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	Phil's Blogservations Friday, February 28, 2003 Posted by philgomes 4:36 PM Setting The Record Straight -- Phase Two Strategies And The PeopleSoft Team: I'm a little late getting to this, but I just read the Feb. 10 PR Week and, frankly, I'm incredibly irritated. PR Week Reporter Andrew Gordon penned the well-written article "Client Losses Need Not Be Insurmountable For Firms," chronicling how firms coped with losing gigantic seven-figure-revenue clients that contributed to a large share of an agency's revenue. Here is a bullet-point summary of the dissolved agency/client relationships discussed in the article: TSI Communications and IBM Hoffman Agency and HP Applied Communications and Oracle Access Communications and Siebel Phase Two Strategies and PeopleSoft For those who don't know, I worked at Phase Two Strategies (PTS) for three years, though not in service of the PeopleSoft account. I came in as a senior associate and left as an account manager. In a description of PTS post-PeopleSoft HR situation, PTS CEO Bill Boehlke is quoted in the article as saying (Emphasis added): "We had some people who resigned, because the shock [of PeopleSoft firing PTS] was so great," says Boehlke. "They had dedicated themselves to PeopleSoft, and they just didn't understand what it was going to be like not working on that account anymore." If this is an accurate quote, it hardly does justice to the former PTS staffers who sweated blood and burned lean tissue in service of the account, delivering award-winning results. These were very smart, talented, and resilient people who worked on the PeopleSoft account. They were battle-tested and far from the lily-livered, fold-under-adversity plebes that this excerpted statement might lead one to believe. Life without PeopleSoft did not send these folks into a state of apoplexy, the way that perhaps a world devoid of marijuana might make Woody Harrelson, Cheech, Chong, Phish, and Cypress Hill cower in the corner of their bedrooms. The fact is, they knew that the skills and relationships built on behalf of PeopleSoft could easily have been retargeted at another client prospect. One superstar PTS manager, in particular, left to ply his considerable skills at a PeopleSoft competitor. He did not resign because not working on PeopleSoft suddenly siphoned all of the meaning out of his professional life, as the quote might indicate. And, as you might guess, the loss of PeopleSoft meant that other headcount-reducing measures had to be undertaken. These measures did not rely on waiting for a bunch of shellshocked agency staffers to throw in the towel. The following is a list of folks who worked on the PeopleSoft account at Phase Two Strategies, but are no longer with the firm. Any agency or corporation would be hard-pressed to find a better group of professionals, even with the rich talent pool of qualified between-jobs PR folks out there. Aeron Noe Alicia Nieva-Woodgate Andrea Landsberg Artemis Anderson Bill Rader Craig Kaufman David Swain Daylan Burlison Diane Petek Eugen Babau-Iladi Hugh Burnham Jane Dryden Jessica James Kellianne Toland Kiersten Kessler Laurie Wilson Madge Miller Michelle (Zawrotny) Dyson Pamela Klores Sarah Treat Sean Mills Steve Jensen In going beyond the call-of-duty and delivering incredible work on the PeopleSoft account, these people had PTS drink their blood while they licked the agency's wounds during the tech PR industry's most brutal deceleration. In post-PeopleSoft PTS, they came out swinging in an aggressive program to replace the business and the revenue. Alas, market forces were entirely too formidable and, sadly, some good people had to go find work elsewhere. The PTS PeopleSoft team -- the one that built and executed PeopleSoft's phenomenal public relations turnaround in 2000-2002 -- simply deserve more credit. Much more. HOME | OBSESSIONS | FAQ | HEROES | CAREER | BLOG | CONTACT Note that the views expressed on this site do not necessarily reflect those of Phil's employer, its business partners, its clients, or anyone or anything that doesn't come from Phil.	ABOUT THIS BLOG This blog not only discusses PR and media matters, but Phil's everyday observations about a variety of topics. EMAIL phil[at] philgomes[[dot}]com SYNDICATE Feedburner ARCHIVE YAHOO! IM SKYPE WISH LIST PITCH POLICY MY PHOTOS www.flickr.com Photostream RSS Enter your Email Powered by FeedBlitz COMMENT AND TRACKBACK POLICY Comments and trackbacks are unmoderated, though I will delete the patently offensive ones. Any comments and trackbacks are the opinions of the individual writer of those comments and trackbacks, and not those of Phil Gomes, his employer, its clients, or its business partners. If you have a bone to pick, bug the people who wrote the comment or trackback.