Marion, Montgomery, Inc.

At Marion Montgomery, we consider ourselves extremely lucky to have such awesome clients. This past weekend we got to work with the folks from Shell Oil, the Houston Golf Association and Redstone Companies on the Shell Houston Open — and were reminded yet again to thank our lucky stars!

The Shell Houston Open festivities kicked off last month with our first ever Shell Houston Open tweetup at Houston’s beloved Coffee Groundz. JR Cohen was our unofficial host with the most and the awesome PR folks from Shell gave away passes to the tournament. We grilled burgers for everyone and used the event to start spreading the word about all of the things the tournament does for Houston charities and the Houston economy as a whole.

On Tuesday night of tournament week, we got to attend the Legacy Dinner where Shell honors someone for their humanitarian and volunteer service. Last year, First Lady Barbara Bush was honored for her work fighting illiteracy, and this year it was none other than the legendary Emmitt Smith! Pat and Emmitt Smith Charities strives to create educational experiences and enrichment opportunities for underprivileged children. It was a super fun evening and one of our SHO Social Media Ambassadors, Monica Danna, even got in a high five with Emmitt! To top it off, ESPN’s Mike and Mike were there, because Shell had earlier auctioned off a chance to play with them in the Shell Houston Open Pro Am. The money raised by the auction — $48,500! — went to Mike and Mike’s favorite charity, the V Foundation for Cancer Research.

So what was the actual tournament like for the MMI crew?

Leading up to and during the tournament, one of our main jobs was to be the liaison between the Shell Houston Open core charities and the media. MMIer Sarah actually wrote a post on the SHOandTell blog a few months ago about how fulfilling and moving it is to get to work with the charities. Did you know that since 1992, the tournament has raised almost 50 million for charities? Amazing.

During the tournament we worked directly with the producer Shell hired to cover the event, creating end-of-day recap videos that would be posted to ShellTube, the company’s internal YouTube-like site. I had a lot of fun working with Evan (the producer) on the videos. We focused on the charity aspect of the tournament as well as what the tournament brings to Shell as a company.

When we weren’t managing charity interviews or filming with Evan, we were walking from hole to hole and tweeting up a storm and running with all things social media.

A special thank you to Paul from The Loop Scoop, the CultureMap team, Monica, Chris Pitre and Fiery James for coming out to play with the MMI team. We had a blast with y’all!!

And to Shell Oil, Houston Golf Association and Redstone — thanks for hosting this amazing event that does so much good for so many! See you next year!