Career changes: From PR to renewable advertising

I realize I had hinted at changes in my podcast and in previous blog entries, but I guess I never actually articulated it. A recent conversation with a friend brought that back to attention so I guess it is time to spill the beans, even if that is half a year late. I only made subtle changes to my Xing/LinkedIn profiles so that didn’t raise attention.

The short version is that I moved from the PR team to the advertising unit of our agency, also taking on more internal organizational work.

The longer version begins with November 2002, when a student job in a PR/advertising agency turned into an internship into a full-time position. I never planned for a career in PR, it dropped in my lap and I ran with it. Not bad, too, I’d like to think. But you know as well as I do that you can only achieve so much when the heart is not 110% in it. Passion. Missing. Ever since it became clear that one of the accounts I was handling was not going to be continued at our agency, my motivation was down. That client was sort of the last straw. It also proved to be a topical connector to what I am doing now.

Because, apart from the fact that I got tired of PR, I was looking to work on something with more purpose. A topic. Therefore, an intercompany change proved to be a logical conclusion: Since 2004, the ad unit of WBN (there, I said it) has been gaining a strong foot in the renewables market in Germany, handling clients from pv, wind and biomass sectors. I am still communicating with clients and 3rd parties, just more on an organizational scale than with an interest in selling, if you know what I mean.

Internally too, the time was not only right then, but high to relaunch the agency’s homepage which we did very efficiently and quickly (Thomas Gigold did the CSS and troubleshooting). Two weeks ago I have begun publishing almost daily “green links” on the site (I know, another blog…), merging passions.  Of course, there is an RSS feed which you can subscribe to, too.

As for the Web 2.0 stuff, you may have noticed that I am no longer writing the blog for Ligx which leaves fring as our only active account in that area. However, being on the ad unit gives me way more options to consult clients on where it is possible, feasible and sensible to integrate social media tools. And naturally, the knowledge is still here and will be applied, if needed…

As I tweeted yesterday, I massively added “green/environmental”-feeds to my RSS-reader to expand my scope, and as stated earlier today, I totally intend to be more active when it comes to CO2-reduction, power-saving and other environmental issues.

That is it in a nut shell. Already, I made great connections, worked on motivating projects and we have two very cool announcements to come hopefully this year, so stay tuned!

And if you’d like to check out projects we have done, you may click here. Some logos have references linked.

selfreference