WE ARE PCI

PCI’s senior counselors have extensive experience collaborating with organizations – government entities, advocacy groups, membership associations, advocates and corporations – that seek to engage and mobilize audiences around a cause or effort.

We dive deeply into your issue to understand it from all perspectives and through the eyes of observers and stakeholders. Our communications counsel is founded on negotiation, diffusing volatile situations and presenting the human perspective backed by facts and data.

Our senior counselors work with you to evaluate and monitor a crisis situation and provide 24/7 counsel and support.

We provide an honest – sometimes brutally honest – outsider’s assessment and recommendations. We work with your leadership and designated spokespersons to guide you to speak confidently, honestly and proactively through the most effective channels to reach the people who need to hear your message. And we do it quickly.

Because it’s better to prevent crises than manage them, we help you identify, plan for, and mitigate situations that have the potential to negatively shape public opinion and disrupt your business. The PCI team has extensive experience helping professionals across many industries manage their reputational risk through crisis communications planning and implementation.

We amplify your story by drawing from the many offerings in our digital toolbox to engage audiences in a meaningful way and move them to action.

The digital team collaborates closely with each PCI sector – associations, civic and park districts, destinations and culture, healthcare, nonprofit and wildlife care and conservation – to create an integrated digital strategy and program execution that aligns with your organizational communication goals, target audiences and strategies.

We counsel a variety of clients that to reach specific audiences and engage a diverse group of people to accomplish their missions. Our commitment to diversity begins at home. Our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) team members bring unique perspectives to develop and guide initiatives that connect people, programs and purpose. We understand access and inclusion are priorities for many of our clients who want to reach Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and people of color (BIPOC).

Engaging influencers – a form of paid media – can naturally complement your traditional digital advertising strategy. Increasingly, people act based on posts from these influencers, who possess niche subject matter expertise and/or a large following similar to those of earned media. Some of the biggest influencers aren’t reporters affiliated with traditional media, yet we engage with them directly in a similar way. That’s vital, because influencer posts function as virtual word-of-mouth, with 92% of consumers reporting they trust recommendations from their peers on social media more than any form of advertising.

Whether you seek to raise awareness or reactively address an issue, we can help you develop and implement creative campaigns designed to meet your key objectives.

We work hand in hand with you to create the strategy, identify key audiences, develop the materials and assets and then activate the campaign across a variety of channels in a unified approach. This simplifies the process and gets results.

We help you develop the right strategic approach, build the most compelling narrative, and employ the most effective channels to deliver those messages. In an age when communication is rapidfire and audiences are inundated with content, the ability to engage and inspire is paramount. PCI helps you make that happen. It’s important to make your messages come alive through stories, and we can work with you to identify people who can share them, whether patients, staff members, advocates or volunteers, Written stories rich in detail, anecdotes and examples and videos that are shot in the person’s every day setting will help your audiences better understand your messages.

We know what media want and work with you to develop the materials and compelling images and identify spokespersons to generate meaningful coverage from national and local outlets.

Our team includes many former journalists, who have a wealth of experience building successful media relations campaigns on a foundation of compelling messages, well-prepared spokespersons and strong media relationships. PCI’s 20-plus media specialists are in daily contact with reporters, producers, bloggers and influencers. We work closely with you to develop effective messaging by researching timely and relevant information and composing compelling news releases and media pitches to reach your audiences.

Media love anecdotes and stories, and we help you unearth the ones that resonate with your audience and bring your messages to life. The young mother whose life was saved through an innovative treatment, the animal caretaker who nursed the ailing chimp, the pharmacist who connected a struggling patient to affordable medications, the nonprofit determined to float nine giraffes to safety across a croc-infested river. We package these stories with compelling words, images and videos to help media connect the dots between real people and the remarkable actions they taken every day.

Beyond mining meaningful stories for our clients as part of an effective media relations strategy, we equip our clients to tell their own stories. Our media trainers help our clients clearly, concisely, and effectively share and position their stories, whether it be for internal or external audiences, through the use of spoken and written words and images.

The world of events and meetings has changed drastically during the pandemic and we’ve worked with numerous companies and organizations to help them pivot – and fast. News moves with lightning speed today, driven by nonstop social media, and it’s critical that decisions are made quickly – but thoughtfully and strategically, too.

Our team of 40 counselors, media specialists, writers and event planning professionals does what it takes to pull off a successful press conference, annual meeting, grand opening, gala or special event, from planning and logistics to on-the-ground support and virtual assistance.

PCI has a long history of executing and promoting events that make a splash. We have helped a wide range of clients elevate their storytelling via annual meetings, timely hooks and special events. Whether your event is live, virtual or hybrid, our team has the flexibility and creativity to bring it to life in a safe, responsible and engaging manner.

Civic and government relations are complex and communications can be fraught, often dealing with dilemmas and decisions that either unite or divide communities and, if mishandled, can consume valuable time and resources. We understand communications must be nuanced and strike just the right tone.

We work side by side with you to achieve your objectives. Whether developing ballot initiatives, conveying the importance of referendums to the public or helping to pass an ordinance, we embrace a combination of communications techniques to advance your goals. We know it’s vital to understand your key audiences and communicate with them in a way that welcomes their point of view and acknowledges that all share a desire to make their community the best it can be. We help you connect to these citizens and engage them as allies and ambassadors.

We work with you to develop an effective strategy, hone messages, brighten your brand and make your story resonate with audiences to benefit your organization.

Our reputation management clients include associations, corporations, nonprofit institutions, and individuals, and we take the time to understand the story, commit to it and identify the most effective channels and important audiences. We’ve rebranded museums, zoos and schools; showcased the extensive volunteer work and financial support of major companies and corporate foundations; and coached new CEOs on how to define their brand and broadcast their ideas and contributions.

An effective social media presence requires vision. We develop social media strategy playbooks that details a cohesive, integrated plan of opportunities to spotlight campaigns and initiatives within your organization’s existing social media platforms and identify opportunities to enhance overarching organizational presence.

PCI’s spokesperson and storytelling training program prepares speakers to connect with their audiences, whether from the podium, in a television studio, on the pages of a newspaper or in a TikTok post. We’ve trained countless professionals, including CEOs, doctors, musicians, conservation scientists, veterinarians and philanthropists. Most of our trainers are former journalists who provide real-world counsel and insight. And while we prepare for the worst – the hostile audiences and gotcha questions – we focus on building confidence in a fun, interactive and supportive environment.

We learn your business so we can help you formulate and deliver key messages, not generic content. Importantly, we help you unearth personal stories, which bring your messages to life by conveying emotion and demonstrating impact beyond statistics alone. Our media trainers help you share and position your stories clearly, concisely and effectively, for internal or external audiences.

If you don’t know where you’re going, how will you get there? That’s why strategy is at the core of everything we do. We have deep experience helping you develop strategic and communications plans that transform your organization, providing tactics and content that amplify your thought leadership and storytelling to reach the right audience at the right time.

We help organizations of every shape and size plan the future they want and develop a roadmap to get there. Our approach engages stakeholders throughout the process, including through initial surveys and by facilitating group sessions to ensure the final plan offers an actionable, pragmatic path that achieve your goals.

Strong design is an important part of effective storytelling. Our creative design team develops striking content that translates your messages to digestible, relatable imagery, from infographics and motion graphics to websites, annual reports and marketing collateral. We have experience in animation, printed materials, graphics, video, visual problem solving and photography to shape and share stories through a variety of innovative visual content and channels.