2026 marks Forefront’s 10th anniversary, and to celebrate, we’re sitting down with each of our practice area heads to get the inside scoop on their specialties, new technologies they’re exploring and their take on the B2B marketing landscape’s biggest trends.
In this installment, we go inside our PR practice area, speaking with Forefront SVP and Head of Media Relations Jonathan Marino about how the team helps our clients navigate high-stakes moments, how to measure real impact beyond placements and his take on the evolving media landscape.
Q: Why is it important to approach PR differently for capital markets and fintech versus other industries?
A: Financial services is a well-established industry in the U.S., so our clients are often up against institutions with more than a century of history building a reputation for trustworthiness and reliability. That reputation is the most important asset you can have in this space. Many of the clients we aim to work with are startups, disruptive organizations or rapidly expanding companies launching a tech-enabled product or service set to change how the industry operates. Crafting a distinct narrative and voice — whether for an executive or a product — requires us to research and analyze not only how different sub-sectors of finance operate, but also how our clients’ competitors navigate that space.
Q: What experience does the Forefront PR team bring that gives clients confidence in high-stakes, high-visibility moments?
A: Forefront’s co-founders, Mark Dowd and Eric Soderberg, have decades of in-house marketing and communications leadership experience. Beyond that, our team blends people who’ve worked in visible roles at complex financial services organizations with former journalists who understand what resonates with the people who write, produce, and edit the news. Across our team, and across the globe, we have experience working with top-tier media in deadline-driven environments.
Q: What’s an example of a PR win or campaign that showcases the team’s capabilities in this space?
A: One example is our work with moomoo, a global investment and trading platform originally based in Hong Kong and which is now growing its presence in the U.S. We support the full range of communications — media placements, speaker training, content development and media strategy. We’ve supported a dozen announcements in 2026, with coverage in outlets like The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Bloomberg, Yahoo! Finance and the Pomp Podcast, reaching both traditional financial news audiences and new media that didn’t exist a decade ago. That mix is helping build their reputation and momentum at exactly the moment they need to establish a brand in the U.S.
Q: What trends are you seeing in how B2B capital markets and fintech companies want to be covered in the media?
A: A recent study found there are roughly seven PR professionals for every journalist. I spent more than a decade writing and editing news, and I would have benefited from fewer interactions with communications professionals and more interactions with the executives in the industries I covered.
Newsrooms shrunk and may continue to shrink in the years ahead. Podcasts like TBPN launched. For three hours of programming, they require a fraction of the staff that major television networks use to put on shows.
When you approach someone at a globally recognized news organization like Axios, Bloomberg, or the FT, you have to demonstrate knowledge of space and show how your clients have specific, unique views on what’s happening right now. That means being able to talk about how private market data companies are supporting LPs managing a bulging roster of GPs, or what makes an event contract exclusively the jurisdiction of the CFTC. It also means being able to address the sub-sector’s history to understand how we got to where we are today.
Q: Beyond placements, how do you measure whether a PR campaign is actually moving the needle for a client?
A: One increasingly useful signal is how a company ranks against its competitors in LLM search results. Running a company and its peers through AI tools creates a quick scorecard on how visibility and messaging perform, and it can surface real surprises about how a brand is perceived relative to competitors.
Beyond that, the bigger win is moving from a basic press mention to a substantial feature story — becoming part of the day’s central narrative rather than a passing reference. And when markets move fast, having a trusted spokesperson who can respond quickly and be relied upon by reporters builds credibility over time. It’s also worth noting that sometimes the best result is deliberately low visibility, particularly around regulator communication or internal messaging, where consistency matters more than exposure.
Q: What makes a good spokesperson, and how do you help identify the right one for a client?
A: Genuine enthusiasm for what you’re building matters most. You could work in the HVAC space and earn your way into a Wall Street Journal profile with the right narrative. So, personality is definitely a factor. But you also need a distinct point of view and the ability to have honest, trust-based conversations with reporters, whether on camera or off the record. People can tell the difference between someone trying to drive a transactional relationship and someone building a real one. Building that kind of network among producers, podcasters, journalists and editors takes time, which is part of why we think of ourselves as relationship managers for our clients.
Q: What’s your approach to award programs, speaking opportunities and industry rankings?
A: Because the clients we work with tend to be in a growth stage, a lot of them are well-positioned for awards and industry lists, and that can be a nice complement to a holistic communications program — especially when a client wants to highlight a thriving culture or position themselves as a thought leader in the market. That said, we see earned media as the more valuable, ongoing asset. No one wins fifteen awards in a year, but appearing in fifteen stories across outlets like CNBC or Bloomberg creates a steady drumbeat that resonates in a way a single award moment cannot. And this is increasingly showing up in LLM results, too.
Q: How do you approach reactive PR — responding to industry news or a client-specific event on short notice?
A: It’s increasingly a 24/7 job, especially as markets themselves move toward round-the-clock activity. In the past, you could count on a crisis slowing down when the closing bell rang at 4. Soon, we’ll have fully functioning after-hours trading at the retail level, and that means managing your narrative more actively. Whether it’s major regulatory news or a disruptive market event, you need to be prepared with a point of view and the ability to deliver it on the reporter’s timeline, not your own — no one can wait for you to publish.
Thank you to Jon for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the PR practice area. This installment concludes our series of conversations with Forefront’s practice area leaders. You can view the full series in our blog archives.