Power Women Become Partners at GRB&A
Project: Gary R. Bozel, owner of GRB&A, a Towson-based, full-service public accounting firm, planned to expand his leadership team by formally announcing Kelly DeRose and Megan Emdad as partners of the organization. His team reached out to Polished Nichols Public Relations & Marketing for their oversight of all internal and external communications practices for the announcement.
Challenge: With the busy tax season quickly approaching, GRB&A’s biggest challenge was time. Natalie and Nicole quickly joined forces and launched the relationship with an insights meeting at which time the team discussed goals and shared details of the firm’s new leadership changes. The team needed to act quick to draft, edit, and finalize all written communications and disseminate the news to the media.
Another major hurdle for the firm and the industry in general is the daunting record low of Certified Public Accountants in decades. The firm currently has several available job positions; however, there has been a lack of qualified interested candidates.
Plans: Polished Nichols dug deep and spoke with the three partners to gather all details of the partnership, roles/responsibilities of each partner, what differentiates the team from their competitors, and how they planned to up their game with recruitment.
The duo shared structure, ideas, and word choices for Gary, Kelly, and Megan’s internal speeches to share with their constituents. They also penned newsletter articles about the announcement. Finally, Polished Nichols developed a media relations plan with a formal press release, several pitch emails, a comprehensive media list, and a dissemination plan to align with the internal and external announcements with the team, clients, partners, vendors, family, and friends.
Polished Nichols assisted with a formal photo shoot to remain within the suggested brand guidelines. The team designed a montage of photo ideas and worked with the photographer on formal and casual images of the partners and the entire GRB&A team.
Outcome: The new partners made their formal announcement to their internal team during the last week of January followed by a media relations push, and newsletter communication campaign. The media relations outreach resulted in more than 4,959,243 unique monthly viewers, ensuring an increase of website traffic, brand reputation, and public image. Media coverage about the GRB&A partnership news was shared with the team who disbursed the headlines and quotes on their social media platforms to increase additional exposure for their target audiences.
