What It Takes to Build a Modern PR Agency

Justin Levinson (00:00)

Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the Agency Side Podcast. I'm your host, Justin Levinson. Today I'm joined by Taryn Langer, founder and president of Moxie Communications Group. Over the past 15 years, Taryn has grown Moxie from a startup into a 45 person agency that helps ambitious brands turn their stories into cultural conversations. If you're interested in how successful founders grow an agency, develop compelling brand narratives, and adapt as AI transforms how companies get discovered, this episode is for you. Let's roll it.

Taryn, it's so great to have you here today.

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Taryn Langer (00:40)

Thanks, I'm excited to talk to you.

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Justin Levinson (00:43)

Yeah, should be fun. I guess to start, I for the viewers who might not know, maybe to tell us a little bit about Moxie Communications and what you what you're doing there.

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Taryn Langer (00:52)

Sure. So it's an agency I founded 15 years ago this month, and a lot has changed over those years. But if we fast forward to today, we work with a wide range of brands, both like iconic consumer brands as well as emerging and mature tech brands. We help them craft their stories. We find the right homes for those stories, whether it's in

earned media or social platforms or direct channels for them. And then the sort of big task ahead in today's very fragmented audience and social media environment is how do we get those stories distributed and making sure that we're reaching the right people.

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Justin Levinson (01:37)

Yeah. Very cool. How I guess interested in in your origin story. I know you started at William Morris agency. So kind of interesting how you made that pivot from there to to PR.

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Taryn Langer (01:49)

Yeah. Well, the benefit of hindsight is I can tell a bit of a story around it. Well, at the time it did feel sort of haphazard and, you know, like a lot of young people, you just sort of follow your dreams and look for opportunities. I would say, you know, from a very young age, I thought and I still think that I had a lot of like situational awareness, perception awareness.

Which was always an advantage for me because I could turn that into a level of confidence where I find ways to connect with a lot of different people and I'm able to work with a lot of different leaders, founders, et cetera, from different backgrounds. So in college I finagled some amazing internships at SNL and Brilstein Gray, which was like the big talent management agency in LA and

That's when I thought, okay, my career path is going to be in talent management. I love supporting other people and sort of this thrill of watching others succeed. And I did the William Morris, the the famed mailroom training program. I was there for a couple of years. I think I was maybe a little too eager for my own good at the time and sort of drove my boss insane at the time with gunning for that promotion to be a junior agent. that

That obviously didn't work out. I went to IAC after that and really got to see some of the big early internet behemoths like Ticketmaster and Expedia grow and to really see it from that management operational level. Decided that wasn't quite right for me. I liked entertainment, finagled another job into entertainment PR. And then it was really in 2006 that was a pivotal moment for me when.

The worlds of entertainment and tech collided. And I launched a streaming service called Crackle. And at the time there was one emerging player, little player called YouTube. And through working at, you know, with Crackle at the time, what sort of had me gobsmacked was the founders were my peers. We were in the same age group. And you didn't really see a lot of that in entertainment before working with, you know, big studio heads.

And I realized I could really have an outsized voice. Like it wasn't just about garnering press, but it was about really shaping the narrative of the brand and the storytelling. And with young founders at that time, they were up for being provocative. They were up for doing whatever it takes. And that was the moment I decided, all right, I'm all in on working with startups, working with founders. And then 2011 decided to start Moxie.

really out of fun just seeing some opportunities for where these hotbeds as startup creation were happening. They were happening LA was a really big hotbed at that time and that's my hometown. And even though I was living in New York, I decided to start an agency here, but all of our early clients were out of LA.

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Justin Levinson (05:00)

Wow, that's that's really interesting. How I guess what were your thoughts when you started like the agency? You just built it from scratch. I mean, were you were you kind of nervous or were you pretty confident or how how what were you feeling at that time?

