Originally posted on LPP’s blog, Beyond The Hype.

Tonight, the UNC Tar Heels will take on the Wisconsin Badgers as a part of the Sweet 16. Now, I’ve been a Tar Heel for a long time (over 10 years) and have watched my team in many #MarchMadness battles. But this year is a tad different, it’s the first time I created a bracket that didn’t put UNC as the tourney winner.

Okay, okay – all you hardcore madness fans, I know the cardinal rule of bracketology is to complete with your brain, your research and not your heart. But how many Tar Heels out there can put our Carolina blue hearts aside this time of year? My assumption from my time there, not many.

I filled out my bracket with an empty soul, my eyes devoid of NC and somehow filled with ISU (and let’s not even talk about how that worked out for me). But tonight, UNC will face a #1 seed, rocking some awesome kicks and, hopefully, proving my bracket wrong.

So what does any of this have to do with PR? Aside from needing to get this off my chest, it reminded me of the importance of heart, of intuition, being unpredictable but also being stable. March Madness is, in fact, the opposite of mad, it’s a celebration of passion and heart and all the possibilities that come along with those things. And, for some reason, when I filled out my bracket this year, I did so with research and statistics and I forgot to create a bracket based on my gut, my emotion.

And I think that’s why it makes sense to talk about on a PR agency blog and, more specifically, the LPP blog. Now, don’t get me wrong. Statistics and well-developed content based on research and trends are the basis of most everything we develop. But, that bracket I filled in, NEVER would have left this agency. My coworkers would have looked at me, looked at it, and looked back at me asking, “Do you really believe in this?”

And my answer would have inevitably been, “No.”

This answer would then take us back to the drawing board. Why? Because we’re a team of people who make decisions based on energy, passion, what’s right, never what’s easiest and definitely not because everyone else is doing it.

We’re an agency filled with heart. An agency that’s never scared to trust our intuition, in fact, it’s that burning opinion that’s fostered here. And it’s what we hire for. People with opinions. With guts. With emotion. And, because it’s PR, people who can communicate all of those both internally and externally for our clients.

Quite honestly, it’s March Madness here all year round. And we’re looking for players who are ready to be a part of a sincere and passionate team. A team that’s not afraid to go up against a #1 seed, and certainly not scared of some little ol’ badgers.