leaders of both parties can come together and work on this tough issue.
Read the full story »
Since the official opening of the ProCure Proton Therapy Center in Oklahoma City in June 2009, the facility has seen its first group of patients complete treatment and has added an additional treatment room. The center is the first in the state of Oklahoma and the sixth in the country to provide proton therapy, an alternative to X-ray radiation that spares healthy tissue and results in far fewer short- and long-term side effects.
The center recently added an additional Gantry Room, which doubles the number of patients and expands the types of tumors the center can treat with proton therapy. The first group of patients completed treatment in November 2009. Patients with head and neck, brain, central nervous system, prostate and some pediatric cancers, among others, are being treated at the 60,000 square ft. facility. Patients are coming to the center from all over the state of Oklahoma, as well as from neighboring states.
The ProCure center will treat 1,500 patients per year.
To learn more about proton therapy and the ProCure Proton Therapy Center in Oklahoma City visit http://www.procure.com/ok or call (888) 592-2854.
Read the full story »
