• The New York Times, Thursday, September 9, 2010 9:57 AM

Stuart Elliott writes about the latest acquisition by MDC Partners and notes that it shows a trend in marketers' growing use of PR professionals to reach the buying public via social media, database marketing, experiential marketing and analytics.

Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal & Partners in New York, which is owned by MDC, is acquiring a majority stake in Kwittken & Company, a public relations agency in New York with annual revenue approaching $10 million and clients like Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, McGraw-Hill and Thomson Reuters.

The transaction is the third in five months for MDC involving a public relations agency; the others were Sloane & Company in New York and Allison & Partners in San Francisco. It is the sixth deal over all for MDC since last September. None of the six agencies in which MDC has bought majority stakes specializes in traditional ad tasks like creating television commercials.

Read the whole story at The New York Times »