Marx Layne + Company
YOUR RESTAURANT AND LODGING COMMUNICATIONS EXPERTS
Marx Layne & Company is Michigan’s leading public relations and digital media agency serving the hospitality sector.
Agency of Record for the Michigan Restaurant & Lodging Association.
From Michigan’s big cities such as Detroit and Traverse City to out-state destinations of Chicago and Cleveland to small towns and main streets, Marx Layne has delivered high-quality, individualized marketing campaigns for restaurants, hotels, tourism attractions and events.
Our agency has deep expertise in the hospitality sector: from QSRs, fine dining, multi-concept hospitality companies and single-location restaurants to family hotels with entertainment offerings, boutique inns, luxury hotels and hotels that cater to tech-savvy Millennials. As a result, we understand how to devise a communication strategy that aligns with each client’s unique brand.
Marx Layne delivers value to restaurateurs, hoteliers and entertainment destinations seeking to grow their business. We successfully distinguish our clients from the competition, elevating brands through high-profile media coverage; social media, CRM and digital media campaigns; search engine optimization (SEO); digital analytics consulting; search engine marketing (SEM); Google AdWords; pay-per-click (PPC) and social media advertising; and stakeholder engagement and community relations.
We consistently position our clients as industry leaders, showcasing their unique services and offerings through strategic communication campaigns crafted to “put butts in seats and heads in beds.” In today’s fragmented world of print, broadcast and online media, our clients value the cost-effective strategic direction provided by our experienced communicators.
Through our deep experience, we know that clients in the hospitality sector are most susceptible to the media frenzy when a crisis arrives. Many agencies claim to provide crisis communications, but few can approach the high level of public relations counsel and expertise found at Marx Layne. For decades, we have helped guide our clients through the intense media scrutiny that often erupts during a company’s most trying times.
DECADES OF EXPERIENCE
The hospitality industry is a passion of our account professionals. We have great respect and appreciation for how restaurants and hotels have positively impacted the economy, revitalizing main streets, downtowns and small towns.
Marx Layne has worked with renowned restaurant brands like California Pizza Kitchen, McDonald’s, Morton’s, Ocean Prime and Wolfgang Puck. We have introduced new concepts, including Piada Italian Street Food, Slurping Turtle, Texas de Brazil, and Sage Restaurant Group’s Toasted Oak Grill & Market. Our seasoned account professionals have coordinated grand openings of restaurants throughout Michigan as well as in Chicago and Ohio.
We understand the needs and opportunities that are unique to different concepts, from QSRs to fine dining and everything in between. Our agency works directly with owner/operators, executive chefs, sales managers, franchise associations, corporate leadership and advertising agency partners.
Our hotel experience is equally as vast as our restaurant work. Marriott. Moxy. Best Western. These are some of the brands we have represented. We have managed public relations for the MGM Grand Detroit hotel, casino and spa; MotorCity Casino Hotel; The Townsend Hotel; Bay Harbor; The Inn at St. John’s, the St. Regis Hotel and Weber’s Inn, to name a few.
We have grand opened hotels, launched rebranding campaigns and orchestrated sustaining marketing campaigns to keep our clients’ brands top-of-mind. Our account professionals work directly with hotel general managers, executive chefs, event and sales managers, corporate leadership and partner agencies, including architectural and design firms.
Marx Layne has worked with many organizations on statewide campaigns, including the Michigan Restaurant & Lodging Association, Travel Michigan, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, Bank of America, Comcast, Nestlé Waters North America and Verizon.
What We Do
ELEVATING YOUR BRAND
As your public relations agency, we will:
- Conceptualize a communications campaign that incorporates key timeframes, including seasonality, peak and off-season, messaging designed to engage key stakeholders and prospective patrons, product and service launches, strategic partnerships, trends and events
- Draft bylined articles, op-eds and blogs that position you as a thought leader in the industry
- Monitor industry news and trends to pursue interview opportunities for your brand
- Create and post social media content to showcase your brand’s offerings and points of distinction
- Web development, design, content creation, optimization and programming
- Identify events for participation that align with your brand and are meaningful to generating business
- Design, write, print and disseminate brochures, newsletters, e-newsletters and other graphic materials to keep your brand top-of-mind among key stakeholders
Our public relations professionals consistently generate high-profile media coverage for our clients, raising their brand profile and creating awareness among existing and prospective patrons.
