It’s about relationships, people!!!

Posted by Paul Holman of AHA Creative Strategies on February 01st, 2012

My friend, mentor and former boss, Della Smith of Q Workshops, is a smart cookie. She may, in fact, be the smartest person I have ever met. (And I have met a lot of really, really smart people!)

Now, I am not sure I would put Della up against Jeopardy genius Ken Jennings—that’s just a different kind of smart (and one that I believe has more to do with memory than anything else). But I have seen Della in a wide range of scenarios—from dealing with an organization facing a huge crisis to sipping a cold…

Going the distance with your PR campaigns

Posted by Paul Holman of AHA Creative Strategies on January 27th, 2012

In today’s AHA Fast Take Friday, Ruth uses her training for the Vancouver Sun Run as an analogy for a communications outreach.

The art and science of telling a great (corporate) story

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on January 19th, 2012

Telling your organization’s story isn’t as easy as some would think, but it certainly isn’t hard. It does take some time and effort, but the results provide excellent return on investment.

The fact is, stories are being told about your organization all the time. Whether the stories are good or bad, they are being told by clients or customers, by service providers, employees and contractors (and their families and friends), by competitors, your board members, government officials and by the media.

When we start working with a client, we often do a little bit of research and find some of…

Crisis communications – the prequel

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on January 17th, 2012

This blog post isn’t about what to do should your organization be faced with an issue or a crisis. It is about what you can do today, proactively, even if there isn’t the slightest evidence that there might be a challenge in your future. (A word of warning: A small mistake by someone in your organization could get a lot of interest online and turn into a huge crisis. Don’t think a crisis would never happen to you. It can. And at some point, it likely will.)

Back to today’s post…

We are often asked to develop issues and crisis…

Image release form

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on November 14th, 2011

I am on location at a video shoot for a client today and as I took the early ferry into Vancouver (a short 40-minute commute from my home on the Sunshine Coast), I heard a report on News 1130, a local radio station, that grabbed my attention.

It seems that a local politician used the images of two children in campaign brochures without getting permission from their parents. As a communicator, when I see issues like this, I wonder how it happened. In this day and age, taking photos of children without the written consent of their parent(s)…

How to work with your agency

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on November 10th, 2011

At AHA, we feel fortunate that we get to work with our clients. We have great clients and many of the people that we work with have been with AHA for a long time. Several have changed organizations and brought AHA to work with them in their new role.

At AHA, we are consistently focused on finding the best ways to work with our clients. What makes a client stand out is that they focus on finding the best way to work with us. Working in partnership means that we build a mutually beneficial, respectful relationship. We have a commitment…

Content matters

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on November 03rd, 2011

At AHA, we spend a great deal of time working with clients to create interesting, informative and engaging content. It isn’t about what the client organization wants to say as much as it is about what their community or stakeholder group is interested in hearing, discussing, and learning.

For some organizations, this is a big paradigm shift. It can, in fact, be culture shifting. There is a perception with the fast-paced, 24/7 cycle of user-generated content online, that organizations have lost control of their “message.” When in fact, the social media era (in my humble opinion) should be seen as…

Know and understand your audience

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on October 31st, 2011

I recently received an email from an organization in the communications field asking for my input. The email offered me the chance to win an iPod Shuffle. I found it surprising that an organization in this field would reach out to communicators and offer that as the prize. The communicators I know either have iPhones or smart phones that hold music or they already have a music player. And a Shuffle is pretty far down the food chain. An iPad would have been a better prize; only about half of the communicators I know have a tablet of some type.…

The value of an audit

Posted by Paul Holman of AHA Creative Strategies on October 28th, 2011

In today’s AHA Fast Take Friday, Ruth looks at the importance and value of a communications audit.