In the tech industry, the power of perception is nothing new. “Welcome to the new world of public relations, where hot startups and hot venture-capital firms are matched by every-bit-as-hot PR shops,” Fast Company extolled, hyping the behind-the-scenes operators who helped unknowns break through the “extremely noisy” conversation. That was in 1998. But bubblicious valuations and questionable business models aren’t the only carry-overs from the last time around. As the New York tech scene ascends up the ranks of the city’s power elite, so have the connectors behind the curtain.
“It used to be all about representing celebrities and rappers and hot clubs and now it’s about representing really cool startups and hot brands . . . and I guess it doesn’t hurt to have a rapper,” said Andy Morris, co-founder of the PR agency Morris King, which also represents New York startups. “When your client comes in number two on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt, that’s the new rock star.” That may be the weathervane reading inside the bubble, but even Guest of a Guest, where old money last names entitle you to a shutter click, has started covering tech parties.
In Silicon Valley, where the tech industry has no rival, agencies like Outcast, Spark, LaunchSquad, and Atomic tend to dominate as gatekeepers between the press and startups. But none of their New York branches own the space, leaving an opening for Brew.
Journalism professors used to coach cub reporters to treat PR reps like the enemy. They’re what stands between you and the truth. But if the ethics 2.0 lesson that was Michael Arrington’s ouster from AOL was any lesson, the lines are blurring. Between investor and blogger, between ‘source’ and ‘friend’. “When she’s out in the Valley, she stays with [veteran tech journalist] Kara Swisher,” said Curbed’s Lockhart Steele, one of Ms. Hammerling’s best friends. Mr. Frommer noted At a recent mentoring session where Ms. Hammerling explained the ins and outs of getting press to the new class of TechStars, Ms. Hammerling mentioned that she sometimes has coffee at the home of AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka, even if they argue about a story. Every reporter The Observer contacted spoke in admiring tones of how Brew PR didn’t waste their time.
“People are people. They can be friends with whoever they want to,” said Mr. Frommer, noting that Mr. Arrington is friends with investor Ron Conway. “I’m sure he probably gives Ron Conway’s invests a little more attention, but no one’s going to value a friendship more than their professional reputation … Friends are nice, but I’m number one, so I’m not going to jeopardize.”
Judging by Ms. Hammerling’s willingness to aggressively engage with everyone from reporters to investors on behalf of her employees and clients, she’s not willing to jeopardize those relationships either. “Her ideal state would be to not be upset, but she takes her work very personally, so her work is her life,” said Ms. Pokorny. “If she goes out of her way to take the time to get you all the information that you will ever need, then to write some really horrible, disparaging thing that’s really off message, you’re gonna have to have an explanation for that. A lot of PR people will just accept the explanation the reporter gives … Brooke will say if you can’t fix it I will go to your editor and then while you’re responding to her, she will go to your editor anyway.”
“AT 24, 25, YOU’RE FEARLESS. I certainly was. Being in the Valley at that point was, I’m guessing, what it was like to be in Hollywood back in the beginning of the film business when you had five movie stars. You had access. Everybody knew one another. You’d be at a social conference or what not and there would be Marc Andreessen or Larry Ellison.”
“There were parties every night for the dotcom world and my ex-boyfriend was best friends with Mark Pincus and Marc Benioff, who was a marketing dude at Oracle at the time,” Ms. Hammerling explained at her office. “They were older. I was the youngster. I was the little girl living on a houseboat in Sausalito and they all just thought it was the funniest thing,” she went on, leaning in.
In the intervening years, all four tech execs have taken their place in the annals of industry lore. Mr. Pincus launched Zynga, a gaming company behind Farmville that has filed one of the most hotly anticipated IPOs after Facebook. In fact, Brew represented Zynga before it launched. “The first story on Zynga was by Brad Stone at the New York Times,” she notes with pride.
Mr. Benioff founded the ubiquitous web software company Salesforce, which currently boasts a market cap of $18.5 billion. In 1999 Mr. Andreessen sold his company, Netscape, to AOL for $4.2 billion, giving the bubble the poster boy it sought. All three men are now billionaires. Mr. Ellison, CEO of Oracle, however, stands alone as the fifth richest man in the world—and Ms. Hammerling’s longtime mentor. Years after they met, NetSuite, a cloud computing company Mr. Ellison founded, become one of Brew’s first clients and one of the few non-startups still on its roster.
“He was a single playboy then and I had no time for it. He knew right away that that was just not the game we were going to play,” Ms. Hammerling said of Mr. Ellison. “I was very clear that I thought his demeanor in press was lacking at some point. He was always being described as mercurial. It was less about Oracle and more about Larry. It’s always a problem when this happens. But because I got to know him on a level most hadn’t—but not working with him, and not as a girl thing—I was able to really see a side of him that I was so impressed with. I would tell media about it. They were turning their head like, ‘Really?’ I saw how my personal experiences could change public opinion.”
Of course having a way with everyone from tech tycoons to tech bloggers (not to mention her 11,245 Twitter followers) doesn’t always mean that you can protect your clients, or that your efforts won’t backfire. Ning, a former Facebook client backed by Mr. Andreeseen, is probably most famous for a much-derided Fast Company cover that featured its photogenic CEO Gina Bianchini on the cover in a wife beater. The accompanying feature, lauding the company, which helps individuals create their own social networks, waxed perhaps too poetic about Mr. Andreeseen’s theories about a double viral loop. “Adam Penenberg was doing a story for Fast Company on social and then I talked to him and thought it would be a great for him to see Ning,” Ms. Hammerling said. “So we brought him into the Palo Alto office and he lived and breathed the Ning story for a couple days. That’s what really led it to be a cover and then his book.”
When asked about the negative response in some circles, Ms. Hammerling protested. “Pushback from who? I certainly wasn’t pushing back,” she said with a laugh. “Look it was a great moment in time, Ning was an incredible story. You had a couple of things—you had Marc involved, you had a female CEO. You’ve got to remember, Facebook had 45 people when I started working with Ning. The social networking space was pretty hot, we all wanted to be involved with it. And I was passionate about the idea of people having their own social networks. And Ning.”
ntiku@observer.com
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