Leading Wireless and Gaming PR Firm’s “Chief Talker,” Vijay S. Chattha, Nominated for PR Week's 2005 Young Professional of the Year
(San Francisco, CA) Vijay S. Chattha, VSC Consulting's "Chief Talker," has been nominated for his stunning results in the field of Public Relations for PR Week's prestigious 2005 Young Professional of the Year Award, which honors the individual who represents the best in public relations each year. Nominees are judged by their career history and professional qualifications, including evidence of outstanding achievement in handling clients or senior-level staff, developing PR strategy, business savvy, creativity, knowledge of PR tactics, and contribution to business objectives.
In nominating Chattha for the award, his colleague Robert Anton Patterson wrote: "VIjay is worthy of the award because he has led our firm to over 110% annual revenue growth and has become the go-to PR Exec in emerging markets such as wireless and gaming." Some of VSC's current wireless and gaming clients include Sennari Entertainment, Metreon's Walk of Game, Moderati, eMbience, Octane Technologies, and ipsh!
With the nomination, Chattha becomes one of the first South Asian-Americans to be proposed for the award. The distinction is important as VSC has developed a strong base of South Asian-American clients that operate in North America and abroad. After 9/11, Chattha was strongly affected by hate crimes targeting Sikh and Muslim Americans and stated, "public relations was a resource that our community desperately needed."
The craft of public relations has also translated into commercial success, with the launch of VSC Consulting in November 2002.
In the last year alone, VSC has worked with its clients to generate over 1,200 media hits, including coverage in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, Headline News, Forbes, Red Herring, Adweek, Advertising Age, Gamespot, IGN, The San Jose Mercury News, SF Weekly, Crain's New York, The San Francisco Examiner, Associated Press, Reuters, Financial Times, and on ABC, NBC, and CBS, as well as in many other trade and ethnic targeted media outlets.
"We owe a great deal of our success to Vijay's creative thinking and proactive approach to publicity. His ability to grow VSC while maintaining a high level of personal service is impressive," says VSC client Nihal Mehta, CEO of ipsh!, a leader in mobile marketing strategies.
Under Chattha's leadership, VSC is becoming an expert in the fields of wireless technology, digital entertainment, video gaming, and ethnic marketing.
Chattha is now the youngest director of a PR agency that serves a unit of the world's largest advertising group, Omnicom (ipsh!), and a division of Sony Corporation (Metreon). The West Virginia native has also tried to inject the entrepreneurial spirit in the younger generation by speaking at events like the Young Entrepreneur's Forum at the Wharton School of Business, and at Future-M, a lecture series he created at Berkeley's Haas School of Business.
VSC's CEO and many of his current clients follow a similar mantra of balancing work with charity. He and three other VSC clients serve on the board of Project Ahimsa, a global effort to empower youth through music with offices in Tampa and San Francisco providing music education resources and instruments to over 20,000 children in India and the U.S.
On his nomination, Chattha jokes, "I still don't think my parents know what I do for a living, but they're learning. For example, my dad used the word "buzz" the other day in conversation, so I must be getting through."