The Essence of Public Relations
Before diving into DKC, let's talk about the PR business itself.
Simply put, PR firms are in the business of "managing relationships" for companies. Companies have stories to tell, media outlets have pages to fill, and the public has information to consume. What PR firms do is stand in the middle, translating corporate business objectives into content that media wants to cover and audiences want to engage with.
What does this business rely on to survive? Connections come first — they determine whether you can even get a journalist to answer your call. But connections alone aren't enough; you also need judgment — can you find the angle that makes the media interested in the same story? That's what separates the masters from the mediocre. As for execution, that's just the baseline — getting things done before the deadline is fundamental.
DKC has been able to establish itself in New York's PR circle for over thirty years precisely because of these accumulated strengths.
Who is DKC
A professional environment befitting a leading PR firm
DKC, originally named Dan Klores Communications, was founded in New York in 1991. Founder Dan Klores is a legendary figure in New York's PR circle. He is also a documentary filmmaker, having directed multiple ESPN sports documentaries, and holds independent prestige in New York's cultural circles.
The company's current CEO is Sean Cassidy, while Dan Klores has gradually stepped back from day-to-day operations.
Corporate Independence
DKC is an independent PR firm. It doesn't belong to global communications groups like WPP, Omnicom, or Publicis. It's not publicly traded and has no external capital pressure. This independence determines that its approach differs from the major conglomerates. Offices are primarily distributed across New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, but New York is unquestionably the headquarters.
DKC's Business Portfolio
DKC's business lines are actually quite diverse. Let me discuss them in order of importance.
Real Estate PR — The Crown Jewel
New York's iconic skyline — built with the support of strategic PR
Real estate PR must be discussed first because this is DKC's true specialty. New York is one of the world's most active real estate markets, and every landmark project developer needs PR support — from community relations during the land acquisition phase to media buzz during the sales phase. According to PRWeek reports, DKC has long served top New York developers like Related Companies and Silverstein Properties, with deep involvement in the PR communications for the Hudson Yards project. They have cultivated deep networks with developers, architects, government officials, and real estate journalists over many years in this vertical sector. Honestly, if you're doing a major real estate project in New York and don't engage DKC, you'd be embarrassed to even greet your peers.
Entertainment & Sports PR
Entertainment and sports PR is another signature business line. This includes promoting films, TV series, and streaming platforms, as well as marketing athletes and sporting events. This business line's success is largely due to the founder's influence — Dan Klores himself is a documentary filmmaker and has natural connections to the entertainment industry.
Corporate Communications
The most traditional PR business — helping companies tell their stories, shape executive image, handle investor relations, and coordinate external communications for major milestones like IPOs and M&A. High client value, but also the most competitive — giants like Edelman and Brunswick are all competing for this work.
Consumer Brand PR
Primarily helping consumer brands with product launches, media reviews, and KOL seeding. Fast-paced, high creativity requirements, and relatively quantifiable results.
Crisis Management
When companies face trouble — scandals, lawsuits, media storms — they need someone to put out fires, control the narrative, and repair reputation. This is one of the most profitable areas in PR because clients have no bargaining power, and what's needed is experience and judgment, not manpower.
Digital & Social Media
Including content creation, social media management, and data monitoring. DKC has this business line, but frankly, it's not their core competency — more like being pushed forward by the times.
Business Model
DKC's revenue sources are primarily of two types: Retainer-based and Project-based.
Retainer-based means clients pay a fixed monthly fee, and DKC provides ongoing PR services. Cash flow is stable but requires maintaining long-term client relationships. Project-based charges per individual campaign, such as a product launch or crisis response. Profit margins may be higher, but revenue fluctuates significantly.
Mature PR firms typically pursue a higher proportion of retainer clients because this means predictable revenue and deeper client retention.
DKC's True Competitive Advantages
With the same services available from hundreds of firms in the market, why choose DKC?
Deep Local Networks in New York
Over three decades of relationship building in Manhattan
DKC started in New York in 1991 and hasn't moved in over thirty years. This means they have thirty years of relationship accumulation with New York's media circles, political and business circles, real estate circles, and entertainment circles.
PR is an industry that is extremely dependent on connections. When you need a particular New York Times journalist to pay attention to your story, hiring a PR firm that has known this journalist for fifteen years versus hiring a newcomer to the market makes a world of difference.
DKC's advantage isn't in "being able to do everything" but rather in "many things in the New York market that only they can accomplish."
