By Bruce Kupper

LEVERAGING BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT.   Winning awards is nice. However, they are not important unless you have a credible and visionary marketing effort to exploit this type of exposure. It doesn't give me a thrill to read my name in the newspaper; what's exciting is being able to use the citation as a lever for landing a substantial client.

We have found that the coverage is solid from the organizations giving the awards. The real difference seems to lie in two areas. One, you need to inform clients and selected prospects that you are winning these type of accolades, and two, you need to look for trends in the awards you win and utilize these to position your business as such and such in a certain regard.

We have been able to harness our entrepreneurial nature into stories on how we became the marketing department for some of our accounts. We also were able to gain coverage for our representation practice, which combines consulting and strategic marketing introductions for a certain segment of our clientele.

Stories like this give us a certain air of exclusivity in the space we occupy. In addition, since we only enter contests with objective judging criteria, we are able to point to specific areas of expertise when wooing clients. These factors, coupled with our more standard marketing efforts, seem to offer perspective clients a glimpse into our more "cutting edge" approach.

PACKAGING THE NEWS.  This idea of being a proven entity on the edge of new developments has helped us to leverage our exposure and translate it into additional sales. That is because the bottom line is that clients want new and experimental approaches. They just want these approaches carefully tested with someone else's marketing dollars.

So depending upon the markets your company serves and your plans for harnessing the power of public relations, you will find that any one or a combination of these techniques will pay dividends for your business. Your defining moment, however, will be not just the achievement of the coverage, but rather your ability to package and market the materials concerning your operation to your prospects and current clients. That's when you will see your company really profit.

Bruce Kupper, 51, founded Kupper Parker Communications, in 1977, and currently serves as president and chief executive officer. Based in St. Louis, Missouri, the advertising and public relations agency and its European and affiliated businesses have combined annual revenue of $16.5 million and employ 255 people. In 1977, he joined the advertising agency, Young & Rubicam Inc., as account supervisor for the Midwest Service Office. Kupper, who handled both the Chrysler/Plymouth and Dodge accounts, was named the agency's National Account Executive of the Year in 1977. He declined a promotion to vice president in the Detroit office to open his own agency

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