Mixing it with my peeps
After more than a decade in the marketing and communications business, I’ve seen my fair share of award ceremonies. Rule number one: always order the vegetarian entree. It’s much harder to mess up pasta than it is New York Strip.
Tonight I joined the Colorado Healthcare Communicators at their Gold Leaf Awards honoring excellence in statewide MarCom initiatives. While I haven’t historically been involved with too much healthcare, I do have some familial ties.
My father was a veterinarian before retiring to Mexico; my mother (now hanging with my dad south of the border) has her phD in psychology; I have two aunts who are nurses and my brilliant younger cousin just got accepted to Med School.
OK, I know…none of that makes me a healthcare expert. But it does allow me to pretend to be one. Or at least be able to honestly say I am intimately familiar with people who ARE experts.
So what landed me in this hodgepodge of hospital big wigs and blood bank benefactors?
It goes back to that “long-play” new business development I’ve commented on before on these pages. In this instance, we were given the opportunity to put together their pre-show and awards-show presentations. It enabled us to not only get a better grip on the healthcare landscape, but also learn more about some of the bigger agency players in the state. After all, most of the big shops dedicate some piece of their practice to healthcare. It’s supposed to be recession-proof, after all.
We had fun putting the presentation together. Pulling in pictures from top-ranked hospital TV shows through the ages. Everything from Trapper John, M.D. to Scrubs. It seemed to go over well. We had a decent amount of complements.
And I collected a good number of business cards. I believe they call it “networking.”
But what I found the most valuable at the Gold Leaf Awards, beside any new business that may or may not evolve from it, is the ability to talk shop.
I don’t get a lot of chances to do that anymore. Even before I launched this agency, I spent time on the corporate side where life as a PR pro is a bit of an island existence. And while I work with many pros in PR and other areas of marketing and communications in my current life, it’s not on a daily basis.
Us MarCom folks are strange cats in that we actually read newspapers still. We follow media. We are fascinated by proposed FCC rulings on Internet usage and comments from government officials that their administration is barred from talking with reporters from specific media outlets. And while we discuss things like “bubble boy” like everyone else, it’s done within the context of PIO strategy and the precarious line where media stops reporting the story for any other reason than to grow outrageous comment threads on their websites to boost traffic (read, online ad sales).
The new beast of media has yet to be defined. Chewing on that, throwing out ideas of what the “future” might look like with others who share the same space professionally was not only valuable…it was fun.
In many ways it reminded me of finding fellow Americans while I lived in Finland. There weren’t many of us living there in the late 90s. Many more Aussies, who whether they like it or not are pretty freakin’ American minus the accent. It’s about “being with your own.” Speaking the same “code.” Laughing at the same jokes.
So, yes, a bunch of folks won some awards. Good for them. They did some amazing work. That’s why they were there. Winning rules.
As for me, I was just happy to talk with my kinfolk for a bit. And now I can’t escape the urge to go find a flag and pledge allegience.
