What a year!

Like I’ve said before, it’s important to celebrate the wins in this competitive world of public relations and media. So, now’s the time to recap on the year and celebrate all the good stuff! 

Our business has doubled in size in the past 12 months! We are working with clients in Springfield, IL, St Louis, MO, Guernsey and Jersey (the Channel Islands, Europe). Our portfolio of clients is rich and diverse. We’ve worked on state projects. We have worked with politicians. We are involved in a number of non-profits, civic and networking organizations. We sit, and advise, on several boards. We have opened our US headquarters in Springfield. We have welcomed two new faces to the team and we have launched our free, online, lifestyle magazine – Eighteen21.com. 

But what is most important is the recognition, awareness and revenue growth we have achieved for our clients. Several have been shortlisted and won awards. Others have appeared in a range of publications from The State Journal-Register to Guernsey’s Chamber of Commerce magazine, Contact, and on TV from Good Day Marketplace Illinois with host Melanie Streeper to Fox 32’s Good Day Chicago with former Springfield native Natalie Bomke. We’ve seen their businesses grow and as a result the need to increase staff numbers and move into large offices or workshops. 

It’s been a great year and we cannot wait to see what 2017 brings.  Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

Meeting Hillary and reflecting on change, challenge and opportunity

Yesterday I met Hillary Clinton. It was brilliant. I was lucky enough to attend the MSNBC town hall at the Old State Capitol because my very talented friend wrote a fantastic piece in support of Hillary, six weeks ago, which was read by two million people. Not only is Courtney Enlow-Hall my friend, an extremely talented writer, but also the latest addition to Gem PR & Media. We are so excited that she will be working with us to continue the strategic and sustained approach we take when it comes to delivering global public relations, social media and marketing services for our clients.

Each year the president at Illinois Women in Leadership chooses a new theme. Our current president, Cheri Plummer, chose challenge, change and opportunity. I mention this because sat there, yesterday, listening to a woman who is likely going to be the next president of the United States of America and the country’s first female president I thought about the challenge, change and opportunity that had lead up to this moment for me.

The challenge of moving from one continent to another, making new friends and building a business.

The change of living in what my niece calls ‘the other world’, where, as Hillary said yesterday, on average 90 people die each day from gun violence and you’ve lived most of your life on a 25-square-mile island, with 60,000 people in the English Channel and it’s safe to leave your front door unlocked; it’s a big change.

When it comes to opportunity for me it’s about leaving my mark by giving back, by using my experience to help those who need it, whether being PR chair for Friends of Memorial, volunteering for Daily Bread through Rotary or working with people like our friend Tony DelGiorno who is running for the State Representative in the 99th district. I am extremely thankful for the opportunities that have come my way over the past 18 months, living in Springfield, Illinois. I do not take for granted the people I have met, those I get to work with and the growth our business is going through.  

A Trail Not a Trial

We have worked on a range of public relations campaigns since the launch of Gem PR & Media in 2013, but most recently we were involved in a congressional campaign in Illinois, USA. We learnt a lot during this campaign, from conception to completion; we helped create a strategy, messaging and managed media relations, but most importantly we developed a candidate. 

Our job was to guide him through the political maze, which includes the electorate and the media. It was one of the most challenging public relations campaigns we have ever worked on, but also one of the most rewarding. In a congressional campaign where the district covers numerous counties there’s plenty of travel involved, the media is widespread and so are the many meetings, rallies and parades. 

In a political campaign, a key to success is fundraising. Fundraising events are crucial, but also one of our favorite aspects because the support the candidate receives from friends, family, colleagues and proponents encourages them - it reminds them why they are doing this in the first place. 

We had the opportunity to work with intelligent, well-informed and passionate individuals including, people working on the campaign, supporters and journalists. We are excited about Gem PR & Media’s next political adventure. Watch this space.

When Gemma met David

I’ll never forget the day Barack Obama was elected president of the United States of America. My husband and business partner Chris, an american living in Guernsey, booked the next day off work and promised to wake me up in the early hours once the result was in. I watched with him Obama’s acceptance speech, a speech I remember parts of till this day, and that morning I sat at my desk as the news editor of The Guernsey Press in love with politics as much as I’d ever been. When I left the paper to move into PR I told the MD I was taking the leap because I wanted to one day run political campaigns.

This week I met a hero, David Axelrod, one of the brains behind Obama’s 2008 campaign. He was in Springfield, IL for a book signing of Believer: My forty years in politics. We talked about the Illinois 18th Congressional race for which Gem PR & Media is managing the PR for democratic candidate Adam Lopez, about his visit to the capitol city and about Guernsey. On walking away he shouted: ‘don’t ever lose your accent.’ I said: ‘I promise I won’t.’ So in a matter of weeks I’ve met a man I admire as one of the greatest political minds of our time and have joined the campaign to get a democrat elected to a seat in The House of Representatives, which has belonged to the republicans since 1939 - an area which Abraham Lincoln himself served (although he represented the 7th district). What a fantastic start to a our first summer in the USA and the penultimate months in the second year of Gem PR & Media.