Mark Harrison, Founding Partner and CEO

Mark Harrison, Founding Partner and CEO of Abraham Harrison LLC, has a unique history of professional experience, blending technology, education, business, and international affairs. Trained as a diplomat, Mr. Harrison has worked with UNHCR, the IMF, and the World Bank Group.

Mr. Harrison has served as a political functionary, technologist, and journalist in the US, Europe, Thailand, Israel, Tanzania, and Guatemala. Mr. Harrison has served as CTO and Technical Counsel to a companies ranging from Fortune 500's to start-ups, and has guided projects across the globe.

Mr. Harrison has lived and worked in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America and speaks English, German, French, Swahili, and Spanish.

Mark Harrison lives in Berlin and Mauritius

Contact Info

Email: mharrison@abrahamharrison.com
US: +1 (202) 657-4769
Cell: +49 (0)177 781 4856
Fax: +1 (202) 330-5724

Instant Text Messaging

Skype: markwharrison
GTalk: mharrison@abrahamharrison.com
SMS: +491777814856

Chris Abraham, President and COO

Chris Abraham, President and COO of Abraham Harrison, is a leading expert in online public relations with a focus on blogger outreach, blogger engagement, and Internet reputation management. A pioneer in online social networks and publishing, with a natural facility for anticipating the next big thing, Chris is an Internet analyst, web strategy consultant and advisor to the industries’ leading firms. He specializes in web2.0 technologies, including content syndication, online collaboration, blogging, and consumer generated media.

Prior to starting Abraham Harrison, Chris was a member of the Interactive Team at Edelman Public Affairs in Washington, DC, consulting clients such as Wal-Mart, Shell, and GE on blogger and social media strategy. Before Edelman, Chris was Technology Strategist for New Media Strategies, a pioneer in online brand promotion and protection with clients including Sci-Fi Channel, Buena Vista, TomTom, Paramount Pictures, Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Disney, Reebok, EA, RCA, and NBC.

In the early nineties, Chris joined The Meta Network, a seminal online virtual community based in Washington, and so began his career as an expert in online community development, social media, social networking, and online collaboration. Chris has had a web presence since 1993 and started blogging in 1999, focusing on community, connection, innovation, and brand extension. As a technologist, Chris has consulted T. Rowe Price, the US Department of Treasury CIO, Friendster, Deutsche Telekom, and others.

Chris has taught blogging courses for the Writer's Center of Bethesda, has been a guest lecturer on public affairs blogging at Columbia University's SIPA school and the American University in Washington, DC, and is the Emergent Technologies Advisor to the Urban Institute's Communications Advisory Board. Additionally, he is the go-to expert on social media, citizen journalism, technology, and the Internet for BBC World Service, CNN Radio, and CNet's BNet.

Chris received his BA in American Literature from The George Washington University, studied American Literature at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, and studied French at the University of Hawaii. He splits his time between Berlin, Germany, and Washington, DC.

Saul Wainwright, Director of Operations

Saul Wainwright is the Director of Operations for Abraham & Harrison. Saul has worked for A&H for just on a year having worked his way up from OCM to Project Manager to his current position, Director of Operations.

Prior to his work at A&H Saul worked as a Finance Manager for a multi-million dollar yacht dealership in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Saul is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley where he studied Political Economics. Saul focuses on keeping a broad picture of everything that is going on at A&H with an eye to making things flow and operate as we manage a global team of workers and clients across multiple time-zones and continents.

Saul and his wife, Kelly and lovely daughter Eyala, split their time between Oakland, CA and Cape Town, SA giving him the global and multi-cultural viewpoint that brings added value to the A&H team.

Working for A&H enables a life style well-suited to a dual-continental life and Saul feels blessed every day by the fact that he gets to spend time at home with his lovely little daughter. Saul enjoys photography, travel and reading about political-economic theory (any thoughts on "infinite value"?).

Contact Info

Email: swainwright@abrahamharrison.com
Cell: +1 (510) 847-3261
Fax: +1 (202) 330-5724

Instant Text Messaging

Skype: sachutney
GTalk: swainwright@abrahamharrison.com

Daniel Krueger, Director of Client Services

Daniel Krueger is the Director of Client Services for Abraham & Harrison. Daniel spent the past decade producing, editing, shooting, and directing television shows for various production companies and nationally syndicated networks such as ABC, NBC, CBS, TLC, HGTV, Discovery, Fox, and others. Prior to A&H, Dan worked as an Executive Producer for The Electric Sheep Company where he headed virtual worlds projects for clients including the Emmy Award winning Showtime's "The L Word" in Second Life project, Bantam Dell, Ben & Jerry's and CBS's "CSI: NY." His background in television, photography, and his recent foray into online virtual worlds made a natural transition into internet marketing.

