The Hoffman Agency: Global PR & Tech
The Hoffman Agency is a global public relations firm founded in 1987 by Lou Hoffman. Their worldwide headquarters is in San Jose, California, and they have eight additional offices in the United States, Europe, and Asia Pacific. Specialty services they offer clients include corporate blogging workshops, broadcast media and social media, media training, storytelling workshops, business press, and web 2.0 / digital marketing.
The year after the agency was founded they successfully helped HP publicize their new CD-ROM concept – so successfully that HP later transferred their entire block of PR business to The Hoffman Agency. Their first global PR campaign started in 1994. They represented Hyundai’s (now known as Hynix) M-PEG2 chip to Asia Pacific and Europe. As of 2013, at least 50% of their work is done for companies in the Asia Pacific arena.
Some of their clients include Mercedes-Benz, Barclays Bank, iRobot, Hitachi, 3M, Dassault Systems, Evernote, Alcatel-Lucent, Nautilus, City of Fremont, and Center for Creative Leadership. In 2015, they were listed as finalists for eight Holmes Report SABRE Awards, winner of three of them, and received four Certificates of Achievement. They also won the PR Daily 2015 Digital and Social Media Awards, LinkedIn Category.
Their mission is to “do great work.” They’ve built their firm around the tenets that built the great companies of Silicon Valley. Namely, never let the status quo be the measure of satisfaction, take intelligent risks, create a team-oriented culture, and keep your hierarchy as flat as possible.
They believe bringing people on board who have ingenuity, smarts, initiative, teamwork, and creativity and then letting them do what they do without putting any emphasis on billable hours, translating to great work for the clients and satisfaction within the ranks. It seems to be working for them.
