Over the past 25 years, Marina Maher has built her eponymous PR firm into a go-to destination for clients who want to create an emotional connection between women and brands. Since she founded Marina Maher Communications in 1983, Maher has built the agency into the preeminent marketing-to-women PR firm.
In recent years, MMC has dramatically grown in size and depth, posting revenues of $25 million in 2010 and growing to more than $40 million since then. It has been recognized in the industry for its creativity and expertise in reaching and motivating consumers for such blue-chip clients as Procter & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark, Merck, NovoNordisk and Pfizer. Maher’s leadership and dedication to staff has resulted in the firm consistently being cited as a "best agency to work for."
Maher is widely recognized as one of the nation’s leading authorities on marketing to women, with particular expertise in beauty, consumer product, and consumer health brand building. She has played a key strategic role helping such brands as COVERGIRL, Clairol, U by Kotex* and WonderBra achieve iconic status. Observers say her secret is the prescient way she interprets how pop culture trends will impact consumer behavior.
She has mentored some of the top executives in PR and marketing and frequently provides senior level marketing counsel to global CEOs, presidents, CMOs, and communications leaders. Fluent in French and Italian and with business experience in markets around the world, Maher shapes many of her client’s global marketing campaigns.
She has worked in every aspect of the PR business: as a copywriter, media director and account manager; on the corporate side and in agencies; and in US practices and abroad. In November 2011, Marina Maher Associates was acquired by global marketing services holding company Omnicom.
Maher has continued in her position as CEO since then, with her agency operating as a unit of Omnicom's Diversified Agency Services but functioning as an independent business with its headquarters in New York City.
Maher is a member and former board director of the Council of PR Firms, an industry organization that promotes the profession and sets quality and ethical standards. She is also on the board of governors of Cosmetic Executive Women and the Beauty Industry Advisory Board for the Fashion Institute of Technology Masters Program.