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Taryn Langer (05:12)

mean, you know, I I didn't really set out to build an agency. I just set out, I think, to do it on my own and work with great companies. But I my team hears me say this a lot. I fall in love hard and fast. And everything to me at the time was so exciting I didn't want to say no. So the first handful of clients we took on was through a Venture Studio called Science out in LA. And I think

five of those six early investments of theirs had pretty notable exits. And so founders talked to each other and Dollar Shave Club was like really our first client. and that was such a hit at the time. And so we had a lot of in I had a lot of inbound interest. And that's when I said, okay, now I can intentionally start hiring. And if I am going to build an agency, what do I want to do differently? And and yeah, so it is so that

That was to be able to have that autonomy and control who I worked with and decide which clients to take on was yeah, that that was a really special opportunity. And so it happened very intentionally. And I was lucky that very early on I met my partner, Karina Pertil and

We're very yin and yang. She was like the operational master. She put scaffolding on all of the kind of wild creativity and and drive and gecko and really helped helped form what is a a really tight knit collaborative team today. We're about fifty people and we're split now between New York and LA for our headquarters.

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Justin Levinson (06:56)

Very cool. So in then initially you were thinking about just kind of being a solo entity. You weren't thinking about necessarily scaling a a company.

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Taryn Langer (07:03)

Not

at all. I mean, I chose the name Moxie. I I there wasn't even a lot of intention on the name. It was sort of like, okay, I have to start sending invoices, my accountants telling me, you know, I have to set up a business. I pick the name. It's my daughter's middle name. I thought, okay, I was really intentional about that. It's a great name. It'll it'll work for this. Yeah. Yeah, but but there's only so many hours in the day that I was

able to work with all the companies that I wanted to be working with.

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Justin Levinson (07:34)

And when at what point did you and your partner come together? Was it right in the beginning or was it sort of

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Taryn Langer (07:40)

It was really early on. It was like I would say in the first like year and a half. So I had had a couple of like maybe a handful of employees at that time. And I was just doing things from gut instinct, right? How did I want to be treated and mentored at that stage? What kind of exposure did I wanna have? You know, a lot of agencies have their are are very process driven, very bureaucratic. You have to, you know, start with

clippings and building media databases, and then you can have exposure to pitching and reporters, and then you can have exposure to clients. And I just thought the best learning always happens live in the room. It's very much a client services business and a media services business. I always think of media as our clients as well. And so I wanted to kind of break some of those barriers early on for people and

Maybe it was tapping back into my early spirit when I was at William Morris, where I wanted you know, I thought my capabilities exceeded my place, my stature, yeah, my pay grade. And so I wanted to be able to offer that to really just smart, hardworking, super curious, passionate people as well.

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Justin Levinson (08:57)

That's that's brilliant. Yeah, I was gonna ask you how if if any sort of lessons from William Morris have sort of crossed into your your, you know, role now. And that's that's a great answer. It's kind of giving people those opportunities to, you know, to get client facing and all that kind of stuff early on. So so people that are fairly junior level at Moxie are getting some of those you know, getting to handle some of that stuff.

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Taryn Langer (09:19)

Re I mean, we've put people on client calls granted as observers, but you know, on their first day, right? We want them to know that a title doesn't necessarily give you permission to have a great idea or a suggestion or a recommendation. So we really try to encourage that right from the get go and let them know that their voice matters, their opinions count.

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Justin Levinson (09:45)

Yeah.

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Taryn Langer (10:25)

Gosh, see, I I think we have a lot of team leaders and BPs who've really developed like sector and domain expertise, whether it's in CPG or you know, we work with some amazing CPG clients like Liquid Death and Guttles and Gimme Seaweed or Fashion and E commerce or, you know, Enterprise SaaS. So they might have different opinions than I do. I think for me, what

really makes a great client is a client who wants to really make an impression, who really wants to cultivate their brand, whether it's enterprise tech or consumer tech. Brand is really essential right now, I think, especially in the age of AI and AI proliferation. You know, I feel like I've just come off of two years where one AI productivity tool is virtually indistinguishable from the next. And so

Really building that trust in, you know, in the founding team that these are the right stewards of my data, my information, et cetera, is really important. So I always look for brands that have really invested founders. You know, it's easier to find that at the early stage. Sometimes at the later stage, at growth stage, they're a little bit more re they can be more removed, but I always love a founder who has a point of view, an opinion that they're unafraid to share.

