by Brian Lustig, Partner
Today I officially join Bluetext as a Partner as Lustig Communications becomes a part of Bluetext.
Joining a communications agency – in any capacity – is in all honesty not something I ever planned to do after founding my own firm six years ago. Even though Lustig Communications has worked closely with Bluetext since its inception and my work with the Bluetext Partners dates as far back as 13 years, this decision should have been much harder than it was. Any individual who has launched his/her own firm can tell you that it becomes your ‘baby’ that you work tirelessly to nurture as it grows.
Greater Washington does not suffer from a lack of talented PR agencies and practitioners, and I’ve had the good fortune to interact with many of them. But in watching the work Bluetext has been doing for organizations since its 2011 launch, I was repeatedly blown away by the creative, high-impact communications campaigns the Bluetext team created and delivered. It is not an accident that the world’s leading brands – ranging from Google, Cisco and Adobe to the USO, Reznick Group and APCO – have turned to the Bluetext team to solve their communications and branding challenges.
The path leading Lustig Communications to Bluetext began nearly 18 years ago. Some people might say that makes me a PR veteran, but to me it just kind of sounds like I’m really old. After spending the early years of my public relations career working on behalf of political campaigns and policy initiatives, I eyed a buzzing technology community in Washington, DC and could not help myself from gravitating towards the energy of the dot com boom. It was August 2000.
Within weeks, of course, the boom busted. It turns out that getting a sock puppet to interview people on the street does not mean that your company has figured out how to sell and deliver pet supplies online. But despite the ups and downs in the tech sector that succeeded the bust, I was hooked on technology…not just technology really, but helping growing companies and entrepreneurs with big ideas.
It was this passion that led me to go off on my own and found Lustig Communications six years ago and to assemble a team focused on working with technology innovators, growing firms and startups. I’ve always felt there is a right way to practice public relations. To me, this meant investing my team in each client fully, challenging clients when a kick in the rear was needed, and ultimately, walking into work each day with a goal of developing a new idea (or ideas) that could help the client succeed.
I could start rattling off the tired old buzzwords you often see when two firms align, how it is about synergies and complementary services and how the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. None of that matters, they are just words really. Ultimately, it is about two firms committed to working with any organization, of any size, in any sector, that has a challenge to solve, and figuring out how to help them solve it. And I’d like to think that with this move today, we are better positioned to do just that than we were yesterday.