Reputation Institute will soon be heading across the Charles River to Boston.
The Cambridge firm, which tracks and analyzes public perceptions of its 400-plus clients, plans to open its new headquarters, at 399 Boylston St. in the Back Bay on Nov. 14.
It’s one of the first big changes implemented by chief executive Kylie Wright-Ford (below) since she started in the job this past summer. She also recently hired a new chief financial officer, David Stack, whose career includes CFO stints at HubSpot and Localytics.
Wright-Ford moved to Boston from Atlanta, to take over for interim CEO Tyler Newton. (Newton remains chairman, as well as a partner with Catalyst Investors, a major shareholder in Reputation Institute.)
The 165-person global company was bursting at the seams in Cambridge, where it employs about 50 people.
The new office, with 15,000 square feet, is triple the size, with enough room for 75 employees — and one roving robot that will allow executives from overseas to participate in meetings via a video connection.
Crossing the river was important because most of the company’s clients are communications and marketing professionals and there’s a greater density of them on the south side of the Charles, particularly in the Back Bay. Wright-Ford says at least half of the local employees will see their commute improve as a result of the switch.
The company has been busy this year rolling out a new service, known as “Media RepTrak,” that uses artificial intelligence to help companies be more proactive in managing their reputations and insulating themselves from prospective crises.
A native of Australia, Wright-Ford says she quickly felt at home in Boston. And she seems to be embracing the local vernacular.
“I’ve always liked university towns,” Wright-Ford says. “People can be wicked sports fans [here] and can still enjoy an intellectual conversation.”
WGBH hopes to raise $175m over 5 years
WGBH is putting a price on its future — and it’s not a small one.
The nation’s largest producer of public-broadcast programming has unveiled the goal of its five-year fund-raising campaign: $175 million.
The money will be used to create new content, such as podcasts or curricula connected to a new animated series, “Molly of Denali,” that will launch next year. WGBH recently contributed $10 million to merge PRI and PRX, two distributors of public-radio programming; more than half of that money came from the WGBH campaign, entitled “Leadership in the Digital Century.”
“What campaigns do for us, they create access to capital for us to try new things, to experiment with a new idea, to get something up and running,” says Jon Abbott, WGBH’s chief executive.
To date, the Boston-based media operation has raised $122 million.
WGBH hopes to raise the rest by the end of 2020. As is typical for many big campaigns, the initial phase of fund-raising was done quietly, until a significant portion of the money was raised.
Unlike WGBH’s campaign just over a decade ago, this one isn’t about bricks and mortar. The last campaign funded the 950-person nonprofit’s new Brighton headquarters, a few blocks down Guest Street from New Balance’s new corporate office.
So far, at least 300 gifts in this new campaign are for at least $100,000 or more, Abbott says, and the vast majority of individual and institutional donors are from New England.
“What the campaign is designed to do is . . . to keep WGBH in the leadership position that we hold,” Abbott says.
Asset manager’s ads draw on star power
State Street Global Advisors went west for its latest ad campaign: Hollywood.
The Boston-based asset manager enlisted actress/director Elizabeth Banks for short-form videos and related social media promotions, in which Banks interviewed executives at four mid-sized companies about the secrets of their success.
The goal was to boost the profile of mid-cap companies among the fund manager’s clients. Ad agency McCann — the firm behind State Street’s “Fearless Girl” effort last year — returned to shepherd the project, “Crazy Enough to Work.”
Two of the four profiled companies are local: Dunkin’ Brands and Boston Beer Co. (The production teams visited a Dunkin’ shop in Quincy, and the Samuel Adams brewery in Jamaica Plain.) The others are The New York Times Co. and Los Angeles real estate investment trust SPR Properties.
Stephen Tisdalle, chief marketing officer at State Street Global Advisors, says the company is currently evaluating whether to extend the campaign and highlight more mid-sized businesses.
“She was able to bring a dimension out of these leaders that they typically aren’t used to,” Tisdalle says of Banks, who grew up in Pittsfield. “She was very interested in doing something that wasn’t scripted.”
Boston Beer Co. chairman Jim Koch seemed awed by his brush with celebrity.
“It’s an honor to have you in our brewery,” Koch tells Banks in the video. “You’re like the most famous person.”
Banks deadpans: “I don’t know. Samuel Adams is pretty famous.”
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