Dan is a Pennsylvania native who enjoys spending time with his wife Gretchen and two children Mya and Michael. In his spare time he can be found snowboarding, hiking, playing poker, and attending Philadelphia Eagles football games.

Contact Info

Email: dkrueger@abrahamharrison.com
Cell: +1 (215) 962-4035
Fax: +1 (202) 330-5724

Instant Text Messaging

Skype: dkrueger13
AIM: d13vk
GTalk: dkrueger@abrahamharrison.com
SMS: +12023305724

 

Sara Wilson, Director of Business Development

Sara Wilson is Director of Business Development for Abraham & Harrison. Trained as a historian, with experience in college administration, freelance writing, and non-profit management, Sara is the company’s jack-of-all-trades. Although her primary focus is business development, her other responsibilities include human resources, financial services, and management of our virtual office. Sara knows who at A&H is supposed to be doing any particular thing, and, if no one is doing it, will assign it to someone, or do it herself.

Sara received her bachelor’s degree from Tufts University and moved to Washington DC to attend graduate school at American University. She now lives in Arlington, Virginia with her two children, Casey and Jared, and her husband Ed, who also works for a virtual company and is therefore also at home all day. Their children worry that they don’t really have jobs.

When not working for A&H, Sara works with an association of historians, volunteers on various school and civic committees, beats Casey at Wii boxing, or shares in Jared’s latest interests, which at the moment include playing the cello and watching The Weather Channel. In her very little spare time, Sara likes to attend the theater, read, and do anything that gets her outside, as long as it doesn’t involve a lawn mower.

Dani Sevilla, Project Manager

Dani Sevilla is a project manager at Abraham Harrison and has been working and learning with the team since June 2007. Dani's relationship with the internet and new media has grown from a mostly Google, academic research, and transient blog reader to a mature relationship built on mutual respect and admiration for the wonderful communities that are ever growing and fluctuating in the online sphere.

In the summer of 2008 Dani was able to bring some of the skills she has learned working with AH to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil where she worked with a group of young children to produce a blog to help educate people about the reality of their lives in Babilonia, a small favela in the hills near Copacabana beach.

Dani graduated from Georgetown University with a double major in French and Spanish Literature and minor in Business - which explains her grasp of many key marketing terms like "gangbusters". She stayed at Georgetown to complete a M.S. in Spanish Literature and Cultural Studies and is currently working on an M.A. in Humanities and Social Thought at New York University.

Dani and her two giant schnauzers, two love birds, and one quarter horse all reside in northern New Jersey where she spends her free time hiking, running, writing the occasional term paper and thesis, and trying to get over a series of jumps while remaining on her horse's back.

Lauren Cook, Project Manager

Lauren Cook has been working in the online brand management and social media realm for over five years. Most recently, Lauren was the Executive Editor and Internet Strategist at BeThree.com, a social media platform delivering edgy content on healthy lifestyles to Gen X/Y women.

Lauren got her start in social media at New Media Strategies, an online brand intelligence and viral marketing firm based in Washington D.C. There, Lauren worked as a Project Manager within the Corporate and Entertainment Practices where she helped develop, manage and execute social media marketing campaigns for several Fortune 500 companies, movie and television studios.

Prior to focusing on social media, Lauren worked as a Marketing Associate at The Maritime Intelligence Group, helping to promote homeland security initiatives in maritime ports and educate top officials on the maritime terrorist threat. Her first stint in marketing began at The Advisory Board Company, a health care consulting firm located in Washington.

Lauren holds a BA in English and Creative Writing from Emory University. In her spare time, she's a contributor and trend-spotter for Buzzfeed.com, a site that tracks the web's obsessions in real time. She also writes for The Denver Examiner and is an avid celebrity blog devourer and lover of cookies.

Abraham Harrison in PC World

A reporter from IDG interviewed our CEO, Mark Harrison about how Abraham Harrison uses Google Apps. Check out For Web Apps, Get a Service Guarantee, in PC World.

For example, the Google Apps Premier Edition suite contains an availability guarantee only for its Gmail portion (for 99.9 percent uptime) and offers no commitment for the other components, which include word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software.

“It would be comforting to have an SLA that covered the entire suite,” says Mark Harrison, founding partner of Abraham Harrison LLC, provider of online marketing services.

