King Family Vineyards is best known for its outstanding wines, nestled in the hills of Crozet, just a short country drive away from Charlottesville. KFV is also known for drawing large crowds. In this Five in the Hive episode, we discuss what role events play in the vineyard's overall marketing strategy.

Introducing Five in the Hive, our video blog "vlog" series about all things related to PR, marketing and graphic design. We will be featuring local brands we admire each month, and we're open to ideas. Enjoy this first installment featuring...us!

In March, we were hired by the Virginia tourism bureaus of Winchester-Frederick County, Shenandoah County, Rockingham County and Harrisonburg City for a destination marketing campaign to help brand a winery/brewery/cidery/distillery trail. Here's a case study outlining our work for this branding project.

In this day and age, accessibility of content is at the forefront of Millennials’ minds. This demographic has been noted to “disrupt trends” as the consumer-provider relationship has shifted to the power of the consumer. It is now more important than ever to understanding the habits of Millennials as they begin to age and move into their spending years.

Millennials. With a majority of this generation now in the workforce, they currently command an estimated $1.3 trillion in annual consumer spending. Their buying habits tend to differ greatly from the generations preceding them. However, Millennials’ buying habits can be easily understood when you look closely at what they care about. Here’s a quick glance at what matters most to this generation when it comes to supporting brands.

According to Forbes, there are 80 million millennials in America alone, and they represent about a fourth of the entire population, with $200 billion in annual buying power. Simply put, it's important for us to consider this influential group if we want to get their attention. Here are three key ways to nail millennial marketing.

The idea behind Inbound Marketing is to attract ideal customers through targeted online marketing. No more "fingers crossed" for a prospective client to call after you blast out an email. No more cold calls and blindly chasing potential customers. Instead, there is a very specific methodology behind Inbound Marketing that turns visitors into leads, leads into clients, and clients into promoters of your business. Sounds good, right?

In a 30-day experiment, it was found that the click-through rate (CTR) of posts containing photos is 128% higher than the CTR of posts containing videos or links. We also know photos on Facebook generate 53% more "likes" than the average post. To help you out, we've got a couple of great resources for license-free photos that will keep you from violating copyright laws.

We've conducted public relations and marketing campaigns for several franchises, and individual franchisees, over the years. With each experience and client, we've learned some general do's and don'ts when it comes to marketing a franchise to consumers. If you're a new franchise owner or manage a national franchise brand, this one's for you.

Fortunately, we live in an area - Charlottesville, VA - that has a lot to offer tourists. One popular tourist attraction (and gaining popularity by the minute) is our area's vineyards and wine trails. Recently, though, we've noticed a trend emerging: wine trails expanding to encompass breweries and distilleries helping Virginia tourism. Something for everyone, right?

As brand specialists and marketers often working in the food and beverage industry, one element of our job is to create strong messaging that will help drive awareness and sales of our clients' products. Part of what we rely on when crafting these messages is research data.

We were hired a few years ago by Snip-its, a national salon franchise just for kids. Our work for Snip-its spanned from national media relations to social media strategy to grand opening PR campaigns in markets across the country. Snip-its is a great brand for many reasons, but we love it most for its support of families and children with autism.