CyanPoint Communications

11/03/2025

🎉 We made it! 🎉

November marks 15 years in business, and we’re celebrating all month long!

That’s 15 years of connecting through stories, building meaningful relationships, and making an impact through communication that cares. 💬💙

We’re grateful for our kind clients, collaborators, and colleagues who’ve kept us going (and growing!) all these years. 🌱

To mark this milestone, we’re dedicating November to what’s always guided us: kindness in communication. 💫 We hope to inspire kind words all month long.

👉 Read all about our anniversary celebration and what’s ahead below! 👇

10/31/2025

🎃✨ To all the wonder women living with Down syndrome as their superpower — Happy Halloween! You inspire us every day to lead with kindness and confidence. 💪💛

The flashback on the left (circa 1975) shows Founder Karyn Odway's homemade Wonder Woman costume while her brother Gary’s getup is Popeye. Underneath it is his true superpower: Strength through kindness. 🫶

Here’s to celebrating the superheroes in our lives — those who remind us of the diversity of superpowers. And let’s make the last day of Down Syndrome Awareness Month super sweet – filled with treats (no tricks!).

10/31/2025

Some as we glean from our journey.

🌟 Consistent, Collaborative Communications in Crisis 🌟

When COVID-19 hit in March 2020, uncertainty spread just as fast as the virus. A rural hospital system knew it had to be more than a care provider, it had to be a trusted leader in the community.

✅ We helped launch a dedicated website within two months, offering clear, consistent updates.

✅ Partnered with 43 organizations and leaders from mental health centers to local colleges.

✅ Produced content (50+ articles) reinforcing key safety behaviors during the pandemic.

💡 Lesson learned: In times of crisis, hospitals that lean into local collaboration and consistent content can strengthen community trust.

🔍 PR Pros: How have you handled an ongoing crisis impacting the broader community?

10/30/2025

✨PR/Marketing Communications Pros, we’re continuing our “lessons learned” journey—a look back at our work over the past 15 years in hopes of sparking new ideas for your PR campaigns today. Many of our early clients have since been acquired, merged, rebranded, or moved on. Still the experiences and insights realized are relevant today. We hope the past can inform the present and shed a brighter light on the future.

🌟 Client Success Story: Strengthening Connections for Better Patient Care
🏥 When a four-hospital health system centralized its orthopedics and spine program, it faced a critical challenge: how to strengthen connections with referring physicians and clinicians to sustain quality patient care.
✅ We launched an education-focused PR campaign, positioning 40+ orthopedic and spine specialists as thought leaders. Over 5 years, that meant:
✔️ 35+ speaking opportunities at medical conferences & learning clinics
✔️ 35+ articles in trade publications
✔️ 38% increase in overall results from year one of the program
👉 The impact of connecting expertise with educational opportunities? Providers earned reputations as “phenomenal” speakers with “well-researched” insights while building valuable referral relationships that improved communication and patient care.
💡 Lesson Learned: Thought leadership isn’t just about visibility. It’s about creating meaningful connections that strengthen trust, open doors for collaboration, and directly impact patient outcomes.

🔍 PR Pros: Do you have a takeaway to share on thought leadership campaigns of your own?

10/15/2025

✨Our 15 Years of Stories journey leads us to through communications that impact people with disabilities and their families.

🌟 Client Success Story: From Local Resource to Nationally Recognized Leader 🌟
✅ Situation: A powerful mission, but limited awareness in the early 2010s. More families and professionals needed to know about the resources of a business created for the special needs community.
✅ Solution: We launched a media relations campaign, spotlighting the founder at major conferences and positioning her as the go-to subject matter expert on special needs future care planning.
📈 Results:
- Featured in American Banker + Financial Planning
- Quoted as an expert in The New York Times
- Families reached out + online community grew
- Elevated to nationally recognized leader in future care planning

The brand became a trusted source in the special needs community.

💡 Lesson Learned: Strategic PR engages the right people to hear and act.

🔍 PR Pros: How have you strategically reached out to the disability community and engaged with people who have special abilities?

10/09/2025

Remembering this content that shows the then “new way” of stepping toward healthier living for adults with Down syndrome. An inspiring story with sound health advice that holds true today.
https://www.ahchealthenews.com/2014/07/14/living-life-to-the-fullest-with-down-syndrome/

Through role models and support, see how one man with Down syndrome keeps his life on the healthy track.

10/08/2025

✨In honor of Down Syndrome Awareness Month, we wanted to highlight a special assignment that brought us great joy. Scripture says, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35) We truly were blessed by this work, and we learned a valuable lesson along the way. We hope this “lessons learned” journey looking back at the past 15 years sparks new ideas for your next PR campaign.

🌟 Client Success Story: Awakening Awareness of Impact and Need 🌟
In the early 2010s, a nonprofit medical center serving teens and adults with Down syndrome faced a challenge: mounting financial needs as its patient base grew and its model of care evolved. It also had a donor base mostly unaware of a growing gap. Government reimbursements and private insurance for medical services covered less than half of costs, and the center’s larger health system absorbed the difference, but a push in philanthropy would limit the deficit and position the center to expand its new lifestyle and wellness programs critical to patient health and independence.

