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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Automotive PR Pioneer Exits by Selling Firm

Joseph Molina had never considered selling the public relations firm he started four decades ago in the San Fernando Valley. But a meeting with Dave Imre changed that. The two were introduced by a mutual business associate and hit it off right away as they found out their business philosophies matched. JMPR is now a division of imre, a Baltimore marketing communications agency with offices in Los Angeles and New York. “This is what we needed to grow; this is what we needed to survive and do it with great style and experience,” Molina said in an interview with the Business Journal. Molina, 63, has stayed on as a president and the JMPR offices will remain in Woodland Hills. “We don’t envision a whole lot of changes this year because a lot of their major events are in the fourth quarter and we don’t want to disturb that great team,” Imre said. “We want to be additive to it.” Molina and Imre would not disclose the purchase price. Imre will do more than $20 million in revenue this year with a workforce of more than 100 employees handling clients in the health care, financial services and consumer goods industries. JMPR is what’s known as a boutique agency with revenue in the $3 million range and 16 employees with clients in the high-end automotive and luxury lifestyle sectors. “If it moves, flies or floats, we wanted to be involved with it,” Molina said. The offer from Imre was not the first that Molina has received for the business he started out of his San Fernando Valley apartment in 1977. A few years ago, one of the large global PR firms had tried to acquire JMPR but it didn’t work out. In retrospect, Molina said he didn’t think it would have been the best fit for his agency to become a division of the larger rival. There were parties interested in buying the company, but the purchaser was more interested in what the price would be. Molina said he was interested in the total experience and how such a deal would grow his company. “I didn’t want to take something that I poured my blood, sweat and tears into, as well as those of everybody who has worked here, and throw it away for a check,” he said. The difference with imre was how JMPR and the larger agency believed in doing business the same way and in treating its clients and employees, Molina and Imre said. “They were quick to move. They were feisty,” Molina added. “They really worked hard.” Dan Kahn is a former JMPR employee who started his own marketing agency, Kahn Media in Moorpark, that also specializes in the automotive industry. Kahn said he was happy his former boss found an exit strategy. “Succession planning, especially in the agency business, is very challenging, both managing the client side of it and managing the employee side of it,” Kahn said. “It seems like he found something that is a good fit.” Luxury autos The one word that keeps popping up in Molina’s description of his public relations career is fun. He said he had the most fun in the early years when he got to drive the press cars made available to him by such luxury brands as Ferrari, Lamborghini and Rolls Royce. “I like to drive (the cars) to familiarize myself with the product,” Molina said. Starting from his apartment on Sherman Way to a townhouse on Topanga Canyon Boulevard to an office on Canoga Avenue, JMPR has always been in the San Fernando Valley. The Valley has been good to him and he has no intention of moving – either the business or his home, said Molina, who lives in the hills of the west Valley with his second wife. Following the death of his first wife in 2013, Molina said he had his entire estate valued, including the public relations business. He hadn’t a clue up to that point what it was worth and when he found out, that was the first time it popped into his head to possibly sell it, he said. While new business was always coming into the pipeline, the company was not expanding into new areas of media coverage as quickly as Molina would have liked. Those new areas include digital, social media and video production. Imre was spot on in all three, Molina said. “Everything we wanted to offer, they offered,” he added. “Everything they wanted from the PR side of the business we could help bolster.” Kahn, the former employee, said that Molina carved out a unique position in public relations by becoming a luxury automotive specialist. Prior to JMPR, he was not sure that specialty had existed in an agency, he added. But as an agency, JMPR defined itself within traditional public relations channels. With the business world evolving and the needs of clients changing with the advent of the internet and social media, the company needed to find ways beyond the traditional ones to get the message out for their clients, Kahn said. “This acquisition is going to allow them to have access to services they weren’t able to offer before,” he explained. “It is good to see that (Molina) recognized that.” Like JMPR, imre has a foundation in traditional media for public relations but in the past seven to eight years has really grown its social and digital media presence, Imre said. “That is where we are doing a lot of innovating,” he added. “We thought we could join forces, and two plus two equals five.” The automotive market is new for imre. In buying JMPR it gains instant expertise. The smaller firm’s reputation in the luxury car market is unparalleled and built on 40 years of understanding the people, product and customers, Imre said. “When you talk to people in that business, Joe Molina and his agency mean something significant,” he added. Entrepreneurial legacy During 40 years of running his own business, Molina has learned a few lessons. In public relations, he said, it all comes down to relationships – meeting face to face and getting to know sources and others in the daily grind of telling stories for clients. That is what’s missing from the new generation of communications professionals. They prefer to remain faceless and work only through email, he added. “I have seen too many people who have thought pressing a button and sending a release out was doing the job,” Molina said. Kahn called his two years at JMPR a mixed experience. Molina could be tough as he has high expectations for his people. But now that he operates a competing agency, he finds himself saying things to his employees that Molina used to say to him. “I have a much better understanding what he was going through and what he was trying to manage at the time,” he added. Molina said that he has enjoyed watching as his former employees move on to bigger things, either with their own agencies or working for car manufacturers. In addition to Kahn at Kahn Media, there is Dan Weikel who went on to start IBP Media in Westlake Village, a firm that represents high-end luxury brands. Other alumni have gone to represent Jaguar Land Rover and Bentley. Even Molina’s daughter, Allyson, represents Chevrolet for an agency in Atlanta. “There is a whole generation of communications professionals out there in a variety of fields and a variety of gigs that all spent some time learning at his desk,” Kahn said. “That is a legacy he should be proud of.”

Mark Madler
Mark Madler
Mark R. Madler covers aviation & aerospace, manufacturing, technology, automotive & transportation, media & entertainment and the Antelope Valley. He joined the company in February 2006. Madler previously worked as a reporter for the Burbank Leader. Before that, he was a reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago and several daily newspapers in the suburban Chicago area. He has a bachelor’s of science degree in journalism from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

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