Dominant Position in Vertical Sectors
DKC hasn't tried to compete head-to-head with global giants like Edelman and Weber Shandwick across all sectors. Instead, it chose to establish absolute dominance in several vertical areas: New York real estate PR is almost at a monopoly level — DKC appears on the PR roster of major New York real estate projects with extremely high frequency; entertainment PR, leveraging the founder's background, has deep accumulation in film, television, and streaming.
This "vertical deep-dive" strategy is the classic approach for independent PR firms fighting against 4A giants: you don't compete with me on scale, I don't compete with you on breadth — I just do the best in my territory.
The Founder's Personal Brand
Dan Klores is not an ordinary PR company founder. He is a documentary filmmaker whose works include "Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs. The New York Knicks" from ESPN's "30 for 30" series, and he holds independent prestige in New York's cultural circles. This "founder as brand" model gives DKC a cultural depth rarely seen in independent PR firms.
Of course, this is also a double-edged sword. The founder's aura can attract clients, but it can also make the company overly dependent on one person. Dan Klores has gradually stepped back, and whether CEO Sean Cassidy can maintain this brand tone after taking over is a long-term challenge DKC faces.
The Flexibility of an Independent Company
Not belonging to a large group means: fast decision-making, no bureaucratic processes, the ability to reject unsuitable clients, and the ability to invest extraordinary resources for individual clients. PR firms under major groups often have to deal with internal reporting, cross-regional coordination, and globally unified processes. Independent firms don't have these burdens.
How DKC Actually Works
The above covered the business portfolio and competitive advantages, but a PR firm's value ultimately manifests at the execution level.
Media Relations Operations
Building and maintaining crucial media relationships
PR firms maintain an internally updated journalist database that records each journalist's coverage areas, writing style and preferences, contact information, response speed, collaboration history, and depth of personal relationships. DKC has been doing this in New York for thirty years — this database's depth is something new companies cannot replicate.
When a client has news to push, the PR workflow goes roughly like this:
Find the angle — When a client says "our company just raised a funding round," that's not news. PR needs to find the angle that media is willing to write about.
Match the journalist — Who is this news suitable for? The Wall Street Journal's tech reporter or a specific industry vertical publication?
Write the pitch email — Usually no more than 200 words, with the first sentence necessarily grabbing the journalist's attention.
Follow up — Sending the email isn't the end. If there's no reply in two days, call. If the call isn't answered, text. But you can't be too annoying — the sense of proportion is important.
Coordinate coverage — If the journalist is interested, coordinate interview times, prepare interview outlines, and give the client media training.
Amplification — After the article is published, help the client spread it on social media, compile media coverage summaries, and evaluate communication effectiveness.
Daily maintenance of journalist relationships is also very important. It's not about only reaching out when you need something. Senior PR professionals regularly meet journalists for coffee or meals without discussing business — just industry gossip; proactively provide journalists with leads, even if unrelated to their clients; remember journalists' personal details; send congratulatory messages when journalists write good articles. This "useless effort" builds trust. When you really need help, journalists are willing to take your call.
Campaign Execution Process
Using a consumer brand new product launch as an example:
Including goal setting, core message refinement, audience analysis, channel planning, and timeline.
Writing press releases (usually preparing multiple versions), creating media kits, preparing interview talking points.
"Briefing" core journalists, arranging exclusive interviews, sending products to KOLs in advance.
Press release goes out at unified time, social media launches simultaneously, all-day monitoring with real-time adjustments.
Compiling coverage summaries, data analysis, following up on long-tail coverage, post-mortem review.
Crisis Management
When crisis strikes, experience and judgment become invaluable
Crisis PR is the most profitable business in the PR industry because clients have no bargaining power, time pressure is extreme, and the experience requirements are very high.
The rhythm after a crisis breaks has no standard template — it's different every time — but some things are unavoidable. The first thing is always to figure out what actually happened — this sounds simple, but you don't know how chaotic information is when a crisis first breaks. The clients themselves can't explain clearly. Sometimes you can figure it out in an hour; sometimes you spend half a day verifying details.
Then comes the decision: respond or not? How to respond? Who should be the face? This phase tests experience the most — wrong judgment can make things ten times worse. I've seen people rush to issue statements that only made things worse, and I've seen people stay silent too long and let public opinion define them. There's no standard answer; it all depends on the specific situation.
