As featured in September/October 1998
	Charlotte Ottley's Strategies

A Talent for Bringing People Together

By Vincent F.A. Golphin

It's a talent. Really. That's what observers and clients past and present say. Charlotte Ottley has a talent for bringing people together.

The head of C. Ottley Strategies, Ltd., a public relations and marketing firm with offices in New York City and St. Louis, is credited with the knack for bringing often high-class clients together with the people they most want to reach. Often, that means linking big, white-run businesses with minority partners or consumers. Sometimes, the challenge is just to pull off the right event in the right place for the desired result.

When international fabric designer Charles Hyland of New York and an African-American colleague in Detroit wanted to get the word out about a unique collaboration, they started with C. Ottley Strategies.

Ottley and her staff re-packaged the African-American designer. They positioned him to get maximum exposure for his artistry and Hyland's product.

Showhouse, a project to benefit the Detroit Symphony, was the black designer's debut. He was given a room to decorate in Detroit's John Selley Mansion, the former residence of the archbishop.

COS, as staffers tend to refer to the firm, dreamed up the idea of tying the designs to singer Nancy Wilson. The room was done in a "Nancy Wilson" theme. The agency even pulled in an African-American dress designer to craft a gown for Wilson out of Hyland fabrics to match the theme. They did the PR thing, too.

COS drew daily stories from Motor City papers and news stations. The agency landed the designer some national attention through BET (Black Entertainment Television). There are other stories.

When Charlie Johnson, CEO and president of Louisville, Kentucky's Active Transportation, North America's biggest minority-owned hauling company, wanted to reach prospective clients, COS created an event to highlight the company at the United Nations. Three years later, when Ford Motor Company agreed to join Active in building a $280 million trucking plant in Louisville, the Ottley staff pulled together a coming out party with special guests such as Jesse Jackson.

Whenever the Chase Manhattan Bank Corporation wants to promote a venture with a black or Hispanic business, or sponsor a public event, the answer is COS. The relationship is summed in a letter to Ottley from Chase managing director Carol Parry: "C. Ottley Strategies' ability to communicate to our constituencies is impressive... On numerous occasions your problem-solving strategies have provided both opportunities and a positive public image for the new Chase. We gave you a challenge tantamount to those of firms much larger than yours. You continue to meet the challenge."

With a seven-member staff ensconced in a modest suite of offices on East 57th Street, over the past five years COS has drawn accolades from a growing slate of companies including Anheuser-Busch, Lucent Technologies and Avis Rent a Car.

"When companies are looking for a minority firm who can help them reach ethnic markets nationwide, only three names traditionally come to mind (Uniworld, Burrell, and Carolyn Jones ad agencies)," said Ottley, flashing her trademark warm smile. "We need to get them to know there is a 'new age' firm out here."

She explained: "We try to say to corporations, let us be your liaison to navigate you through the community for sales, PR and goodwill. We say back to the community, we will assure that you get from them sales, goodwill and PR."

Harlem's Commitment Day, planned and conceived by COS, shows the dynamic. Ottley and the staff brought Wall Street, Madison and Park Avenues uptown to 135th Street in Harlem in front of the Abyssinian Development Corporation headquarters for a business exposition.

"ADC wanted to raise money and needed $50,000," she said. "They thought that going to the Hilton would make a difference. But if you're trying to market a community to attract developers, then you have to do it where you live. They thought it was the weirdest idea to try to get 250 corporate executives to come to Harlem at 7:30 a.m. to sit under a tent and have breakfast."

COS did everything. The firm packaged and themed, "Harlem Renaissance: Day of Commitment." Aside from drawing international media coverage, the event became a day-long street festival. It included a "Taste of Harlem" luncheon catered by 10 of the area's best restaurants, and performances by Stephanie Mills and the Broadway cast of "Smokey Joe's Cafe."

Ottley said, "Now, if you are a corporation who has already invested money in Harlem or plan to invest money in Harlem, you mean you don't want to be part of a day that would allow you to showcase your commitment?"

COS helped the non-profit agency raise more than $260,000. Movers and shakers from the metropolis' major financial institutions, corporations and the Empire State Development Corporation gained the chance to learn about a community many of them rarely visit from the inside. Some found new clients to broaden their markets. Harlem business people gained access to lenders and traders.

