InkHouse Strategies: Public Engagement

Today, we are expanding our InkHouse Strategies offering to include public affairs and community engagement. InkHouse Strategies is comprised of our most senior team members who provide strategic counsel to our clients. For example, our crisis team has guided clients through the murky waters of turmoil to bring their organizations together through transparency and community. We’ve helped senior executives imagine, secure and prepare for major thought leadership initiatives like TED talks. We’ve helped major brands relocate corporate headquarters, while others have come to us to develop new messaging for new markets. 

An approach that combines the traditional territory of media relations and social media with community issues has never been more important. As I’ve written, businesses are the new battleground states and we must be ready to tackle any PR issue, even those outside of traditional programs. Public engagement is very often the landscape for these kinds of programs.

The Public Engagement group will be led by Susan Elsbree, who came to us from the Boston Redevelopment Authority, and is a force for good in our communities. Susan knows first-hand how a hot development market, like Boston, creates pressure on many of its outlying neighborhoods. These projects need to offer communities something beyond development; they require a clear narrative -- or vision -- of the economic growth, opportunity, and potential impact on those who live in or serve the community. 

It’s no surprise that Susan was named a “Woman of Fire” by Banker & Tradesman in 2017. And for the past five years, she’s been building the InkHouse real estate practice, the public engagement offering of InkHouse Strategies, which is a combination of our knowledge of the public and civic sectors combined with our experience in media and public relations. 

Susan and her team design custom strategic communications plans for our clients to help them tell their stories, build public support, combat misinformation and communicate directly to targeted audiences in order to derive maximum impact to support and achieve their business goals. Whether it’s supporting a short-term effort to navigate a public permitting process or planning for a twenty-year development project, our depth of experience allows us to take on client initiatives of any industry, size or scope. 

This group provides senior strategic counsel for organizations that are:

• Relocating to a new location, building or acquiring new buildings or property
• In a regulated industry and there are new policies coming out that will impact how the company operates
• Needing to establish philanthropic roots in a community
• Working to reach decision-makers in the public sphere (elected officials, community leaders, etc.)
• Having an issue that may be an ongoing crisis 

In combination with the InkHouse team, we work with strategic partners like Waterville Consulting, a government and community affairs firm led by Sean Curran, which was founded in 2002 to serve the growth industries that underpin the economy of New England. 

We look forward to partnering with you to solve the big issues that matter to your communities. You can reach us at workwithus@inkhouse.com.