Abraham Harrison, founded in 2007, has been using Google Apps Premier Edition for about one year, and the uptime of its hosted applications and services, though not 100 percent, has been excellent, according to Harrison. Downtime incidents have been rare and brief, and have never proven disruptive to the company’s operations, he says. “We’ve never been crippled by an outage,” Harrison says.

Still, should a significant Google Apps outage occur, it certainly would impact the company, which is highly dependent on the suite. The company chose Google Apps in order to give its geographically-dispersed staff an array of software to use for communication and collaboration. In addition to the suite’s productivity applications, the company also uses Google Talk instant messenger and Gmail for e-mail. The company’s 22 employees, located in six countries and four continents, operate in 14 different time zones, and since most of their work is collaborative, Google Apps–which lets users jointly edit documents located on a central server–was a better alternative than e-mailing Microsoft Office documents back and forth.

Harrison would also like to see Google Apps provide an offline component that would allow users to work on their local PCs when disconnected from the Internet, a capability he knows Google is pursuing with its Gears technology.

That Harrison would feel more at ease with an SLA is telling. His company isn’t an ordinary Google Apps customer. Although the relationship between Google and Abraham Harrison is purely of the vendor-client type, meaning that the company receives no compensation from Google, the Google Apps team has singled it out as a model small business whose feedback it regularly seeks. As a result, Harrison is in close contact with the Google Apps team.

Abraham Harrison LLC Offerings

Abraham & Harrison offers its clients comprehensive Online Conversation Marketing campaigns. We integrate Online Publicity, Online Grassroots & New Media Marketing, Business Intelligence, Search Engine Services and Online Reputation Clean-up and Defense to ensure that our client’s message, the right message, is being portrayed in every corner of the digital space. Additionally, we offer our expertise in the areas of profiling, intelligence, forensics and crisis management. Although Abraham & Harrison offers its clients the ability to cherry pick the services that best suit their needs, we strongly suggest customized, tailored packages of services for most clients, as our experience has proven the power of an integrated, comprehensive approach.

Abraham and Harrison Services

Online Publicity and Blogger Relations

Not unlike traditional public relations, the Abraham & Harrison Online Publicity and Blogger Relations strategy not only identifies the right people for you to be talking to, but also connects these people with your brand and your message. In this kind of “top-down” influencer outreaches, we identify the demographics and their thought leaders who will likely respond most favorably to your brand, create social media news releases (SMNRs), develop message models for each demographic, conduct a broad outreach, and then personally follow-up with everyone who responds.

Examples of typical Online Publicity campaigns include: Event Publicity, New Product Launches, Crisis Communication, Brand Re-Information Campaigns, Overall Brand Awareness/Promotional Efforts.

Online Grassroots and New Media Marketing

Also referred to as Online Advocacy or Online Guerilla Marketing, this kind of “bottom-up” approach is a means of spreading news and information to a targeted network of online influencers within the blogosphere, message boards, video communities, social bookmarking sites, listservs, etc. As with our “top-down” approach, this strategy involves the development of key messaging in consultation with the client, and the identification of key demographics, but instead of reaching out directly to bloggers and other online thought leaders, our team of Online Grassroots experts engages in conversations about your brand wherever any related conversations are already occurring, allowing us to capitalize on the “long tail,” or the complex nature of online chatter in which dialogue about our client’s brands isn’t always localized within its first-glance demographic targets.

Social Network Sites are a key area of grassroots conversation marketing, and we can create or strengthen your presence in the SNS space, updating and messaging groups that we create and promote on your behalf.

Examples of typical Online Grassroots Marketing campaigns include: Social Network Marketing, Asset Distribution, Social Media Marketing, Viral Marketing.

Online Intelligence

We can provide real-time, accurate business intelligence about the online market landscape, trends in your overall brand perception online, and competitor-analysis. Depending on your needs, the deliverable for this kind of initiative can be a one-time State of the Union comprehensive, detailed report, evaluating and analyzing trends within the mediasphere; blogosphere; user generated content outlets, message boards and forums or can be offered as ongoing trend analysis.

Search Engine Services

Brands of the world, large and small, know that visibility of favorable content within key search engines can make or break your marketing and public relations initiatives. Abraham & Harrison offers full-service Search Engine Marketing, including: Traditional Search Engine Optimization (Promotion), Defensive Search Engine Optimization (Protection), Domain Name Protection and Domain Name Services. We will analyze and report on your current, or planned, site; implement full SEO services (metatag tweaking, copywriting, and submission); and offer SEO maintenance.

