Two-year-old Syrus Reputation Services of Montreal has grown to 13 employees with the appointment of Louis-Philippe Gariépy as vice-president.
Syrus specializes in reputation consulting and offers strategic management advice in communications and brand management.
Gariépy, a lawyer by training, has extensive experience in the communications field, working on everything from government relations issues to crisis management for BDDS Weber Shandwick and National. He has also worked for major corporations (Shell, Xstrata and Glencore) “because I felt that I needed a bit more experience on how things are done internally in large corporations,” Gariépy told Marketing.
Gariépy recently worked on his own as a consultant and quickly realized “there’s a lot of work that you have to leave on the table” when you’re a one-person show. “There’s an appeal to work in a multidisciplinary team like we have here at Syrus, which is to turn around and actually get things done. The winner in all that is the client,” he said.
Gariépy brings to Syrus international experience, superior analytical skills, thorough agency and client perspective and strong business acumen, said Syrus president and partner Alain Bergeron. The new vice-president has experience with growth projects, closures, industrial disputes, change management, due diligence, public consultations and has worked overseas in Chile, Peru, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia and the Philippines.
Bergeron and co-founder Hugues Mousseau have more than 40 years of communications, marketing and reputation management experience.
“We thought there was an opportunity to marry strategy and communications with the ultimate goal of protecting or enhancing personal or corporate reputation without recycling ideas from client to client,” said Bergeron.
The company’s clients include publicly-traded Canadian companies in the technology, food, retail, media and automotive fields and a variety of private companies, professional associations and individuals.
“We are a cross between a strategy shop and a communications shop,” said Bergeron with services that range from financial communications, branding and social media to internal communications and crisis management.
“Communications is not reputation. Reputation is values and corporate behaviour put together, repeatedly. You need deep knowledge of a given company and its DNA to create lasting value,” added Bergeron. “And to that end, our first step is always to provide a diagnosis before we provide any remedy to any issue. It sounds basic, but I think the communications industry forgot that important principle years ago.”
