Come On In

May 18, 2021

Welcoming our friends, clients and business partners starts at the front door. We are hosts and gatherers – bringing people together. Over the past year, Inspire has been sprucing up our digital “front door” to make it more inviting and to better reflect who we are and what we do.

What do we do? It’s a question we get frequently. It may seem straightforward, but it is complex. Who we are today is certainly not who we were seven years ago. Not only are we bigger, but we are also far more diverse in the work we do.

Since our founding in 2014, we have grown – from three-and-a-half folks in a 1,000-square-foot white house, to a team of 16 in a beautiful new 7,000 square foot building. (A building, of course, which sat mostly empty the past year).

We’ve taken the past year to find the opportunity to re-envision our “virtual front door” – that first welcome you get when you encounter Inspire –at InspirePRGroup.com. Going through this exercise – telling our own story – provides opportunities to reflect on where we’ve been and where we’re going.

Not long before the pandemic, our team collaborated on an exercise to more clearly define our purpose, reaffirm our vision, and establish tenets and values that we share both for ourselves and our practice. We leaned heavily into those values as we made decisions in 2020.

As we have added clients, we’ve seen growth and diversity take place. Our work with the farm community and in food production remains a steady constant and is of deep value to all of us, but we have expanded our industry expertise and work across several other sectors as well.

We have grown our practice and expertise in the sustainability and renewable energy sectors, and we have increased our focus on social impact by supporting clients that are dedicated to these efforts. It has been an honor to watch clients of our firm hone their focus on sustainability, community engagement and social responsibility in a deliberate and intentional way.

We’ve also grown our work supporting the pet care community. We are proud to help brands and organizations prioritize their commitment to doing what’s right for companion animals and telling the stories of this multi-billion-dollar sector of our economy.

Loyalty + Longevity

We continue to be grateful that so many of our clients have been with our team for more than 20 years – well before our agency was created. Although our team is bigger, our core group remains, and our clients have found the continuity and loyalty we provide of real value. As they’ve grown, we’ve grown. As they’ve learned, we’ve learned.

There is no better example than that of our work in the restaurant andhospitality space. So many restaurant clients have come to us and remained with us, even as they weathered the tremendous impacts of 2020. And we are appreciative of these lasting partnerships. The variety of our restaurant work has increased, from fine dining to fast casual, from family restaurants to quick-service food.

Learning + Giving

From public school districts to private, independent and faith-based schools, from elementary schools to colleges and universities, the value of telling the stories of those who are shaping the minds of the next generation cannot be understated. We take seriously our role in being engaged by these learning communities.

I am so proud of the expansive work that we do in the nonprofit sector. Telling the stories of those who serve vulnerable populations, who provide critical community services, and who protect people from all walks of life is a true privilege. Our work with the Ohio Association of Foodbanks, for example, has passed the 20-year mark. We also continue to support one emerging nonprofit annually with our Inspiring Good grant program.

Much as our overall client base has been enhanced, the work that we do also has developed and expanded. The communications business is ever-changing, and to succeed you must always innovate. That has been our intent and our direction.

Today, we continue to refine the power of storytelling. Media engagement and digital strategies make up a good portion of our work for clients. And we now have enhanced in-house video production capabilities to respond to the changing needs of our clients and the availability of new technologies.

Doing work that is purposeful and rewarding matters – and the interconnectedness of the varied clients we serve makes that possible.

It is important to note this – our success has not come because we were in the right place at the right time. We are determined and fierce. We set our minds to ambitious goals seven years ago, and we are achieving them. We’ve built a talented, committed and bold team of communicators and collaborators.

So, what do we do? Take a visit to our all-new front door and find out. Or click the links within this column to see examples of our capabilities and case studies of client work.

If you have been with us on that journey, thank you. If you are just coming to Inspire for the first time – come on in and spend some time with us.