Online Reputation Clean-Up and Defense

Despite providing Internet users with a wealth of accurate information, some brands have faced the hard reality of the adverse affects that negative online chatter and mis-information can have. Fortunately, the majority of these trends can be reversed, if treated early and in the right way. By providing clients in need of Online Reputation Clean-Up and Defense services, the Abraham & Harrison team harnesses the power of an integrated approach to attach negative opinions and misinformation from all sides. In combining our Search Engine Services (including Domain Name and Defensive SEO), Online Public Relations, Business Intelligence and our Online Grassroots and New Media Marketing Programs, the Abraham & Harrison team is able to deliver quick results. In the past, we have proven effective in minimizing the visibility of unfavorable content online, countering misinformation with real information and creating valuable allies among online opinion leaders on behalf of our clients.

In this day and age, we don’t need to remind you of the Internet’s effects (be it favorable or dismal) on many popular brands. It is this phenomenon that has made Online Conversation Marketing an ideal solution for a variety of notable brands, ranging from Internet start-ups to public interest groups to major consumer brands. Abraham & Harrison is comprised of a trained team of media, marketing and public relations experts working together to drive positive online presence on behalf of our clients. Operating in a “virtual office,” the Abraham & Harrison team is spread across four continents, representing more than 10 time zones and almost a dozen languages. This dispersion has given us a notable competitive edge, allowing us to quickly and effectively employ comprehensive Online Conversation Marketing Campaigns within more than 50 countries.

In working individually with online influencers and Internet users on both a macro (Online Outreach) and micro (Online Engagement, Grassroots Marketing) level, Abraham & Harrison builds relationships and drives favorable, organic conversation in a compliant fashion. The Abraham & Harrison methods reflect the natural progress of organic word-of-mouth – starting small and progressively growing to reach a larger and larger audience. In respecting the online community, the Abraham & Harrison team stands firmly against online solicitation (SPAM) of any kind. To conclude, Abraham & Harrison is pleased to offer its unique Online Conversation Marketing services to an array of brands and organizations. People are already talking about you online – are you listening?

AHLLC Featured in a Google Apps Case Study

We're proud to be a featured Google Apps Premier case study.
Google Apps gives us a structured, integrated way to stay connected and collaborate. - Chris Abraham, President and COO, Abraham Harrison (Read the Abraham & Harrison case study to learn more)

Abraham Harrison manages a successful virtual business using Google Apps Premier Edition.

Business

To many traditional PR, ad and marketing agencies, the Internet is just another medium, but to Abraham Harrison, it is another culture—one that calls for a completely new approach to marketing. "Abraham Harrison specializes in everything from blogger outreach to influencer identification, brand protection and social media consulting for clients like Friendster, Deutsche Telekom, and T. Rowe Price." "Ten percent of the people in the world influence the other 90 percent in terms of purchases and other decisions. What many companies do not realize is that the people who are tipping the scales are increasingly the world's online denizens, and they may not have fancy titles," explains CEO Mark Harrison.

Approach

When it comes to running its own business, Abraham Harrison remains true to its Internet-centric roots. Besides the two founders, the team consists of 14 contractors spread across the United States, Europe, India and Africa, who often move from one place to another for extended periods of time.

Solution

Whether they are vacationing in the Alps or living on the island of Mauritius, Abraham Harrison employees stay in touch and collaborate using Google Apps Premier Edition. "I plan to move from Washington D.C. to Berlin for a while, but it really doesn't matter because of our virtual work environment based on Google Apps," says President and COO Chris Abraham. "Google Apps gives us a structured, integrated way to stay connected and collaborate."

Abraham initially made the decision to use Google Apps based on Gmail's spam protection, generous storage quotas and ease of sifting through messages. Although Gmail was the initial allure, the extended team has quickly embraced Google Apps as an integrated communication and collaboration system. The company uses Docs & Spreadsheets to help staff track hours as well as create and collaborate on strategy documents, presentations and other client materials. Google Calendar allows everyone to work flexible hours while still saying coordinated, despite being spread across 10 time zones. Using Google Talk, employees exchange insights during conference calls, much like passing notes across a table to share ideas. And the initially unseen benefits of Gmail are becoming apparent; Abraham Harrison is often brought in to work on accounts under the auspices of larger marketing, PR or ad firms and Google Apps makes it easy and automatic for the firm to send out perfectly branded email addresses (mark@largerfirm.com). "The integration and functionality of Google Apps just keeps getting better," says Abraham. "I am always amazed when someone sends me an email from Microsoft Outlook or another application and it gets inserted as a temporary event on my Google Calendar." Several employees also access Google Apps not just on their PCs, but also from mobile phones and other devices like the BlackBerry. "I can be out hiking in the Alps, and still stay in touch on the work front," says Harrison. "I even use Google Gears to help ensure that when I lose Internet connectivity on a train, I don't lose any data."

