by Kim Isaza
newseditor@mdjonline.com

May 18, 2012 12:00 AM 

Read more: The Marietta Daily Journal 

Hosted by the Men’s Group at First Baptist Alpharetta, the Classic raises funds to support single mothers and their children who are in need.

Thanks to individuals and corporate sponsors, the event promises to raise enough funds to purchase two used vehicles for those Mothers in need.

Special thanks to our Gold Sponsor, Huddle House, for stepping up for the third year in a row.

James 1:27 tells us that Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this:  to look after orphans and windows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Take a moment and check out the video which explains a bit more….and, if you would like to play next year or become a sponsor, please call Rountree Group at 770-645-4545.

HB, theintegrated marketing communication agency, has been recruited into IPREX, the worldwide corporation of public relations and communication firms which now has 60 offices in its Americas region.

Based in Boston, MA HB was established in 1999 and offers its services in three primary sectors: clean technology (energy producers and the clean-tech supply chain); medical technology (from medical instruments to healthcare software) and high technology (hardware, software, and IT).

Clients in the US and Europe include Attivio, EMC Corporation, ContextVision AB, Valtronic, Confirmit, Hobsons and others.

HB is a fully-integrated business-to-business marketing agency drawing on a wide range of skills and platforms to address clients’ challenges. To ensure smooth adoption of new processes and effective delivery, the agency builds its service model on a foundation called HB Flightplan℠ Methodology, ensuring the long term viability and success of client programs.

Nicolas Boillot, HB’s CEO, said “As we map our growth across multiple industries and geographies, we look forward to a productive relationship with IPREX and its member agencies, including sharing best practices and skill sets for global clients.”

IPREX Americas President Renzi Stone (Saxum, Oklahoma City), inwelcoming HB remarked:“Kevin Hart and Nicolas Boillot have built an exciting integrated agency with strong analytical skills and highly-regarded creative programs. They have had remarkable success marketing complex technologies to a wide range of audiences.”

“We expect HB to fit seamlessly within the organization because of our closely aligned approach and process, and complement our substantial existing integrated marketing and communications abilities. We value HB’s long experience of working for international companies, especially in Europe, where IPREX is also very strong. We expect HB to fit seamlessly into our organization.”

IPREX – the worldwide corporation of public relations and communication firms, has recruited Singapore agency Chrysler Communications to its Asia Pacific group.

Chrysler Communications provides public relations consulting and media relations services for the consumer, lifestyle and corporate communications sectors within South East Asia. The agency’s services focus on senior-level strategic counsel, reputation management, marketing communications, and media profile management for B2B andB2Cclients.

While the agency began by concentrating on consumer and lifestyle markets, founder and Managing Director Marina Mathews is using her personal international business experience toexpand operations in the corporate sector. Chrysler Communications’ work for international serviced and virtual office provider, Servcorp is an example.

Other Chrysler Communications clients include Pangaea Singapore, the world’s most luxurious nightclub,furniture company WTP and several brands in the food industry such as Bistecca, Crust Gourmet Pizza and Senor Taco.

IPREX President Asia PacificPeter Wilkinson (Wilkinson Group, Sydney) welcomed Chrysler Communications to the network, commenting: “With serious investment from many of the world’s majorinternational companies and a reputation as one of the best places in the world to do business, Singapore is a dynamic and growing market, so we’re looking forward to working with Marina and her team.

“The communication industry is becoming increasingly professional in the Asia Pacific region and Chrysler Communications’ approach and delivery match our style perfectly.”

Chrysler Communications Managing Director Marina Mathews said: “The IPREX reputation speaks for itself in this region and around the world. It’s an honor for our agency to be invited to such a prestigious global network of fellow communication professionals.

“Our boutique team has over 25 years of professional PR experience in the Asia Pacific region, and joining IPREX is a testament to our results here at Chrysler Communications.”

About IPREX

IPREX is one of the world’s major corporations of public relations and communication firms. Founded in 1983, its 74 partners have 113 offices in North and South America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific, with annual revenue of US$204m.  Its 1,500 professionals provide a comprehensive range of services for some of the world’s most successful companies.

