History Channel Hit Gives National Exposure for Johnson & Company

Persistence and creativity pay off for jo&co associate when her company gets equal coverage with big time Office Wonders

For Katy Carroll, account executive for Johnson & Company, The Virtual Agency™, a hit on the History Channel is about as exciting as it gets. Having Johnson & Company (jo&co) share the spotlight with office wonders like AT&T, Xerox, 3M and Microsoft is impressive.

In response to a ProfNet (a PR Newswire service) query, Carroll contacted Actuality Productions, of Thousand Oaks, Calif., the producers of the Office Wonders segment as part of the History Channel's Modern Marvels series. They were immediately interested in her pitch about Johnson & Company as a virtual workplace with a unique corporate culture.

"They were very interested in what Johnson & Company did, but were still in their initial stages of gathering information," Carroll says. "I decided to send them some written communication specifically about Jennifer [J. Johnson, principal and senior marketing strategist for Johnson & Company] as well as about jo&co's basic philosophy and bios of some of its associates."

Carroll continued to contact them periodically with e-mails and follow-up calls. After almost two months, she finally talked to the producer, Matthew P. Hickey. Several emails and phone conversations later, Carroll secured a live interview with Johnson and Jordan Karpowitz, an account planner with jo&co living in Princeton, N.J.

 "I think the kind of gentle persistence I used eventually got the interview with Jennifer and Jordan," Carroll says. "I knew that they were legitimately interested in Johnson & Company, but it was good to have us brought to mind again a few months after the first contact. Once I talked with Matthew, he was intrigued."

What Carroll did was nothing short of a miracle. She sold him on the idea that the virtual work place is where the office is headed and got almost equal coverage for Johnson & Company as the billion dollar companies received. "Hickey was very excited about what Johnson & Company did and asked all sorts of questions. After talking for more than a half an hour, he was amazed at our processes, what we did and how we did it."

But Carroll didn't stop at just a pitch on the telephone. She pulled together several pieces of useful information. She was proactive by providing him the opportunity of interviewing other associates in different parts of the country. Finally, she was never more than a phone call away from Hickey or Johnson to help make sure that the interview happened.

Carroll watched the program, which aired on March 15, at a three-day retreat for jo&co in Half Moon Bay, Calif., with almost 20 Johnson & Company associates. It was the ultimate prize for an associate who had worked hard to get national TV coverage for a young, cutting-edge company. Johnson was there and complementary to Carroll about her work.

"Katy did an extraordinary job of follow-up and persistence in getting us this opportunity with the History Channel. The producers told me how impressed they were with Carroll and her willingness to do whatever they needed for background information and as a facilitator for making the interviews happen."

Not only did the producers tell Johnson, but Carroll was the first one listed in the "Special Thanks" credits at the end of the program.

But Carroll wasn't dazzled by her mention in the credits. "I was impressed by the caliber of companies that we were grouped with. They talked to people from companies like AT&T, Xerox, 3M and Microsoft," she says. "I thought it was amazing that we were included in the broadcast right along side those types of organizations."

Carroll is a modern marvel of her own who proved that being proactive and persistence pays off in the long run.