Mark W. McClennan, APR
Senior Vice President

Mark McClennan combines strategic communications counsel with a relentless drive for excellence to help Schwartz Communications’ clients succeed in leveraging public relations to realize their business objectives. He works with clients to determine overall messaging and strategy, while remaining actively engaged with the media and analysts. He regularly advises clients on social media and podcasting strategies.

In his more than 12 years at Schwartz, McClennan has led teams in a variety of industries, including financial services, consumer technology, Web 2.0, semiconductor manufacturing, healthcare IT, homeland security, storage and gaming. He heads the materials science and semiconductor practice group, but also has a strong focus on financial services and consumer technology.

McClennan has worked with companies ranging from venture-funded start-ups to large public companies, including CheckFree, Peppercoin, Bill Me Later, Epocrates, AmberWave, PRI Automation, Connected, Imaging Automation, Converge and Trellix. He has guided companies through IPOs and acquisitions. He has coordinated successful public relations campaigns for companies in Europe and Asia.

McClennan’s teams have been recognized with more than 35 awards for excellence in public relations, including four Silver Anvils (the PR industry Oscars) in the past four years for Marketing Consumer Services: Technology for his teams’ work on behalf of CheckFree, Bill Me Later and Peppercoin. For CheckFree, his team helped raise consumer awareness of the benefits to paying bills online to 99 percent, and followed up with a campaigns focused on increasing the number of women who pay their bills online and reducing consumer fears of ID theft.

He has obtained placements for his clients in a wide variety of business and trade publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Fast Company, Forbes, U.S. News and World Report and Newsweek. In 2006, McClennan orchestrated a blog campaign for Tabblo that resulted in it exceeding growth projections and helping the company be acquired less than six months after the company retained Schwartz.

McClennan helps spearhead the agency’s social media efforts. He manages all of the agency’s senior media strategists to maximize their effectiveness across accounts. For the past 18 months, he has taught Schwartz’s “Boot Camp” to train new employees on the skills and approach needed to succeed at Schwartz. He helped create and run many other training programs for Schwartz, including new supervisor training, advanced media relations, maximizing trade shows and social media training.

McClennan has a B.A. in public relations and political science from the S.I. Newhouse School at Syracuse University. He is president of the Public Relations Society of America’s Boston Chapter, one of the largest in the nation.

Twitter: @mcclennan

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mcclennan

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