They're on the frontline. We merely support them.

VACEP President Scott Hickey, interviewed in the Times-Dispatch on the effort to combat COVID-19.

We have proudly supported the Virginia College of Emergency Physicians with communications support over the past few years. Mostly, this was in the form of advocacy before the General Assembly, member commutations, website updates — things of that nature.

Then, coronavirus. And we found ourselves with a client — partner, rather — on the front lines of a growing pandemic.

It’s weird how things evolve. When America first started taking the novel coronavirus seriously — which, for many, was late February and early March — we pitched two emergency physicians to the local morning show. We packed into a tiny green room with several other guests (can you imagine that now?) and the physicians, when it was their turn, went on and discussed the emerging threat. That was March 5…how little we knew then. See the spot.

Then lockdowns hit, and our email and phone lines started exploding. CBS This Morning out of New York, even the BBC in the United Kingdom. That interview with a Virginia physician was scheduled, but had to be delayed as the prime minister went into the ICU with COVID-19 symptoms. (In what world are we living in where your Virginia-based client gets bumped by the UK prime minister’s health condition?)

One of our favorite client media stories, ever, was this piece in the Richmond Times-Dispatch by reporter Eric Kolenich, with photos by Bob Brown. Eric and Bob took readers inside the world of what it’s like to serve on the frontline in a war with an invisible enemy. We’re proud of our work, but more proud of our partners at VACEP.

Go beyond the law firm website status quo

We’ve reviewed at a lot of law firm web sites over the years. A conservative industry by its very nature, most legal sites are largely all the same. It’s a list of practice areas, which includes an even longer list — often bullet points — of the types of cases and legal strategies and tactics the attorneys cover. The bios of partners and attorneys — the most visited pages on any firm’s website — that read like a laundry list of case types, awards, and then a full paragraph of one’s education.

But a law firm is like any other organization: It is made up of complex and unique human beings, each with a story to tell, and each with a passion for their specific area of interest. Many web companies and search engine-focused writers tend to load firm sites up with copy to help the firm get found by Google. The truth, when you talk to any attorney, is that most new business comes in through referrals, not search engines (at least not without significant investment). Therefore, it’s best to present the best version of your firm — and yourself. And that requires storytelling.

When the Richmond law firm ThompsonMcMullan approached us to create copy for their website, our one requirement is that they let us loose to craft intriguing biographies, practice area descriptions that didn’t sound like every one of their competitors, and a firm profile that captured the rich history of a four-decades-young team of jurists. You’ll also note their home page makes no distinct reference to it being a law firm. They focused, instead, on putting their values front and center. The end product, we believe with full bias, presents this small firm as one of the region’s most distinguished.

Making Patient Safety Real

A sampling of the effort for the renowned VCU Department of Nurse Anesthesia. What kind of work? All of it. All of the work. Copy, design, photography, illustration, printing and managing the whole thing, every day. We are proud to partner with the team who lives by the credo, “Making Patient Safety Real.”

Pitching into the depths of outer space

We know a good story when we hear of one. At a meeting with one of our nonprofit association clients, we overheard a conversation about the cool work a member was doing outside his day-to-day as an emergency physician. We just knew we could get placement of the story: The guy had invented a device that can be used in zero-gravity to treat he trauma of a collapsed lung. And, that device has been part of two payloads on Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket ships.

See the story on Dr. Marsh Cuttino’s company, Orbital Medicine. Unfortunately to read the entire thing you’ll need a login. Otherwise, just enjoy cool pictures of rocketships and Bezos in a cowboy hat.

Building a Level I Trauma website

VCU Health is one of the only Level I trauma centers in the region. But their web presence needed to be taken up, well, a level. Diving in, we got to know the trauma program, its people, its facilities, its triumphs, it’s tragedies. Then we built a webpage within the VCU Health website that reflects it. This content was also extended out into a social media campaign for May’s Trauma Awareness Month. We also nearly drove off the road when we saw the health system’s “Take Me to VCU” billboard that used our copy, because quite frankly, we are damn proud of the work we do for this fine organization. We hope you never need the trauma team at VCU Health, but if you do, find a way to get to them.