Communicating success and growth
When you open the website for Brookline Public Relations, you are met with: “Your story is one thing, communicating it is everything.” And that is something Shauna Macdonald and her team have been offering to a growing number of clients since she opened her boutique public relations agency in Calgary more than eight years ago.
Macdonald says she was always determined to have her own company since beginning her career in Boston with an advertising and public relations company, after winning her masters in communication degree from Boston University and post completing her business degree at Queen’s in Kingston.
After a four-year stint she returned to Calgary and, at 26 years of age, became vice-president and managing director of FleishmanHillard International Communications for Alberta. It was good experience in running a business that meant being responsible for budgeting, staffing, and business development.
By 2004, Macdonald decided she was ready to launch her own company and, with a staff of one office/communications assistant, opened Brookline.
Getting accounts is one thing but keeping them happy is a sure sign of success.
George Gosbee, then at Tristone Capital, was the first to give her the responsibility of looking after his company’s public relations needs — and still trusts Brookline now as chairman and CEO of AltaCorp Capital.
Other clients were quickly attracted to her early-days roster and with them came the need for more staff and a bigger office.
Today, Brookline has nine PR practitioners plus an administration assistant that enjoy working out of the fashionable and character space on the third floor of the Lorraine Block on 12th Avenue S.W.
Their roles include media, public and corporate relations, event planning and management, crisis management and social media as well as all being skilled in marketing and communications.
They assist all industries although oil and gas, life- style, financial and hospitality are the major categories they handle, vice-president Paula Worthington taking the lead role with many of the lifestyle accounts.
A good number of longstanding clients have been with Brookline for many years. Two restaurant chains stand out as they are both in quite aggressive growth modes.
Founded in Calgary in 1979, Edo Japan keeps the agency very busy helping it open doors to new locations that now top the 100 mark in North America, feeding more than 7.5 million meals each year.
Another is Franworks. Brookline helps this Calgary-based company with its popular Original Joe’s Restaurant and Bar brand, its more recent Elephant & Castle pubs and last year helped promote the new State & Main Kitchen & Bar brand that opened in Lethbridge, Saskatoon, Winnipeg and Red Deer.
Brookline works with Marketplace Events on its Home + Garden Show and the Rocky Mountain Wine Festival is always a fun event for the staff to be involved in. But the biggest and most rewarding of the events it manages has to be the “CEO Rescue in the Rockies” for STARS Air Ambulance. Executives are dropped off in the mountains by helicopter with only a cellphone to collect the donations that will “rescue” them. Last year the one-day exercise raised $1.3 million.
Macdonald has many advocates for the work her team continues to provide, such as Hyatt Regency Calgary hotel, Landmark Homes and AIMCo. Loudest cheer is from entertainer Paul Brandt who entrusts Brookline with publicity — including last year’s highly successful appearances at the Stampede — and media relations. Next month, Brookline will be wowing the entertainment media when he performs at Grand Ole Opry.
Last Friday’s most enjoyable Sien Lok celebration of the Year of the Snake was a Chinatown gala event where politicians needed to be seen. Attendees at the packed festivities included not only Premier Alison Redford and sitting MLAs, Mayor Naheed Nenshi and incumbent aldermen, but also Kevin Taylor, James Maxim and Sean Chu who have begun soliciting votes for their run at the upcoming civic election.
Much more relaxed was Ald. Gian-Carlo Carra, with his wife and baby son celebrating with good food and fun at the 18th Annual dinner at the Home Food Inn.