Forty years is a long time to do anything. For a communications agency, it’s long enough to have worked in a world before the internet, before social media, before the entire infrastructure of how information moves changed underneath the industry’s feet more than once.
I joined R&J at the tail end of 1999, when the world was on the precipice of the Y2K transition and all the uncertainty that came with it was swirling. It was literally the dawn of a new century, and there was very real talk, in many circles, about the possibility that the whole world would be completely transformed in an instant at the stroke of midnight.
When I look back at the mid-to-late 1990s, I see a defining stretch that set the trajectory for everything R&J Strategic Communications would become. We now refer to it as our Expansion & Specialization Era, a time when both our agency and the broader communications landscape were undergoing rapid, transformative change.
R&J Strategic Communications is a full-service integrated digital marketing and public relations agency specializing in commercial real estate, healthcare, human services and nonprofit communications. Celebrating 40 years, the agency continues to evolve alongside a rapidly changing communications landscape, helping organizations navigate emerging platforms, technologies and audience behaviors.
When I founded what would eventually become R&J Strategic Communications in 1986, the vision was straightforward: build a firm rooted in integrity, trusted relationships, and strategic thinking. In our earliest days, the company operated as Roberts & John Advertising and Public Relations, a small agency with a big belief that organizations deserved communications partners who cared as deeply about their mission and reputation as they did.
