Cocktail Party Talk

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What do you say when you’re at a cocktail party, summer BBQ, or some other social gathering where you’re sure to meet new people who will invariably ask what you do for a living? If you’re a doctor, lawyer, accountant, musician (or one of a host of other professions) the answer is quite easy.  What do you say, however, if you’ve been practicing investor relations for more than 25 years?  Does anybody not in the business understand what that means?  If you generalize and say, “I’m in public relations,” most would probably confuse you for a publicist, with a glitzy lifestyle keeping the latest celebrity in the news and out of trouble.

At PondelWilkinson, we practice both investor relations and strategic public relations, so I asked some of my colleagues how they describe what we do (I’m always looking for ways to be more entertaining at parties). Here is a summary of their answers:

  • We offer strategic counsel to a host of clients with wide-ranging needs. We help clients with financial and general business messaging, maintain positive relationships with investors and communicate with key stakeholders to drive positive business results.
  • PondelWilkinson is a specialized public relations firm, concentrating on corporate matters, from public company issues such as investor communications, to liaison on behalf of public or private companies with the business/financial news media, to crisis communications.
  • We help people/organizations communicate with their key audiences, whether it’s other businesses, consumers or shareholders.
  • PondelWilkinson represents publicly traded companies by interfacing with shareholders, analysts and investors on behalf of clients. We pitch media, plan events and write press releases. Basically, we help companies raise their reputations and build support for the client.
  • We help companies tell their stories to key audiences, including investors, media, employees and customers.
  • We help public and private companies communicate.

Not one of my peers used the words investor relations in describing how we spend our professional time (although one did use public relations). I generally don’t either.  My usual answer is that “We are a consulting firm helping companies, both publicly traded and private, communicate with key audiences.”

How do you describe what you do? We’d love to hear from you.

— Laurie Berman, lberman@pondel.com