How a Madison Firm Turns a Message Into Leverage

The interesting thing about a message is that it has no force of its own. A sentence can be true, elegant and perfectly punctuated, yet fail to move a zoning board, a customer or a skeptical legislator by a single inch. Keith Gilkes knew this from years spent near Wisconsin government. The recurring problem was not simply that companies and public officials disagreed. It was that companies, government and communities often did not understand one another well enough to disagree productively.

So in early 2017, Gilkes founded Platform Communications in Madison. The original proposition sounded modest: bridge that gap. The actual work was less tidy. A client might need to explain a development project, assemble supporters, anticipate opposition, speak to reporters and persuade public officials - all while keeping the same story intact. Platform's answer became a firm where the message, the messenger and the route to the audience could be designed together.

That distinction explains the company's odd range. Its public roster has included Google, Foxconn, the Milwaukee Brewers, UnitedHealthcare, Charter Communications, tribal and trade organizations, schools, law firms, renewable-energy developers and local causes. These organizations do not share a market. They share a condition: their success depends on somebody outside the organization understanding an idea and deciding to act.

01 / The hidden machineryThe press release is only the visible part

Platform sells public relations, public affairs, marketing and digital work, crisis counsel and message development. The list is conventional. The combination is not. Its practitioners have worked in newsrooms, political campaigns, executive offices, state and federal government and corporate communications. They know the habits of the institutions on the other side of the pitch because they have occupied those rooms.

This is where Platform fits in the market. A traditional PR shop may optimize for coverage. A lobbying firm may work the government channel. A digital agency may optimize impressions and conversions. Platform's pitch is that these are not separate problems when the issue is public and contested. The executive statement affects the news story; the news story affects the coalition; the coalition affects the hearing room. One brief can connect them.

“I look forward to continuing to show how a Midwestern firm can have national reach.”Brian Reisinger, CEO and Senior Writer

02 / Proof under pressureA campaign is an argument with a calendar

Consider Marsy's Law in Wisconsin, a proposed constitutional amendment concerning crime victims' rights. Platform's account of the work includes coalition building, public advocacy and communications. The measure had to clear the legislature in consecutive sessions before reaching voters in April 2020. It won approval from 76 percent of those voters. Whatever one's view of the policy - it later faced a legal challenge and survived at the state Supreme Court - the communications result was measurable and unusually public.

The same integrated instinct appeared during the pandemic. Platform helped launch and lead Stop the COVID Spread, a statewide coalition backed by health professionals, businesses and professional sports teams. It produced public-service announcements featuring figures from the Green Bay Packers, the Brewers and state government. The mechanism was straightforward: trusted messengers carried one public-health request into audiences the government could not reach in the same way.

There were corporate assignments too. Platform supported communications as Foxconn negotiated with Wisconsin across two governors from opposite parties. It later added renewable-energy projects, associations and grassroots clients. The common task was translation across constituencies with different incentives. That is less glamorous than “storytelling,” and more valuable.

03 / The second actWhat the firm added, and why

Platform grew by following the work sideways. Crisis communications arrived as law firms, think tanks and advocacy groups needed help. In 2021, demand for creative and digital advocacy became a formal Marketing and Digital Division. A dedicated Public Affairs Division followed in 2023. In 2025, the firm expanded message development into executive communications, high-level copywriting, focus groups, polling and message testing.

The most revealing product is the Badger Battleground Poll. Commissioning a statewide survey can be too expensive for an association or advocacy group. Platform's 2025 offer broke the poll into private questions: $4,500 for the first, $3,500 for the second, with volume pricing after that. Clients helped craft the question, received their private data and shared the cost of the broader fieldwork. Public questions supplied news value; private questions supplied client intelligence.

This is a piece of the business model one can actually see. Platform does not publish general retainers or campaign fees. It earns revenue from advisory and execution work, sold by project or ongoing relationship. The poll is the exception: a professional service made legible, modular and easier to buy. The reader can copy that idea in almost any expert business - find the expensive instrument, pool the fixed cost and sell only the slice each customer needs.

04 / The useful failureThe lone expert reaches a ceiling

On the firm's eighth anniversary, Reisinger described an early miscalculation. When he first brought in clients, he focused on what he could offer them personally. What he missed, he wrote, was how much insight arrived through collaboration. The first thing to fail was not a public campaign. It was the image of the self-sufficient consultant.

That changed the internal logic of the firm. Platform staff describe trust, open knowledge-sharing, curiosity and a family-first policy. Anthony Birch, who leads marketing and digital strategy, put the point without mysticism: there is no secret button for good strategy. Ask questions, stay curious, improve the work. Alec Zimmerman offered the external version of the lesson: work for the Homecrew Coalition taught him that earned and paid media were more effective when used together.

In September 2024, this collaborative model acquired symbolic weight. Gilkes moved from CEO to Executive Chairman. Reisinger - the former investigative journalist, Senate adviser, campaign strategist and the firm's first vice president - became CEO and Senior Writer. The title is telling. Platform did not promote its chief writer away from writing. It made writing part of the chief executive's job.

05 / The portable partsBorrow the sequence, not the scenery

There are several things worth stealing. Begin with the audience rather than the announcement. Define the decision you want before choosing a channel. Test the disputed premise instead of relying on the loudest person in the room. Put earned media, paid media and stakeholder outreach on the same calendar. Give every coalition member language that sounds human enough to use. And when specialist research carries a large fixed cost, look for a shared vehicle.

Those practices have conditions. They work when the desired action is specific, the coalition has genuine common ground and the research is designed credibly. They work poorly when a client wants publicity without scrutiny, when partners agree only on a slogan or when the underlying conduct cannot survive attention. Integrated communications magnifies coherence; it also exposes contradictions faster. Nor is a shared poll a substitute for a custom study when the population, confidentiality or methodology must be unique.

Platform's story is ultimately less about clever phrases than the architecture around them. A sentence becomes useful when research gives it confidence, a coalition gives it reach, a messenger gives it trust and a campaign gives it timing. The firm began by noticing a gap in understanding. Its business is the set of tools required to close it.