The Remarkable Growth of Mueller Communications

The Mueller Communications team. Photo courtesy of Mueller Communications.

Is the PR profession dead?

“There is no such thing as PR anymore,” declared Martin Sorrell, an “advertising titan” who runs S4 Capital, in a debate with Sarah Waddington, CEO of the global Public Relations and Communications Association, that was broadcast on BBC Radio.

“Traditional PR is dead,” said corporate PR executive Lulu Cheng Meservey when she launched her own public relations firm, based in Washington, D.C., last year.

Meanwhile, in Milwaukee, the one-time PR shop Mueller Communications is booming. “We’ve more than doubled in size over the last decade,” says James Madlom, the co-CEO of the company. It’s a remarkable success story, but one that was achieved by strategically moving away from traditional PR.

“Historically, a PR professional’s greatest asset was their Rolodex,” as a Forbes magazine story noted. “They built relationships with journalists over time, sharing useful and timely information in the hopes that it would translate into coverage for clients. … For decades, PR firms have trotted out books of press clippings to illustrate worth for clients.”

But the incredible decline of the media has made that model obsolete. “Economists might say it’s an example of too many buyers (PR people) chasing too few goods (placements in publications), a classic recipe for inflation,” as one analysis wryly put.

H. Carl Mueller, who started Mueller Communications 40 years ago, was the classic example of a PR guy with great connections and robust rolodex. A former Milwaukee Sentinel reporter, he served as press secretary to Gov. Martin Schreiber, assistant chancellor at UW-Milwaukee and chief of staff for Mayor John Norquist. Mueller used his connections to win clients and get them positive media coverage. “He’s able to communicate with anybody and everybody,” Madlom says in the firm’s video celebrating its 40th anniversary.

But by the time the company’s co-CEO Lori Richards joined the firm in 2002, the business was beginning to change, with PR and advertising seen as separate industries. “Advertising and PR were in different lanes,” she recalls. “But those lanes have merged into one highway,” a highway that now includes web development and design and all forms of social media, she notes, and “we have to be able to switch back and forth between these lanes.”

Mueller had the good sense to learn from his younger staff as the firm began to expand its offerings. “I learned from them every day,” he says, “and usually it was from one of the youngest people.”

And much of that was about the revolution in social media.

“That’s been a big part of our growth,” Richards notes. “We have four graphic designers on staff and eight to ten people working on web development or digital issues.”

The firm now has 40 staff members who are at least 80%-time employees. Its webpage of those smiling faces seems to go on and on.

That’s a big change from, say, 15 years ago, when “the whole staff could fit around one table,” Madlom recalls.

Much of that growth has come since Richards and Madlom took over as co-CEOs, but Mueller laid the groundwork for all of it, they note.

“Carl was great at surrounding himself with great people,” Madlom says. “If you build a great team, success follows.”

Mueller had approached the two during a time when his late wife first became ill with cancer and he needed to work fewer hours. “I needed both of them to step up and take more responsibility with the company,” he recalls.

Over time, he began discussing the possibility of them gradually taking over the ownership. Richards and Madlom began as minority owners in 2015, then became majority owners in 2020. Which was not an easy time to take full control.

“When COVID hit we were really terrified,” Richards recalls.

Mueller, meanwhile, remained with the firm on a part-time basis (he still has an office at the company) and was a trusted adviser.

Yet the basic goal has remained the same. “Communication strategy is all about delivering the right message at the right time to the right audience in the right way,” Madlom says.

The newest way to do this is using artificial intelligence (AI), and that goes back in some way to the beginning of PR, with an emphasis on traditional media.

“When you look at AI it places a great value on traditional media to establish credibility,” Madlom notes.

So, hurrah, the media isn’t quite dead. The next time you look for information about Mueller Communications, the AI entry at the top of the Google page may quote this story.