But some things never change
After a decade covering wars, editing magazines and reporting on a new industry called “high-tech,” I founded Metzger Associates in 1991 – one of the nation’s first technology-focused PR agencies. Driven by my journalist genes, nose for news and compulsion to write about every Industrial Revolution paradigm shift I could spin with my trusty IBM Selectric typewriter, I devoted my career to a new professional specialty called “media relations.”
Relating across media is what I’ve always done, and though so much has changed, that’s pretty much what we do here every day at Metzger Associates. But things really started changing about 10 years ago, when we acquired Doyle Albee’s firm, the Legatus Group, and kicked off one of the first “new media” practices in the agency business. We’ve been on the bleeding edge of digital marketing and social networking ever since. Our PR pros work today alongside creative, web dev and SEO specialists, integrating communications across the right media with the right message on behalf of clients working in industries from digital security and healthcare to energy and consumer products.
And, drum roll please: the “A” in Associates has now changed to Albee, and Metzger Albee Public Relations is now poised to move forward in a new economy with a new name, new offices in Boulder and Denver, and new ways to deliver results to our clients. As one of the region’s largest and longest-standing public relations and marketing firms, we’re housed in an efficient ‘nerve center’ headquarters where we leverage our own office along with co-working space and virtual offices to the benefit of clients, staff and partners.
The biggest change to our business beyond the invention of the Internet has been the advent of “search,” the killer app of all time, where the words themselves have become the code for all marketing and communications that help buyers and sellers find each other. And with our heritage of technology and B2B public relations, where writing skills are paramount, we’ve become the wordsmiths rising to the top, mixing the messaging with the new math of measurement on everything from websites and press releases to investor relations programs and social media campaigns. The surviving traditional media, now all digitized, remain our bread and butter, but the social networks and our clients’ search-optimized websites have become vital forms of media as well. And as Google and the other search engines continue to put more emphasis on quality content that’s regularly updated, we believe we are poised to serve clients as almost no other firm can.
We’ve come a long way from our start in a mountain cabin west of Boulder almost a quarter century ago. And though so much has changed, reaching the media that resonates with our clients’ stories is what we’ve always done for a living, and what we are doing now, well into our third decade.
It’s been a privilege to run Metzger Associates, and now Metzger Albee – and as a final note, the old name is not completely going away. Thanks to a thoughtful show of appreciation for the new branding (and with the help of our client, Uwingu), Doyle has memorialized the Metzger Associates name forever as a crater on Mars!
We do have fun around here. Glad to be memorialized in this way, and I’m looking forward to new adventures back here on Planet Earth as Metzger Albee Public Relations!