Through pro bono PR support, we developed media and content tactics that spotlighted the center’s life-changing impact with robust results.
Nine placements across TV, print, and digital, including a WGN-TV feature on why people with Down syndrome are living longer and a Daily Herald profile on how volunteering improves health.

A health system e-newsletter with tens of thousands of subscribers featured new research on medical screenings and healthy lifestyle guidance that showcased the center’s annual run/walk fundraiser.

The coverage turned into a fundraising tool as staff leveraged media clips in grant applications and donor outreach.
👉 The outcome: Stronger donor relationships, new funding streams, expanded events, and increased participation in lifestyle education programs – all promoting the center’s vision for healthier, longer lives.

💡 Lesson learned: Greater donor engagement is realized through authentic storytelling that shows human impact, raises awareness, and encourages growth.

🔍 PR Pros: Do you have a takeaway to share from nonprofit or pro bono work you have done over the years?

10/07/2025

🌱 15 Years Rooted in Relationships
Approaching 15 years in business is more than a milestone; it’s a moment to pause and ponder what sustains growth. For us, much of it has been about relationships. Every client we’ve served came through a referral. More than half have stayed with us for over three years. And every success — from media placements to thought leadership wins — has grown from connecting through trust, excellence and collaboration.

We’ve journeyed through 15 years of storytelling, PR strategy, and staying true to our niche in healthcare and disability communications. But at the heart of our story are the people and partnerships that helped us get here.

👉 Read our latest Milestone Moments: Journeying in Rooted Relationships: https://lnkd.in/gJujHb77

10/02/2025

✨ Since November 2010, CyanPoint Communications has been about one thing: results. Over the next several weeks, we’ll be sharing some client success stories. Many of those early clients have since been acquired, merged, rebranded, or moved on. But the experiences? The insights? They’re as relevant today as ever. As scripture says, “…there is nothing new under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 1:9), but the hope is the past can inform the present and light the way forward.
👉 Join us on this “lessons learned” journey—a look back that just might spark new ideas for your PR campaigns today. We start with our first client.

Client Success Story: From Overlooked to Orthopedic Leader
🏥 In Chicago’s crowded healthcare market, four community hospitals – part of a new health system – wanted to build the reputation of its orthopedics program to rival Chicago’s biggest academic centers.
💡 By strengthening the brand around its world-renowned surgeon leader, we launched a media relations campaign.
📰 Secured media feature stories, highlighting advanced procedures
👨‍⚕️ Engaged 25+ surgeons as trusted experts
📝 Created patient-story content, driving web traffic

👉 The result? The health system’s orthopedic center became a recognized leader, experiencing a boost in patient calls & new referrals.
🌟 Lesson learned: A strong reputation is earned one genuine story at a time.

🔍 PR Pros: Do you have a takeaway to share from your own reputation building campaign?

09/23/2025

When was the last time you stopped to consider your career path?

Milestones naturally invite moments of recollection. As I approach a business anniversary, I pause and wonder about the storied public relations path of CyanPoint Communications—our past experiences and present situation. The process has been both humbling and uplifting.

Read on and then ask yourself: What wisdom can you gain from reflecting on impactful moments in your work life?



https://cyanpoint.com/2025/09/looking-back-before-moving-forward/

09/23/2025

🍂Fall is the perfect season to pause and reflect—on the roadways we’ve traveled, the milestones we’ve realized, and the lessons we’ve learned along the way.🍂

It’s also a time to rev up and refocus for the road ahead. With the final quarter of the year in view (Q4 starts next week!), we’ve got 15 weeks left to reach our goals – with purpose and impact. Here’s to a season of reflection, renewal, and results. Let’s make every mile count. 💪✨🏁✅

09/18/2025

Once a journalist, always a storyteller. 📝

In 2019, CyanPoint Communications Founder Karyn Odway had a chance to revisit her 1990s broadcast journalism roots in Wausau, WI. 📺Dozens of WSAW-TV NewsChannel 7 “graduates” came together to honor our legendary news director, Mark Zelich, who was about to celebrate 90 years young that September.

The now-longest serving anchor of NewsChannel 7, Jeff Thelen, asked her to be part of his “Whatever Happened To…?” series. What a full-circle moment—from working alongside Jeff in the mid-90s to being interviewed by him decades later.

A brilliant reminder of how storytelling connects past to present. 💡Stay tuned for how CyanPoint Communications will carry that creative storytelling spirit forward. ✨ Courage.

https://www.wsaw.com/content/news/Whatever-Happened-to--Karyn-Odway-565133122.html

Kareyn Odway was an anchor, reporter and assistant news director at NewsChannel 7 in the early to mid 1990s. And she helped it through a major time of transition, treasuring the entire time.