The Wilcox Group’s closing hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks. I had put my heart into the place, as VP–Investor Communications on such accounts as Kinross Gold and daring entrepreneur John Bitove’s the XM Radio IPO and his other companies Priszm Income Fund (KFC, Taco Bell) and Scott’s REIT. Mat Wilcox, founder and CEO, is one of the greatest talents in the PR business. If she had been in New York instead of Vancouver, she would have had 400 people in her employ instead of the 30 or so there were at WG’s peak, when there were offices in BC and Toronto.

Wilcox was Mat and Mat was Wilcox. The firm was inseparable from her shadow; there was a heavy component of micromanagement, which kept some clients happy and often alienated and disturbed professionals who believed they should be accorded more space and intellectual liberty. It was her firm though and she built it from the ground up. Who am I to say how she should run it? (Although I did, mistakenly).

Mat had had some serious health problems, well documented in a highly revealing account when she was named one of the  country’s 100 most influential women. It broke her heart to close the Toronto office, which she dutifully visited every other week, flying cross country, a daunting schedule for anyone, especially a person who arose at 4 am almost daily–even after her dual cancer treatments.

One of the most telling comments in Wilcox’s valedictory was her thoughts about social media. Expressing her unbridled enthusiasm for the communications revolution of our time, she also noted that “the financial model” for it does not exist–meaning the energy and time required to develop an online brand, either personally or in a corporate sense has not found its proper financial reward.

It’s always sad when an organization one has known and loved is no more. LA PR guru Martin Cooper expressed this well when Harshe-Rotman & Druck, Inc collapsed in the arms of Ruder Finn. Mat Wilcox was one of a kind and so was her firm, with its crisis communications “War Room,” total devotion to clients, brutal honesty — even about Matt’s illness. Although Mat herself will carry on, a plus for the PR world, the firm is gone, and that is a definite minus.

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