Previous Successes

Media relations

I have won two London IABC Virtuoso Awards for previous media relations campaigns – for Vote Banting as Greatest Canadian and for the re-opening of Storybook Gardens. The media relations campaign for Vote Banting was part of CBC’s Greatest Canadian Contest. This campaign resulted in national and international media coverage of Sir Fredrick Banting and earned him a fourth place finish in the national contest. All of this was done on no budget, just earned media.

Issues management

Knowing that any organization’s success depends on its public reputation, the role of issues management was important in the City of London’s goal to position itself within the top rank of Canadian municipalities. One of the most complex issues I worked on at the City was the Ontario Fire Marshal’s Report, which was released in October 2004 and contained 44 recommendations for improving the London Fire Services’ fire inspection and public education departments. After endless hours of meetings and weeks of pouring over all the details of what could have been a very damaging report, a communications strategy was developed that would bring all the issues forward in a positive and proactive manner. The result was little negative media coverage and a strategy in-place to address the recommendations, some of which were completed before the report was made public.

Strategic planning

At the inception of Doors Open London, a two-day event featuring free access to London’s heritage sites, I worked with the steering committee to develop a strategic plan to raise awareness of not only this event, but the importance of preserving London’s heritage buildings. This plan included a marketing strategy, to develop a consistent brand for the event; a media relations strategy, to generate earned media and media interest in Doors Open; and a community relations strategy, to expand the event into the community, instead of it being a City-run event. The result was a successful event that attracted over 10,000 visitors to 47 sites. By year four, this number increased to 15,000 visitors to 72 sites.

Crisis communications

For three years I served as the City of London’s Emergency Information Officer, a provincially mandated position. In this role I was responsible for coordinating media relations at the scene of large and small scale emergencies, writing news releases and speaking notes, debriefing emergency personnel and spokespersons on issues and preparing answer to anticipated difficult questions from the media.

I was the lead communicator in the August 2003 hydro outage – organizing eight media briefings and writing 13 news releases in the first two days of the crisis. During this crisis, I sat as a member of London’s Emergency Control Group and worked with civic leaders to ensure key messages that related to the health and safety of Londoners were included in all media reports.

I have also been the lead communicator at a number of smaller scale emergencies in London, that were major emergencies to the community affected. This included the October 2004 evacuation of 600 students at a local high school, with over 60 students transported to hospital by ambulance. By having me on scene handling the media, the emergency personnel were able to focus their attention on the immediate emergency, yet the media were able to get the information they needed in a timely manner.