You may or may not have read this BusinessWeek article. “Getting Creative With Mad Ave” (It kept me entertained while waiting for stitches in my left hand at the hospital this weekend). Upon first glance it seemed like a typical story about a cool marketing strategy, but upon further reading I learned that it was much more than that; To find the right agency, MINI Cooper did something quite different before signing on the dotted line, they did a “quirky trial-by-immersion.” During the article, you learn how important cultural fit, hunger for the business, and time investment played into the decision of which firm to eventually hire. Well worth a read for those of us in the communications consulting world. It also sheds some new perspective on the continued importance of brand and perception…

“It’s not uncommon, for relationships between a marketer and a new agency to hit the rocks in less than two years for having failed to bond earlier. So over the two-month-long shootout, says MINI marketing manager Trudy Hardy, the carmaker treated each agency as if it were already working on the brand.”

- -John Welton

Writing the title to this blog post gave me a chuckle as it reminded me of the cult movie Airplane!. In one scene weighty reading materials are being distributed by the airplane attendant who ultimately hands a passenger a leaflet entitled Great Jews in Sports, suggesting this is a rarity.

As a young professional in the fast paced world of communications consulting I often come across many great business leaders. As a Jewish professional living in San Francisco, third among U.S. cities in Jewish population (behind New York and Los Angeles), I was given a rare opportunity to meet one of the great Jews in business, Terry Semel, Chairman and CEO of Yahoo!.

Invited by the Jewish Community Federation I attended a Business Leadership Counsel breakfast featuring Mr. Terry Semel as the guest speaker. During the breakfast he discussed what it takes to be a leader in business and outlined many qualities. One in particular caught my attention, teamwork. He explained business, like sports, can have its superstar but without a team nothing is sustainable. With this I drew an understanding as to why Mr. Semel is CEO of Yahoo!. As the world converges online, Yahoo! has continued to develop relationships and partnerships that help to make it one of the leading global Internet communications companies of our time. It takes a leader who understands the concept of teamwork to bring many moving parts together as one. 

The speech encouraged me to approach Mr. Semel after the breakfast and I was greeted graciously and with a firm handshake. Thank you, Mr. Semel, for being an inspiration a leader and a great Jew in business.

-Josh Gershman

Just a quick pointer to Andrew Gordon’s piece in PRWeek (sub req’d) on the communication and marketing efforts behind browser darling Firefox and the good folks at Mozilla. Voce’s Colin Crook shares his thoughts on the space, what it means for M$FT and highlight’s our work with open source browser startup Flock. Colin was part of the “open source marketing” effort at Mozilla and now brings this knowledge to the Flock team.



A couple months back, Colin chatted about Voce’s work with the Flock team - there’s a podcast available for your listening pleasure. Colin sounds much smarter in print.

– Voce Nation

Voce is on hand at this year’s CES show in Las Vegas and it’s turning out to be quite the scene.  The big difference from last year’s show is that in early 2005 the industry was trying to create momentum. The mood was forced.  Companies were tired of the downturn and wanted a good year with fresh, innovative products. What a difference a year makes.  This year’s show has energy.  There is an optimistic undercurrent and companies and people are excited to be here introducing everything from the latest car stereos and plasma TVs, to chip sets and digital connectivity solutions.

But the real mark of whether CES has punch is the after-show party scene and this year vendors are spending big on parties.  Intel had the Black Eyed Peas.  AMD had the Black Crows.  Microsoft had The Killers and tonight, Monster Cable has Stevie Wonder.  So far though, our client Yahoo! has pulled out the biggest gun — Tom Cruise.  He joined CEO Terry Semel on stage during his keynote and then went to the Yahoo! tenthouse to meet some fans.  Voce’s been at all the right spots to take some pictures - enjoy!

The Voce Nation returns from holiday bliss today after a week off to rest, relax and reflect on, well, whatever. For some folks it was time to reflect on family, for others it was food and for a select few it was bad football bets — but for all of us it was one thing: sleep. The important thing here is that we were given the *time* to shift down, re-connect with our interests and re-energize for the new year. Thanks again Mama Voce.

Today we return to the PR mix, refreshed, fired up and itching to kick-start 2006. And to help with that, we all began the day reading PR Week’s “Who to Watch” story (sub req’d) which names Voce among its four “Agencies to Watch in 2006:”

Launched in 1999, Voce managed to survive the downturn by focusing on a consultative model, particularly so that it could hang on to senior staff. Now on the growth track for the past two years, Voce has positioned itself according to its specialties, including one called Digital Advocacy. Working with such clients as Network Appliance and Yahoo, the firm is making its name as one that is truly steeped in new media, and not merely because the entire firm blogs. This year should be the time when Voce, led by president Richard Cline, starts to raise its profile and prove its mettle beyond its extremely loyal and rapturous client base. After all, this is the company that helped Yahoo launch its first foray into the blogosphere. That’s the kind of credibility that many firms launching new-media offerings can only dream of.

2006 is going to be amazing, here we come…