In March 2021, the Austin Chamber of Commerce called ECPR Texas with the sort of request consultants love: temporary help, clearly bounded. The Chamber was searching for an internal communications leader. ECPR would mind the gap for perhaps two months, four at most. Then, three months into the arrangement, the client contact left. The bridge had reached the opposite bank and discovered there was no road.
This is usually where an agency starts protecting its scope. ECPR changed it. The team stopped treating the work as an emergency patch and began acting as the communications department the Chamber did not have. It reworked the organization's messaging, audited its social channels, handled hundreds of press requests, coached spokespeople and helped recruit the employees who would eventually take the work back.
The assignment lasted 15 months. ECPR says it produced about $15 million in earned media value and reached nearly half a billion people. The noisier number is impressive. The quieter result is more revealing: the agency designed a writing test, vetted résumés, sat in interviews, trained the new hires and handed over its talking points and strategic thinking. It made itself useful by planning its own exit.
An apprenticeship measured in decades
There is a neat rhyme between that client handoff and the firm's own. Elizabeth Christian founded Elizabeth Christian Public Relations in 1995. Four years later, a Texas State University student named Kristin Marcum arrived as an intern. One of her jobs was clipping press coverage - actual newspaper, actual scissors - in an office she has since described as a converted bathroom.
Marcum stayed. She rose through account work, management, the presidency and a shareholding. Founder and successor said they had known for about a decade that she would eventually take over. In 2022, after 23 years at the company, Marcum acquired it, became owner and CEO, and shortened the name to ECPR. Christian moved into an of-counsel role. The sale price was not disclosed.
Apparently the longest possible version of “let's see how this semester goes.”
The succession tells you what the company considers an asset. A campaign can be copied. A contact list can go stale. Judgment earned over repeated encounters with the same reporters, institutions, elected officials and civic leaders is harder to reproduce. Marcum calls this knowing the “inside baseball” of Austin. It is less mysterious than it sounds: be present for a long time, remember what happened last time, and answer the phone when the next difficult thing happens.
“Connections are what build businesses, communities and lives worth celebrating.”Kristin Marcum, owner and CEO
The product is organized belief
ECPR now calls itself a civic impact communications firm. The label is a useful correction to the usual picture of PR as press releases and launch parties. Its customers include companies, health systems, nonprofits, school districts, cities, foundations and professional associations. They tend to have the same awkward problem: one decision must make sense to several groups that speak different languages.
The firm's menu covers strategic PR, crisis planning and response, public-affairs communications, coalition building, digital advertising, sentiment tracking, social media, video and events. ECPR is explicit that it is not a registered lobbying firm. It works alongside lobbyists and lawyers, translating a policy objective into language that can travel beyond the Capitol or City Hall.
Consider MLS2ATX. In 2017, the idea of bringing Major League Soccer to Austin was a hopeful pitch, not a stadium. ECPR helped with communications and community outreach as supporters attended events, contacted council members and testified at City Hall. By 2019, the effort had helped produce Austin FC, the city's first major league sports franchise. The agency did not manufacture the team. It helped organize belief around it until a private ambition looked like a civic possibility.
A library campaign with receipts
In January 2022, the Texas Library Association hired ECPR as Texas politicians pushed investigations of books. The response was not merely a press campaign. ECPR helped create Texans for the Right to Read - name, message, website, newsletter, social presence and a recruitable identity for people who opposed bans.
By the end of the contract, ECPR reported 553 media mentions, $8.9 million in earned media value and an estimated audience of nearly 364 million. The newsletter recruited more than 3,300 coalition members; targeted digital ads generated 2.6 million impressions. More consequentially, the coalition contributed to efforts that kept what the association considered the most damaging legislative proposals from becoming law and delayed some local school-board policies.
Earned-media value is an agency metric and should be read as one, not as cash in the bank. Coalition membership is harder to wave away. It records a person doing something. This distinction matters because ECPR's strongest work crosses from attention into participation: readers join, fans testify, executives learn to answer, and internal teams inherit the system.
The price of a seat at the table
ECPR publishes a number most agencies hide: engagements start at $10,000 a month for at least six months. The minimum opening commitment is therefore $60,000. The firm prefers one primary contact and access to executive leadership. These are not decorative conditions. A message cannot be disciplined when five client-side committees can rewrite it, and a crisis adviser without access to the decision-maker is merely a spectator with a phone.
This model will not suit a small local business seeking a one-off press release, a leader who wants favorable coverage without uncomfortable counsel, or an organization unable to give the agency timely access. It also will not replace lobbying where direct legislative advocacy is required. ECPR's place in the market is between an ad agency, a public-affairs shop and an outsourced senior communications office. The combination is the point.
What to borrow without hiring them
The transferable lesson is not “get better connections.” Start smaller. Audit every channel before adding another. Write a home-base message - the sentence every spokesperson can return to when the interview wanders. Decide who owns approvals. Train more than one person to speak. Track actions as well as impressions. Most of all, build the handoff while the campaign is running.
In 2026, PRovoke Media named ECPR its IN2 SABRE Social Impact Agency of the Year for work with the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country on the Kerr County Flood Relief Fund. The honor fits the firm's new positioning, but the logic is old. Elizabeth Christian built a company. She prepared someone else to own it. Kristin Marcum built client systems. Her teams prepared other people to run them.
The usual agency fantasy is to be irreplaceable. ECPR's more useful idea is to leave behind a stronger institution - and remain the call it wants to make when the next unfamiliar problem arrives.