Team will create communications strategy across paid, earned, shared and owned media to optimize reach and relevance of client stories

Bill C. Smith has joined The Bliss Group as a Senior Vice President to lead and build a newly formed media team focusing on paid, earned, shared, and owned (PESO) communications strategy and corporate storytelling for leading healthcare, finance, technology, and professional services firms.

The creation of a PESO Media team reflects The Bliss Group’s commitment to aligning our client’s story with the audiences they want to reach. This audience architecture-based approach can apply to positive narratives and be utilized to protect clients when issues and crisis management is required. The PESO team will focus in four key areas:

• Paid Media – Lifting earned, shared, and owned content to a more targeted audience within social media channels, mainstream media, and search engines to expand the reach of stories.
• Earned Media – Securing top tier and trade placements for cutting edge insights based on an audience-driven analytics approach, then optimizing how this story reaches the target audience via use of shared media and light paid.
• Shared Media – Creating and distributing relevant content across social platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, and more.
• Owned Media – Developing engaging written and visual materials for owned platforms, including blogs and websites, while ensuring the voice of social channels is consistent with the voice of blogs and websites.

This holistic function was formed to align with the emerging needs of clients, create new career opportunities for team members, and offer a unique approach that leverages collective expertise within The Bliss Group’s network. Bill will be responsible for helping the agency build upon its strong public relations roots to reach new heights in evolving markets, which will include the introduction of a new and emerging discipline called “search media relations.” Search media relations enables us to identify and reach an optimized set of influencers and organizations, as well as realize the importance of relevant influencers earlier in the marketing process.

“Our clients count on us to approach the media market with the same discipline that they do for their business,” said Bob Pearson, CEO of The Bliss Group. “It is our job to identify how a story can reach its intended audience and ensure that how a client shows up in any media channel, including search, is consistent with the overall narrative important to their success. The days of just gaining coverage are long gone and Bill is helping us usher in a new era.”

Bill previously served as a Group Vice President at Makovsky where he led strategy across the firm’s Financial and Professional Services practice for clients like Russell Reynolds Associates, Mercer, Kearney, Bracewell, UHY Advisors, and Debtwire. He began his career at Dukas Public Relations driving impactful media results for a wide range of accounting firms, investment banks, trade groups, and wealth advisors.

In 2015, Bill received the PR News Rising PR Stars 30 & Under Award. He is a contributor to Talking Biz News and volunteers for the nonprofit mentorship organization Rising Leaders, Inc. He graduated cum laude from Cornell University with a B.S. in Communication Media Studies and a minor in Africana Studies.

The Bliss Group

The Bliss Group is a full-service marketing communications firm with deep expertise in business & professional services, financial services, health care, and technology. The agency’s leading-edge offerings unlock value for clients as data, technology, and storytelling converge in B2B and B2C marketplaces. The firm’s teams are based in New York, New Jersey, and Austin. For more information, please visit TheBlissGrp.com.

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