Results

For Abraham Harrison, Google Apps Premier Edition gives staff powerful communication and collaboration tools that have brought productivity to the next level. Google Apps is bringing an expert team of relationship marketing experts together from around the world to produce results for clients. "Google Apps are beautifully designed, and have definitely been a factor in our rapid expansion," says Harrison. "We're big Google fans, and look forward to even bigger and better enhancements to Google Apps."

About Google Apps

Google Apps is a suite of applications that includes Gmail (webmail services), Google Calendar (shared calendaring), Google Talk (instant messaging and voice over IP), and a Start Page for creating a customizable homepage on a specific domain. Google Apps offers editions tailored to specific customer needs, including a Standard Edition (ideal for family domains), Education Edition (K-12 schools, colleges and universities), Premier Edition (businesses of all sizes) and Partner Edition (Internet Service Providers and portals).

An Outline of What We Do

Abraham Harrison, LLC is a Public Relations company dealing solely in online media. AHLLC has two practices: Promotional online PR, and Defensive online PR

1. Promotional online PR is about getting the client’s message out
   1. Three methodologies:
      1. Top-down Online Influencer Outreach
         • Blogger and community gatekeeper outreach in order to get those influencers to be the mouthpieces for our clients.
           • We do the elite A-lister high-touch, personal relationship management
           • And B-Z lister “long-tail” outreach
      2. Social Networking Site (SNS) presence creation and management
         • Creation, development, and upkeep of profiles, groups, and friend relationships
      3. Bottom-up Online Conversation Engagement
         • Going to where the conversations are happening online (in forums, newsgroups, blog comments, etc.) and directly engaging the conversation that is happening online.
2. Defensive online PR is essentially crisis management
   1. Two methodologies:
      1. Making bad stuff disappear: Online Reputation Clean-up/Search Results Cleansing
         • Establishing client’s hegemony over their search engine results and making the negative content a “needle in a haystack”
      2. Countering bad stuff too big to make disappear: Direct Misinformation Correction via Online Conversation Engagement
         • Finding negative conversation online and engaging it in order to bring the client’s message into the dialogue
         • Quiet and/or neutralize vitriol by bringing the detractors into positive relationship

Company Culture and Working Environment

Abraham Harrison LLC is an Internet-based company that takes advantage of the medium in which we work to maximize the freedom and quality of life of our company's employees. We value:
Freedom. Because our people span ten time zones and three continents, all work is completed online. We have no dress code, no office hours, and no meetings. We use email and online document sharing so that work can be completed during times that work best for the employee.
Accountability. We are a team of highly independent, self-motivated, self-managing experts in our fields. Our associates have the right to choose whether or not to work on a particular offered project.
Professionalism. We work to stay free of the ego and drama that taint many workplaces, and focus on the strict discipline of extraordinary professionalism.

Our Team at Abraham Harrison LLC

Abraham Harrison is a company of 22 people stretching across 14 time zones, and living in five countries on four continents. We are of four nationalities and six ethnicities.

Among us we speak not only English, but Spanish, Afrikaans, German, French, Hindi, Swahili, and Arabic. Our people have lived in the US, UK, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Liberia, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia, Germany, Spain, India, and Egypt.

In this highly international, intercultural, interlingual company that is Abraham Harrison LLC, we meet on the internet and operate primarily in English - and we live our daily lives both on and offline within the constantly morphing cultural boundaries that is our modern cosmopolitan world.

It is our normal daily life that we order lunch in German while phoning with a client in English, then pause to ask a friend a question in Spanish - and navigating in real time the cultural switches that go along with communicating with an Austrian, a Canadian, and a Colombian within the span of 10 seconds.

Equally, and in a similarly cosmopolitan and adaptable fashion, we comfortably and naturally move between online communities of Ivy-League professors, Latino youth, snarky gamers, and growling no-BS New York businessmen - each of these groups has as unique an inside culture and as much protocol that we must carefully respect, as any culture defined by geographic boundaries or national language.

It is this ability to comfortably, naturally, and sensitively move among cultures - both in the online and offline worlds - that make us here at Abraham Harrison so effortlessly able to communicate effectively wherever our clients need us to.

We are cosmopolitans in the fullest sense, and the sensitivity and adaptability we employ in our daily lives and as we move around the globe for business, pleasure, or family, we bring to bear intuitively in our online conversation marketing. 22 people, 5 countries, 4 continents, 6 ethnicities, and 8 languages between us.

That’s the team at Abraham Harrison.