"We're the middle," Ottley said. "We have constituencies in the community that trust us. We're from corporate America, so they trust us, too."

Charlotte Ottley once worked for NBC. Theresa Racine, COS' media relations manager, spent nearly two decades in television,too. She was an anchor and reporter at an Alabama NBC station. Hector Pena, the special events manager, once did promotions for New York's Spanish Broadcasting System. He ran his own promotional business for two years with clients such as Goya Foods, but left that to join COS. Nneke (pronounced Nee-ka) Pope, who coordinates the firm's activities with clients, once handled community relations for a Coler/Goldwater Hospital on Roosevelt Island, part of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation.

"I see myself as the glue, principally because I have a coordinating background," said Pope. "I am constantly focusing on procedural issues within the office to make certain that everything flows well. Also, I have a background in special events planning and media relations and public relations. If there are any issues when clients call us and Hector or Theresa are not here, I'm able to address those issues."

Ottley said experienced employees become an added value for clients. "You don't leave me and drop to the bottom of anything," she said.

The Manhattan-based Faith Center for Community Development, an agency which guides churches in community development and neighborhood revitalization projects, provides an example of how the commitment to clients works. Chase is one of the non-profit organizations key backers.

"I came as a Chase consultant to give Chase some feedback on the marketability of this project," said Ottley. They met for the first time at a sit-down with bank executives.

The Rev. Fred Lucas, the Faith Center's director, said he was there to gauge whether COS had the sensitivity and skills to package a client that deals with churches. "We found that many of the national technical assistance organizations really didn't understand how religious institutions work," said Lucas, 15-year pastor of a 4,400-member, Brooklyn African Methodist Episcopal congregation before establishing the center.

COS took the center, whose offices are in the Manhattan United Way building, back to basics. "It's helped to have a professional group that is not a part of our organization to assist us in stepping back from our day-to-day activities and accessing where we are and where we want to go," said Lucas. "She is excellent in terms of that. Looking at our national outreach, we have spent a lot of time in places like St. Louis and Houston."

Ottley said her staff works to make certain that when the client goes public they are ready to respond to any opportunity. "I consult our clients so they have every base covered," she said. "We talk a lot about anchoring the program and the 'what ifs.' We take our time to make sure that even if I'm not there, the team is comfortable with the concept. If they want a second tier of information, we are preparing the second tier. When my clients go out, they are ready to fly. They are ready to pass the test."

She said a firm focused merely on public relations would push for the press conference. An advertising agency might rush to do an ad whether or not the client is ready.

Charlotte Ottley has won two Big Apple Awards from the Public Relations Society of America's New York Chapter. An even greater indication that the firm is doing something right, she says, are overtures from bigger firms such as Edelman, Saatchi and Saatchi, Uniworld, Burrell and Graham and the Mingo-Chisholm Group.

Charlotte Ottley started her first ad agency in 1983 while doing public affairs work for CBS. It was Reflections & Associates, based in a five-room suite in downtown St. Louis. Her mother was the office manager. The first and largest client was Brown and Williamson Tobacco Corporation. The list expanded. Eventually, she worked with McDonnell Douglas, the aerospace company.

She learned to love challenges as the only child of entrepreneur parents. Her father's family, the Merritts, owned service stations and cabs in East St. Louis, where she was born on August 2, 1947. Despite an early interest in business, Ottley went to Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois, where she earned a master's degree in speech pathology and audiology. She taught for a decade at the University of Missouri Medical Center and the University of Kansas Medical Center.

She left CBS in 1989. Ottley said she had done more than she set out to do in television and was ready for another challenge. That was the birth of Charlotte Ottley Strategies. The goal was to bring a unique, personal approach to the task of marketing and public relations.

"We consider what the people need and what the corporation needs and the best medium to do it," Ottley explained. "We know how to create a psychic message because we are up on the media.

"I have to think of the story that will be understood in the community (meaning business and everybody), so they will come and get my client's services. I educate my client so they package their services so people can understand it. Everybody walks away with something."

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