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Justin Levinson (11:54)

Yeah. And do most clients at this point come inbound just based on like work they've already done, it comes naturally, or is there you know, also some some push that you you do on your end as well?

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Taryn Langer (12:07)

Still emotion we are trying to perfect right now. I would say about 99% of everything is inbound. I can recall a handful of times where I've reached out to a founder or company and said, God, like you're missing this opportunity. I would love to do this. I've been thinking deeply about it. And it's worked, it's worked really well those couple of times, but

For now, I would say we we still really benefit from having built a r the reputation we've built. It's evident when you look at the, you know, not only the trajectory, but like the history of our clients. A lot of times we're starting with them from stealth mode and working with them all the way up until an exit. So that reputation really matters, especially amongst venture-backed companies, right? They're all leaning on

their investors and their VCs for recommendations. Who's, you know, not only what's great engineering talent, but who should I be using for PR? And so because we've we've been around and chances are we've worked with portfolio you know, their portfolio companies and probably the top leading 20 venture funds, we get a lot of stuff inbound.

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Justin Levinson (13:27)

Very cool. And how does that look when the the client comes to you inbound and is interested in and working? Like I guess what are the very first steps is sort of just like an intake call and then are you I'm just kind of curious what the the pipeline sort of looks like when you're kind of walking the client through to, you know, sharing what your services and and deciding what's right for them.

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Taryn Langer (13:47)

Yeah, I mean it very much is a an intake call. I actually take probably about seventy percent of those in those intake calls myself. And yeah, that's I take a lot of them myself. My partners will do will do a lot. We really like to start those intake calls at the very senior level. I think both because the senior team is and and we are

probably considered more of like a top heavy firm with a lot of senior leadership. They're very involved and really invested in the day-to-day of the client work. And so it's not sort of like this bait and switch. I that that's typically like one of the top complaints I hear from a lot of clients. We had senior people on the call. Now we have junior people working on the account. So we like to set that precedent off the bat.

You know, I want to understand what is their internal resourcing, right? Because PR is not just this siloed media relations function. It's really integral not only to marketing, but sales and also HR and partnerships, et cetera. And so I'm always looking to make sure it is integrated internally up to the highest levels. And that there's that investment and commitment because it does take

you know, the clients always ask or potential clients always ask, what what does it take from us? Like what level of involvement are you looking for us? And I think they're coming to us 'cause they're looking for our, you know, our judgment, our ideas, our creativity on the pitching and the opportunities and the content creation, et cetera. But you know

Stories are only as good as their proof points, their data, the voices behind them. And so it's important for them to understand like we're we're in this together. It it has to be a it has to be a partnership. They have to prioritize it.

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Justin Levinson (15:50)

Yeah. So would you say that you're always ki involved in the accounts too? Like 'cause I know you you said that it it's not like passed on to junior people. Do you feel like you're fairly accessible if you've kind of done the intake call going forward?

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Taryn Langer (16:02)

Well, luckily I have three amazing partners at this point. And we have a pretty stacked, sophisticated, experienced V VP and managing director team. And so at that level, yeah. I I it in some ways I'm I'm obsolete. I don't need to be on everything. and because we have so many clients, again, it just goes down back to that, you know, there aren't enough hours in the day. But I tend to

you know, either swoop in when there's really critical strategy moments or ahead of big acquisitions, but I dedicate about I would say fifty per of my time to a book of maybe ten clients at at any given time where I'm actively involved. Got it. You know, I'm

I'm on the weekly calls. I am doing the writing. The the benefit of also having a more sophisticated team and a great operational team is I can spend my time doing what I love. Yeah. And that's something I've I've I think from day one, you know, everyone said, Okay, well, read this book because you're going from a practitioner to an operator. So you have to have this mind shift. And I always found myself coming back to the work and really wanting to do the work. That's

That's what I love to do. And so now my time is freed up as such that I spend it on the client work and I spend it on marketing the agency.

