I may be celebrating my 10-year anniversary working at HC HQ, but it’s actually been over 16 years that I have been calling HC home - prior to 2010 I worked part-time as a contractor.

I started my career at HC doing general admin, and Sue provided me with the opportunity to leap back into the workforce after being a full-time mum for 12 years. 
Recalling those early days will lay testament to how old I am, film photoshoots, atlases to find remote regional towns on the map, thermal roll fax machines that spewed forth metres of communications, rubber thimblettes to count hundreds of media clips that arrived by courier each week, coded and counted and my all-time favourite - manual sentiment reporting – I used a lot of lead pencils. 

We were hands on and did plenty of reading newspapers and industry magazines and forged great relationships with editors and media sales reps – it was a different pace. Weekly papers and monthly mags covered our desks and online news was only just beginning.
Over my time here I have learnt many skills, not just in the office but out in the trenches getting amongst it and talking to “the people”. I love this part of my job – from trade conferences and seminars, photoshoots in places I can barely pronounce, to my all-time absolute, undeniable favourite – the field days. It’s at those field days when we learn the most – we get to talk to clients, their dealers and their customers. It’s where I discovered the art of the three-question lead in – if I’m unsure of myself I line up three questions to uncover something about the person or their product. After that the conversation just takes off.

As a company we are all about “industries that feed and build the world” – some may think a strange choice of industries for a strategic communications agency that, for now, has women at the controls. But it suits us all perfectly because at HC we are great learners and we love our clients brands - I am immensely proud to tell people I know my excavators from my wheel loaders, and can talk to farmers about their season ahead, what they are planting, about the soil type and the size of air cart and drill they are using to plant this season. I also enjoy sharing my knowledge with my colleagues, tucking the new ones firmly under my wing and heading out to show them what it’s all about, even if they think they don’t want to.

Over the past few years digital communications has really taken off too and launched us into the new and endless possibilities of online comms. It’s here that I have found my “new love”, connecting our clients with their “fans” via social media – of course social is not the same for all brands – and that’s what I love about it. Finding out what makes an audience tick, what makes them hit like, share or comment – and of course there is always the other side of the coin – what really doesn’t resonate with them, but that is the learning bit I love, make the comms better and motivate an audience to engage. It’s all about the storytelling and showing how much you understand them. 

My role today is very different to when I started – from admin to creative services, then project management. I now work closer with our clients on projects, and love seeing results for their brand. But I still like to know what’s going on across the agency, and love learning something new, so stay tuned for what’s next!
Al Jackson