This week, GSG Partner and Managing Director Tanya Meck spoke at PRovoke Media’s Global Summit, hosted at The Watergate Hotel in Washington D.C. The Summit brought together public relations experts and senior practitioners to address issues and discuss trends within the industry.
Meck was a featured speaker on the panel titled “Maximizing The Success of ‘Non-Traditional’ Hires.” The panel also featured Tilo Bonow, Founder and CEO of PIABO, Shayoni Lynn, Founder of Lynn, and Paul Holmes, Founder and Chair of Provoke Media, who moderated the discussion. The expert panel reflected on the challenges of expanding the talent pool outside of the traditional PR agency hire and the best practices for integrating these types of hires into an agency. The need to continue to evolve the definition of a diverse workforce in an ever-changing industry was also discussed, both in regard to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and the industry’s intellectual diversity.
Meck mentioned that an example of GSG’s non-traditional hiring involves its creative agency The L@B, and she highlighted that while GSG is best known as a public affairs firm working with companies in highly regulated industries, the firm has “brought in a Madison Avenue Creative Director who up until that point had only done consumer PR.”
She added that “the world around us is changing, and we can no longer rely on the same ideas and approaches that we may have utilized in the past. I don’t simply mean new technology and platforms – I mean evaluating and addressing our clients’ challenges in a fundamentally different way. And that means that we must attract and engage talent that brings alternative viewpoints and experience to the group.” When asked about the impact non-traditional hires have had on GSG, Tanya answered “One of the things that I have learned and continue to learn is that bringing in [new] viewpoints, and making us think differently, has been a huge benefit to our clients – and also to us. Anytime I catch myself thinking or saying, ‘that’s not the way we do things,’ or ‘that won’t work because…,’ it’s a flag for me to step back and pay attention. Maybe this is an opportunity to improve our work or grow our business!”
