The Communications Group of Little Rock has a new industrial-strength PR client.
The marketing and advertising firm, led by co-founder and CEO Dan Cowling, has been named the PR agency of record for Toyota Material Handling USA, winning a competition with firms from around the country.
TMHU is the marketing, sales and distribution arm of Toyota Industrial Equipment, the Toyota Industries Corp. subsidiary that makes lift trucks and tractors, which the public generally knows as forklifts. Both TMHU and its manufacturing arm are based in Columbus, Indiana, and Cowling said his firm’s extensive experience with industrial clients made it right for the job.
“We’re incredibly honored to be working with their marketing and PR team,” he said, specifically crediting his firm’s industrial business-to-business expertise. “Our iB2B specialists have graduated from motor school, logged hours at manufacturing boot camps and spent hundreds of hours on many plant floors, making Toyota a good match for us.”
Steve Tadd, the national marketing director for TMHU, said his company selected the Communications Group after a national search because of shared values and culture and Comgroup’s “extensive manufacturing and industrial media relations experience.”
The Communication’s Group’s longest-held client is Innovation Industries of Russellville, a maker of elevator fixtures and accessories. Among many industrial clients, the agency represents Baldor Electric of Fort Smith, Tuthill Vacuum & Blower Systems of Springfield, Missouri, and Motion Industries Inc. of Birmingham, Alabama.
The agency would not put a dollar figure on the value of the TMHU contract, citing its policy of keeping private clients’ information confidential, but Lisa Van Hook, Comgroup’s executive vice president and leader of its public relations group, called it a “good account that we worked hard to earn.”
Toyota has been the No. 1 brand in the material handling industry since 2002, according to a Comgroup press release, and one in five forklifts sold in the U.S. is a Toyota.
Van Hook said she and her colleagues were fascinated by the Toyota campus in Indiana, which totals more than 1 million SF on 126 acres. When a current expansion is complete, the combined plant will employ 1,000 workers. Van Hook showed cellphone pictures of its products, past and present, including a red, white and blue model made for the plant’s 25th anniversary. Jason Brown, the firm’s public relations and digital media specialist, told the story of the first Toyota forklift sold in America, and how Toyota retrieved it to put it on display at the plant.
“They found the guy who owned it, and said why they wanted it back,” Brown said. “He said he didn’t want to part with it, and that he used it every day. Even though it was a very old model, it still did the job for him. So they gave him a new model in exchange for it.”
They’re With the Force
The Communications Group was also recently honored for a pro-bono campaign to thank police officers, Behind the Badge. “We started this seven months ago before we saw the kind of horrors we had recently in Dallas,” Cowling said, referring to mass shootings of police. “We wanted to put a human face on law enforcement, for people to realize that behind the badge are fathers, mothers, sons and daughters. We wanted these real people to be seen, and thanked.”
Cowling and Claude Locke, executive creative director, were on hand this summer to receive the Outstanding Supporter Award from the State Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police. The Behind the Badge campaign features 18 Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pulaski County officers talking on camera about their lives, families and reasons for serving.
The officers appear in TV, radio and billboard ads and on a website. The campaign, with the theme of “Tell ‘em Thanks,” also employs bumper stickers and was the result of donated time, media and Communications Group services.
The group’s analysis of the campaign after seven months showed that it had generated more than 150,000 impressions on Facebook, including 16,490 “likes.” It was shared more than 2,500 times. Data for the website revealed more than 6,000 page views.
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