Dave Donohue: nerd-in-residence

Last night, I enjoyed the company of over 1,000 peers at Tavern on the Green for the 2007 PRWeek awards. My employer, OutCast Communications, was a finalist in the Technology Campaign of the Year category, an award we won in 2005 with Fortify Software; in 2003 with Good Technology; and in 2001 with Salesforce.com.

This year, I was very pleased to be there when Ingres won Honourable Mention in the Small Corporate Communications Team of the Year, and even more so when I was a guest at the table of EMC, which won Honourable Mention in the Large Corporate Communications Team of the Year category. The presentation that everyone received as they exited noted that:

“The media can be a skeptical bunch. EMC, a leader in the field of data storage, experienced this firsthand while it was in the midst of a buying spree, snapping up 17 companies in three years. The communications team was faced with attempting to promote EMC as a single brand after facing scrutiny from Wall Street and the company’s investment community. The One Voice Campaign was hatched to capture, consolidate, and simplify the messages of these companies under the EMC umbrella. The initiative aimed to effectively communicate the company’s acquisition strategy, portraying the moves as a critically strategic stem for maintaining EMC’s competitive advantage. The success was evident through a series of business stories portraying EMC’s successful transformation into an information-management powerhouse.”

Congratulations to all of the winners, finalists, and nominees from last night’s awards dinner. And thanks to PRWeek and the night’s sponsors for throwing a party to remember.

Full disclosure: I’ve worked with EMC for several years now, and I couldn’t be more proud of the recognition that their team received last night.