The August 8-14, 2008 issue of the Pittsburgh Business Times served up some terrific news about which to blog: In that issue, Jack Horner Communications Inc. (JHC) was named western Pennsylvania’s largest public relations agency. 

In Philadelphia, too, where we’ve operated an office for just three years, we broke into the 2008 “Top-25 list of Public Relations Firms” published by the Philadelphia Business Journal.

So what’s the big deal?  Those regional rankings speak volumes for leading independent public relations and marketing agencies, like ours, who “bring it” year after year, in good times and in bad—weathering the last recession and this one.

Besides bragging rights and making my mother proud, industry rankings signal to current and prospective clients that JHC has a solid history of serving the region’s premier clients, with both local and national public relations and marketing programs, and serving them well enough to grow our business.

As a business owner, the latest ranking provides me with an important occasion to thank our past, present and future clients.  Without them and the opportunities that they provide, we are quite literally, nothing.  Thank you, JHC clients, you are really number-one.

A quick shout out to the JHC staff in both the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh offices: you are relentless performers and watchdogs over all things client service.  Your tenacity defines us.

The agency business is not for the faint of heart.  We are driven hard daily, by clients and by our own exemplary work standards, to produce strategy and implementations against targets that have a tendency to move amid conditions that change and change and change.  Amid deadlines that collide and crush.

Yet since we are hyper-committed and great at it, today we are number one.  Until tomorrow.

Thank goodness for the panini maker and beer Friday.