A quartet of comms professionals with decades of industry experience is launching a new public affairs agency based in Vancouver.
Jeff Ferrier, , and Emma Macklem announced last week the launch of Framepoint Public Affairs. Kerr and Reder have previously been recognized as among the province’s most influential current affairs professionals in .
“We each left our respective large agencies … and we realized, independently of one another, that we wanted to do something where we could be more dedicated to our clients, and ensure that our clients are working with senior executives and getting the benefit of working with us directly,” said Kerr.
“We shared this same vision and we quickly thought, ‘There's a ton of synergy here and we should be partnering together to introduce this to the market.’”
The new firm is a full-service integrated consulting firm specializing in public affairs, government relations and digital advocacy.
“Our bread and butter is government relations and communications. Government relations is changing partly because of the fact that we all live online now,” said Kerr, former national government relations lead at Earnscliffe Strategy.
“Our audience is online, so we need to be online, our clients need to be online. It's supplementing traditional government relations tactics with online advocacy tactics and that's something that we really enjoy working on,” said Kerr.
She said government relations is not necessarily stuffy and staid, as some people may think – it can be modern and is constantly evolving.
“It's not just about talking to the premier and getting something done. It's about a real strategy that involves mobilizing the community, other stakeholders and government as well,” said Kerr.
“Government touches every business in some way, whether it's taxation or regulations, but there's also a role for government in terms of how to facilitate growth for the economy. So there's a role there for government relations and for companies to be engaging more with government.”
