by Allen Caudle, Vollmer COO
Every year when the O’Dwyer’s rankings come out I’m thrilled to see confirmation of what we have achieved at Vollmer, a top 50 ranking of independent firms nationally, clearly the number one firm in the Southwest with a recognizable expertise in eight different areas. Then the little businessman sitting on my shoulder says “if you’d focus on one of those areas of expertise you’d make more money.” And the entrepreneur guy sitting on my other shoulder says “let’s push harder in travel and environment and see if we can crack the top 10 next year, and we’ve got great people working on healthcare and food, let’s make a push there for 2009, and education is recession resistant, let’s grow that even though it’s not even measured.”
So every year, I have to sit down and have a meeting with myself and re-justify this insane business plan. Why do we have four offices? Why do we have so many established practice areas, when everyone tells us the era of the generalist firm is dead? Wouldn’t we make more money if we specialized? The answer is always probably, but that’s not what drives us. At Vollmer, we do the work we do, we have the expertise that we have, because someone had a need and we have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and the ability to bring that to play for our clients to their benefit and ours. We have summed it up in our brand definition as “passion and expertise in action”.
If one of our people comes to us and says I see an opportunity and I want to become an expert in X, we will work with them to see how we can make that opportunity a reality. When a prospective client comes to us and works in an industry that we are not familiar, it would be “more profitable” to walk away saying we don’t know that industry. Instead we say “let us come up to speed on your industry and show you how we can apply our expertise as PR professionals to develop a program for you”.
I’m proud of what we have achieved. I look forward to facing new challenges and new opportunities in 2009. I am thankful of our client relationships that allow us to do great work. I appreciate the passion and expertise that has achieved the following rankings:
O'Dwyer's National Rankings - Vollmer:
#50 Independent firms nationally
#12 Travel and leisure expertise
#15 Environmental PR
#28 Entertainment PR
#31 Professional Services PR
#42 Healthcare PR
#46 Food & Beverage PR
#54 Financial PR
#58 Technology PR
Generalist firm? Or passion and expertise in action?
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