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Justin Levinson (17:29)

Very cool. And you come from an accounts background too, right? That's when you in your career, that's sort of where you've grown through.

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Taryn Langer (17:35)

Yeah. I mean, after I see I worked at a handful of PR agencies and so I was always doing account work. Cool. I was never in sort of like a an operational role at an agency before.

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Justin Levinson (17:49)

Got it. Well that that's that's really cool that you're able to kind of do the stuff that you that you like to do, but you're still involved. what do you think has been the I guess this it's a tough question to ask and I think it's maybe too kind of vague, but like what do you what do you s what do you feel like is your like, you know, special sauce? Like what has been what has made, you know, what you've built successful?

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Taryn Langer (18:12)

You know, I I always say it's it's luck and luck is, you know, preparation and the ability to see opportunities. So there's always been a lot of stars that have aligned, I think, along the past fifteen years. It is a great team that I could not, you know, run a fifty person agency to the level and standards that I want to as a as a one woman show.

You know, so so I really lean on the expertise and insights of of my peers at the agency. And going back to that first thing I said, right? It's that perception awareness. So whether we're working with a, you know, Series D AI and pharmaceutical company or a stealth snack brand, I am obsessed with understanding who the customer is and what they care about.

that sort of obsession makes the work equally as exciting to me. And so yeah, that's these, you know, my brain is just constantly it I always imagine what's happening. My brain is that moment in Rant Tattooe where he eats the strawberry and the cheese together and everything explodes, you know, the fireworks go off. And that sort of I'd imagine what's happening in in my head if you could see it.

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Justin Levinson (19:35)

Yeah, my brain kind of operates at a similar level. So I can I can understand. Yeah, that's that's that's interesting. I guess I wanna pivot just also into like like work that you're like exceptionally proud of. Is there any, you know, particular things that you've worked on that you feel were really standout?

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Taryn Langer (19:55)

Like asking me to pick a favorite child. Yeah,

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Justin Levinson (19:58)

Yeah.

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Taryn Langer (19:59)

I mean, I think the work that we've done with Aura over the past seven years has been incredibly rewarding. you know, we started working with them when, you know, they were still sort of this, you know, known for just sleep tracking and hadn't really broken through that real like lifestyle brand barrier. And

the ways we've been able to work with that brand and also grow the work with our brand, with that brand and, you know, looking at affiliate marketing and influencer marketing and all of these other pieces have been incredibly rewarding. There's always that moment, you know, over the years when I'll watch like the Super Bowl and, you know, I see a a client have a great Super Bowl ad, or, you know, the Aura ads during FIFA. And it's sort of like that's, that's, you know, that

feels like it's our baby very much. So that that's probably one that that a lot of people are familiar with that we're incredibly proud of. And then there's other things that really happen behind the scenes too, when we're working with emerging companies and we're trying to help them set up, you know, their principles and their standards for data privacy or, you know, new features, new tools that they're going to launch in the future that might

erode some of the early messaging that you have day one as a founder versus, you know, year five as a founder. So a lot of that behind the scenes work that I see continue to influence how the brand the brand perception and the motions they go through is also pretty rewarding.

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Justin Levinson (21:36)

Yeah. I know you have all these like you were saying, like affiliate marketing and like you guys are influencer stuff as well. Mm-hmm. I imagine it was probably different when you got into this industry like fifteen years ago. I've is there maybe you could tell me a little bit about the the changes that you've experienced since you got into the got into this to what what it's like today. Yeah.

