News of GCI Group’s merger with Cohn & Wolfe took me a bit by surprise. I sat a little shocked looking at the front page of prweek and thought, “WTF.” In fact, I was so shocked I quickly wrote all my friends who were GCI alums to see if they heard. We all felt the same way: shocked and saddened.
I like to think my PR career began in classic form. I was at the right place at the right time. For three years I stalked the GCI office president, Jeff Hunt (a frequent commenter on this blog—okay only once) through PRSA and TPRA (Texas Public Relation Association) events. I even got him to speak at a PR event I was lucky enough to organize at my university.
I had a job lined up with Apple in its education sales department, when a week before I was to graduate I was told the job had been dissolved. So, I took a risk. I drove 13 miles north from San Marcos to Austin with a newly ironed shirt, a briefcase that only contained my single-paged printed resume and a prayer to the GCI offices to find Jeff.
It jus
t so happened GCI had recently won the Dell account and they were looking to staff up. I walked in asked for Jeff. He was leaving to lunch, saw me and said, “Come on back. I want my staff to talk to you.”
After a 2 hour talk, I was asked to go to Dell to interview for an “embedded” staff position. Ten days after graduation, I started work at GCI from Dell.
I cut my pr teeth at GCI and gained a ton of valuable experience. I worked with great clients, people and companies. I drank the GCI kool-aid so much I have an orange tie that I still wear today as a reminder of my younger days in PR. (not that I’m that old) In fact, my ugly mug was lucky enough to grace the front page of the gcigroup website in that tie.
The energy that came from working at that company was amazing. The client service, the new business pitching, the creativity . I’m actually getting fired up right now!
I really could go on about it, but I want everyone to know how great that place and the people were to me. Julian Read, Jeff Hunt, Lynne Skinner, Paul Walker, Don Bartholomew, Lee-Anne Bustard, Wilson, Talley, Kevin. I could go on. Like I said in a twit earlier: I hope C&W knows the talent and culture they’re about to get.
I heart GCI – and Matty C. There was never a dull moment when you were here. Cheers!
I share your sense of loss. While I never worked at GCI, I am close friends with Julian, Jeff, and Terry, and I’ll miss knowing that long-time name will now go missing. On the other hand, let’s hope this is a good move for the team.