The Man Who Put a Concorde Above Times Square Still Thinks Like a Reporter

In 1996, a newly founded public-relations firm received the sort of first assignment that makes every later pitch sound suspiciously modest. British Airways had a half-size model of Concorde. It was 102 feet long, spanned 42 feet and weighed 24,500 pounds. The airline wanted it above Times Square. Tom Goodman, who had just left a career inside American network news, helped put it there.

The object was an advertisement, technically. But nobody experiences a 12-ton supersonic aircraft as an advertisement. It is an interruption in the laws of the street. People point. Cab drivers tell passengers. Television crews discover that their evening segment has already composed itself. Goodman Media International's first campaign contained the whole business in miniature: find the detail so concrete that another person wants to carry it forward.

The person on the other side of the pitch

Goodman began as a reporter-photographer at The Delaware Gazette near Columbus, Ohio. He then moved to J. Walter Thompson, handled news information at ABC and became a senior communications executive at CBS and CBS News. His programs included 60 Minutes, Face the Nation, CBS Evening News with Dan Rather and 48 Hours. Before he asked reporters to care, he had watched reporters decide.

That distinction is the firm’s most credible competitive advantage. Plenty of agencies know how to manufacture a list, write a release and count impressions. Goodman’s public history suggests a different first question: what would make this useful to the newsroom? It is less flattering to the client, and therefore more useful. A client’s anniversary is not automatically a story. A 100-year-old paper company whose building appeared in the opening credits of The Office might be.

“The media business is in their DNA.”Eileen M. Murphy, former communications executive, The New York Times

A small firm with three ways into the room

Today, Goodman sells no single product in a box. It sells counsel and execution. Earned media covers press strategy, positioning, thought leadership and crisis response. GMI Digital adds social strategy, content, influencers and search. Paid media supplies reach through social promotion, search and sponsorships. The sectors are broad: publishing, healthcare, professional services, travel, culture, consumer brands and nonprofits.

The interesting part is how the second route arrived. In 2016, Goodman created GMI Digital, but the firm had already been doing digital work. The change was organizational: clients were asking, the capability existed, and Amy Jaick - a former Goodman employee who had since worked at The Economist and fintech company Estimize - was available to lead it. The agency waited for demand and an owner, then put a name on the service. Many companies do the reverse and spend a year trying to make the brochure come true.

The same craft, from Miffy to medicine

The client roster looks like someone emptied several unrelated filing cabinets onto a table. There are media companies and accountants, a Dutch rabbit and hospital systems, Harry Potter launches and human-rights organizations. Scholastic hired the firm around two major Potter books. The New York Times worked with it for more than a decade. Current public listings include CohnReznick, Columbia University, RWJBarnabas Health, Centers Health Care, the Joe Torre Safe At Home Foundation, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights and Mercis, the company behind Miffy.

Yet the job is remarkably consistent. Professional-services firms need experts turned into quotable authorities. Healthcare organizations need difficult science translated without making it childish. Publishers need a release to become an occasion. Nonprofits need a mission to encounter the news cycle at exactly the right angle. In each case, Goodman is selling understandable authority.

The healthcare practice shows the quieter end of that work. Its cyber-crisis service helps organizations decide who belongs on the crisis team, how information moves internally, which stakeholders need which message and what can be prepared before an attack. The output includes roadmaps and adaptable templates. Here, success may mean the absence of spectacle - the institution responds before confusion gets a headline.

The middle space in the agency market

Goodman sits between two familiar alternatives. A giant network can offer owned offices everywhere, armies of specialists and procurement-friendly scale. A narrow boutique can know one industry down to its private vocabulary. Goodman’s answer is a compact senior team, several vertical practices and partner agencies in Los Angeles, Boston and the United Kingdom. Founder and executive involvement is part of the offer.

That model is valuable when a client needs judgment more than production volume. It also contains its own limit: senior attention does not scale like software. The approach depends on access to credible executives, evidence worth discussing and a client willing to move at newsroom speed. It is a poor fit for a company shopping for automated content, guaranteed coverage or the cheapest possible stream of posts.

The record offers awards - a Platinum Magellan for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s 100,000 Lives Campaign and a Gold Mercury for Intermountain Healthcare’s LiVe campaign - but longevity tells the cleaner story. CFO Marie Vogliano has been with the company since its founding. COO Sabrina Strauss joined in 2003. Long client relationships appear in testimonials. In an industry whose work is organized into beginnings and launches, staying is an achievement of its own.

The Concorde model eventually came down. It was restored and moved to an aerospace museum. The lesson did not require the aircraft to remain above Broadway forever. It only required someone to remember it. Three decades later, Goodman Media still makes its living from that small conversion: turning an institution’s private importance into a detail the public can see.