Worldcom Public Relations Group’s 2025 North America Regional Meeting wrapped less than a week ago in beautiful Asheville, N.C., bringing together 50 principals and staff from 30 firms in 35 cities across the U.S. and Canada, plus our global chair, Serge Beckers, attending from Wisse Kommunikatie in the Netherlands. These meetings are an invaluable source of professional growth and renewal, benefiting not only partner firms but also our clients, in three ways:
1. Expanding Capacity
Through these gatherings, we explore opportunities to collaborate to create more impact and value for clients. Clients sometimes need specialized sector or functional expertise, geographic presence in key markets or a broader group of senior advisors to tackle thorny brand or reputation challenges, and Worldcom provides that. There is a great deal of regional and global cooperation underway among partners, bringing together best-in-class firms around the world to serve clients with expansive needs.
At Linhart PR, we’ve recently been pursuing opportunities to assist clients together with two North American partner firms, Cleveland-based Dix & Eaton, and Vermont-based Junapr.
2. Improving Performance
Partners always learn from each other about client challenges and solutions through case study presentations. These included a panel discussion on how Asheville-based tourism and business groups and infrastructure providers handled Hurricane Helene and its aftermath and projected accurate messages about clean-up, response and re-opening to a national audience.
The rapidly emerging role of AI was a thread woven throughout the conference, with partners sharing various client use cases (including Generative Engine Optimization audits), tools and experiences. Linhart PR has a GEO audit underway for a client now, leading to recommendations for improving search performance vs. peers.
3. Building Trust
Entrusting clients and their needs to Worldcom partner firms requires trust-based relationships with peers and these are built at meetings like this. Worldcom is a high-trust network because of opportunities to exchange perspectives, spot trends and tell war stories about client challenges faced and solved.
Clients should know that all Worldcom partner firms must pass a regular assessment and peer review under the Worldcom Management Standard, which ensures all partner firms have rigorous systems and processes in place to enable them to perform at a high level. Peer reviews have helped Linhart PR improve our performance and serve our clients more effectively. In Asheville, we were part of a review team for RH Strategic, a respected partner firm with offices in Seattle and Washington, D.C.
The meeting last week was hosted by the North Carolina-based RLF Communications team, led by Monty Hagler. It was an important opportunity for our partnership to contribute to the economic recovery of Asheville from Hurricane Helene as it extends its warm welcome to visitors once again.
Worldcom Public Relations Group is a powerful resource for partner firms, teams and their clients. #WorldcomWorks
