PR PRofiles: LaunchSquad, Marx Layne, M18 PR & more…

Here’s a few brief profiles on firms which we haven’t written about before much…

M18 PR

M18 is based in New York and specializes in hospitality and real estate sectors with a few design clients thrown into the mix – just to keep things beautiful. The firm was founded by Michael Tavani and Meghan McGinnis. Their current client roster includes over 70 real estate properties they represent more than 30 hotels and design organizations. Their clients are in places all around the world – some of the most popular high-end vacation spots.

Their Associate Director, Nicola Amos, recently said in an interview about working in hospitality PR, “I think that if you are in the hospitality industry that should always be your jumping off point: how you make other people feel.”

Marx Layne

Marx Layne‘s offices are in Farmington Hills, a suburb of Detroit, where they’ve been a PR fixture for well over a quarter of a century when they were founded as Marx Layne & Company in 1987. And as you might suppose, they represent many in the automotive industry, but they also provide B2B and consumer integrated communications and marketing efforts to industries across the board including financial, real estate development, hospitality, non-profit, publishing industries, health care, and more.

LaunchSquad

LaunchSquad was launched in 1999 and has grown to four offices in the U.S., but they are still in expansion mode, though not as much about more office space and employees as working to bring clients on with more name recognition. The company culture, according to many of their employees, is fun and a little kitschy – but geared to everyone being on a fairly equal standing. Some of their clients include UStream, IBM, Jobvite, D:Wave, and AOL.

Zak Communications

Zak is headquartered in Montreal but has another office in Toronto – with a total staff of under 15 currently. Zak was founded in 2002 by Laurie Zakreski. They are a boutique firm specializing in lifestyle brand communications and consumer products in the prestige, beauty, lifestyle, and fashion sector. Clients of the firm can use their bilingual (French and English) fluency to create campaigns that work from both slants.

Taft and Partners

Located in Lawrenceville, NJ and with a second office in Newark, Taft and Partners was founded by Pete Taft, current CEO. The executives there boast they each bring a minimum of 15 years’ experience to help build client work with dedication and precision. And, according to their website, “Ideas are Taft and Partners’ stock in trade, the key to solving our clients’ problems. And we haven’t yet met a business problem our big ideas couldn’t conquer – think Godzilla strolling through Tokyo.” That might offer some insight into where this firm begins their approach to client campaigns.