Agility and resilience are two aspects that businesses need to look for in a PR partner. The PR industry has undergone tumultuous change in an ever-changing business landscape and the birth of birth of digital like as social media. This has flipped PR backwards as clients choose digital over PR and then fast forward back to PR, realising that it is the strategic tool needed to make social media meaningful.

In this evolutionary process, PR often remains underrated even though it is one of the most vital cogs in the marketing wheel. The stories a business tells and how they tell them in amidst the humdrum of endless content pushed at readers is crucial. Skilled communications professionals are responsible for ensuring the stories are told powerfully, but also accurately and concisely.

Evolving as GinjaNinja

In 2003, I started GinjaNinja with a simple goal of creating a business big enough to support my then young family. As an industry stalwart with over 32 years of experience, I believed in PR enough to bank my entire future on its purpose and possibilities and the business even had my name in it, Watt Communications.  As shared in my book, Making Hotdogs: A quirky guide to building a career in PR and making life fucking awesome, evolving as a business is important to its survival and mine has had plenty of ups and downs, all contributing to its growth and evolution.

For myself, always remaining relevant was key, but in a way that is unique to the brand, sincere in its intentions and offers what the market will need today as well as in a year’s time. My relationship with PR started over three decades ago and as I have grown, matured, and evolved, so too has my business. What we do has not changed as much as how we do it. In fact, I am a big believer in ‘old school is cool’, so what makes a good PR person in the 90s and 2000’s remains relevant and vital to the success of the profession.

In 2016, I made a huge leap and changed the name from my married surname to what I believed to be a fun and funky name that was not directly related to my name – GinjaNinjaPR. It had a fun play on my hair colour, but also brings in my team who work as an incredible group of sought-after ninjas. It is a great icebreaker and helps us stand out from the PR crowd, being just slightly left of normal, but brilliant at what we do.  Not quite done, I reverted to my maiden name, Hogg, and then dropped the PR from our business name. why? Because people, if they did, pigeon PR and do not value its impact across a business, including the bottom line.

If done properly and consistently over time, strategic communications make a fundamental difference to a business and its brand. It is how you educate and build awareness. Through communications, you build profiles and leaders, you engineer conversations and build bridges for your client to use when wanting to engage successfully with the media. GinjaNinja is not just a PR company. We have an undeniable passion to help build businesses, using our powers of persuasion, creative intellect, and determination to empower entrepreneurial brands to speak to the people and businesses that matter most. We connect, collaborate, and communicate in an inimitable Ninja style, to help brands realise their potential and reach new levels of success.  

Oscar Wilde said that the one thing worse than being talked about, is not being talked about. This is why GinjaNinja exists. We are storytellers and through this powerful medium, can assist brands at any stage of their lifecycle to define their unique voice and share it where it needs to be heard. Through ongoing dialogue and consistent, compelling communication, GinjaNinja helps brands build awareness and influence.

This has been the GinjaNinja evolution over 20 years: From an add on PR service to a fully-fledged agency that helps build businesses. That’s powerful to me and as I continue to evolve as its leader, I have no doubt that I will bring more to the business as it grows and its impact broadens.