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Taryn Langer (21:56)

You know, I would say well, so much has changed, right, over the past fifteen years between, you know, the rise of affiliate marketing and now, you know, we talk as much about crafting stories and narratives that are gonna be registered by machines as well as humans and how do we feed the LLMs as that becomes you know, the nascent discovery point for for a lot of people and the products and services that they're purchasing.

you know, we saw the rise of LinkedIn and that is a powerful network. Tw TikTok, I mean Instagram, none of these things were either around or, you know, had had permeated right consumer behavior at that time. I've we've always taken sort of a balance between like risk and

You know, what is the right level of risk and experimentation to mastery and expertise before we formally roll something out as a service? And so a lot of times behind the scenes, we're running a bunch of experiments on different platforms, trying different things, deciding, you know, is attribution and measure and the measurement tools there yet where we could prove this out as a real value to a client before.

Hiring against it, building departments against it. So that's always been, you know, a a kind of fun practice but behind the scenes. And that's why again, I'm always looking at the team from the person, it's their first day or it's, you know, year thirteen for them. What are you seeing? What are you hearing? How might that be a channel that benefits a client? How might that be a channel to reach a new kind of audience that we couldn't before?

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Justin Levinson (23:39)

Yeah, are you feel are you pretty like on the ball with all these different social media? Do you are you on like TikTok and and and LinkedIn and all that stuff ac actively? Yeah, you must be happy.

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Taryn Langer (23:48)

I'm I'm addicted to all of it. I I'm a night owl. I don't go to bed until very late and I am scrolling and you know I I sort of have a hate relationship with that woman who pops up on my TikTok after I've been on for three hours and said, Are you tired of scrolling? And I'm Nope, I'm just getting started.

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Justin Levinson (24:12)

That's funny. Yeah. I mean I I I'm into it too. I I I LinkedIn especially was something I never thought was even like a thing. Like when I when I was younger I like, LinkedIn? Like who's on there? Like a bunch of nerds are on LinkedIn and now it's like that's a it's like, well, I guess I'm one of those nerds. That's how I I live there now.

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Taryn Langer (24:27)

would say LinkedIn is probably our primary like thought leadership channel for for a significant amount of our clients. And so we put a lot of attention into cultivating those audiences. How do we make sure we're, you know, not going to succumb to like the whole AI slot that's happening there. And I know everybody now between LinkedIn and Anthropic are working on watermarks and tags, which is wonderful.

I lo I love that. Let's let's preserve the the value of human knowledge and and wisdom and and writing and those capabilities. But

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Justin Levinson (25:07)

Yeah. How how has things changed on like the technology side? I guess like maybe with with AI, has that really affected your like how is that being adapted into your industry? It's

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Taryn Langer (25:18)

It's incredible. It really is like a compounding factor for the amount and depth of work we're able to create with it. Right. It is an a phenomenal research tool if you're using it the right way. I should say we're just for the past year, we have been deeply investigating every single platform, testing it across the agency. Once we commit to platforms, really running deep.

learning sessions and utilization sessions around it, making sure our team understands the risks and the reward. I I can speak personally and just say, you know, it allows me to absorb a tremendous amount of information that would typically take me hours and hours and days to really understand like what are the real insights here. Of course you have to check all your sources.

And what I like to do is I like to pit everything against one another as well to really understand maybe how is this hidden algorithm inf impacting what I'm seeing or not? So whether I'm searching, you know, incognito or I'm logged in, you know, it's it's all of these checks and balances that are really important. I actually, you know, when it comes to social media too, I mean, I'm not just scrolling endlessly, like when I go down a certain path.

I force the algorithm to change by looking at the other side of the story so I can understand what every side is saying. And sometimes you really have to make that very intentional because you will get sucked into one side of the story. So to purposely set that habit, it's sort of like, you know, when I was channel surfing and it would be like, Okay, if I'm watching MSMBC for an hour, I'm gonna watch Fox for an hour to really understand everything.

