When Marshall McLuhan spoke about a "global village," he probably wasn't thinking about PR agencies that operated across borders. Nonetheless, the Canadian scholar inspired a
fellow Canuck to seek success in the North American PR market. Enter Colleen Coplick, CEO of Vancouver-based Type A Public Relations.
"I took McLuhan's global village to heart and started looking at the broader concept," says Coplick, who founded her agency in 2002. Not limiting herself to a Canadian client
base, she successfully reached out across the United States and landed clients as far away as New York, Kansas City and Los Angeles.
"When I am seeking new business, I am sometimes asked: So how are you going to handle what I need from where you are?" she says. Coplick answers those inquiries with
references from current clients and makes the effort to hold in-person meetings with the seemingly far-away clients.
Coplick's go-getter attitude has been the driving force of her PR career. She came to the industry after being bored to death working for a CFO in a corporate setting. "I did
not enjoy number crunching and balancing budgets," she recalls, adding liberation came through a chance encounter. "I met a woman who did PR and I thought: Wow, no one told me
about this! This is so cool!"
After taking a college course in PR and working at an agency, Coplick found a talent for snagging free-lance projects. After setting up her own agency, she made her mark
promoting lifestyle consumer products and services.
Coplick has secured quality placement on both sides of the border, and even placed a Vancouver client's product into an Academy Awards gift bag. She's also been successful in
securing media attention where others may fear to tread. One client is a Toronto sex toy store, whose naughty product line-up may not sit well with conservative media. But
Coplick successfully publicized the operation in creative ways, including a 15% senior discount promotion during Canada's Seniors Month celebration in June and the creation of
North America's first sex toy registry.
"We were able to find a way to get this client discussed without making people giggle," she adds. Indeed, Coplick lives up to her agency's motto: "People Don't Pay Us to be
Shy."
Contact: Colleen Coplick, [email protected].