We offer a wide array of synergistic services:
- Media relations
- Spokesperson training
- Developing and managing social media platforms and dialogues
- Website design and management
- Creating SEO-focused content for clients’ websites
- Special events planning, execution and promotion, ranging from small exclusive seminars to highly attended open houses to weekend outdoor events that draw one million people
- Our crisis management team has expertly handled such critical issues as food-borne illness, product recalls, industrial accidents, death on premises, boycotts and strikes. We provide crisis communications on an hourly basis, navigating and managing the message with sensitivity to how things play out in a court of law and the court of public opinion. We also are the go-to agency for large law firms that need highly responsive crisis management communications for their clients.
We are partners with the Michigan Restaurant & Lodging Association and the Detroit Restaurant & Lodging Association, the recognized leaders of Michigan and Detroit’s hospitality industry.
Hospitality Marketing Team
SEASONED PROFESSIONALS LEAD OUR HOSPITALITY MARKETING TEAM
Michael Layne has been serving established and growing companies in the Detroit metropolitan area since the early 1980s. He has provided strategic communications counsel to numerous industry leaders as an extension of their corporate brands.
As a founding partner of Marx Layne & Company in 1987, Layne has been instrumental in building Michigan’s largest independently owned public relations agency. Layne attributes the growth and stability of Marx Layne & Company to the development and retention of a diverse client base and the careful building of a dedicated and capable team of public relations professionals.
A bona fide foodie, Layne’s love of food, wine and entertainment has helped position the agency as the premier provider of communications services. Furthermore, his work for leading nonprofits, municipal officials and area business leaders has put him clearly in the center of activity throughout Michigan and beyond.
Michael Odom has nearly 20 years of experience providing marketing, public relations and event planning services for clients in several industry sectors, including hospitality, retail, nonprofit and healthcare.
His expertise includes grand openings, ribbon cuttings, groundbreakings; media relations for events of all sizes and sustaining communication campaigns; orchestrating all aspects of special events, from A/V and entertainment to food & beverage and scripting; and crisis communications management.
Odom is Hispanic, bilingual (Spanish) and maintains strong ties to the Hispanic community throughout Michigan. He is chairman of the board for the Southwest Detroit Business Association, a nonprofit organization that supports business owners and residents in the state’s largest Hispanic populated area which is highly regarded for its restaurants and entertainment venues. Odom is a board member at large for the Detroit Regional LGBT Chamber of Commerce, a nonprofit organization that works to certify, promote and support LGBT businesses.
Lana Mini is a veteran print and digital media journalist and editor with more than 20 years of experience covering local and national news, business and human-interest stories. Prior to joining Marx Layne & Company, Mini served as a full-time writer and editor with Gannett Newspapers, Inc. (Detroit Free Press and Observer & Eccentric Newspapers) and a journalist with Digital First Media (Macomb Daily, Oakland Press, Press & Guide). Her news coverage of state government and general interest stories – including environmental stories surrounding the Great Lakes — earned her numerous awards by the Michigan Press Association and Society of Professional Journalists.
Mini also has worked in the nonprofit sector as a public relations coordinator and social media writer, creating content that attracted positive community engagement. Through her deep relationships in newsrooms throughout the region, combined with years of journalistic experience, Mini has a keen understanding of what the news editors and readers want, which lands her clients the positive media coverage they need to increase brand awareness.
Our Thoughts
INSIGHTS TO OUR THINKING
Contact Us
LET’S TALK
Marx Layne + Company: Public Relations & Communications Experts for the Hospitality Industry
Marx Layne + Company | (248) 855-6777
Metro Detroit: 31300 Orchard Lake Rd Suite 100, Farmington Hills, MI 48334
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