TORONTO – After nearly 21 years with Rogers Communications, Jan Innes’ final day as VP provincial and municipal government relations, was December 4th.
For those of us who have covered the company for a long time, we know Jan as the smart, affable communications pro who expertly handled one of the toughest jobs in the field for over a decade: managing public relations for the company’s visionary, sometimes-mercurial, founder and CEO, the late Ted Rogers.
“I just thought I have been at one place for an awfully long time, have had just a terrific career at Rogers – and I believe that Rogers is in my DNA – but I just think it’s time for a new chapter, to do something different,” she said in an interview.
Replacing her is former Edmonton-Leduc Conservative MP James Rajotte.
“I am very, very sad to see Jan go,” said vice-chairman Phil Lind, her boss through all her years with Rogers – and for five years prior to that with upstart long distance competitor Unitel. “It’s a great loss for the company. First of all, her judgement is fantastic. That’s what I love most about her.”
Innes was part of the public relations, government relations and regulatory team Lind assembled in the 1990s for Unitel when it took on Bell Canada and the other regional telco monopolies as the first long distance competitor in Canada (an idea that seems almost quaint now, given how telecom has evolved). Rogers was one Unitel’s owners.
In January 1995 Innes joined Rogers as VP communications and handled some pretty rough stretches where the company struggled financially (it’s share price once dipped as low as $4.80) as it attempted to grow and develop its wired network while sinking needed dollars into this newfangled way of communicating: wirelessly.
“When in the 1990s we just had our backs to the wall – another near bankruptcy for Rogers – she and I would talk every morning and the press would be on us and she just held the fort for us in those days,” recalled Lind. “There were very few of us meeting with the outside world. It was investment bankers and the press… and Rogers was hunkered down himself and no one else talked to anybody.”
“We had many years where the company did not make any money and we ploughed everything into the network and infrastructure of the company – and that wasn’t always positively viewed by everyone else,” said Innes, “so it certainly was tougher for me, handling communications for the company… those were definitely challenges.”
“A lesser person would have said ‘to hell with it, I’m going to work with someone who has a chance’ but she bleeds Red and there’s no doubt about it, she’ll be a Rogers person for the rest of her life,” added Lind.
Innes herself counts her time at Unitel as a highlight as it was a fierce, years-long regulatory battle where Unitel eventually won the right to compete in the long distance market, but at great cost to its ownership.
She recalled the company’s purchase of Maclean-Hunter as another highlight, which made Rogers the dominant cable company in Canada at the time and brought it a stable of radio stations and magazine titles, some of which it still owns today.
Innes also helped guide the re-brand of Rogers in 2000 when the company dropped the Cantel wireless brand, began to use the convergence loop, or mobius strip, as its primary logo (which it still uses today) and deployed the five-note musical “sting” at the end of every TV and radio ad in order to identify it as a Rogers brand. So whether it was for cable, wireless, OMNI or CHFI, “you knew it was related to Rogers,” she explained.
As well, “one of the biggest highlights was watching and working closely with Ted Rogers, who is a Canadian icon,” she added. “One of the special things I got to do was to travel with Ted with the Relentless book release across the country (in 2008) when it was towards the end of his life.
“And, it was wonderful to work with Phil Lind for all of these years. He’s been a terrific mentor, a wonderful boss and I feel very fortunate to have worked with him.”
“She’s fantastic,” added Lind. “The company is going to miss her a lot.”