Drafting the statement is a torturous process — going through a dozen-plus revisions is normal, with legal, executives, and PR pulling in different directions. Even after it goes out, it's not over — journalists' follow-up questions, social media fermentation, internal employee sentiment all need to be handled simultaneously.
Real Crisis Case
I previously encountered a real estate project crisis case (can't name the specific client) where a construction accident led to strong community backlash. DKC coordinated the developer's statement, a community briefing, and local media interviews within 48 hours, basically controlling the public opinion trajectory. This kind of rapid response capability is the result of years of accumulation.
Crisis management has several core principles: Speed matters more than perfection — silence will be interpreted as guilt; acknowledging facts, expressing concern, and explaining actions is the standard structure for crisis statements; don't fight with the media — you can't win; prepare for the worst-case scenario — assume all internal emails will be leaked.
The Real Estate PR Playbook
This is DKC's strongest area, and the approach differs from consumer brand PR.
Real estate PR requires a full-lifecycle approach from land acquisition to resident move-in
Real estate PR must cover the entire project lifecycle:
Land acquisition phase: Community relations management. A developer wants to build in a certain community but residents oppose it — what to do? Organize community meetings, secure positive local media coverage, coordinate relationships with local politicians.
Groundbreaking phase: Groundbreaking ceremonies, project vision promotion.
Construction phase: Continuous progress updates, media exposure for milestone events.
Pre-sale phase: This is when PR is most intensive — model home openings, media preview events, celebrity buyer news, design award applications.
Move-in phase: Resident stories, community events, long-term brand maintenance.
New York real estate is an extremely relationship-dense market. Developers, architects, interior designers, brokerage firms, real estate journalists — this circle is actually quite small, and everyone knows each other. DKC has been doing this for thirty years, accumulating these personal networks and a deep understanding of the unwritten rules of New York's real estate market.
Knowing which journalist is interested in what type of project, knowing which architect's name can add points to a project, knowing when to keep a low profile and when to go high-profile, knowing how to defuse community opposition. These things can't be written into a PowerPoint, but they determine project success or failure.
The Day-to-Day Reality
The daily reality of PR work — communication, coordination, and attention to detail
The daily life at a PR firm, honestly, is neither as glamorous as TV dramas make it seem nor that mysterious.
A typical day for an account manager: Before 8 AM, browse the day's news, check emails, team standup. Morning calls to journalists following up on pitches, helping clients prepare interview talking points, weekly meetings with clients. Afternoon accompanying clients to interviews, writing press releases, handling internal approvals. Evening possibly attending client events, coordinating media check-in and interview arrangements, then going home to continue processing emails.
The daily work of PR involves massive amounts of communication, coordination, writing, and relationship maintenance. Most of the time isn't spent on amazing creative ideas, but on follow-ups, reminders, revisions, and confirmations. A press release might go through twenty revisions, an interview might take two weeks to coordinate, a journalist might need three months of follow-up before agreeing to write one article. This is a job that requires patience, emotional intelligence, and attention to detail.
What DKC Does and Doesn't Do
Company Positioning
DKC does not do advertising — it's a pure PR company that doesn't touch advertising creative or media buying. This differs from "integrated marketing communications" companies under WPP and Omnicom.
As an independent company without public listing pressure, there's no need to acquire unrelated businesses just for growth numbers. Expansion is relatively cautious, basically extending around core capabilities.
Positioned in the mid-to-high-end market — not competing on price. Clients pay a premium for connections, experience, and certainty.
Industry Context
To understand what DKC is doing, you also need to understand what the entire PR industry is going through.
Media Fragmentation
Media fragmentation is the biggest change. In the past, a PR firm's core capability was relationships with mainstream media — handle a few major newspapers and magazines, and most of the communication problem was solved. Now media is infinitely fragmented — KOLs, podcasts, newsletters, short videos — each channel has its own rules. PR firms must adapt to this complexity.
The Pressure for Quantifiable Results
The pressure for quantifiable results is also growing. Advertising can track click-through rates and conversion rates, but how do you measure PR effectiveness? Clients increasingly demand "quantifiable ROI," but much of PR's value is intangible and long-term. This tension is a pain point for the entire industry.
Independent Firms vs. 4A Groups
The competitive landscape between independent firms and 4A groups is also evolving. Giants like Edelman and Weber Shandwick have global networks and capital backing — how do independent firms survive? DKC's answer is: deep cultivation in vertical sectors, maintaining local advantages, preserving flexibility. Not seeking to be the biggest, but seeking to be irreplaceable in specific areas.