Summer!? It’s already October. Seems like we just ended holidays and vacations and got back to work and school and now we’re already in the heart of autumn.

In Chicago, we spent a good chunk of this past summer watching the filming of “Transformers 3″ all over the city, but mostly right outside our GA office. Having never seen Transformers 1 or 2, I was assured by my kids these are cool movies with awesome battle scenes. Ok, I’ll take their word for it.

But even the most jaded of us acted like tourists, gawking out our windows, star-struck at the magnitude in which mayhem and destruction were meticulously staged on the same streets we walk every day. And to top that off, there were real honest-to-goodness fireballs and skyscraper jumpers and machine gun fire, and more fireballs, and you think, hey, maybe it isn’t just all about CG and special effects technology anymore. Yeah, right. Still no sign of these cars that transform into 10-story robots, so while we’re watching dozens of actors scramble around in an imaginary firefight with these things, somebody is slaving away at a monitor somewhere filling in the rest of the story. Such are the times we live in.

So what’s our story?

We’ve undergone a bit of a transformation this summer ourselves. Not a dramatic change, but we’ve spent a fair bit of time figuring out how to represent more of what we do and have been doing with our business, especially given the technology we now have at our disposal to get the attention of our clients’ customers. Just as we have naturally evolved away from just the label of an “ad agency” 10 years ago, how we can communicate today as individuals and in business escapes easy labels and definitions.

Bottom line, we’re still communication experts. We are a communication company, for all that that means these days. And at the core of that communication is, and always will be, the story. So not only do we take our role seriously as planners, strategists, and co-creators of our clients’ stories, but also we find, as a group, that we are as loaded as ever with the talents, skills, and expertise to get those stories out in today’s world. Which I find is a world that is immediate, engaging, powerful and daunting all at the same time.

Over just the past few months we’ve flexed some of this communication muscle across every channel imaginable and with audiences as varied as the laboratory community, women in need of the best moisturizer around, and anyone who wants to take television with them anywhere they go.

Three quick examples [there are plenty more, trust me], but a microcosm of our life here at GA. So much so that also this summer, we were recognized by INC. magazine as one of their 500/5000 fastest growing independent companies in the US. We’re not exactly in the top 100, but we’re happy for the recognition all the same.

So as we move from one season to the next, we continue to move—not transform—our world forward. The GA Communication Group is a more apt description of the company we are today. Health, Digital, and Consumer are the perfect arenas in which our clients seek out our help for their companies and products. It has all come together quite nicely these last few years. We’re blessed with enormous talent, both here in Chicago and out in San Diego. This will all continue to blend seamlessly as well.

So you will see some changes: some logos, some descriptions, some people who you may not have met before, but I can assure you the one constant in all of this is, and will always be, our clients and the stories they need our help to tell. Funny thing is that as much as we’ve talked this past summer about our business, we always catch ourselves to reiterate that at the end of the day, it’s really not about us, it’s about you, and your business. As it has been for 28 years, we’re damn glad to be along for the ride.