By Jess Ruderman
Atention Comms will comprise Milk & Honey PR’s U.S. team and client portfolio.
NEW YORK: Milk & Honey PR North America CEO Paul Cohen has launched Attention Comms, an independent agency spun off from Milk & Honey PR’s U.S. business.
The agency debut follows a share buyout of Milk & Honey PR’s U.S. operations by its American leadership, led by Cohen, who has overseen the agency’s stateside business since its launch in 2021.
Cohen will serve as CEO of Attention Comms alongside a team of eight full-time and part-time employees.
As part of the buyout, which closed this month, the entirety of Milk & Honey PR’s U.S. team has moved to the new organization, in addition to all of the U.S. operation’s clients, according to Cohen.
Attention Comms’ portfolio has about 10 clients, including independent music company Concord, oral-care brand Ordo, payment-processing solutions company Qualpay, professional services firm StoneTurn and health and fitness company Merrithew.
Milk & Honey PR will continue to operate out of offices in Singapore, the U.K. and Germany. The certified B Corp agency was founded in 2017 and is majority employee-owned.
“Milk & Honey continues our commitment to the ambitious U.S. market,” Milk & Honey PR founder and group CEO Kirsty Leighton said via email. “We wish [Cohen] and his NYC team of three all the success in their independent venture. We look forward to sharing an update on our new leadership in the coming weeks.”
Financial terms of the share purchase were not disclosed.
Attention Comms’ leadership sought a separation from Milk & Honey to give the U.S. team more “agility and ability to reflect the uniqueness of the U.S. market,” while also continuing to work with “ambitious, high-growth, purpose-driven organizations,” Cohen said.
The newly formed agency will offer similar services as it did under the Milk & Honey PR brand, including reputation strategy, thought leadership, digital media engagement and brand storytelling.
Attention Comms will be headquartered in New York City, the firm said in a statement. The agency will continue to serve a portfolio of clients across health, technology, energy, social impact, nonprofit and arts and entertainment, according to the agency.
The new firm’s name and branding is “reflective of where we are in our industry,” Cohen explained, emphasizing that attention has become the “fundamental substance of society today.”
“Ezra Klein had a comment where he said, ‘media is something you get booked on; attention is something you attract.’ The industry has to stop treating attention as something that others control, the media controls or influencers control,” he said. “This is something we have to fight for.”
Cohen declined to share his financial goals for the firm, but he said smart, purposefully set-up boutiques are poised to thrive in 2025 and 2026 amid increasing industry consolidation.
“This is the moment for agencies like Attention Comms. I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I’ve seen so many changes, but probably more changes in the past couple of years than the two decades prior to that,” he said. “What that means is smart, focused agencies that know the type of clients that they want and can thrive with are really going to be in the driver’s seat.”
Prior to Milk & Honey PR, Cohen served as a principal at boutique strategic communications consultancy Prospect Strategies Group. Before that, he spent 17 years at Ketchum, where he held senior positions in the firm’s Shanghai, Hong Kong, Brussels and New York offices, most recently as a partner and MD of energy and industry for the Omnicom agency.