NEW YORK: Pokemon USA has named Amy Wexler to be its first-ever PR director as the company expands its US base of operations to support the wide range of Pokemon products in America and across Europe.
"We'll be pulling together programs that benefit the brand and maintaining recognizability," said Wexler. "There's a lot of competition right now."
Prior to Wexler's hiring, Pokemon handled PR through its marketing department.
Pokemon has used a New York agency, A. Lavin Communications, for the opening of its Pokemon store in Rockefeller Center, and will continue using agencies for project work, said Wexler. She also expects to be hiring PR staffers for her burgeoning department. "I'm literally laying the groundwork here," she said.
Pokemon USA handles Pokemon products outside of Asia and Japan. Those products include movies, DVD and home videos, trading cards, video games, comics, toys, and licensing deals with Hasbro, American Greetings, and Wizards of the Coast, a trading-card company.
Wexler said she'll be working to produce unified messaging for all those products, as well as for new characters that will be added to the Pokemon universe. She's already been working to gain increased visibility for Pokemon, getting a Pokemon balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and laying plans for a Pokemon character to ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange.
Wexler joined Pokemon from Cairns & Associates, where she was media director, working with clients such as Universal Studios' consumer products group.
She also handled PR at Planned Television Arts, and worked for Ruder Finn.