So I do like pitting the AI against each other. I like pitting the AI measurement tools against each other to seeing, okay, how is peak gonna, you know, tell me about like LLM brand perception versus profound and what do those nuances look like? What do they really mean? What's the most valid?

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Justin Levinson (27:28)

It's like scientist trying to equally prove and disprove the same theory. So it's like 'cause it's you have to you wanna know the truth and you wanna have all you wanna have the balance. That's it's really smart.

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Taryn Langer (27:38)

Yeah.

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Justin Levinson (27:40)

Outside of work and and your successful agency, what do you enjoy doing outside of outside of this world?

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Taryn Langer (27:47)

a funny question to me because I'm like, gosh, do I even have outside time? What what else am I doing?

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Justin Levinson (27:54)

Turn's just like scrolling all day and night.

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Taryn Langer (27:55)

Yeah, I am. I am. I would say, you know, family, friends and binging content and occasionally travel. you know, I always you know, not always, but I like to think, you know, my husband's my best friend of twenty five years, my kids are my priority and work is my purpose. And so there's not a lot of room outside of that. My friends are my soulmates. I really like to spend a lot of intentional time, you know, with my friends from all different

Walks of life, all different kinds of backgrounds, and kind of get outside that like work tech echo chamber that's really easy to, you know, just succumb to.

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Justin Levinson (28:35)

Yeah. Any favorite music?

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Taryn Langer (28:38)

Favorite music. I I don't know, I I kind of go in like these phases. Like right now I'm listening to a lot of run the jewels and Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I'll switch it up and maybe listen to like Fleetwood Mac for a week. I'm kind of all over the place.

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Justin Levinson (28:58)

Awesome. Any favorite movies or T V shows that you're into? Yeah.

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Taryn Langer (29:01)

Yes.

Movies, yes. My favorite movie of all time is Aliens Two.

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Justin Levinson (29:07)

Go on.

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Taryn Langer (29:08)

Absolutely my favorite. Sigourney Weaver, that was like I just wanted to be her when when I was growing up in Aliens. And also I do like I like all the old like action sci fi. I'm crazy John Wick fan too. Shows I watch everything. You name a show and I've watched it.

But my podcast that I'm obsessed with that I always tell people is I I listen to a lot of different podcasts. I like the personality driven ones in tech, like Hard Fork or All In. And then on the other end of the spectrum, I'll sit there and I'll listen to Sam Harris. So I try to feel a little smarter. And I'm I think I'm gonna go down a philosophy hole now, especially with all the threats and concerns of AI. I feel like

philosophy is going to be really interesting territory that I've never really stepped into. but Dateline is my all-time favorite. I suggest everyone listens to Dateline for the storytelling aspect to understand how stories unfold, how drops of information can lead a listener or a viewer to come up to, you know, their make their own conclusions and and then be surprised at the end. So I just I love the way those narratives unfold.

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Justin Levinson (30:24)

And any favorite foods while I'm throwing these rapid fire questions at you?

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Taryn Langer (30:28)

Gosh, favorite food. Yeah, I would say my my death row meal. Do you watch those? Like I watch a lot of those TikTok death row meals.

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Justin Levinson (30:38)

The last meal bef that you can eat if you had one meal up.

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Taryn Langer (30:40)

Okay,

my death row meal would be fried chicken, a seafood tower, and saffron risotto.

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Justin Levinson (30:49)

Wow, nice. That's great. Well, Tara, thanks so much for being here today and and offering so much value to the community and telling us your your story. It's been really wonderful to to chat with you.

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Taryn Langer (31:00)

Yeah, and thanks for all the good work you're doing and helping companies like mine find great talent. That's really important. I appreciate it. It's all about the people.

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Justin Levinson (31:10)

It is. It's a people but it's all about relationships and people. A hundred percent. All right, Sarah, take care. I appreciate it.

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Taryn Langer (31:16)

Thanks.

All right. Bye.