Who We Are

Hackney Communications has helped more than two dozen small companies over the last five years, raising the profile of these companies for customers and prospects in places like the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Forbes and Businessweek.

Holt Hackney

Holt Hackney is a communications specialist with more than 20 years of experience as a journalist and public relations professional.

In the 1980s, Hackney began a career in journalism, rising from an editor at a small-town weekly newspaper to a staff writer at a national business magazine in New York City. At Financial World, Hackney crafted stories about billion-dollar corporations. This experience helped him understand the needs of business journalists as well as analysts, which he relied on as sources for his stories.

In the early 1990s, Hackney combined his journalism skills with his interest in public relations and assisted the National Golf Foundation in disseminating its messages in a highly politicized business environment.

Several years later, Hackney accepted a managing editor role for LRP Publications, a legal publisher, where he oversaw four publications and their respective editors as well as assisted the company's marketing lead in her efforts to market the publications to potential subscribers.

In 1998, Hackney further put his communication skills to work in the technology field. First, he joined Stratfor/Infraworks as the Director of Communications, where he helped the company secure coverage in Investors Business Daily, Infoworld and Time Magazine.

Hackney, then applied his skills at CyBerCorp, an electronic stock trading company. This was the scene of Hackney's most significant accomplishment. Without benefit of a public relations firm or relevant advertising budget, he achieved editorial hits in Forbes, Fortune, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, Investors Business Daily, Texas Monthly, The Industry Standard, CNNfn, MSN Investor, PC World, Austin Business Journal and Austin American Statesman and others. He also facilitated interviews for the CEO on CNBC, CNN Moneyline, CNN Digital Jam, FoxNews' Cavuto Report and all four network affiliates in Austin. In addition, Hackney set up telephone and face-to-face interviews for the CEO with Wall Street (such as Credit Suisse First Boston and Morgan Stanley) and industry analysts (such as Jupiter and Forrester). Fifteen months after Hackney joined CyBerCorp, the company was purchased by Charles Schwab for $500 million.

Hackney's next step was to assist Hewlett Packard, where he served as Director of Communications for the company's enterprise software subsidiary, Austin-based Dazel. Hackney worked with the Dazel marketing team as well as HP's corporate public relations team in California to extend Dazel's messages through the media and analysts. His work helped secure coverage in all the relevant technology publications as well as coordinating interviews for Dazel executives with the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and Businessweek. In addition, Hackney took over a flagging analyst relations effort and brought Dazel back into the good graces of outfits, such as Gartner, IDC, Meta Group and Hurwitz.

Hackney's success has been attributable to a unique qualification in the public relations community -- experience as a national business journalist. In addition, to being a staff writer at Financial World, Hackney has written for Florida Trend (the Florida equivalent to Texas Monthly), Forbes' Executive Edge and Treasury and Risk Management Magazine. This experience has influenced his ability to understand the needs of the journalist, gain immediate respect from the journalist and utilize existing contacts in the journalism world.

On a personal note, Hackney is a Florida native, who received a degree in journalism from the University of Florida.

Stewart Johnson

Stewart Johnson is a seasoned communications professional with more than 20 years of successful leadership and program management experience in public relations, corporate communications and marketing in diverse organizations and fast-paced business environments—including fortune 500 companies.

Johnson got his start as a Public Affairs Officer in the U.S. Marine Corps where, for six years, he was involved in communicating the Marine message as a liaison between the media/public and the Marine Corps. During his career with the Marine Corps, Johnson attained the rank of Captain as he served in various communications roles at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California and the Twelfth Marine Corps Recruiting District. His Camp Pendleton assignments included serving as officer-in-charge of: external news bureau—writing, editing, distributing all print, radio and video news releases, articles and stories, and training spokespeople; community relations and speakers bureau—coordinating Marine participation (color guards, equipment displays, bands, k-nine dog demos, speakers) in events throughout the Western United States; San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station public relations liaison—the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station is physically located on Camp Pendleton. At the Twelfth Marine Corps District, Captain Johnson served as Marketing Officer for Marine recruiting in ten Western states and as the District’s officer in charge of all public relations/media relations activities—serving as the primary Marine spokesperson for the region and training/prepping other spokespeople as appropriate.

