CAUTION: THE SPIN STARTS HERE WITH TOM MADDEN!
To tell Tom Madden to stop spinning, inventing and creating is like telling the Federal Government to stop spending or telling Trump, the subject of his latest book, to stop tweeting. Good luck!
Madden, the founder of the award-winning, billionaire-making PR firm TransMedia Group, is the quintessential “Spin Man,” the title of his engaging memoir recounting his rise from a harrowing career as a newspaper reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer to the pinnacle of network television and then rocketing into the PR world where’s he’s an accomplished master of publicity campaigns and crisis management..
To introduce a new anti-cellulite cream from client Rexall Sundown, he had store clerks at Duane Reade Drugstores in New York wear “Don’t Panic” buttons to assure female customers there would be enough of this fabulous substance to go around. Then a piece he arranged on NBC Dateline ran nearly eight minutes, setting off $50 million in media exposure and a retail stampede resulting in $54 million in sales.
When Rexall Sundown’s founder Carl DeSantis sold the company for $1.6 billion he credited Madden’s publicity for much of the company’s successes, including making OsteoBi-Flex the $100 million-a-year arthritis champ.
Madden has reinvented himself several times. Starting as a newspaper reporter, he spun himself up to the top executive ranks in network television. As a reporter he’d do anything to get the story. Once he disguised himself as a waiter so he could interview quarantined passengers of a hijacked airliner. Next he tried his hand at speech writing and corporate titans like the Chairman of Kellogg’s Company sought out his talent as a wordsmith. Speeches Madden wrote for Kellogg’s were reprinted in The New York Times.
Nothing short of media meteoric have been Madden’s many reincarnations from reporter, to speech writer, to head of PR at ABC and to the #2-ranked executive at NBC before launching his own firm in 1981 and writing best sellers like King of the Condo, a satiric novel based on his experiences as president of a Florida condo and more recently “Is there enough Brady in Trump to win the inSUPERable Bowl?”
When he launched TransMedia Group in 1981, the boutique firm landed the largest company in America at the time, AT&T, as its first client. Madden helped Ma Bell through its tumultuous divestiture, guiding then besieged chairman Charley Brown through the media underbrush up to a safe clearing where the company reinvented itself.
TheCity of New York also was quick to tap Madden’s magic with media and he was assigned to promote fair housing in the city. The brilliant PSA campaign he created earned TransMediaa Bronze Anvil Award from the Public Relations Society of America.
Today TransMedia Group (www.transmediagroup.com) has an outstanding staff headed by his daughter Adrienne Mazzone, President. The bilingual firm serves clients worldwide from its headquarters in Boca Raton. Madden has over 20,000 connections on LinkedIn and counting! Connect with Tom on LinkedIn!