Angela Jamison (left) founder of Communicopia and Camryn Jamison, PR writer/graphic designer, who will help take the agency into its next quarter century. (Photo by Flavi Huff Photography)
by Angela Bendorf Jamison
It was November1998 and I was taking care of the things that needed to be done to start my new business. After working jobs as a newspaper reporter and editor, a public relations/advertising account supervisor and then a corporate communications manager, I was starting my own agency.
In October of that year, I was trying to come up with a name for my new business. While it’s easy to do this for my clients–from business names to product names and more–doing it for my own company was challenging. I wanted the word “communications” to be a part of my name and I was attaching “comm” or “communi” to every word I saw.
While flying to Washington, D.C. to meet with my first client (and still my client today), I was reading one of those airline magazines and there was a story about cornucopias (since Thanksgiving was just around the corner). I did the drill and presto–adding “Communi” to “copia” sounded great and I had my company name!
Now I could do all the paperwork to become an S Corporation. I was incorporated on Dec. 4, 1998, and so that is Communicopia’s official founder’s day and the day we celebrate Communicopia’s anniversary.
One thing I didn’t do–because beleive or not small businesses weren’t doing it at the time–was secure my website domain name. This is something that nowadays is done as part of naming your company. In 1998, while big companies had websites, not every business did. It was difficult to code a site and was costly.
By 2000 when I began exploring doing websites for clients, I thought I would start with my own website. I discovered someone else in Canada had the Communicopia name and URL–thus having to add PR to the end of my already long company name.
The years have flown by with good work for many clients all for whom I’m most grateful.
We are starting the celebration of our 25th year in business at the beginning of our quarter of a century and celebrating during the entire year of 2023.
Cards have gone out to clients from throughout the years to thank them for helping us get to this milestone and an open house will be planned for when it’s warm again.
We will be choosing a greater Wake Forest area non-profit to partner with in providing a year of free marketing communications services. Giving back is our way to show our gratitude for 25 years in the community. We look forward to celebrating!