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am:pm pr early logo illustration by Molly McCormick

Collaboration – We like it this way

When our team decided to spin out and start our own thing, we wanted everything to be new and we wanted everything to be “us.”

Our most enjoyable and successful experiences had been through collaboration.  From day one, we decided to collaborate on everything.  We brainstormed our mission together. We decided on open office space where we would sit around one table, without offices that separated us from each other. We shopped for office furniture together and covered our walls in white boards for our many spontaneous brainstorms.

We planned our website together.  We all participate in client development activities.  We’ve realized putting our heads together makes us much more creative. As leadership guru Ken Blanchard teaches, “None of us is as smart as all of us.”

Our collaboration became so natural and organic that we extended this way of working to relationships with our clients, partners, neighbors, peers and friends.   Our clients become part of us.  We absorb them as members of our team. We hope they see us the same way.

We recently decided to partner strategically with 7 Apps, a smartphone app developer.  We realized more of our clients are asking about apps as marketing tools.  Our partnership gives 7 Apps access to market research and marketing expertise to support apps it’s developing for its own clients.

We hold weekly PR 3.0 meetings (Thursdays at 3:00pm) and invite our PR peers and clients to join us for roundtable discussions about the latest happening in social media, SEO and mobile.

We even crowd-sourced our logo, asking everyone we knew to help us choose the image that identifies our firm.

Now there’s another big opportunity for our friends to collaborate – in celebrating an open house for our new venture (save the date – 8/26/10 4-6:30pm).

We came from downtown, Class A office space and for AM:PM PR we were looking for an office location distinctly different.  We found the perfect place in an iconic historic firehouse with available space in an eclectic area of SE Portland.  A big bonus is that we can be part of a real neighborhood.

Rather than just show off what we’ve got (and the new space we’ll be moving into with 7 Apps), we decided to invite our neighbors to show off to our friends what an amazing neighborhood we’re in.

Bremik Construction (next door neighbors and the builders who did such a beautiful job restoring the firehouse and the adjacent buildings that are now Bremik’s home) even decided to open up their space and deck for our event.

We’re big fans of everyone we’ve invited.  Expect to taste:

We’ll even be showing off art from the wealth of local artists, hardware from our favorite little Ankeny Hardware across the street, and much more.

We like this way of working.  We have found real value from the psychic income of collaboration, enjoying the work we do and the people we are surrounded by.  Our new, bigger space should be completed by the end of the year.  It will have the same open feel and include gathering areas for peers and clients to come and just hang out if they need a little collaboration time.

So come on over – August 26 for the open house, or anytime.  Our place is yours.