NEW YORK, June 28, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- DiGennaro Communications (DGC), the leading independent B2B public relations agency serving the marketing and media sectors, is delivering on its vision, and making big investments in its future with a key promotion and two senior hires related to a restructuring of its core business and increased focus on consumer and tech. DGC celebrated its 15-year anniversary on January 1, 2021.
DGC Founder and CEO Samantha DiGennaro and President and COO Maxine Winer announced today the promotion of 11-year agency veteran Mary-Elisabeth Ghanem to Senior Vice President and Director of its newly formed Creative, Media & Marketing practice, comprised of the agency’s core client base, including new clients Hathway, Musicbed, Purpose and WONGDOODY, and recently returning clients, such as The Marketing Arm (OMC) and United Collective/Gallegos United.
The agency also hired consumer PR expert Brooke Geller as Senior Vice President, Consumer & Lifestyle, to lead and grow the agency’s B2C practice and to formalize the agency’s influencer marketing offering. Geller will build upon the agency’s deep experience with Feld Entertainment’s live properties, such as Disney on Ice, Sesame Street Live, Marvel Live, and others as well as recent wins such as Van Gogh: The Immersive Exhibit and CAUSEBOX, a sustainable monthly subscription service DGC recently took through a rebrand to Alltrue.
Another seasoned communicator, Kristen Morquecho, joined as Senior Vice President to oversee the agency’s growing tech portfolio, including new clients such as eko, tvScientific, QuickFrame and others. Her deep expertise in the media and entertainment industries, especially in digital and mobile content, apps, e-commerce, marketing solutions, adtech and technology platforms, makes her ideal to help lead DGC’s expansion in these sectors. Morquecho is based in Los Angeles, where DGC has long had a significant presence and client base.
All three report to Winer, who joined DGC from FleishmanHillard in January 2020. Rounding out the agency’s senior leadership team is CFO Tony Cofone, who joined DGC in March 2020 after a long career as North American CFO of MSL.
“With the exponential growth we’ve seen so far in 2021, this is the perfect time to add structure that positions us to further scale the business, building around experienced subject matter experts in MaryLiz, Brooke and Kristen to drive higher levels of accountability and value to our clients,” explained DiGennaro. “DGC was built on the value prop of serving not only as communications strategists to our c-level clients, but also as deeply experienced business counselors and consiglieri. The vision is to own that same value prop that has served us so well in our core marketing and media business, and to recreate it for other core verticals -- tech, consumer, music and entertainment.”
Winer believes the secret to the firm’s ability to weather the challenges of 2020 and capitalize on current opportunities lies in the very purposeful path she and DiGennaro have forged to move the agency forward.
“We’re not expanding just for the sake of expansion; we’re making very intentional investments in the clients, industries and people we believe are the future of our agency,” she said. “You won’t see us chasing every shiny object that comes our way; we’d much rather focus where we know we can add the most value to our clients and create the best career opportunities for our people. That is the lens through which we consider all decisions: Is it good for our clients? Is it good for our people? Just one isn’t good enough; it needs to be both.”
About Mary-Elisabeth Ghanem
Ghanem, who first joined DGC in 2007, is a boomerang, having left the agency for several years to go in house at Yahoo, where she managed B2B communications. Later, she was Global Director of Corporate Communications at Sapient. Since re-joining DGC in 2014, Ghanem has served as senior counsel and team lead for many of the agency’s ad, media, and marketing clients, including brands from every holding company – WPP, Omnicom (OMC), Interpublic Group (IPG), Havas, Publicis, Dentsu and Cheil – as well as clients such as Spotify, Pinterest, LinkedIn and TikTok.
About Brooke Geller
Geller is a seasoned marketing strategist and public relations professional with deep experience in entertainment, beauty, luxury fashion, food, and spirits. As Senior Partner at Finn Partners, she created and built the agency’s first ever influencer division, FinnFluence. Prior to that, she spent seven years as a Senior Vice President at Dan Klores Communications, where she oversaw a portfolio of luxury, fashion, beauty, and special event clients, including L’Oréal Paris, Clinique, Range Rover, Cos bar, Belvedere, Moët & Chandon, Jaguar, ULTA Beauty, Teva, and Origins, among others. Earlier, she had stints with Rogers & Cowan, Harrison & Shriftman and Ruder Finn. She began her career at Rubenstein.
About Kristen Morquecho
A senior communications strategist, Morquecho has extensive experience counseling senior leadership across both Fortune 500 and startup companies, including Farmers Insurance, Oracle Data Cloud, and Citysearch. Most recently, she was Head of Corporate Communication for Atom Tickets, an award-winning start up that brought to market a revolutionary social movie ticketing app and website. Prior to that, Morquecho held leadership roles at Yahoo, where she drove development of the media story for Yahoo’s media network and advertising products, and YellowPages.com, where she grew awareness of the company’s home services for consumers and marketing tools for small businesses.
About DiGennaro Communications
DiGennaro Communications (DGC) is a full-service independent PR and strategic communications agency. Founded in 2006 by Samantha DiGennaro, the agency provides strategy, media relations, industry marketing, content creation, executive thought leadership and visibility, speakers’ bureau, social media marketing, influencer relations, market intelligence, crisis communications and training services. With a team of more than 30 communications strategists and former journalists/editors, DGC delivers access to virtually every reporter, conference organizer and industry influencer its clients want to reach. Headquartered in New York City, the agency also has a presence in Chicago, Los Angeles, Austin, and the UK/France. Learn more here: www.digennaro-usa.com
Contact: Sara Vinson, DiGennaro Communications
sara.vinson@digennaro-usa.com
917-753-2955
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/5f31b9e1-9f39-4766-ac15-9e74958fad1e