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| Taylor Gross |
As we celebrate The Herald Group’s 20th anniversary, we have been reflecting on how we got here. Just two decades ago, the scrum of politics and policymaking inside the Beltway was very different. For the most part, companies and organizations that wanted to win legislative and regulatory battles relied on two approaches—old school shoe-leather lobbying and traditional public relations. Doug McGinn, Matt Well, and I—each working in different realms—had a vision for a new approach.
One afternoon in 2005, we met at the cafe in the downtown Marriott and discussed our approach to serve as a one-stop shop for issue campaign strategy development and execution. We would bring our backgrounds and tactics from the campaign trail to legislative and regulatory battles. We wouldn’t just place stories or propose new legislative language; we would advance our clients’ issues by winning critical hearts and minds—of stakeholders, constituents, allies, third parties, regulators, and legislators. We shook on it right there and went into business together.
Over the past two decades, The Herald Group (THG) has grown and adapted to meet our clients’ needs. Since its founding in 2015, THG has developed into an innovative and dynamic full-scale public affairs shop offering a wide range of cutting-edge advocacy tools for our clients.
The founding partners have developed a unique business model built upon years-long relationships with our clients, many of the clients our firm services today were here 20 years ago—not an easy feat in today’s corporate landscape. As our client roster continues to grow, so do the services we offer.
THG is proud of the business we’ve built and grateful for the opportunities to continue to help our clients face regulatory challenges and public affairs crises. As the policy landscape continues to evolve, we have gained unique capabilities to address the critical issues and challenges faced by our clients.
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| (L to R) The Herald Group founders Matt Well, Doug McGinn & Taylor Gross |
When we launched the firm, we saw a need—and an opportunity—to bring all the pieces of advocacy together under one roof. That early vision helped us find success, but we’ve never been ones to sit still. What moves the needle has evolved and so have we. We've built out a full-scale digital department to meet the moment, expanded into corporate communications, and now support clients through major events like mergers and acquisitions.
We’ve also built an exceptional strategic alliances team that maintains strong connections with a wide range of third-party organizations—and we work to bring our clients and these organizations together around shared concerns. Our alliance with Advocus Partners enables us to bring a range of additional capabilities to our clients. We’re growing because the challenges our clients face are growing too—and we’re committed to staying ahead of them.
In our twentieth year we are in full-growth mode as we are hiring at all levels and bringing in new clients and projects. It is because of our team’s hard work, creativity, and dedication that we’ve built tremendous momentum. Now, we are turning our focus on harnessing that momentum to fuel continued growth over the next twenty years.
While The Herald Group will always explore emerging technologies to strengthen our operations, we will continue to employ our fundamental, time-tested approach that consistently delivers winning results for our clients. Even after two decades, we’re still a fast-moving, maverick firm that’s determined to lead the way in public affairs.
As we celebrate our milestone anniversary we are looking forward to the next twenty years and continuing to develop, execute, and win some of the most critical national, state and international issue advocacy campaigns on behalf of our clients.
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Taylor Gross is a Founding Partner of The Herald Group and specializes in crisis communications, public policy battles and strategic media relations, having spent is career in both the public and private sector assisting global corporations through mergers and acquisitions, providing strategic communications at the White House and helping clients navigate the unpredictable world of public policy battles.
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