Former leaders of Dallas-based advertising agency The Richards Group’s public relations practice recently launched a nationwide, independent public relations and marketing firm.
The firm, Genuine Articles, is led by women and was co-founded by Stacey Barnett, Elizabeth Clayton and Greg Miller, who bring together nearly 60 years of experience in the PR field.
On paper, the firm has been in existence for more than a year.
Clients began contacting the Richards Group’s public relations team in early 2021 with a proposal: they wanted to continue working with employees, but did not engage in Richards’ name as such.
The Richards Group, which rebranded itself as TRG, provided both creative advertising and public relations services and was in the midst of a PR crisis of its own at the time. After racially insensitive comments made by founder Stan Richards during a meeting and promoted in Ad Age major clients, including Home Depot and Motel 6, had severed ties with the agency.
With TRG’s permission, a new LLC, Genuine Articles, was created to serve those clients and ultimately preserve jobs. Some employees in public relations serve mostly public service and nonprofit clients, working part-time for both TRG and new firms.
“The best way forward was to really envision it as a modern, nimble, fast-moving communications agency that is changing the PR world,” Miller said.
The co-founders say that their new firm’s focus on “authentic expression” matches how the firm came to be.
“We now have a worldview that we can empathize with any customer,” Miller said.
The firm has 12 employees—many of them TRG veterinarians—and it is actively hiring many more PR professionals, according to the original article. It has employees in North Texas, Austin and Phoenix, Ariz.
It retained almost all of its customers from TRG in the split. Genuine Articles’ roster includes 16 clients, including Salvation Army, Scottish Right for Children, Discount Tire and Universal Engineering Sciences. It has handled the much awaited launch of the recent Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs Company,
Based on gross business bookings, GenuineArticle estimates that it is well on its way to be among the top three public relations firms in the state within the next two to three years.
According to both firms, Genuine Article will continue to work with TRG clients as well. The “vast majority” of the actual article’s business, however, is different, Barnett said.
The firm of Barnett, Clayton and Miller is one of the new organizations started by former TRG veterans last year as clients began to leave the Dallas advertising agency.
Veterans Chris Smith and Dave Kroenke split to form Plot Twist, a boutique advertising agency to serve Richards Group clients HEB and Central Market – the firm’s name itself is a nod to plot twists in their long careers at TRG and their own. Starting business of .
Rob Baker and Jimmy Bonner formed the Baker & Bonner Creative Emporium, something they both said they had planned for a while before intensifying their plans following the October 2020 client exodus at TRG.
TRG has been rebranding and redefining itself for months since founder Stan Richards split from the firm. this is Diversified your leadership and significantly reduced its workforce. Its iconic Uptown tower was recently valued at over $60 million sold at the beginning of the year.
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