Now making its move into the entertainment industry, Laidlaw Group is working alongside top music names to launch a cutting edge plan for the Over My Shoulder Project. Inspired by the unique relationship between Grammy Award winning singer Patti Austin and songwriter/designer Dawn Carroll, the Over My Shoulder Project is a national initiative that uses music to raise awareness about the power of mentoring.

These two influential music personalities are joining forces with Laidlaw Group to promote the project based on an extensive branding and Social Influence Marketing (SIM) campaign with the help of huge names from all facets of the entertainment industry including producer Norman Lear.

Laidlaw Group couldn’t agree more with personal branding expert and best-selling author Dan Schawbel. In his article “Build a Marketing Platform Like a Celebrity” Dan writes about how an online social brand is critical to supporting business or personal objectives.

Laidlaw Group guided Dave Wieneke through social media brand recognition with the design and development of a new Ezine to promote his personal brand. Laidlaw Group devised a social media strategy based on their extensive experience with high profile clients who want to reach out through this exciting new media channel. Ezines mimic the experience of reading an actual magazine with page-turn animation, compelling content and attention-grabbing graphics. You can see the Ezine Laidlaw Group created for Dave here: davewieneke.com.

With a client roster that demonstrates the strength of finding integrated marketing communications partners attuned to the nuances of design sensibility, Laidlaw Group proves again and again to be a perfect fit for interior designers and architects. The websites featured below showcase Laidlaw Group’s ability to translate the sophistication and elegance of an interior designer/architecture firm’s brand into memorable marketing materials.

Gauthier-Stacy Incorporated is a full-service interior design firm offering high-end design and architectural services for residential and commercial projects. Partners Jim Gauthier and Susan Stacy founded the trend setting firm after establishing their reputations at some of Boston’s most noted firms, including Bierly-Drake, Celeste Cooper and CBT Architects.

With mobile devices fast becoming a primary way to access the web, businesses now have a new way to reach their customers. Companies specializing in mobile website design and development create strategies and concepts specifically for the mobile web, while keeping the brand identity and messaging consistent with existing marketing communications materials.

Top 5 Benefits of the Mobile Web

If you have an existing website, you should also think about getting a mobile website, because they are another way that businesses can reach their customers. There are also 5 top benefits of the mobile web:

1.     24-7 Access: Your customers can access your brand anytime, anywhere. All they need is cell phone coverage. No need to wait for them to get to a computer.

With the ultimate goal of building a brand and gaining market share, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become paramount in the success of any business’s web presence. For Laidlaw Group, SEO is simply another key component of an already well-established suite of integrated marketing communications services. In 2010, Laidlaw Group has provided clients including The Debt Exchange, Boston Dental Health and Wellness and Precast Specialties Corp. with its proven SEO process designed to increase visibility and brand awareness for clients’ products and services.

Based on data-driven SEO results such as higher Search Engine Results Page (SERP) rankings and increased web traffic, Laidlaw Group is focused on increasing both client market share and prominence in the market.

rethink:precast, a blog launched by Precast Specialties Corp. is a prime example of how a B2B company combined the worlds of traditional and Social Influence Marketing (SIM) to get results. Precast Specialties Corp. is a precast concrete manufacturer in Abington, MA.

The blog is an extension of the innovative thinking that helped the company gain market share with traditional marketing outreach including a corporate website, print advertising campaigns and corporate literature. rethink:precast targets architects, contractors, suppliers and developers who are key to the growth of Precast’s business. Content of the blog includes information about the economic state of the industry, new and innovative products, sustainability, and the company’s projects, people and partnerships.

The Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth recently conducted a new in-depth and statistically significant study on the usage of social media in fast-growing corporations. This new study revisits the Center’s study of Inc. 500 social media usage for the third consecutive year, making it a valuable and rare longitudinal study of corporate use of these new technologies.

The new study compares adoption of social media over three years (2007, 2008 and 2009) by the Inc. 500, a list of the fastest-growing private U.S. companies compiled annually by Inc. Magazine. For details about the 2009 Inc. 500 and the complete directory of the included companies, please visit Inc. Magazine’s website at www.Inc.com.

A successful social media campaign integrates social media into the many elements of marketing, including advertising, digital, and PR.

For companies, resistance to social media is futile. Millions of people are creating content for the social Web. Your competitors are already there. Your customers have been there for a long time. If your business isn’t putting itself out there, it ought to be.

But before you take the plunge, bear in mind the many myths that surround social media.

1. Social media is cheap, if not free. Yes, many of the tools that can be employed in social media marketing are free to use. These include Google’s (GOOG) video-sharing site YouTube, Yahoo’s (YHOO) photo-sharing site Flickr, the social-network building tool Ning, and content aggregators such as Digg and eBay’s (EBAY) StumbleUpon. Free blogging tools abound too; among them are WordPress, Twitter, and FriendFeed.

However, integrating these tools into a corporate marketing program requires skill, time, and money. The budget for an effective social media marketing campaign begins at $50,000 for two to three months. I’m sure companies have spent less, and I know they’ve spent more.

From large urban research hospitals to small private practices‚ medical professionals from all sectors are recognizing the power of social media to assist them in the brand building that results in successful acquisition of new patients, practice growth and patient communication.

From the live Twitter coverage of a father-son kidney transplant to get more organ donors according to Betsy MacKay, vice president of public affairs for Children Medical Center in Dallas as reported by The Dallas Business Journal to the success of Mayo Clinic experts podcasting about health issues and gaining approximately 76,000 subscribers in one month according to the Jacksonville Business Journal ‚ there is no doubt that social media is becoming more and more important to success in the medical field.