After months of planning, this week Cookerly Public Relations is hosting the Worldcom Public Relations Group Americas Region meeting in Atlanta. As an Americas Region board member, I am especially excited to have many of our Worldcom partners learn more about Cookerly, experience the city we love and build friendships throughout the week.
For those not familiar with Worldcom, it is the world’s leading network of independently-owned public relations firms, which consists of 110 international agency partners that operate in nearly 100 cities on six continents. Founded in 1988, it was formed so the strongest, most capable agencies could serve national, international and multi-national clients while retaining the flexibility and client-service focus inherent to independent firms.
This year’s theme – “Ignite ATL – Agencies that Lead” – is most fitting. The City of Atlanta serves as a leading global business hub, just as many Worldcom agencies are considered industry leaders in their respective markets and niches. To that end, selecting Atlanta as our meeting site was an obvious choice for many reasons.
First, the city is a global center for numerous industries including aerospace technology, financial technology, supply chain and logistics, and transportation. Second, we claim the third largest concentration of Fortune 500 companies in the country. Atlanta is home to such bellwether companies as Coca-Cola, Delta, Home Depot, UPS, Newell Rubbermaid and many others. The city also has the world’s busiest airport for passenger service and 80 percent of the U.S. population is within a two-hour flight.
Moreover, Atlanta is regarded as a melting pot of educated, driven people with a collaborative and creative spirit constantly exploring new ways to accomplish goals. The same is true of Worldcom and its members.
This week’s conference brings together the brightest, most accomplished public relations practitioners in the industry to share best practices, opportunities to collaborate and emerging trends and resources. It also attracts notable speakers from a wide range of companies and organizations to discuss innovative public relations and marketing campaigns, successful business strategies and other topics.
Cookerly proudly welcomes our Worldcom partners and we look forward to showing them our renowned southern hospitality and good times. Stay tuned throughout the week to the Cookerly Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram pages for updates – because this week we plan to “Ignite ATL” in a big way.
Cory Stewart is the chief operating officer at Cookerly PR.
As design director at Cookerly, Tim serves as the creative lead in the development of branding campaigns, print collateral and digital media for clients across a broad range of industries, including consumer, professional services, healthcare and technology.
As senior vice president at Cookerly, Mike Rieman specializes in building and maintaining relationships with the media and has an excellent track record of landing significant placements in print and broadcast media including USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and Money Magazine.
As vice president of Cookerly, Sheryl Sellaway uses her extensive corporate communications background to lead consumer PR efforts, deliver strategy for marketing programs and share expertise about community initiatives.
As a senior vice president at Cookerly, Matt helps organizations protect and advance their reputations and bottom lines through strategic communications programs. Using creativity, planning and flawless execution, he works with a team to deliver compelling public relations campaigns that produce results and support clients’ business objectives.