crisis-communications
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BGR Group Made a Product Out of Political Whiplash
Washington changes hands every few years. BGR turned that instability into a service - pairing access with policy depth, communications, and a network built to outlast any one administration.
Orchestra Bet That the Agency of the Future Would Look Like a Crowd
The communications business spent years splitting expertise into ever-smaller shops. Orchestra’s answer was to buy the specialists, keep their names, and teach them to play from the same score.
The Firm That Treats Every Boardroom Like Election Night
SKDK built a national communications business by importing the habits of political campaigns - research, message discipline, rapid response and a stubborn belief that every audience can be moved.
The PR Firm That Learned to Pitch the Answer Machine
5WPR built a large independent agency by answering journalism's five old questions. Now it is betting that the sixth question - who gets named by an AI - will remake the communications business.
The Ad Agency Where the People Making the Work Own the Place
Hirons sells advertising, public relations and digital strategy. Its more interesting product is alignment: the people doing the client work also own the company.
The Firm You Call When the Sentence Cannot Be Wrong
Kekst CNC sells something hard to put on a rate card: judgment when a company has one chance to explain itself. Its history begins with an accidental niche, a client the founder refused to defend, and a merger two decades in the making.
The Reputation Accountants Are Here
Burson was assembled from two giant PR firms to solve an old problem with a new instrument: making reputation legible before the crisis arrives. The experiment is part consultancy, part creative shop, and increasingly part software lab.
How a 60-Year-Old Detroit Agency Learned to Start Over
Franco survived six decades by treating its legacy as evidence, not instruction. The Detroit firm kept the relationships of old-school PR, added the machinery of modern marketing, and discovered that reinvention works best when you can measure it.
The Trust Factory Has a Trust Problem
Edelman turned a home-perm publicity stunt into the world’s largest independent PR firm. Seventy-four years later, its product is no longer publicity. It is permission to be believed.
The Agency That Makes Boring Things Matter
Borshoff built a forty-year Indianapolis institution by doing an unfashionable thing very well: making utility notices, corporate risks and civic institutions feel consequential to ordinary people.
The Agency That Learned to Sell the Whole Conversation
DKC began with the old New York art of getting people talked about. Thirty-five years later, it sells something larger: the research, story, social post, live moment and search result that decide what the talking means.
The Business of Making Google Forget
NetReputation built a business around an awkward truth: the internet rarely forgets on command. So it removes what it can, outranks what it cannot, and sells the patient work in between.
The Agency That Bought Its Way Back Home
Res Publica Group began as a Chicago spinout. Two decades later, it bought the public-relations shop it came from - a neat lesson in how a boutique grows without pretending to be a conglomerate.
The People Behind the People Everyone Knows
42West built a serious business out of an odd Hollywood truth: the people paid to attract attention are most valuable when you barely notice them. Its product is not publicity alone - it is the choreography of attention.
Sunshine Sachs Morgan & Lylis Built an Empire by Staying Out of the Picture
For three decades, the communications firm treated its own invisibility as proof of competence. Then the media changed, two operators joined the marquee, and even the people behind the curtain decided it was time to be seen.
The Lobbying Firm That Turned Fifty Statehouses Into One Desk
HB Strategies grew by making a complicated promise: give a client one command desk for Washington, state capitals and the court of public opinion. Seven years later, the three letters on the door belonged to an independent national firm.
The Company You Hire When the Story Starts Moving Faster Than You Can
FleishmanHillard sells something difficult to photograph: better odds when attention, trust and business collide. Its best work turns a message into a decision - and its worst moments show why reputation firms must live under the same light they aim at everyone else.
The Sandwich That Bit Back
A Dallas PR firm built its reputation on an unfashionable idea: prepare for the mess, then find the human story inside it. A dislocated jaw, a milk truck and a plate of chicken-fried steak explain the method better than any pitch deck could.
The Firm That Got Smaller to Think Bigger
Strategies 360 once spread across 13 states. After bankruptcy, layoffs and a change of ownership, its smaller Western network is making a more interesting bet: local knowledge works best when research, lobbying and creative people share the same table.
The Agency That Learned to Work From 23 Feet of Aluminum
Publicity For Good grew up in an Airstream, survived a one-day revenue collapse, and turned purpose-driven PR into a production system measured in placements, podcasts, and proof.
The Agency That Fired 40% of Its Clients
MikeWorldWide gave up $2.5 million in unprofitable business, cut its client roster by 40%, and grew anyway. The arithmetic explains a 40-year-old PR firm that would rather own its choices than merely look large.
The Ad Agency That Learned to Move a City
R&R Partners wrote four words that escaped advertising and entered the language. The more revealing trick is what happened next: the Las Vegas agency learned to treat campaigns as coalitions, cities as products and persuasion as infrastructure.
The Interesting Business of Making People Care
For 55 years, a South Carolina agency has specialized in the messages most people would rather ignore. Its trick is to make the complicated feel human - and then count what happens next.
The Agency That Bet the Map Was Wrong
Jeffrey Sharlach built a communications firm around a curious proposition: Latin America was not a side market. Three decades, six offices and one WPP acquisition later, the niche looks less like a limitation than the whole trick.
HELLER and the Sentence Before the Story
Most PR firms sell attention. HELLER sells the judgment to know when to answer, what to correct and which sentence must land before the story hardens around you.
The Polling Firm That Learned to Make the Weather
Global Strategy Group started by measuring public opinion. Thirty years later, it sells something more ambitious: a way to turn research into movement - in markets, media, policy, and politics.
The Lucrative Moment Before Everyone Panics
Narrative Strategies found a valuable place to stand: where the newsroom, the boardroom and the political war room all start shouting at once. Its product is not publicity so much as a plan for the next difficult morning.
The Firm That Put Its Name on the Merger
Ketchum spent a century selling attention, trust and cultural timing. Then it made the most revealing pitch of its life: the brand was worth keeping, but the old company was not.
The Agency Bought for Its Bad Days
TrailRunner built an agency for the moments when law, money, politics and reputation collide. Then a public-affairs group paid $33 million upfront to own that collision.
The Miami Agency That Treats Attention Like a Balance Sheet
rbb Communications built a national agency around a disarmingly practical idea: attention matters only when it changes behavior. Its case files reveal how research, media, creative work and measurement become one operating system.