Beginning in 1991, Johnson entered the financial services industry, where he worked as Assistant Vice President, Corporate Communications and guided West One Bancorp’s internal communications program for five years. His duties included writing and editing WEST, a monthly magazine for employees. As well, he wrote, produced and hosted “West One Video Magazine,” a quarterly video news program for employees, which won a Telly Award. Johnson also wrote and edited all promotional news releases, ran the corporation’s speaker’s bureau, and conducted media training for bank spokespeople.

When U.S. Bank acquired West One Bancorp, Johnson stayed on with the Idaho affiliate as Assistant Vice President of Public Relations where he developed and implemented all public relations activities during the bank conversion to a new name/new entity. During the transition, Johnson was able to garner positive media coverage about the conversion in more than 70 Idaho news outlets—including all daily newspapers, the top five TV news broadcasts, and the top five radio stations. In addition, Johnson displayed his ability to handle public relations during a serious incident when he served as spokesperson for and effectively handled all media relations for a shootout/hostage incident at a Boise bank branch.

Over the last nine years, Johnson has been primarily focused on the technology industry. First, he helped Micron Technology’s Communications subsidiary establish itself as a dominant player in the Radio Frequency Identification market while serving as a Public Relations and Marketing Manager. During his stint with Micron (1996-1999), Johnson managed development of all marketing collateral material for the company, including fact sheets, cost-benefit studies, brochures, and data sheets; launched a new company Website and managed it; garnered 3 cover stories about automated fueling with RFID—Petroleum Equipment & Technology (twice) and Electronic Commerce World; Delivered 6 presentations about RFID at major industry and vertical market trade events, including ScanTech, IDExpo, National Association of Control States Expo, and Association of Lab Automation; and established a speaker’s bureau program that gave more than 40 presentations to automatic identification industry and trade organizations in two years.

He joined Hewlett-Packard in 1999 as a Worldwide Public Relations Manager. In that role, he handled public relations and media relations for HP’s Jetsend Communications Protocol, Linux Operating System and Sponsorships. While serving at HP, Johnson was responsible for media coverage and article placement in a wide variety of high-tech and business publications, including: Wall Street Journal, CNET, Computer Reseller News, Computerworld, eWeek, Hard Copy Observer, InfoWorld, Information Week, Interactive Week, Network Computing, Network Magazine, PC Magazine, PC World, Smart Computing, VAR Business, G2 Computer Intelligence, Linux Magazine, Linux World, Linuxgram, Money Magazine, San Jose Mercury News, TechTV, Computerwire, The451.com, Financial Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Dow Jones News, South China Morning Post, Linux Weekly News, Dr. Dobbs’ Journal, IDG News Service, Software Development Times, San Diego Daily Transcript, Geek.com, CBS Marketwatch, Investors Business Daily, and Reuters.

In recent years, Johnson has continued his involvement with Hewlett Packard as a consultant, while assisting other corporate clients with their public relations and marketing needs. His other clients include Best HR Practices, PCS Edventures, Provizio, Albertsons, FMC Corporation, Payroll America, and DTX Media. Some of his accomplishments for these clients include media coverage or article placement in the Idaho Statesman, Idaho State Journal, The Spokesman-Review, Dallas Morning News, The Orange County Register, Deseret News, as well as television coverage in Salt Lake City, and Sacramento.

Johnson, who has an MBA, brings a wealth of experience to Hackney Communications, especially in the areas of executive media training/coaching, message development, establishing and building relationships with key media representatives, strategic planning, writing, and cutting through jargon to make the complex understandable.