Padilla Speer Beardsley
joins forces with 4 agencies
to develop new products

Padilla Speer Beardsley, the 80-employee Minneapolis public relations agency, has formed Lumin, a limited liability corporation with four other agencies around the country. Its purpose is to serve as a research and development lab, the creations of which all Lumin members can use.

“We wanted to be able to look at what’s next in our field. In public relations there’s a lot of companies that have done it the same old way since the dawn of time,” says Matt Kucharski, vice president of Padilla Speer Beardsley. “We have all these ideas, yet there’s no time to create a single R&D lab within our own firm.

“Each firm is contributing time and money and brain power to develop a new set of public relations or communications products, which each firm will take to market to its own customers and its own prospects. This is something we don’t think has been done before,” he says.

To set up the LLC, the members had weekly conference calls and monthly in-person meetings. They visited each of the other firms. Now that Lumin is launched, the board of directors meets every other week via phone, and quarterly in person. Each firm operates independently, but a certain amount of revenue will flow back into the LLC probably as a royalty, and that will be used to fund new projects and new revenue.

The goal is to generate three to five new products each year through Lumin. “These are five really, really smart and well respected firms in their own right. And for them to band together and share their collective brain power is pretty exciting,” Kucharski says.

The other four firms are: Carter Ryley Thomas of Richmond, Virginia; PainePR of Los Angeles; Patrice Tanaka & Co. Inc. of New York; and Peppercom of New York.

Matt Kucharski, Padilla Speer Beardsley: 612.455.1731; mkucharski@psbpr.com; www.psbpr.com