I was a bit saddened to hear that the longstanding business relationship between CHEN PR and Sun is coming to end, and Jim Grisanzio apparently had much the same reaction. It’s not that I question Sun’s business decision – I know little to nothing about how those relationships are managed – but more because I know the folks from CHEN very well and they’ve taken outstanding care of me and James over the years, even back in ’02 when James and I were just a couple of guys trying to start (Yet Another) analyst firm.
For those of you not in the analyst or vendor businesses, from my one-sided perspective the AR role is all about facilitating the relationship between the folks that cover the business (us) and the vendor itself (them). In many respects, it’s a thankless job as vendors can never get enough positive coverage, and the AR firm often bears the brunt of the blame for leaks. If you’re not in this business, it might seem like a simple, even trivial, job, but you’d be surprised at just how crucial the role can be in ensuring ongoing coverage of their clients. CHEN, at least from our limited experience, has always done an outstanding job at handling both the good and the bad.
Sun’s got a very capable AR staff on its own right (Preston Turner is one of the absolute best in the business), the folks from Citigate (Vanessa Villacarlos, Kevin Doak, Grace Angulo, et al) have always been very good to us, so I don’t expect much to change in our relationship with Sun in that regard. But CHEN, and in particular our main contact there, Randy Wambold, rank at or near the top of my personal list of PR/AR firms. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve been pinged Randy over IM to ask for clarification about what is/is not NDA and had an answer back within minutes, or received proactive follow up briefings on a minor but important issue I’d raised in passing and subsequently forgotten about.
So sure, it helps that most of office are big Sox fans ;), but I can honestly say that if anyone happens to be looking for help with AR or PR, you can’t do much better than the folks from CHEN. You never know, we might find ourselves in that boat soon.
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