THE BLOG

by Scott Sutherland

We’re celebrating the 11^th Anniversary of our firm this month. As we turn the corner on our first decade at SG, we’re also announcing some exciting changes at the firm. My wife and business partner Lesley will be taking the reins as CEO. Current VP Julia Vinyard has been named President of the firm.

As for me, I’m going to be starting a new consulting practice next year. I’m looking forward to going back to my roots of working closely with seed stage startups that need senior help in building out their marketing and communications plans as they bring innovative and groundbreaking new products to the marketplace.

I went to Lesley several months ago with this idea of her taking charge of the firm while I shifted my focus to a new venture. She and I both agreed that this change in leadership of the firm was needed and important. We’ve been very fortunate over the past decade. We’ve built this agency from a company we ran out of our living room, into one of tech’s leading agencies. We now have 40 extremely talented and energetic team members at SG in offices in San Francisco and New York. Yes, we have definitely come a long way.

And the agency is much different than what we started with. We’re at stage where we need a single voice speaking for the company and a single leader at the helm to run things. And it is clear to me that Lesley is the right person for that role.

There are also personal reasons we want to make this change. The last 11 years of working together every day have been the best years of our lives. But being business partners as well as life partners has its challenges. I am really grateful to Lesley for agreeing to start this business with me and for all the years of support, encouragement and hard work! And I want to show that gratitude by being the most supportive husband and partner I can be. But I can’t really be that supporter every day if we’re both working so hard at building SutherlandGold. My new venture will provide some flexibility for me to do more to support Lesley and to play a bigger role in taking care of our children. I am really psyched about that.

I’m looking forward to helping Lesley and Julia add to the senior team at SG. I want to help them find new people who can deeply support their ambitions and abilities to take SG to the next level.

I won’t be going anywhere any time soon. I’ll continue my current role at SG as long as I’m needed to support all the clients whose accounts I currently work on. But Lesley and I are also excited to start this transition in our business and in our personal lives. I want to thank everyone at SG and all the totally awesome clients that we work with now and have worked with over this decade plus. If I haven’t reached out yet to thank you personally and share my excitement about what’s ahead, you’ll hear from me soon.

Thanks again for such an awesome 11 years!

by Lesley Gold

Every now and then a woman comes along who speaks the truth in such a way it reminds us that great advice isn’t always recognized or appreciated when given.

Here’s the most recent bit of advice that came to me via that viral delivery service in the sky: email.

“Please don’t even think of coming into work with jagged half peeled off nail polish. The fact that I have to keep telling people how disgusting it is is somewhat shocking. If you must, buy yourself a bottle of generic remover for a dollar and keep it at the office. Also, makeup and lipgloss/stick and an overall polished look is requested (read-required). Be smart about your appearance. You work in PR. Market yourself. It has been proven to be a key to success.”

This pearl of wisdom was sent from a female PR agency CEO to her entire staff via email. It was then forwarded across the country to my inbox. My gut reaction was horror and outrage.

What would Sheryl say?!

Who’d want to be in a Lean In Circle with this gal?

Then, I laughed. Despite the irony of a PR professional being so excruciatingly tone deaf, the career advice she provided was actually kind of right. Appearances do matter, in most workplaces.  Marketing yourself is key to success.  I, for one, recognize how fortunate I am to work in technology, where fleece is mandatory and showers are optional.  But the tech industry’s lax hygiene standards are definitely the exception, and not the rule. Young employees, it would seem, need to know the rule.

The signal-to-noise ratio on the women workplace conversation is so out of whack that it’s hard for those who need it to take away simple, practical advice on career management. There are people out there who want to be part of management, not part of the movement.

And to them I say this: ignore the hysteria. You might find more guidance in the hysterical.

When asked by a woman seeking to establish a career as a Hollywood director, Tina Fey recently gave 5 tips for surviving in a man’s work world (I paraphrase):

1. Your job is not to prove women can direct.  Your job is to be a great director.  That will prove women can direct.
2. Wear a bra all the time, even if you think you don’t need to.
3. Don’t eat diet food in front of other people – it weakens you.  If you need to eat a Lean Cuisine, do it alone.
4. Crying, if authentic and warranted, is totally acceptable.  It scares the sh*! out of people, too.
5. Talent is not sexually transmitted, so don’t sleep with talented people thinking it will get you ahead.  Sleep with people who are nice.

Now this is practical, easy-to-follow wisdom which rings true with me, partially because of my own personal family lore around women’s workplace issues.

My mother loves to tell how she became a minor cause celebre in her local circle when she was denied a judgeship early in her legal career. It had been reported that she was a liberal and a feminist. She embraced the liberal term. But to this day claims she was incorrectly labeled a feminist based on a bad bra and poor choice of knit.

In fact, most of the practical, hilarious, spot-on career advice I’ve ever received came from my mother.  I don’t think she’d mind if I shared it, but I will do so with this caveat: feminists should stop reading now.  At this stage of my career, these are now self-evident truths, but they are not politically correct. These rules push me forward. They keep me motivated. They work most importantly when work is hard. And one thing women know is WORK IS HARD.

And these rules make me smile. Because most days, I don’t have a problem leaning in. But, I do have a problem lightening up.

My Mother’s Rules for Women Who Work

1. If a man opens a door for you, walk through it.
2. Never give up an advantage in the name of equality.
3. Don’t let the sexist piglets get to you. (Said when I was six.)
4. Don’t let the fuckers get to you. (Said last week.)
5. Always say yes when someone asks you to dance.
6. If you do one thing in your life, have kids.

by Scott Sutherland

Summer is officially here. And for many firms this is a time to slow down and take a breather. But we don’t know the concept here at SG. For us, slower months mean more opportunities! And the great people we have here at SG have capitalized on the slow summer month of June to absolutely crush it for our clients.

One of our newer staff members was updating our Media Results archive and just had to point out the amazing clips we’ve accumulated this month for all our clients. For Brightcove, 23 pieces of coverage on a single day for a product launch! For Stitcher, a coveted Wall Street Journal review of its groundbreaking mobile app.

Here’s a recap of results in June:

I was talking to a potential new client today and without even asking us, he’d set out to talk to about two dozen current and former SG clients who we’ve worked with over the past two years.

He said one of the more consistent things he heard from these clients was that “the team at SG are fighters. They never give up.”

I love that our startup clients that are battling on so many fronts to succeed see us as fellow “fighters.” But it’s not just persistence that leads to success. You’ve got to have the right people who, just like our clients, get up every day plotting  to win.

So we’re very proud of the SG team of “fighters.” And we’re looking forward to working out butts off for our clients in the coming “slow” summer months.

Find links to a sampling of our top media results from June, here.