The Cookie That Asked the Publicist to Stop

The most interesting sentence in Nicholas & Lence Communications' portfolio is not about a prize, a celebrity or a front page. It is about a bakery asking for less publicity. William Greenberg Desserts, the Upper East Side shop associated with New York's black-and-white cookie, had hired the firm for a short campaign. Nicholas & Lence found a stream of small, visual excuses for coverage: a breast-cancer bake sale, holiday cookies and, when the Jets were chasing the AFC championship, a green black-and-white cookie.

The angles worked. The engagement lasted years. Then the attention worked a little too well. According to the firm's case study, the bakery asked it to slow down because orders were becoming hard to fulfill.

This is a funny result, but it reveals the agency more clearly than the usual language of reach and impressions. Publicity is not an abstract liquid poured into a brand. It arrives in kitchens, ticket queues, public meetings and call centers. If the operation cannot absorb what the story creates, more attention becomes a new problem.

The useful question is not only, “Can this make news?” It is, “What happens the morning after it does?”

The two-door office

Nicholas & Lence was founded in 2007 by Cristyne Nicholas and George Lence. It calls itself a strategic communications, public-relations and government-affairs firm. That last phrase matters. Many agencies enter through one of two doors: the newsroom or the government building. NLC tries both.

Its public-relations work includes media strategy, story development and outreach. Its government and community work adds political mapping, contact with officials, local representation, advocacy and coalition support. The firm also markets destinations, promotes sports, stages events, advises on business development and runs a specialist practice for Business Improvement Districts.

The combination fits assignments where reputation is tangled with permission. A ferry to a national monument operates among city, state and federal actors. A dining district needs restaurant owners, neighbors and City Hall. A municipal client needs residents to understand policy while reporters and county officials receive coherent information. In such cases, a clever headline without a stakeholder map is a spark in a room full of paper.

What they actually did

Consider Statue Cruises, the authorized ferry service to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. The company became an NLC client in 2007, before service began in 2008. The communications job has included promoting an experience used by visitors from around the world and navigating crises such as superstorms and federal government shutdowns. The product is partly tourism publicity and partly continuity under public scrutiny.

At the Belmont Business Improvement District, the first thing to fail was ordinary restaurant service. COVID-19 hit Arthur Avenue's small, often family-run businesses, and indoor dining disappeared. NLC worked with the BID on Piazza di Belmont, an early move to take dining outside and into the street. The story was not “restaurants need attention.” It was a visible change to the neighborhood that gave the attention something useful to describe.

For SouthCoast USA, a coalition of 11 convention and visitors bureaus across four Gulf states, the disruption came in waves: Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Rita and the BP oil spill. NLC's recovery campaign joined destinations that might otherwise have spoken separately. A Jimmy Buffett concert was televised live. At a “Supper on the Sand,” Guy Fieri hosted politicians, community leaders, scientists, businesses and press around locally sourced seafood. The setting answered the fear more vividly than a reassuring statement could. Coverage followed on national morning television.

Public agencies occasionally make the cost of this work visible. Mamaroneck's later recap makes the fee more legible: NLC helped draft releases, build reporter lists, pitch coverage, coordinate possible announcements with Westchester County and create a crisis-communications protocol. That is the business model in miniature. The firm sells judgment and labor through projects and retainers; the deliverable is a sequence of words, relationships and prepared responses.

The change of mind

There is no single conversion scene in the firm's history, but its case studies repeat one change in thinking. A client begins by wanting exposure. Circumstances force a better question: exposure to what end?

For the bakery, the end was an order, which created a capacity limit. For Belmont, it was a meal served outside, which required a changed street. For a hurricane-struck destination, it was a credible reason to return, which required evidence of safety and cooperation. In each instance, communications had to attach itself to something operational.

A generalist with a New York accent

NLC sits between several familiar alternatives. A conventional PR agency may be strong with journalists but less comfortable in a village board meeting. A lobbying shop may know officials but not how to turn a horse named Frederick the Great into a story for the Central Park Horse Show. An in-house communications team may know the institution intimately but lack a broad outside network. Nicholas & Lence's pitch is that one compact firm can connect those worlds.

Its geography is local but its assignments are not exclusively so. The firm promotes New York institutions, works across Westchester and has handled a four-state tourism coalition. Its own phrase, “Global Reach. Local Expertise,” is less a declaration of offices around the world than an argument that a New York network can carry stories outward.

The customers are correspondingly varied: tourism operators, municipalities, hospitality companies, neighborhood districts, cultural organizations, nonprofits, sports events and corporations. What unites them is public dependence. Their fortunes turn on visitors, voters, reporters, regulators, residents or some unruly combination of all five.

The method depends on conditions. There must be a real action behind the story, access to the people whose consent matters and an organization capable of handling the response. It is poorly suited to a hollow announcement, a client unwilling to coordinate internally or a business that cannot fulfill the demand it invites. The black-and-white cookie is charming because the bakery survived the lesson. Not every operation gets such a sweet warning.

The firm's most persuasive product is coordination: a story that the kitchen, the street and City Hall can all live with.