Wheelhouse PR
1545 N. Main St.
Fort Worth 76164
817-945-1450
www.wheelhousepublicrelations.com/
.
Wheelhouse Marketing and PR is nestled into a storefront on North Main Street. The historic brick building houses a colorful vintage Gothic meeting room and workspace for the team behind larger-than-life experiential marketing displays.
The sharply dressed entourage of rocker-type creatives is led by husband-and-wife duo Kell and Julie Curtis.
Kell and Julie both hail from the North Texas area. Kell was a radio, television and film major at the University of North Texas and Julie studied music at Texas Christian University and then music marketing at the University of Texas at Arlington.
The two met at CBS11 where Kell was working and Julie was interning. Kell went on to start Wheelhouse PR and Marketing in 2004 and Julie decided to join the company in 2011 after Kell decided collaborative marketing and “new-wave” public relations that followed the big social media boom was the next big thing in the industry.
“When social media started, I could really kind of see the change [around] 2010 in PR that you really need to have a lot of different avenues and kind of diversify your agency. So that’s what she did; she brought her expertise of sponsorships and branding and working with some national clients,” Kell said.
Because this new public relations medium was uncharted territory, the duo was able to make it their own.
“I was, like, ‘Hey, you’re having all the fun.’ I was working for the agency, I was working for doing sponsorship deals and endorsement deals for big artists and tours and things like that, so making a lot of money for other people. He was, like, ‘You know, I’m traditional marketing and PR. I kind of want to branch out,’ I was, like, ‘Hey! I can come over?’ ” Julie said.
Companies came to Wheelhouse looking for help with navigating the digital world and developing social engagement at the beginning of the social media boom, a skill companies in 2017 have to master to keep up with customers.
“Companies were coming to us looking for full turn-key solutions to their communication. When we talked to them about branding, we’re not talking about just the logo. We’re talking about the way they communicate across every single channel and every vertical,” Julie said. “Keeping that consistent and making it unique and [in] their own voice is a lot of what we focus on when we take on a client that really needs our full services.”
Wheelhouse goes beyond digital overhauls today with what Julie calls three different “buckets” of services to help their clients better relate to consumers or other companies.
One service is a public relations and marketing strategy. Wheelhouse streamlines the voice of companies across social media channels, writes classic news releases and helps create customer pleasing visuals.
It is currently doing that with a startup slated to launch in the next two months. Wheelhouse has been involved since the concept developed two years ago.
“From the very get-go [the startup] wanted a marketing company that could really help them think about how to go to market with a completely new concept and really help them with packaging, messaging and everything – how the app behaves, and all of those specifics,” Julie said.
The second “bucket” of client services is sponsorship. Wheelhouse helps create partnerships that benefit both parties by evaluating the needs of both companies.
An example is involvement with the new Lifetime television show American Beauty Star, where Wheelhouse connected the TV show with beauty brand sponsors that were a good fit for the program.
“We do evaluation and build sponsorship packages by reimagining how either a venue or a festival thinks about a sponsorship, not thinking about it traditionally. We go about it a little more uniquely to really deliver what’s meaningful to both parties so it’s more of a partnership versus ‘be our gold, silver or platinum sponsor.’ It’s a little more involvement, of course, but it makes for really strong partnerships,” Julie said.
The last and most creative level of service offered is experiential marketing, which is meant to touch the consumer, but amplified. Over in Wheelhouse PR and Marketing’s adjacent workshop space, the crew works to bring marketing visions to life.
“I think Pernod Ricard kind of sits in its own bucket in that it’s that marketing experiential that we do for them, which is really touching the consumer in a way that is more elevated and amplified,” Julie said.
Projects for the U.S. spirits and wine company range from 7-foot by 20-foot bar service hedge walls to larger-than-life bottle service thrones and custom costumes. All concepts are created and executed by the Wheelhouse team in its offices and workshop. This is a client relationship that continues to spur growth within Wheelhouse PR and Marketing.
Pernod Ricard owns Absolut Vodka, Jameson, Malibu, Chivas and others. “We manage 17 brands as far as our involvement, activations, tastings. It’s all fun stuff, too — we get to build stuff,” Kell said. “We’ve been working with [the Texas division of Pernod Ricard] for years but they loved what we did and how creative we are and they kept giving us more business.”
That led to expanding their office space on Main Street.
Last year Wheelhouse experienced growing pains as clients started asking for unique experiences to offer their customers, but the duo and their team took the challenge head on, sometimes even building things in their own garages when Wheelhouse didn’t have enough space for large projects.
“We decided the answer is always yes, the client needs it, wants it, we’re going to figure out how to make it work. We had to,” Julie said. “We were pulling together people we knew and talented folks to try to come up with how to deliver these unique scenarios that our clients really need and want. That was definitely a growing period for us.”
Looking ahead, the duo intends to keep moving to the next level and “rolling with it” with their team of creatives.
These projects are “something we want to continue to do with other companies, which is something we hope we get the opportunity to do,” Julie said. “It’s putting your mind to ‘OK, how do we communicate, how do we make [companies] fresh or trusting?’ Those are a lot of the challenges we face every day, but we’re always up for the challenge