In 2010 I attended the annual convention of the National Council for Marketing & Public Relations in Albuquerque on behalf of my then-employer, St. Petersburg College. Rather than simply soak up four days of seminars and conferences, I put together a WordPress blog (a bit like the one you are reading) and reported on each of the conference sessions so my colleagues back in St. Pete could benefit from them. (That blog is still up and you can see it if you want to). The following is one of the stories I produced at that conference. This isn’t an example of great writing, but rather an illustration of how journalism can contribute to institutional knowledge and expand the value of things like conferences and seminars.

Four culprits contribute to stalled growth

This session was presented by Steve McKee, a partner in an Albuquerque-based ad agency, McKee Wallwork Cleveland, and author of “When Growth Stalls,”a book that examines the hows and whys of a business phenomenon that many businesses, even successful ones, run into.

That sudden slowdown is just what happened to McKee’s own business just a few years after launch. The new company went through rapid growth and was even cited by a national magazine as being one of the fastest-growing new companies in America. But just a few years later, much of the air seemed to escape from the balloon, and McKee Wallwork entered a period of the blahs. McKee Wallwork remained busy, but the previously steep growth curve went flat.

As a marketer, McKee was not only worried about the sudden negative turn; he also was curious about the reasons for the sudden change, and he wondered whether other companies experienced the same slowdown after steep initial growth. He decided to do some research.

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