If you think marketing on Facebook is not only good social strategy, but fun, too, wait until you get into – really get into – Pinterest. In case you have been too busy tweeting and texting lately, Pinterest is a collection of virtual bulletin boards in which the board’s creators (registered member, by invitation only) can select a theme and begin tacking (pinning) onto their bulletin board theme-related photos, either their own and/or those discovered online. And all this is made by the site’s developers to be about as simple as it can get. And remember if someone sees a photo on someone else’s board, they can repin it, too, or “like” it (a la Facebook).

Good exposure? Yes. And fun, too? Definitely. But Pinterest isn’t a good marketing tool for every company. You need visuals to make this work. Products, tangibles you can show off. And women should be key audience for this to work for your company. After all, recent stats show that 97 percent of the 10 million registered users, yes 10 million, are women.

If you don’t have anyone to invite you to be a part of Pinterest, give us a shout.

Pay Governance LLC study finds Say-on-Pay vote recommendations may ignore true pay program alignment

NEW YORK (March 16, 2012) – Shareholders at thousands of companies are getting ready to cast their Say-on-Pay votes and many will base their votes on a potentially flawed interpretation of overall alignment of CEO pay to company performance, concludes a study by Pay Governance, LLC, one of the nation’s premier independent compensation consulting firms.

Proxy advisors – such as ISS and Glass Lewis – provide Say-on-Pay recommendations that guide institutional shareholders in their voting. The single most powerful determinant of whether their recommendations will be positive or negative is the overall alignment of CEO pay to company performance – measured primarily by Total Shareholder Return (TSR).

Many large companies receive “high concern” or “medium concern” ratings for pay-for-performance alignment – and in more extreme cases, “against” recommendations for Say-on-Pay votes from Institutional Shareholder Services – despite the reality that, when properly measured, their pay programs exhibit true alignment.  This may adversely affect the outcomes of Say-on-Pay votes, according to Pay Governance’s just released Viewpoint on Executive Compensation.

Pay Governance found strong alignment of a company’s TSR with realizable CEO pay. Realizable pay is the sum of actual cash compensation earned, the aggregate value of in-the-money stock options the current value of restricted shares, actual payout from performance share or cash plans, plus the estimated value of outstanding performance share or performance contingent cash. The alignment between pay and performance found in these measurements is directly linked to the substantial amounts of stock-based incentives in these compensation packages. Other assessment methods cannot provide this clear linkage of pay and performance because the time period used to measure pay opportunity is usually not concurrent with the one used to measure performance.

“We conducted a review of CEO pay and performance alignment at large companies using the realizable pay model and a pay opportunity tool which simulates the new ISS Relative Degree of Alignment (RDA) test,” said Pay Governance managing partner Ira Kay. “Using realizable pay, we found a better than 91 percent alignment with TSR. This supports our believe that realizable pay is the preferable measure of pay to look at when comparing pay to performance.”

Most evaluations of pay for performance by shareholder advisors tend to only look at pay opportunity –cash compensation and the value of equity incentives on the date of grant – which can create the appearance of high pay compared to performance even if that performance, and consequently realizable pay, is low.

“We have consistently used realizable pay to make comparisons between compensation and performance,” said Pay Governance partner Ben Stradley.

“We have consistently used realizable pay to make comparisons between compensation and performance,” said Pay Governance partner Ben Stradley. “We usually make comparisons over three-year periods, but we’ve been able to use longer periods of time capturing an individual executive’s compensation over an entire career.”

Using both tests, approximately 86 percent of the companies exhibited the same levels of alignment versus misalignment of pay with performance. In more than 10 percent of the cases, however, the opportunity-based test found misalignment (high pay opportunity with low TSR) when pay was actually aligned with performance.

For its pay for performance study, Pay Governance examined long-term stock-based incentives for CEOs who had served three or more years at 374 S7P 500 companies filing proxy statements from 2008 through 2010. The study was limited to companies that had filed proxy statements and had held Say-on-Pay votes by mid June 2011. These firms had median revenues of $8 billion and market capitalizations of $11.7 billion.

For a full copy of the study, please visit www.paygovernance.com.

# # #

About Pay Governance
Pay Governance LLC is an independent executive compensation advisory firm. Our focus is on providing sound advice and counsel on how pay programs attract, retain, and motivate executives to create shareholder value. The firm helps compensation committees and management ensure that compensation programs align pay with performance, while being supportive of appropriate corporate governance and risk structures. For more information, please visit www.paygovernance.com.

