Oh, we got trou­ble. Or at least we have for the past two years as COVID has impact­ed near­ly every aspect of all our lives. But as always, a sil­ver lin­ing is start­ing to become clear. Or in this case, I guess, a brass lin­ing – com­plete with 76 trom­bones lead­ing the big parade, with 110...Read More

I’ve nev­er been a big fan of rodents, but when they come bear­ing com­pli­ments, that’s anoth­er story. When I opened my email last week I was greet­ed with a delight­ful sur­prise: a mes­sage from Lau­ra Numeroff, cre­ator of the beloved “If You Give a Mouse a Cook­ie” books. You remem­ber them: the New York Times-best­selling children’s...Read More

It was while watch­ing “A Christ­mas Sto­ry” for around the 800th time over the week­end that I real­ized I should prob­a­bly offer Ral­phie a job. Sure, there are some down­sides, most­ly that he’s fic­tion­al, lives in the 1940s and also is nine years old. But the upsides are plen­ti­ful. In his quest to per­suade his par­ents...Read More

It’s not exact­ly break­ing news that the past two years have been tough on the media. And in Min­neso­ta, prob­a­bly no out­let has faced stronger head­winds recent­ly than Upsize Mag­a­zine. When the region­al busi­ness magazine’s co-founder and pub­lish­er Wes Bergstrom died in Spring 2020, the pub­li­ca­tion went on hia­tus, fac­ing an uncer­tain future. Enter Andy Tel­li­john....Read More

Intro­duc­ing our newest team mem­ber, account coor­di­na­tor Chioma Uwag­wu. Chioma is a 2020 grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­si­ty of St. Thomas in St. Paul, where she majored in – deep breath – com­mu­ni­ca­tion and jour­nal­ism with an empha­sis in per­sua­sion and social influ­ence and a dou­ble major in cul­tur­al studies. As you might expect from that mul­ti-faceted...Read More

We talk a lot about the peo­ple of Bell­mont Part­ners, and how our agency cul­ture dri­ves our abil­i­ty to deliv­er excel­lent results for our clients and our community. We’ve received a lot of atten­tion for the work we do, and we’re extreme­ly proud of that. But today, we’ve been rec­og­nized for the most crit­i­cal foun­da­tion­al ele­ment...Read More

Netflix’s mas­sive hit “Squid Game” is packed with nail-nib­bling ten­sion, heart­less dou­ble-cross­es and cut-throat (lit­er­al­ly) com­pe­ti­tion. If you haven’t seen it, imag­ine the chaos and cal­cu­la­tion of a throng of peo­ple angling to score the last Tick­le Me Elmo on the shelf in 1996, only with a lot more green tracksuits. Mil­lions of words have been...Read More

It was a mem­o­rable and emo­tion­al week­end as Part­ner Mau­reen Cahill received the Cham­pi­on of Hope award from Smile Net­work on Sat­ur­day, Oct. 30. Mau­reen has a deep rela­tion­ship with the orga­ni­za­tion, the vol­un­teers, part­ners and the mis­sion. She served as exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Min­neso­ta-based glob­al non­prof­it from 2012 through 2020, after serv­ing on its...Read More

Scroll through LinkedIn or flip open any busi­ness mag­a­zine and it seems like the cor­po­rate world col­lec­tive­ly just dis­cov­ered a brand-new con­cept: Empathy. And it’s no won­der: If ever there was a time for lead­ers to flex their emo­tion­al-intel­li­gence mus­cles and try to under­stand what their col­leagues, cus­tomers and com­mu­ni­ties are going through, it’s now. Peo­ple are...Read More

Recent­ly I took a look at PR role mod­els in pop cul­ture and came up fair­ly emp­ty. Yes, there were a few exag­ger­at­ed char­ac­ters like Saman­tha Jones from “Sex and the City.” But if they didn’t exact­ly spark a rush of peo­ple apply­ing for PR jobs, who did? The like­ly answer: fic­tion­al jour­nal­ists. In the 70s,...Read More