The 2012 Single Mothers’ Ministry Golf Classic is set to tee off Monday, May 7. All golfers report to the East Course of the Alpharetta Athletic Club that Monday morning to golf for a great cause. Sponsorship opportunities remain open and you may register until April 30th. Check out the Ministry Fast Facts to see how your round of golf and generous donations benefit those of the Single Mothers’ Ministry.

What he does is build bridges of communication using the myriad of ways open to get a message to the 21st century public.

“We do that using multiple communications platforms to send messages across borders and cultures with pinpoint accuracy,” Rountree said. “We’re a communications architect. We have a story to tell, but today you do it from an integrated platform.”

The company his mother Neva Rountree founded 26 years ago is a far cry from just another public relations firm. But the goal is unchanged. Rountree brings clients to the audience so they can receive a message.

Today, that means using Twitter, QR boxes, (Quick Response – those squiggly lines in a box your smartphone camera can read), Facebook, the Web and other media.

What separates Rountree Group is making sure the communications effort takes the view from 10,000 feet, making sure all of the efforts are coordinated.

Strategic communication is not a single pane view, Rountree said. It’s taking a long-term vision of how a company/brand/organization integrates messages to reach its audiences. Whether you are crossing borders or cultures, strategic communication conveys messages that connect and are delivered with pinpoint accuracy to specific audiences, at the right time.

“Strategic communications has often lacked one key element – strategy, which can result in a series of confusing or even conflicting messages to your targeted audiences. A cart-before-the-horse mentality in any business is a sure path to failure,” he said.

“That’s why our communication bridge begins with a focused strategic plan of action designed to accomplish and maintain your communication goals.”

The 2011 Luminary Star Award from the Public Relation Society of America (PRSA) Georgia chapter is the latest honor from his peers. The Luminary Star Award is given to a PRSA Georgia member who has demonstrated tremendous leadership and contributed greatly to the public relations profession for more than 13 years.

Among numerous awards, Rountree is probably most proud of his two Anvil Awards, the highest award given to those of his profession, akin to the Oscar.

Rountree says what separates Rountree Group from other agencies is ability to successfully tailor campaigns in budget-attentive ways.

“Every client has a different audience. We develop the right platform to send to the right audience,” Rountree said.

“Every company will have a branding issue,” he said. Rountree says it is also important that any company blessed with success should use its time and its talents to give back to the community. Two groups he helps are Single Mothers Ministry and Bread of Hope which serves people in Venezuela.

Rountree also gives back to his industry, serving on the Georgia Southern University Public Relations Advisory Board.

Don Rountree holds the latest award his company has accrued, the 2011 Luminary Star Award, given by the public relations industry.

MINNEAPOLIS – 22 February 2012: IPREX, the worldwide corporation of public relations and communication firms, has recruited Prague-based Donath Business & Media (DBM) to its EMEA region, which now has 37 offices in 21 countries.

DBM has been working in public relations and public affairs in the Czech Republic and Slovakia since 1991, offering a broad range of services in strategic communications consulting, crisis and reputation management, creative services and public affairs.

The company’s reputation is based on client success delivered through its combination of an ethical stance with creativity and the active use of the latest IT and social media tools. Its industry expertise includes banking and finance, retail, logistics, media, pharmaceuticals and healthcare, transportation, software, renewable energy and controversial environmental projects.

Clients include UPS, REWE/BILLA retail chain, Samson brewery, International PhotoVoltaic Investors Club, Czech CFA Society and the country’s largest producer of bottled mineral water, Karlovarske mineralni vody.

Company founder and managing director, Michal Donath, said: “It is our job to foster relations on all levels while preventing unnecessary public affairs

problems, and doing this in the future in the company of many esteemed international colleagues, while retaining our independence, will be both a pleasure and an honor.”

IPREX EMEA President, Christian Hannestad, (The Communications Business, Edinburgh) commented: “With its long experience of international communication work, DBM fits seamlessly into the IPREX worldwide team. The firm’s work is of a very high standard, as their European Excellence Awards demonstrate, and as we develop further opportunities for our partners to work together on client business we look forward to the input of Michal and his team.”

About IPREX:

IPREX is one of the world’s major corporations of public relations and communication firms. Founded in 1983, its 71 partners have 106 offices in North and South America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific, with annual revenue of US$189m. Its 1,500 professionals provide a comprehensive range of services for some of the world’s most successful companies.